A lot of people wonder what is the difference between the analog and digital TV? The answer is the way the signal is transmitted. The signal of analog television resembles very much to radio signal transmission, with one difference: the video signal of analog television is AM and the audio is FM. There are many negative aspects of analog signals, and one of those is that there can be annoying interferences in bad weather, and signal quality depends very much on the location of the TV.

The resolution and image quality are also restricted, because there are certain bandwidths assigned to analog TV channels. The analog signal is the United States follows the NTSC standard. This had been adopted in the 1940’s, and served well since then, but nobody thought at that time that about color television. One major weakness of the NTSC standard is color implementation, so it is no wonder a lot of people call “Never Twice The Same Color” the NTSC standard.

Digital TV signal, unlike analog signal, resembles very much the way computers work: there are two kinds of signal, “on” or “off”. The viewer either sees an image, or not. Because of this, gradual loss of signal or interferences are an unknown term in the era of digital TV. It doesn’t make any difference how close or far the transmitter is from the TV, and weather conditions also have no importance.

Unlike analog TV, digital format has been designed to be able to take all the main factors of television signal into consideration: B/W, color and audio can be transmitted as interlaced or progressive signal. This means the signal content has greater integrity and flexibility.

Another advantage is that because digital TV signal consists of “bits”, the same bandwidth one analog TV signal requires can host not only higher quality digital image, but there will be extra space left, which can be used for extra video, audio or text signals.

Because of this, viewers can have a lot of extra features like surround sound, multiple language audio or text using the same bandwidth the standard analog TV signal requires. Digital television is also able to transmit signal for HDTV’s that become more and more popular these days.

With this technology, programs using true wide screen format (16×9) can be broadcasted. The 16×9 format means the shape of the picture corresponds to a movie screen. Viewers can forget about the black bars on the top and the bottom of the wide screen image, being able to watch movies the same way filmmakers wanted to be seen. Sports fans can also see more action, and with 16×9 format it is possible to view the entire football field, without the sensation that it is far away.

In the United State, the date of the digital transition was June 12, 2009. This day all analog TV signals went black. Analog televisions became useless, unless there was an analog-to-digital converter connected to them. The transition was originally scheduled to 2006, but authorities postponed the transition with 3 years because they realized the consumers were not ready.

Edward is an electronics expert who writes HDTV reviews. To read more sharp hdtv reviews, visit HDTVReviewLab.com