Digital Terrestrial Television

Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT) is the technological evolution of broadcast television and an advancement of analog television. DTTV broadcasts land-based (terrestrial) signals. The purposes of digital terrestrial television, similar to digital versus analog in other platforms such as cable, satellite, and telecommunications, reduced use of spectrum and to provide more capacity than analog, provide better quality picture, and to lower operating costs for broadcast and transmission (after the initial upgrade costs). A terrestrial implementation of digital television (DTV) technology uses an aerial to broadcast to a conventional television antenna (or aerial) instead of a satellite dish or cable television connections.

Competing variants of broadcast television systems are being used around the world. Advanced Television Standards Committee created the ATSC standards that use an ATSC tuner in North America and South Korea—an evolution from the analog National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) standard. Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB-T) is used in Japan, with a variation of it being used in most of South America. DVB-T is the most prevalent, covering Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia and some countries of Africa. DMB-T/H is China's own standard (including Hong Kong, though Hong Kong's cable operators use DVB); the rest of the world remains mostly undecided, many evaluating multiple standards. ISDB-T is very similar to DVB-T and can share front-end receiver and demodulator components. Several European countries have switched from analog to digital terrestrial television, with the rest hoping to have completed the switchover mostly by 2012.