Digital Technology: TV’s Next Step :: Television Media Essays

Digital Technology: TV’s Next Step Digital technology is a recent innovation to sweep through America. It has already become the standard for music purchases, and with the use of DVDs, it is now the preferred way to watch a movie in the home. Cell phones were once primarily analog, but now most service areas are digital. These changes came from the market place wanting better sound, picture, and more reliable signals. This is in stark contrast to television, because its change from analog to digital has been brought on by the FCC enacting regulations. The market place should be excited and the change, but not just for better picture quality. Though the FCC may be forcing the change in television, the market place should embrace the changes and even be excited about them. Picture quality is not the only difference between digital and analog television. The FCC has several reasons to switch to digital. A digital signal offers better sound than an analog signal. With analog, you are only able to get two channels of sound. Digital offers you the same 5.1 channels of digital surround sound you hear in movie theatres. The combination of better sound and picture is enough to make many want to upgrade, but there are more reasons. Digital television also allows for more bandwidth with the use of MPEG-2 technology. This is a way of compressing the information and using less bandwidth. It can reduce the number of bits by about 55 to 1, allowing more space on the spectrum. The practical use of this is multicasting. Although how this will be used is still to be determined. It is likely networks will run multiple programs in standard format during the day and use HDTV during primetime. Naturally, both analog and digital signals lose strength over long distances. With analog signals, this causes a horrible picture filled with static. This differs drastically with a digital signal. The signal still weakens over distance, but it makes no difference in quality of picture or sound. As long as the television receives the signal, no matter how weak it is, the picture and sound will be clear. Obviously, this could be a potential problem for cable and satellite providers. Many consumers will no longer have to pay monthly fees to have an acceptable picture.