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Analogue V Digital

  • 31-01-2006 10:36am
    #1
    dellas1979
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,128 ✭✭✭


    Dunno if this is the right place.

    Can anyone please tell me what the difference is between Analogue and Digital channels/TV please? Especially in relation to channels in the UK.

    Thanks.


Comments

  • #2
    Lump
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,984 ✭✭✭✭Lump


    One is transmitted via a digitial Network, and one via Analogue transmitters. Sounds like a stupid answer, but that is the difference. In the Uk, you get Freeview which is free as the name suggests, you get all the BBC Channels 1,2,3,4 News 24 etc, ITV 1,2,3 and 4. Then there's satellitte which you can pay for lots of sports and movie channels, this is subscribtion. What else do you want to know? Technical details or what? I'm comfused. Also it might be better to move this to Home Entertainment.

    John


  • #3
    dellas1979
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,128 ✭✭✭dellas1979


    Thanks for the reply.

    Is freeview analogue?

    Dont actually have a clue what analogue is. Am very basic technology minded.


  • #4
    Lump
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,984 ✭✭✭✭Lump


    Analogue is a series of Radio Waves, basically what you pick up on a FM radio. Digital is a stream of 1's and 0's. Freeview in the Uk is their terrestial Digtial network. It's transmitted from Ariels like analogue, but it's a digital Signal. A freeview box costs £40 to buy and you can pick it up on a regualar ariel, you might need a roof ariel depending on the area you're in.

    There is also Freesat available in Ireland and the Uk and over the world. It's a free version of the Sattellite subscription service.

    If you want more details, I can give you some.

    Also this might help - http://www.bbc.co.uk/digital/freeview.shtml

    John


  • #5
    Lump
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,984 ✭✭✭✭Lump


    Oh, just to add, essentially Digital is "Better" however, the BBC multiplex has 8 megabits to supply all it's channels on freeview, 4 TV stations and 8 radio stations. That's all well and good, you can pretty much discount the radio, as audio take up hardly any space.

    The TV stations have just shy of 2 Megabits each, This will change, using Variable Bit rate, depending what's on TV. For Example BBC 4 normally has talk shows etc on. Therefore it needs less bandwidth to display the pictures correctly. It probably has 1 megbit allocated to it. If there's a feature film like Die another day on BBC 1, it'll grab maybe 3-4 mega bits, and then the other two stations will have the remainder.

    You can notice the compression if there's a lot of explosions etc on a film, basically the Mpeg compression runs out of room, so it sarts creating bigger pixels of one colour.

    Anyway, it's not an Ideal system, but it's generally better then Analogue.

    FYI, Digi beta (The format original progs are shot on is about 70 Mega bits.... so what you watch on TV is about 40:1 compression.

    I could write reams on Mpeg compression, but enough :)

    John


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