Digital Television Transition - Purpose of The Transition

Purpose of The Transition

Almost all analog formats in current use were standardised between the 1940s and 1950s and have had to be adapted to the technological innovations since then. Initially offering only black and white images with monophonic sound, the formats have had to be modified to broadcast in colour and with stereo sound, SAP, captioning, and other information all while being backwards compatible with televisions unable to use the features. Additionally, engineers have had to implement these protocols within the limits of a set bandwidth and the tolerances of an inefficient analogue format.

However during this time, the application and distribution of digital communications evolved. Digital television transmission more efficiently uses the available bandwidth and can easily integrate other digital services. While analog video and audio broadcasts can not efficiently include other digital services, it has the advantage of greater area coverage due that fact that a degraded signal can still be usable to a fringe user while a digital one will just drop-off.

• For the end-user, digital television has potential for resolutions and sound fidelity far higher than that of analogue broadcasts. It is also possible to offer far more channels by way of digital multiplexing, and subchannels, distinct simulcast programming, from the same broadcaster. However most free-to-air broadcasters do not have the finances to operate multiple channels with the same quality of content on all channels, also the more channels provided has the impact of decreasing the bandwidth available to the existing channel(s) meaning overall lower picture quality due to compression artifacts and non-proportional anamorphic widescreen digital scaling.

• For government and industry, digital television reallocates the radio spectrum so that it can be auctioned off. In the subsequent auctions, telecommunications industries can introduce new services and products in mobile telephony, wi-fi internet, and other nationwide telecommunications projects.

• Impact on public-access television, decreased allocations available, expensive digital equipment cost replacement and lower broadcast area coverage due to digital drop-off.