Cable

Where an original analogue cable set-top box is previously required this has to be replaced to receive digital cable. From a user's point of vision the main advantage appears to be simply better picture quality and more channel availability, however (depending on the choices operators make regarding set top box hardware and middleware software) many other features become possible with the transfer away from analogue. Often a TV guide (7 day schedules) with extended information can be viewed, reminders to watch programmes can be situate and advanced parental censorship on channel content can be exercised. Operators also enjoy better CA (conditional access) on Digitally transmitted streams as they can be sent 'encrypted' with schemes such as DES encryption to help prevent unauthorised access and protect revenues.

Operators wishing to enlarge the carrying capacity of their original networks have to replace all analogue set top boxes with digital replacements earlier than turning off the analogue feeds, this is not a trivial or low cost solution as literally millions of set top boxes require replacement.

Some of the more advanced wire networks even have the use of a return path (a 2 way data communications path to allow DTV set top boxes to return information back to the operators head-end). This allows them to expand services offered to include interactive web style content viewing, gaming, voting and other 'on demand' services such as control of Video On Demand films.

Satellite

DTV has been made known to be commercially viable in the satellite television market, where it is used to multiplex large numbers of channels onto the available bandwidth. The business representation for satellite DTV in the U.S. and the UK is similar to that for cable TV. Satellite DTV operators tend to take action as packagers for large numbers of channels, including pay-TV. The greater RF bandwidth accessible to satellite operators allows them to out-compete terrestrial DTV operators on both number of channels and picture quality.

The Broadcast Flag

The fundamental nature of the FCC's rule was in 47 CFR 73.9002(b) and the following sections:

"No merrymaking shall sell or deal out in interstate commerce a enclosed Demodulator merchandise that does not meet the terms with the Demodulator Compliance Requirements and Demodulator Robustness Requirements."

The Demodulator Compliance Requirements insisted that all HDTV demodulators necessity listen for the flag (or assume it to be present in all signals). Flagged comfortable must be output only to "protected outputs" or in degraded form: through analog outputs or digital outputs with visual resolution of 720x480 pixels or less--less than 1/4 of HDTV's capability. Flagged content may be recorded only by "Authorized" methods, which may contain tethering of recordings to a single device.

The Demodulator Robustness Requirements were mainly troubling for open-source developers. In order to avert users from gaining access to the full digital signal, the FCC tied the hands of even sophisticated users and developers.

Digital television

User wish for to keep the right to time- and space-shift that the VCR has given us (against Hollywood's protest). User want to keep the fair use rights that let us excerpt clips from press conferences or make our own "Daily Show" from the evening news. That's why we're cheering people to buy HDTV tuner cards now and build multi-function receivers and recorders around them.

The MythTV development has built a terrific personal video recorder (PVR) platform that gives a GNU/Linux PC features like TiVo's pause live TV and "season pass" recording. These are immense for geeks, and we're looking for volunteers to help make the combination more accessible to the general public.

There are also a number of alternatives for Windows and Macintosh computers that present similar features. We still require volunteers to help make these products more accessible to more people.