Digital Television

Digital Signaling is a new way to send out TV station broadcasting signals and is a major upgrade from the outdate analog signals that many TV stations still use.

Digital signaling using up significantly less of the airwave spectrum, costs less money, and is much more efficient.

With digital signaling consumers can now get a much high quality picture, more better sound quality, and even more programming options. Since digital signaling takes up so much less of the spectrum is allows television stations to broadcast in multicasting. Multicasting is where a TV station can offer subchannels like 4.1,4.2, and 4.3 all with different shows. Digital signaling allows stations to do this while taking up less of the spectrum than an analog signal with only one show on.

For consumers the benefits of digital television are obvious. A better picture, better sound, and more channels but at what cost will this come. Until recently it was rather expensive.

In the past to switch to digital TV you either need to get digital cable, digital satellite, or a new digital TV. Digital cable and satellite cost about $40-$80 per month and a new digital TV costs around $200 and up from there. Recently though electronics companies have begun producing digital television converters that give consumers a much cheap option for getting digital TV. With a converter box consumers can continue using their old TV. All they have to do is hook the box up to their TV. The cost of a converter box re is only about $55 and can be reduce to $15 if you get one of the government issued coupons. If you want to get use the government coupon you have to get a government certified converter box.

Overall, digital TV is a great new technology that we should all take advantage of. In the past it was to expensive for most of us but with TV converter boxes now on the shelves you have no excuse for why you are still watching fuzzy static filled analog TV.

You can go to the DTV Converter Boxes Blog to get a list of certified digital TV converter boxes.

Here you can also find a ton of converter box reviews. Choose from the list below to go directly to each converter boxes' review page.

Tivax STB-T8
Dish Network DTVPal
Channel Master CM-7000
Dish Network DTVPal Plus
Dish Network TR-40 CRA
Airlink101 ATVC102
Zinwell ZAT-970A
Zinwell ZAT-950A

Here is a wonderful list of digital TV antenna reviews that I have found.