HDTV Antennas

The FCC has notified U.S. television broadcasters that the standard for transmitting TV over-the-air shall change from analog to digital. more...

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While there are many technical, political, and economic reasons for and implications of this change, the end-result for some segments of the American TV audience will be an improvement in picture and sound quality.

From a technical standpoint, this change results in a more efficient management of the portions of the radio spectrum used for television. Even though the ATSC channel uses the same 6 MHz bandwidth as the NTSC channel it replaces, the ATSC channels can be packed in adjacent channel slots, whereas with NTSC transmission technology it is not possible to transmit on adjacent channels in the same geographic area. This allows the U.S. government to implement its plans of removing a portion of the VHF and UHF spectra from television uses and auctioning (resulting in a revenue stream of perhaps billions of dollars) some frequencies off to make them available for commercial voice and data services. Other frequencies will be reserved for government and public service.

From a consumer standpoint, every conventional TV with an antenna will become obsolete, unless connected to a digital tuner. After the switch to digital transmission, TV's will be unable to receive terrestrial analog RF TV broadcasts unless connected to a set-top box or other device that contains a digital tuner. Roughly 20% of viewers receive analog broadcasts over the air, and will be affected by the analog shutoff. The majority of TV watchers will not be affected. The 80% of television viewers that use cable or satellite television will not be immediately impacted. Virtually all satellite users and an increasing number of cable users already use set top boxes to view programming, and analog cable television is being phased out in many markets. For people unable to buy new digital TVs, Congress is arranging to offer cash vouchers for the purchase of digital tuners.

From a historical standpoint, this is the first time in over half a century that the basic format for TV transmission has changed. The last major change in TV transmission standards took place when compatible color broadcasts began in 1953. That change was engineered to be backwards-compatible, meaning that existing black-and-white TV sets would receive and display "compatible-color" broadcasts (in monochrome) without modification. The impending change to digital from analog is not backwards-compatible.

High definition versus Standard or Enhanced definition

Digital TV includes HDTV as a subset. The FCC has not mandated HDTV signals be broadcast; it only requires digital TV broadcasts. The prevailing expectation, however, is that native HDTV (i.e. programming recorded with a digital HDTV camera) during primetime will predominate. The great majority of primetime television shows in the United States are available in HDTV at the network level. It is up to the affiliates, not all of which have HDTV broadcast capability, to retransmit these shows at HDTV resolutions. A number of non-primetime shows, including morning news shows and some soap operas, are also available in HDTV.

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