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by: Angus Findlay21
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A lesson on digital TV


Wishing you could pause your favorite TV show while you get a cup of tea? Hoping that you could stop the time at the last few seconds of that baseball game because you so need to go to the bathroom? Did you just miss your favorite television show’s last episode? Now with the newest technology, rewinding, pausing and recording the shows you want is possible!

Introduced in the late 1990s, digital TV or DTV is a new method of sending and receiving audio and video through digital signals which aims to free up the broadcast spectrum so it can be useful to more important services for public security and safety or more advanced wireless services. In this technology, multicasting is used wherein one channel can now have several variations, for example channel 7 for an analog TV can become 7-1, 7-2, 7-3 and so on. With this viewers can now experience lesser interference gaining a better reception, clearer sound and image quality, new channels and features.
Several Digital TV providers have emerged in the US, including Freeview, Sky Digital and BT Vision. Freeview, more commonly known as Digital Terrestial TV or DTT, provides 60 channels of TV and radio which are broadcasted free with no installation necessary. For some, however the will probably need to buy a new TV. Channel line-up is limited as the more popular ones are not available for free, also
Sky Digital, on the other hand offers more channels such as Sky One, Paramount Comedy, and a range of about 200 channels. Unlike Freeview, you need an engineer to install the satellite dish. Also, a digibox and your phone line are then attached to your TV which will allow you to access the interactive services and to verify payment for pay per view channels. Sky Digital also offers broadband internet access.
In the United States, the Federal Communication Commission intends to complete the migration by February 2009. As of March 2007, all TVs manufactured in the country were required to have digital tuners. Some analog TVs are still sold by retailers and many consumers are unaware that these might no longer work next year. To remedy this, the Commission released information on the different equipments that households can use for their analog TVs to receive digital signal.
The Office of Communications in the United Kingdom reported that there are about 22.2 million homes using digital TV. According to the Digital Television Progress Report during the last quarter of 2007, there are about 87.6% of households reached by multi channel broadcast, which is about a point increase from the previous quarter. This is attributed to the British Government’s move of switching off analog transmitters region by region.
In the UK, several Digital TV providers have emerged, the three most popular are Freeview, Sky Digital and BT Vision. Freeview is more commonly known as Digital Terrestial TV or DTT. It offers 60 channels of TV and radio which are broadcasted free without any installation necessary. There might be a need to buy a special Freeview receiver or probably a new TV.
So, still wondering what last night’s football game scores were? Still asking your wife if Liverpool won? Now you can catch that all up. with the high quality box that comes with your BT Total Broadband subscription, you can now catch up with shows you might have missed from the last seven days, and even pause live TV shows! With Video-on-demand from BT Vision, you can now save up to 80 hours of programming. The future of the television is remarkably in our hands, thanks to IPTV who brought it all to us.

About the Author

Angus Findlay is author of this article on Digital tv. Find more information about Freeview here.

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