h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Digital television for the terminally confused. - A2609138
Author: Macphisto - U644799

do you think I need to add more information?

Sure! What about image quality improvement, surround sound, pay-per-view? There are drawbacks like compression artifacts that the experienced eye can discern with a descent TV and snow (the wet and icy kind, not static snow )that accumulates on the dish blocking reception so you need to spray PAM on it.
With Digital television comes all the marketing that makes me angry: the obligation to subscribe to 10 channels in order to get one, and ten other channel to get that other one wich is not included in the previous package.

Thanks for the advice! I'll edit it to keep that information in mind!
Macphisto

I thought that the big selling point of digital TV is the picture quality. Where I live in the U.S, there are many digital TV sources: cable, digital satellite, and over-the-air digital HDTV (high definition digital TV). What has been your experience with the implementation of digital TV in the UK? My experience here is that the over-the-air HDTV broadcasts which I can get are great but sometimes the signal to noise ratio drops low enough that I get nothing. But being free, I don't care too much. On the broadcasts where the source material is not high defition, the cheap analogue cable service I have provides the same quality as the digital over the air 'non-HDTV' (480i) digital broadcast. In some ways the quality is better because the analog picture can do a better job of portraying a scene with very dynamic content than the digital sources can do, due to the limitations of the compression algorithms used. Properly shot HDTV broadcasts with 100% digital source material are outstanding - ABC's "Monday Night Football" comes to mind.

As I understand it, the UK won't get high definition digital TV, since the government dweebs that decide this sort of thing don't think you need it. Too bad - you should get what you want, not what they tell you!

I think that many international readers would be interested to read how digital TV is being implemented across the globe and what people's experiences have been.

In my experience, I have found that digital sateillite television is affected by how much is in the air. Sometimes it appears that the signal is affected by cars going past, and this affecting the signal means you can get a picture that beggars belief(it's all scrambled). From also what I've heard, freeview has problems in rural areas where transmitters are scarce.
Does anyone have articles or websites I can use?
Macphisto

Try the Wikipedia entry on Digital TV:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_TV

which includes information on DTV rollout in many countries. NHK in Japan was instrumental (pun intended) in developing HDTV; they demonstrated the first analogue HDTV system to the US FCC in 1987 under the acronym 'MUSE' - their website has a chronology of information on this: http://www.nhk.or.jp/digital/en/

A great book on the history of TV is "Tube - the invention of Television" by David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher. I would also recommend reading the review of the book "Defining Vision" by Joel Brinkley, at Amazon.com - there is an extensive and informative review by Ralph Berenger. I haven't read this book, but I have "Tube" and some technical books which I wouldn't recommend.

For info on over-the-air reception of the UK Freeview service, see the freeview website : http://www.freeview.co.uk

User reports of over-the-air and satellite reception for US terrestrial digital broadcasting can be found at:

http://www.hdtvpub.com/reception/programming.cfm

These reports might be useful in evaluating over the air (OTA) broadcast performance. Most OTA broadcast in the U.S. is on surplus UHF channels, which are more sensitive to obstacles than VHF.

Hope this is useful - post if I can be of assistance.

!!!! Wow! Lots of information!
Thanks so much for the links! Expect an updated, and so better, edited version of this information soon!
Macphisto