Why I hate the loss of analog television broadcasts in America.

For those who miss analog TV
👇 chatGPT

Digital TV almost always wins when it comes to resolution.
Analog TV
  • Standard resolution only: Traditional analog formats like NTSC (in North America) and PAL/SECAM (in Europe/Latin America) topped out at what we’d now call “standard definition” (roughly 480i for NTSC, 576i for PAL).
  • No fixed pixel grid: It was a continuous signal, so in theory you could get good sharpness if the broadcast chain and the TV set were top quality. But in practice, noise, ghosting, and interference reduced clarity.
  • Quality varies: The picture could degrade gradually with weak signal strength, showing snow or ghosting rather than cutting out completely.
Digital TV
  • Much higher resolutions possible: Even the early standards (like DVB-T and ATSC) supported SD at the same quality as analog, but also 720p, 1080i, 1080p, and now 4K UHD broadcasts in some regions.
  • Consistent quality: A digital signal is either decoded correctly (and looks very sharp at its intended resolution) or it doesn’t come through at all (“cliff effect”). No gradual fuzziness like analog.
  • Compression trade-offs: Digital relies on compression (MPEG-2, H.264, etc.), so artifacts can appear with low bandwidth, but resolution is still higher.

👉 Bottom line: Analog TV never matched the resolution potential of digital. At best, analog gave you a softer SD image; digital enables HD, Full HD, and 4K.
 
I still have an antenna. The received signal is analog. Which the television converts to digital.
Much much better than when televisions had a tuner.
I sure do not wish to go back.
 
BakerV2 said:
I still have an antenna. The received signal is analog. Which the television converts to digital.
Much much better than when televisions had a tuner.
I sure do not wish to go back.
Click to expand...
Where are you that you receive an analog television signal?
From what I've read analog broadcasts are uncommon and possibly used only by smaller broadcasters in less populated areas.
Most over the air signals are transmitted digitally afaik.
 
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