Digital television is a new broadcast standard that uses binary code, the same system of ones and zeroes that runs your computer or your digitally recorded compact discs. Switching to a digital standard dramatically improves the picture and sound quality of television, and gives broadcasters the ability to send a larger, more varied amount of information to the television set. The motivating force behind this mandate is the overcrowding of radio waves that deliver not only analog television, but also devices such as cellular phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, garage door openers and air traffic control systems. Converting to digital frees up air space so that all of these items can operate more safely and efficiently. If you have a digital television and an antenna, you can receive our digital signal.
Personal computers can receive the digital signal by way of a tuner card and antenna.
Also, conversion boxes, which cost much less than digital sets, will convert digital signals to analog so that you can see programs on an analog television set. However, a converter will not give you the audio and visual quality that a digital television set provides. Until the FCC takes back the analog frequencies in 2006, broadcasters will be required to broadcast on both analog and digital bands. Like CD players, computers and hand-held calculators, the prices for digital sets have already begun to decrease as the technology becomes more prominent. Every station will be required to transmit at least one free stream of programming.