Before you start yelling “say what?”, please read the entire post.

The phrases “digital cable” and “digital satellite” unfortunately add to the confusion, of the already confusing lexicon, that attempts to differentiate what is the new generation of digital television, and simply analog television that has been converted into a digital format.

There is a difference. First a couple of definitions:

“Old school” analog is called NTSC (National Television Standards Committee)

Digital television is called ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee)

[The compete specs on the different formats of DTV is for, yet another blog.]

What cable and satellite providers originally touted as “digital cable” or “100% digital satellite” are actually analog NTSC signals that they convert and compress into a digital stream. This allows them to squeeze as many channels as possible into the bandwidth (the size of the data “pipe”) they have available.

It is digital, but from an analog NTSC source, not from a digital ATSC source. Confusing, huh?

Permit me to try and provide an overly simplistic comparison.

A movie studio produces a masterpiece of cinema…One for the ages…One that distills life into its essential elements and teaches a great lesson. No personal collection is truly complete without Caddyshack.

OK, the movie is shot and edited on film, of course. But, for television, the studio has the film scanned onto an analog videotape. So, now we have an analog video source to watch on TV. Ignoring the copyright implications, for this hypothetical situation, I decide to play the videotape and record a copy to DVD. I now have a digital video source, right? Well, yes and no. The DVD is indeed digital video, but it’s only a copy from an analog program.

This would be in contrast to the studio scanning the film to DVD. If I then copy the data onto another DVD, then I have a true digital to digital video source.

As digital ATSC sources start replacing analog NTSC feeds, the cable and satellite providers are starting to capture them. But, they are still converting and sometimes highly compressing those digital streams, before they are passed on to you. These are usually promoted, or labeled, as “HD Channels” even if the programming isn’t always in high-definition (yes, another topic…for another blog).