Digital TV Transition Year

So what does satellite TV have to do with digital TV? Are they related? Of course they are related. Let us a take a closer look. As we all know, the broadcast signal for television will be officially turned digital by the year 2009. That is the digital TV transition year for the United States. All stations will then have to broadcast their signal in a digital format from then on.

The analog signal will become history and will go into the record books. This date was set by the Federal Communications Commission or the FCC. Canada is different though in this regard. The law will only affect US based broadcast and signals.

If your television is out of date or does not accept a digital picture then you may be out of luck. You will be paying for a digital signal but will not be able to see one. How exactly does this work? Well in order to receive television you will have to have a converter box for digital TV, since that will be the only kind. That box will convert the digital signal into an analog signal for your old TV. Hence, you pay for digital but only receive analog. If at all possible I would suggest trying and purchasing a digital capable TV before the year 2009. Satellite television will not really be affected by this transition, to a major extent anyways.

In fact, the exact date for the digital boom to begin is February 17, 2009. From that day forward all stations will broadcast in digital due to FCC regulations. However, a lot of the stations we watch are actually not even regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. Isn’t that ironic? The signals are transferred via cable and satellite, which sort of bypasses the rules for digital format. Cable companies will start to sell more digital products in the year 2009 while satellite should remain around the same percentage of sales. The satellite signal is digital by standard.

There are stations that are non-broadcast which sometimes are not included in the package subscription of cable or satellite. How are we going to deal with those? Well you do not need cable or satellite to watch these stations in high definition or digital. Stations such as NBC and CBS are some of the channels in this category. In order to get a digital picture you are going to need a TV, antenna, and a digital tuner which is built in.

Now when I mention high definition channels, not every single station is in high definition. It is very expensive and costly to produce a “round the clock” airing of HDTV. Besides that, some stations do not even need to comply with the regulations. Now the big question on everyone’s mind is what is all of this going to cost?

Well to be honest, cable is probably going to be the only one really affected. Satellite TV is already digital, so the change will be very minimal. I would suggest a spike in the cable prices then they would level off on a price that is slightly higher than what they are now. Since cable is analog for the most part now, the companies will have to decide whether to convert everything to digital or just to get rid of analog completely.