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Depends on how things are organised in your country.

Here in The Netherlands, you can only get the three public, tax-paid stations (see my blog for an explanation of our media landscape [1], it's quite complicated) for free, whether you're on normal cable or digital cable or digital antenna. For the rest, including the several Dutch commercial stations, you'll either need a normal cable contract (very cheap), or a digital decoder approved by your cable company, who will give you a smartcard to shove in the decoder, unlocking the channels you paid for.

Yes, many TVs come with a digital receiver - but they don't include smartcard support, so it's all very basic, and in NL, practically useless.

[1] http://cogscanthink.blogsome.com/2008/02/09/70s-porn/

So Wrong!!!

Any TV with a "Digital" tuner made much before 2007 is typically junk. At the time recall the entertainment companies were trying to sneak the Broadcast flag into all the tuners, so everybody was assuming you'd have to by a new, approved tuner anyway. Nearly all of the new converter boxes do way better than the built in tuners on older TVs.. even if they only output analog.

I thought I wasn't getting any DTV until my parents purchased one and got every station suggested on antennaweb. I now pick up every channel suggested with a modest $40 external antenna.

Yes, DTV has lower power needed to get good signal. Somebody at the FCC got the bright idea that since DTV singals degrade less, they needed to turn the power down 15% so channels weren't going "too far". Way to politic a situation guys, worry about somebody getting one channel too many versus the people that won't get any! It will save the stations big bucks on electricity too (megawatts aren't getting any cheaper). Broadcasters also get to re-allocate their bandwidth on the fly. They can choose up to 4 SD channels, which many PBS stations do (24x7 Barney?) all in the same amount of wattage and radio bandwidth allocated to them now. This allowed the govt to sell off another dozen stations.. we used to have 83, then 69, now 53-ish. The recent auction to the wireless companies cashing in big bucks to the feds was from this change about to happen.

DTV first went live on actual TV stations back in the late 1990's this isn't some kind of surprise. The public notification has been criminally poor about nearly all the facts. Bad information from nearly everybody. Generally DTV is better for EVERYBODY. OTA watchers get HD-DVD quality movies.. for free and TV stations pay less money to deliver. Yes there are up front costs, and the TV manufactures owned by entertainment companies tried to pull a fast one and and put DRM in all our sets. The late start and setbacks are entirely the fault of lobbyists and boneheaded federal employees worried about their positions and pocketbooks instead of their jobs to the public.

Cable stations are milking the system because they've been getting broadcast TV for free to redistribute under the court ruling that allowed cable companies not to pay anything for broadcast channels if they didn't modify them. The TV stations want their HD streams and all their subchannels also distributed for free..at full resolution (i.e. not modified!)... That's why cable companies want you to by digital boxes so they can comply before they're forced to (and milk you into more $$) At some point they may be forced to provide digital boxes in order to properly redistribute to those in cities that can't get OTA properly. But right now cable doesn't have to move off analog for their end users for several more years.

Also, SD digital is higher bit rate than standard Dish signals. HD is higher resolution and bit rate than ANY cable or satellite signal, second only to Blu-Ray. 1080i and 720p are the same bit rate, using the same amount of radio waves, 720p being full 60 frames per second not interlaced. Movies and shows get the 1080i (because they're shot in 24 frames/second anyway, 60/2 is still 30fps) and sports get 720p so you can see the action better.

1080p that everybody is selling, is not a valid broadcast spec. But it is a valid "monitor" spec... because most DLP/LCD technology is the same as used in computers so there's no such thing as an interlaced DLP/LCD display, so many HDTVs de-interlace/up-sample Blu-Ray movies to use all the pixels available to them.

It's not really wrong at all. Not in the U.S.. All public "broadcast channels" will remain free. So if that's all you ever had, the switch to digital means you will notice no difference at all. Whether you do or do not have a converter box (assuming your TV has even a basic digital tuner).

Now when it comes to digital subscription channels, well, your converter box isn't going to help you at all there. Since it does not have a DigiCipher module (which is what most digital encrypted / subscription broadcasts use... But even then, there is no standard.) So you will still need to get extra equipment if you want to be able to subscribe to subscription channels.

All TVs built in the US after 2005 were required by FCC regulations to include a digital tuner. But most manufacturers were already including digital tuners before that.

Edited 2009-01-07 02:17 UTC

Not true. Most stations run a maximum of 720p24 at 12Mbits MPEG2 simply because of transport limitations. There is no way to attain HD-DVD 'quality' since the transport bitrate is limited and can not match HD-DVD or Bluray's bitrate specs.



You think someone paid for their new digital compression and modulation equipment? Retooling stations costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.



This comment doesn't even make sense. Nothing prevents distribution of 1080p over satellite or cable except the device decoding the content. OTA, cable and satellite in most cases encode to the same specs (bitrates, resolution, audio channels) for premium channels. Most use the same encoder hardware (e.g. Tandberg)



ATSC is delivered in the USA in 6Mhz of bandwidth per station which equates to a transport of 19.393Mbps. You can multiplex as many programs as you want to fill the 20Mbit pipe -- 1080i and 720p are not and do not have to be the same bitrate, nor do they use the same amount of 'radio waves'. Your comparison between resolution, bitrate and radio waves is akin to someone saying that HTML and TCP are the same thing because they ride on the intarwebs. The only match here is the match between RF bandwidth from NTSC to ATSC.



No no no. Sigh. Please do some research on content acquisition from the source camera to the station and contribution feeds if you want to be informed about this topic, vs. spouting random numbers.



Yes it is. 1080p is SMPTE standard 274M.

Please don't make stuff up, you serve only to confuse the other readers who don't know any better.

EXCEPT DTV/HDTV are DIRECTIONAL in nature, versus the OMNI-DIRECTIONAL nature of Analog TV. So you may very well LOSE channels.

DTV/HDTV (yes they are different) also require PERFECT signal. So good luck watching the NFL OTA in a storm.

Yeah, DTV/HDTV is trash, and there's nothing you can do about it. The whole thing is all about money, not technology.

EDIT: Changed quoting.

Edited 2009-01-07 18:51 UTC