Though it's not a novelty any more, Digital television will soon seem like one once it becomes the only transmission format from February 2009. How does the whole concept of Digital television work and how and why is it superior to the normal methods of transmission? Lets try and understand why.

Digital transmission is superior because it converts images and sounds into digital computer data and transmits them. Once the digital data is received by the receiver attached to your television, it is then quickly reassembled into the original picture and sound and viewed by the viewer. Though this may seem like a longer procedure of transmitting television data, it actually is more advantageous than the older analog method as it provides you with a better picture and sound quality. The picture is not grainy or disturbed and the transmission is very clear. This is because the digital tuner attached to the receiver removes any interface from the signals before converting them back to the original images and sounds.

This ability to clean the interface from the signals results in superior quality of picture and sound which ultimately results into superior quality viewing.

To add to the quality, the digital television has another advantage of having a user friendly interface where the user can view the listings well in advance rather than having to flip through random channels to find out what's on and what's not.

One of the other benefits of digital TV is that the transmission can be compressed in order to take up less bandwidth. This implies that more number of channels can be transmitted over the same cable or over the air frequency. This is beneficial for the cable operators who wish to increase the number of channels, as they can now do so without having to replace any cable. HDTV has a bandwidth hogging nature, and hence digital TV transmission is a better way of transmitting HDTV regardless of the medium of transmission used.

Digital TV is an all or none deal, implying that either you experience top quality television viewing with clear picture quality or else you view nothing. In comparison the old, analog transmission method still provided the picture even if the quality degraded at times. The picture might have gone grainy and fuzzy yet it was still viewable, however in digital TV it will either be viewed or nothing can be seen on the screen at all.

There is another inconvenience with this new technology. The problem being that the television sets do not have the facility to tune to these new digital waves. This problem can be solved by either buying a new generation television or else buying the digital tuner that can be attached to your normal television to provide the same effect.

Digital television no doubt will improve television viewing many folds by improving quality and increasing the bandwidth available but the final verdict of the people is still awaited in the matter.