Analogue TV

Analogue TV service or analogue TV broadcasting is the traditional TV system and has been around since TV broadcasting came into existence. This uses magnetic waves to relay and display images and audio. High definition TV is a digital TV format that yields high-resolution programming. While analogue television pictures are made of horizontal lines on the screen, high definition TV has twice the number of lines making the pictures look even more realistic. High definition TV uses wide screen format, which is like a movie screen. HDTV also comes with Dolby Digital surround sound, just like we see in the movie theaters and DVD movies.

When you compare the analogue and digital TV signal, the main advantage of high definition TV is that it uses the same amount of bandwidth as an analogue system, but can transmit six times the information compared to analogue television producing high-resolution pictures and great quality sound.

Another characteristic that differentiates analogue television from high definition TV is aspect ratio, which is the comparison of screen width to height. While analogue television has an aspect ratio of 4:3, high definition TV has an aspect ratio of 16:9. This extra width of high definition TV lets you see the picture exactly as it was meant to be.

The analogue television services will end on February 17, 2009. Until then, most TV stations will continue with both analogue and digital programming.

The immediate question that arises is can an analogue television be adapted to high definition, especially when analogue service is stopped. You will be able to use your analogue TV with a set top converter box that will be sold in retail stores. These boxes will act as digital to analogue TV converters, by receiving digital signals and then converting them into the analogue format so that they can be viewed on analogue TV. Apart from this, if you had a multi channel pay service like cable or analogue satellite TV, your TV will continue to work as usual.

But even with digital to analogue TV converters, your analogue TV signal will not be able to show the full picture quality of digital TV. Analogue to digital TV converters may require new equipment to receive signals over the air. Usually, if your antenna can receive over the air analogue TV signals, it ought to work for digital TV as well. Cable TV subscribers will need new digital TV equipment if they want to view digital TV programming. Cable providers will be able to advise you about what you require.