Digital & HDTV Home Page 

Digital TV Now

Digital broadcast have been available for a few years now. If you have not taken advantage of it yet you are missing quality digital and high definition television that is FREE.

It is strongly recommended that if you live within 70 miles of a local TV broadcast you should put up an antenna and take advantage of over the air digital TV now. It is the best back up system you will have and will keep you from losing a signal when others fail. Go to this web site (Titan TV) to see what digital broadcast are available in your area. Then go to the following site to see how to set up your antenna. (Antennaweb)

If you do not have a digital TV (One with an ATSC tuner) you can use your current one if you get a set top ATSC tuner box that converts the signal to be used by your TV. They sell for about $50 at Wal-Mart. The government is giving $40 coupons 2 per household so it will only cost you $10 per box. Go to this web site to apply for one today. (dtv2009.gov) (All analog NTSC TV broadcast will cease on February 17th, 2009)

HDTV is digital and most local broadcasting includes high definition television broadcast. See our HDTV Mini Course for more information.

Local Digital Broadcast TV can be received free and is known as DTTV

Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV) is an implementation of digital technology to provide a greater number of channels and/or better quality of picture and sound using aerial broadcasts to a conventional antenna instead of a satellite dish or cable connection. The technology used is ATSC in North America.

Transmission

DTTV is transmitted on radio frequencies through the airwaves that are similar to standard analog television, with the primary difference being the use of multiplex transmitters to allow reception of multiple channels on a single frequency range (such as a UHF or VHF channel).

The difference between SDTV (standard definition) and HDTV (high definition) transmission is that the signal on SDTV is compressed more than the HDTV signal.  By compressing the digital signal, broadcasters are able to transmit five SDTV programs, or only one broadcast in HDTV. That is due to the SDTV signal is lower then that of HDTV signals. But the SDTV is much clearer and better the old analog signal

In the USA and North America the ATSC standard TV Tuner is used.

Advantages

• Digital reception is mainly better overall, even when reception for both SDTV and analog is optimum.
• It's vastly easier to obtain the optimum digital picture than the optimum analog picture.
• Many more channels can fit on the digital transmission.

DTV will provide a greater choice in the channels you will be able to access in many areas. Movies, documentaries, children's shows, and public educational programming. Your choices in most cases will be greater than ever before. And the quality of the picture will be superior to the satellite or cable paid services. It will actually make it possible to live without digital satellite services such as the Dish Network or Direct TV. Especially when you add FTA satellite and use our Internet TV links guide!

Disadvantages

• New equipment (Set top box) is required for older TVs that only have the analog NTSC tuner get coupon here
• Antenna installation may be required.

Analog requires lower signal strength to get a watchable picture. But digital does not degrade as analog does. No snowy pictures with digital you either get it perfectly or not at all. Or the signal will cut on and off in poor/marginal reception area. In that case if your within 70 miles you may be able to get a clear signal with a high gain UHF optimized antenna.

Reception

Local DTV broadcasts are received via standard aerial antenna. An ATSC TV tuner digital set-top box decodes the signal received, or TVs manufactured in the USA after March 2007 have an  integrated ATSC TV tuner. However, due to frequency requirements, older version antennas have dual elements. The large ones were designed for the (then primary) VHF reception and the smaller ones for UHF reception. Newer digital antennas are smaller due to their design to receive the (current primary) UHF digital broadcast as only about 9% digital broadcast are over the VHF band.

If you do not have an antenna already or you have reception problems with your older one then you may wish to get one of the new smaller profile models that have a higher gain for the UHF signals. Go to our (Where to Buy Antennas Guide) and it will guide you to the most current and powerful designs for digital and HDTV reception.