December 5, 2007 - The End of Analog Television
On February 17th, 2009 US television will be ceasing to broadcast analog signals. Beyond this date, any over-the-air television broadcast needs to be in digital format. Hopefully, this announcement causes a similar process to occur in Canada, especially for those few stations who still haven't started broadcasting in digital format. Unfortunately, in Canada we have to wait until August 31st, 2011 before digital broadcasts are enforced in Canada (the date the CRTC set for Canadian broadcasters).

• What about my old television?
That's right, your old TV will not be able to understand the digital signal. If you cannot afford to buy a new TV before that date that has a built-in ATSC tuner you still have some options:

1. You can buy a digital-to-analog converter box (similar to a cable box) that will convert the new digital television signals to an analog signal that can still be accepted by your current television. However, keep in mind that you will need a separate box for every television in your household that has an analog NTSC tuner, unless you don't mind watching the same channel at the same time on all of them.

2. Subscribe to a Cable TV or Satellite TV service. Since Cable TV and Satellite Boxes (even the newer digital and HD boxes) all include provisions for digital-to-analog signal conversion for use with analog televisions, if you are either a current subscriber, or sign up before the cutoff date, your television viewing will not be interrupted on televisions that the Cable or Satellite Box is connected to.

• What about my new television?

With the cost of televisions, especially LCDs drastically falling, it may be time to invest in a new television that has an ATSC tuner (pretty much all new tvs will have this).This tuner will allow you to receive over-the-air programming from stations broadcasting television signals in one of several digital broadcasting formats. All Televisions, 27-inches and up, that currently come with analog NTSC tuners, must also now include a digital ATSC tuner as well.

However, keep in mind that the trend towards digital-only cable is quickly moving foward regardless of the government imposed cut-off dates.

If you have a new LCD or plasma flat-panel television and you subscribe to the basic cable packages (not digital or HDTV), the picture quality can be horrible. The reason for this is that HDTVs have the capability of displaying much more detail than an analog TV which results in the video processing circuitry in the HDTV enhancing both the good and bad parts of a low resolution image. The cleaner and more stable your signal, the better result you will have. If the picture has background color noise, signal interference, color bleeding, or edge problems, (which may be unnoticeable on an analog TV due to the fact that it is more forgiving due to the lower resolution) the video processing in an HDTV will attempt to clean it up. However, this may deliver mixed results hence the degraded final picture quality especially with larger screen televisions. As well, some televisions perform the analog-to-digital conversion process better than others.

Needless to say, to achieve the best television picture quality on your new LCD tv is to subscribe to a HDTV digital cable package. This will cost you about $450 for the HDTV tuner and about $64 per month (from Shaw cable). Hopefully these prices drop over the next little while as you can end up spending a large chunk of your earnings just on watching TV. I guess it depends on how important it is to see the blemishes on your favourite actor's face while watching your favourite television show.