The Race to Digital Television

During the summer of 2009, over the air broadcasters are slated to discontinue their analog broadcast signals and move over to digital. Already, the two biggest subscription services, cable and satellite, offer digital-format broadcasting. This conversion promises great improvements. Digital broadcasts generally offer better quality signals and more features than analog signals while consuming less bandwidth. They also require some specific technology to receive which is part of the reason behind the delay in adoption.

Originally, congress had mandated that regular broadcast television was to switch from analog to an exclusively digital format in February of 2009. An ailing economy and consumer's reluctance to spend money upgrading entertainment equipment during such a time caused lawmakers to move the deadline back to June of 2009. Most broadcasters, however, are already broadcasting in digital while maintaining their analog broadcasts for the use of those without a converter box or a digital television. Cable and satellite subscribers have had access to digital broadcasts for some time, however.

Digital format broadcasts are, essentially, more compact than their analog equivalents. As an example of this, over the air broadcasters are now carrying several different versions of their channels instead of just one. On subscription services, customers have become accustomed to choosing between literally hundreds of channels with features such as interactive menus, stats tracking for sports broadcasts and view-on-demand selections. These features are made possible by digital broadcasting. Such a high amount of content on an analog broadcast would consume enormous bandwidth resources and be very expensive for both provider and consumers.

Between the two main competitors, cable and satellite, satellite has generally offered more digital content than has cable. Satellite added many services without charging their customers, such as screen-within-screen technology, the ability to monitor one program in various ways while watching another and menu-driven programmable recording; all of these features owing to digital technology. Digital cable has been offered for some time now, but it's selections have generally been narrower and the price higher, relative to satellite.

Digital broadcasting also opens up the door to high-definition broadcasts. These broadcasts, when viewed over a compatible television, offer much greater clarity than analog televisions. It's still possible to see side-by-side comparisons in electronics stores but, as this technology is adopted on a broader scale, it's likely that those comparisons will become unnecessary in the near future. HDTV is already well on its way to displacing older formats.

Satellite currently offers more broadcasts in HD format than does cable and those selections generally cover a broader array of programming. Sports is one of the most popular types of programming to make available in HD as are movies, of course. Satellite began actively promoting itself based on the number of HD programs it broadcasts. As the price of HD televisions has dropped over the last few months, more customers have purchased the sets and the service which offers the most programming in that format. It is currently a market advantage for satellite.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jane_Wilson_Clark