Digital TV

So what's the latest craze these days? Digital TV. TV broadcasting will be digitised in 2006. You will need to buy a new digital TV set to receive the digital tv transmission. Another option is to get a set top box to convert the digital signal to analog signal. The picture quality remains the same.

What are the benefits of Digital Television?

Broadcaster and viewers are so excited because it allows up to 5 times the amount of information transmitted through the air or cable. there are limited channels assigned to each broadcaster. So now, you can get resolution of 5 times better than the previous analog system and 5.1 channel surround sound Dolby digital.

However, broadcaster may decide not to use the bandwith for high definition programmes.

They can instead use the allocated bandwith to broadcast up to 6 regular resolution channels with the same resolution as the current NSTC channel.

Instead they may use the bandwith allocated to broadcast SDTV programmes whose resolution is the same as the analog NSTC. It allows them to broadcast many more channels if they use SDTV programmes.

Another possibility is a mixture of Medium definition channel and low definition format.

Digitalization will enable 18 different screen video and sound formats to be broadcast. The differences lies with the different combination of vertical resolution, aspect ratio, frame rates and wheather the screen formats is interlaced or progressive.

What is HDTV?

It means high definition tv. The definition is twice the resolution of the current NSTC resolution or a resolution of over 1 million pixels. Its vertical resolution is 1080 pixels and horizontal resolution is 1920 pixels.

What is Medium Definition Format?

Its horizontal resolution is 720 pixels and vertical resolution is 1280 pixels. Aspect ratio is 16:9. It uses Progressive Scan and offers a variety of frame rate of 60, 30 and 24 per second.

VGA Formats

Its vertical resolution is 480 pixels and vertical resolution is 640 pixels. Its aspect ratio is 4:3 and comes either as interlaced or progressive scan. It also offers frame rates of 24, 30 and 60 per second. These formats are meant for computer applications and are considered low resolution formats.

What is SDTV?

SDTV means Standard-definition tv format. This digital format has the same resolution as that of current NSTC television. It has vertical resolution of 480 pixels and a horizontal resolution of 704 pixels. It can either be progressive scan or interlaced. It offers variety of frame rate of 24, 30 and 64 per second.