This is a list of digital television deployments by country, which summarises the process and progress of transition from analogue to digital broadcasting.
The transition to digital television is a process that is happening at different paces around the world. Although digital satellite television is now commonplace, the switch to digital cable and terrestrial television has taken longer. See also Digital terrestrial television.
Not all countries are compatible within each standard DVB-T, ATSC (North America), DMB (China), ISDB (of which there are two incompatible variations used in Japan and South America respectively). Countries that have adopted digital terrestrial recently may have a single MPEG4 based system for SD and HD, while countries with more established system may use MPEG2 for SD and MPEG4 for HD. There are also variations in middleware used. For example Italy, Ireland and the UK are all DVB-T regions, but Ireland uses "MPEG4 + MHEG5 + DVB-T" for both SD and HD transmissions, while the UK uses "MPEG2 + MHEG5 + DVB-T" for SD and "MPEG4 + MHEG5 + DVB-T2" for HDTV, and Italy uses MHP rather than MHEG5 middleware. Since all MPEG4-capable receivers can decode the MPEG2 codec and all DVB-T2 tuners are capable of tuning DVB-T signals, UK HD set-top boxes are compatible with both the UK SD system and Irish SD/HD system, but Irish SD/HD tuners will only work with the SD system used in the UK. Digital cable broadcast tends to be DVB-C or very similar QAM in almost all countries. Broadband on cable is mostly DOCSIS which is DVB-C on the download path. This is important when buying a TV or set-box online rather than from a local retailer who would normally only stock the compatible system. Incompatible retail products are a severe problem in emerging retail digital markets where a neighbouring country has an older standard and dominates the retail trade, such as UK Freeview (rather than compatible "Freeview HD") products in Ireland.
Important DVB-T standards are UK D-book for UK Freeview and Nordig 2.2 for Scandinavia and Ireland. Ireland deviates from Nordig by using UK profile MHEG5 middleware rather than MHP.
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—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
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