Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital
Digital TV is on it's way. Do you know what you need to do? Are you prepared? Find your answers here.
Your traditional television is known as an analog (analogue) television. It works by encoding the picture and sound information as an analog signal. The picture on an analog television is drawn on the screen one entire frame at a time. The analog signals are transmitted continuously even if there is no new information to send.
A digital television receives information as a digital signal. This is an entirely new technology and will eventually replace the analog television system.
The digital signals are transmitted using computer code, which consist entirely of ones and zeroes. This is a difficult concept to perceive but it works. Digital signals are much more efficient, result in less interference and therefore it provides a better quality picture and sound than analog.
Another significant feature of digital television is that is uses a significantly smaller channel bandwidth. This means there is more 'space' for other digital channels which will allow other non-television services such as pay-multimedia services, multicasting (more than one program on the same channel), electronic program guides and interactivity to be used at the same time.
Whilst digital television often has superior audio quality, image, and reception than analog, it is still in the early stages of development and there are still many advances needed.
As with most things in today's modern society Digital Television comes in a couple of quality levels:-
Standard Definition TV (SDTV) - This is the basic level of digital television transmission. It has a quality similar to today's analog TV;
Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV) - This gives a better level of quality and includes Dolby digital surround sound;
High Definition TV (HDTV) - This as the name suggests gives the best quality digital picture and Dolby digital surround sound.
Currently, most TV stations in America are broadcasting digital and analog. This means that you can view your favourite TV shows no matter what type of TV you have. However, after the 17th February 2009 the full-power TV stations will no longer be able to broadcast in analog.
And if you have an analog TV you will not be able to view the shows unless you obtain a separate digital-to-analog converter box or a new digital TV.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will sometime at the start of 2008, issue qualifying households with $40 coupons towards the purchase of a converter box. For more information on how to qualify go to www.ntia.doc.gov.
Bear in mind though, that an analog TV connected to a digital converter box will display the digital broadcasts but not in full digital quality.
Digital TV will be (and is now) available over the air using a standard antenna or via digital cable or satellite. No matter how you receive your TV signal (satellite, cable or over-the-air), you will need the digital converter or digital TV to watch the programming.
With You in Technology
Adam White
About the Author:
Adam writes about
voip satellite phones
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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Digital TV - What You Need To Know.
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Home entertainment has gone a long way from the early 50s when television and stereophonic sounds started to make their presence felt at home. It was a slow and highly iterative evolution, plagued with commercial wars of formats along the way.
You had the video format wars of the late 80s between Sony's Betamax and Matsushita's VHS where the latter eventually won. You have the war of high resolution music formats between Sony's SACD and the DVD consortium's DVD-Audio where no winner has emerged and both formats appear destined to remain a niche product for high end audiophile folks. Then the latest video format wars came in meant to replace the DVD. You have the same protagonists with Sony and its Blue-ray format on side and Toshiba's HD-DVD on the other side. 2008 say the resolution of the two formats with Toshiba conceding the battle to Sony. So now you have Blu-ray wining the video format wards but with pathetic market penetration 3 years after it launch.
Meanwhile, there are emerging new developments in the video front that just might derail Blu-ray from ever gaining critical mass from its video markets. This time, it's about 3D home video aimed at reproducing at home the IMAX 3D experience.
Computers making it all possible
The world of digital technology came to the fore with the increasing power of computers to make Nyquist's theories become reality in converting real world sound and music into digital bits and stored in laser-readable discs. Within 3 years of its application, the CD has penetrated home markets to replace by attrition our beloved analog systems epitomized by the LP records.
The same technology has been applied to bring movies of the highest level of resolution to our homes, starting with DVD and now Blu-ray. Digital technology made it possible to have multichannel systems and high definition video and audio files that require millions of computing instructions to be processed per second to decode them and render them listenable and watchable on our speakers systems and LCD or Plasma TVs.
- Blu-Ray Players
With millions of bytes representing each frame of images in a 24 frame cycle per second of high definition moving picture, only the most powerful computer processing chips harnessed in these players can render the movies in them pleasantly watchable.
- Plasma and LCD TVs
Those fixed panel displays we have are veritable computer systems that have millions of virtual CPUs controlling each pixel on the display. Differentiated only by display principles, Plasma and LCDs have basically revolutionized the way people watch movies and TV shows at home. High Definition movie materials with 30GB to 60GB of content get decoded by computers in Blu Ray Players and sent as bitstreams over HDMI cables so they get displayed on millions of pixels on processor-based LCD panels or gas bubbles on Plasma TVs.
- Multichannel Sound Systems
Stereo is now a mere 20th century artifact taken over by the multichannel sound craze that started with DolbyPro capable Laser Discs and moved on to DVD discrete 6-8 channel sound. With Blu-ray high definition video, you also get Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio for the ultimate in high definition digital sound requiring powerful decoding chips on receivers to make them engagingly listenable at home. GP