Television and Radio |

If you’ve looked at television sets at any of the big electronics retailers in the United States lately, you know that digital TV, or DTV, is a big deal right now. Most stores have whole areas devoted to digital TV sets. You’re also hearing a lot about four other topics:

• HDTV and HDTV broadcasts
• Digital satellite services
• Digital cable
• DVDs and DVD players

Unless you are among the people in the United States who have purchased a DTV set, what you have in your living room is a normal analog TV that seems to be working just fine despite all the hype. ­ Most people, faced with this level of product proliferation, can only ask, “What the heck is going on here?!”

On June 12, 2009, television stations in the United States completed the transition from analog to digital broadcasting. Consumers receiving local television signals over analog antennas now must use converter boxes to receive programming on their TVs. This deadline was pushed back several times in the last few years because of both broadcasters’ and consumers’ inability to meet the FCC’s criteria for a successful transition to digital broadcasting.

The change was last scheduled to take place on Feb. 17, 2009, but was pushed back one final time to allow more people to purchase new TVs or converter boxes to allow them to make the transition. Some stations, however, switched to digital broadcasting in February 2009 anyhow because they’d already contracted time to broadcast on digital transmitters and staying analog would require a costly budgetary adjustment. Buy television with payday advance

“Radio waves” transmit music, conversations, pictures and data invisibly through the air, often over millions of miles — it happens every day in thousands of different ways! Even though radio waves are invisible and completely undetectable to humans, they have totally changed society. Whether we are talking about a cell phone, a baby monitor, a cordless phone or any one of the thousands of other wireless technologies, all of them use radio waves to communicate.

Here are just a few of the everyday technologies that depend on radio waves:

• AM and FM radio broadcasts
• Cordless phones
• Garage door openers
• Wireless networks
• Radio-controlled toys
• Television broadcasts
• Cell phones
• GPS receivers
• Ham radios
• Satellite communications
• Police radios
• Wireless clocks

The list goes on and on… Even things like radar and microwave ovens depend on radio waves. Things like communication and navigation satellites would be impossible without radio waves, as would modern aviation — an airplane depends on a dozen different radio systems. The current trend toward wireless Internet access uses radio as well, and that means a lot more convenience in the future!

­The funny thing is that, at its core, radio is an incredibly simple technology. With just a couple of electronic components that cost at most a d­ollar or two, you can build simple radio transmitters and receivers. The story of how something so simple has become a bedrock technology of the modern world is fascinating!