Digital TV BBC News Online answers key questions about digital TV and how it will affect you.
Digital broadcasting is a new system of transmitting TV, radio and the internet.
This code is transmitted to your TV, which effectively becomes a computer that can convert this digital language back into pictures and sound. The system also allows your TV to connect to the internet, take interactive programmes and carry many, many more channels. Digital transmissions can be received in three ways - through your TV aerial, via a satellite dish and via cable. Analogue TV is the old system of broadcasting that we have had since television began in the 1930s. It converts sound and pictures into waves which are transmitted through the air and picked up by your rooftop or indoor aerial.