The Top 5 Benefits of the Digital Transition

1.) Multicasting – When broadcasting digitally, TV stations compress the data before transmitting, allowing them to send more information to the viewer in the same broadcast. Your converter box de-compresses the information for display on your television, allowing you to receive more than one channel per TV station. The exception to this rule is with High Definition – HD channels, the HD broadcast requires much more data to be displayed due to the increased picture quality.

2.) Free HD Channels – High Definition channels used to only be available to people who purchased digital cable, or satellite service such as Dish Network, or DirecTV. Now that TV stations are broadcasting digitally, HD is available for everyone free of charge due to the ability for digital broadcasts to compress their data – unlike the old analog transmissions.

3.) Enhanced Picture Quality – The first thing people notice once they plug in their digital converter box is the crystal clear picture quality provided by the digital transmission. This amazes many people, especially folks with old TVs made decades ago that are used to seeing a snowy picture. The digital converter box replaces your TVs old analog tuner with a new digital one, thus allowing your old TV to display the pristine digital picture in the higher quality provided by the digital transmission.

4.) New Wireless Technology – Converting the local broadcasts over to digital will free up a lot of space on the electromagnetic spectrum to allow new wireless technologies to operate between the channels in the white space – unused frequencies not allocated to channels in a certain area. There are various types of wireless broadband technology that will soon be available to consumers to compete with traditional cable or DSL connections. Once the transition is complete you will start to hear more about these new technologies.

5.) Improved Communications for Emergency Services – On 9/11 the airwaves were completely jammed with people trying to talk on their cell phones; 911 operators, and even emergency services were unable to communicate at times. After the digital transition you’ll notice that TV broadcasts are only going to be using channels 14-69. The FCC will reserve channels 2-6 for emergency services, such as 911 and the department of homeland security to use for communication.