okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

This time next year those old rabbit ears on that television you bought back in 1980 will be extinct.  You’ve seen this coming for quite a while, you ended up buying an RF modulator, then a hub, and any other number of adapters or converters to keep your television working.  You’re used to buying stuff to make the television work, so what is the big deal about this digital television conversion people keep talking about?

In the past what you were purchasing were simple devices that allowed you to connect more sophisticated analog devices, like RCA cables and coax wire, to your television.  If you’re a gamer you already know that once the resolution of the systems grew to the point where it couldn’t be handled a conventional television, the RF modulators were actually digital to analog converters that allowed you to downgrade the signal to make it viewable.

Gamers have had to do this since the late nineties as the 32-bit systems that were being released were putting out a signal that couldn’t be read in it’s native form.  The systems weren’t high definition, but they were digital.  The same is true of digital cable; extra information was being sent through that a television wouldn’t normally be able to handle.  You could have ran the wire directly into the back of the set, but the picture quality and color saturation was just a hair better with that converter box installed.

There was no real incentive for the nation to move into an all digital format previously because the computer technology wasn’t really there yet to make the move practical.  But now that most computers can handle high definition content at a reasonable price there has been a huge shift towards high definition programming.  But it isn’t quite that simple though.

There is a distinction between digital and high definition, for the tech geeks out there, yes there are other standards available that make high definition seem like an old black and white television that are still in their infancy.  For everyone else though, digital television is anything under the 720 standard.  The 720 number stands for 720 lines of resolution vertically, at any given number of pixels across from left to right.  The old gaming systems and DVD players I mentioned put out a signal that could have ranged from anything up to that number.  Digital cable television was most likely 480, which still delivers a nice picture and better color than regular analog cable does.

Ok Chris, you may ask, “why doesn’t everyone just go with the 480 standard then, why pay extra for high definition”?  Well actually you can still go with 480; in fact most of the digital programming that is available on television is of the 480 variety.  Keep in mind though that DVDs were at a higher resolution than that, in a sense.  DVDs offer a width of 720 pixels, but isn’t a 720 standard because the 720 is only for the width,  the height of DVD programming is really 480.  SDTV, or standard digital television, is usually 480 though it has been known to reach up to 576 in other markets.

So the bottom line is that if you were watching digital cable for about the last 15 years you’ve already been viewing it at that quality, same goes for satellite television subscribers.  The primary difference between analog and digital is in the number of lines.  Standard was clearly superior to analog; 480 lines of resolution in comparison to the 60 of NTSC, not to mention a width of 720, as opposed to a width of 525.  What people don’t realize, is that the difference between the lowest levels of digital brings in a lot better picture than the best analog offers, though the differences may be so slight it takes a real video enthusiast to appreciate it.

Think of it this way, standard definition digital is to analog television what the CD was to the audio cassette, better when you first view it, but difficult to appreciate over time.  Remember, analog television, 625/60 at best, standard definition digital, 720/480.  But you can still get that standard definition signal if that is all you want; a converter box can be purchased for as little as $50 that will allow you to get standard definition digital over the air in conjunction with your rabbit ears.  It isn’t high definition, but it is a lot better than analog ever could have been.

When February 17th comes along what you will need are one of a few things, a cable or satellite connection, or a converter box.  You can still use your old television to watch DVDs and everything else, but you cannot take advantage of over the air programming anymore without some means of converting that signal.  Will regular commercial sponsored television disappear, no, despite what anyone told you.  But they will be using one of a few digital standards, 480, 720 or 1080.

The latter two of those standards represent high definition.  Earlier I mentioned that there are other standards, and you’re probably wondering why people aren’t making practical use of them.  One reason is that the televisions in the market now do not handle high definition as well as they could.  For example it takes a few seconds to actually tune in that HD signal and send it to the screen, thus the long start up times of the newer televisions in the market.  For another the chips that process traditional HD now wouldn’t be sufficient enough to truly handle a standard like say ultra-high definition, which is a whopping 4320 lines of resolution.

What is the purpose of this standard you may wonder.  Movie theaters, electronic billboards, stadium signs or anywhere you need to view an 80 inch screen or more.  The standard will be coming to the US in time, but I’d give it at least another 5 to 10 years or more.  Now what about the accessibility of the signals themselves, do I have to worry about ghosting, snow, interference or loss of color, say the picture goes into black or white?  No not at all, the best analogy for digital television is to compare an analog cell phone to a digital one.  You may not remember analog cell phones, yeah they had snow on it and conversations would leak onto your cell phone, remember those early analog wireless phones?  Now you get the picture.

As good as digital television it has it’s pitfalls.  For example, to watch over the air programming you need to be relatively close to the station, like preferably only 10 miles or so, and the air shouldn’t move whatsoever.  Seriously wind, someone standing up to use the restroom, a bird flying in front of the house, all of these things can cause the signals to reflect off of these items and confuse your television and the picture will freeze and turn into a jigsaw puzzle.  If you’re too far from the station and the computer in the television can’t make heads or tails off of the signal it does receive you get an error message on your television that says “no signal”.

Is the signal there, yeah, is it strong enough to be interpreted, no.  You can live in the same city but not get all of the channels offered by that city, which is sure to frustrate some consumers.  Finally, cable and satellite companies were forced to carry analog signals for another 3 years by the government.  I’m not sure why that is in place, but it does mean that you do not have to rent extra equipment from the cable company if you do not want to.  Don’t be surprised if you can’t get what you used to get though, because cable companies have been trying to find a subtle way to encourage their customers to purchase digital equipment for over a decade now.

Chances are by 2011 though the set you bought in 2000 will be on the fritz, and the one you bought in 1980 will have all sorts of weird problems with it and you won’t want to use either.  By then of course we’ll have thin televisions, like 2 millimeters thick, that act like pictures on a wall and we can just unroll the television and hang it wherever we want …