The other day I picked up a usb tv tuner unit for my laptop. I'm not a big television fan at all but I figured it would be nice to have that option when sitting around in the truck for an extended period of time, like today. Naturally since analog broadcasts are soon to be extinct the card is capable of both analog and HDTV digital broadcast reception.

As I expected, the picture quality of the digital broadcast is exceptional. With digital there's no such thing as a snowy picture. Either you have data or you don't. If the signal is poor there may be some glitches or quick pauses in the video, but what's there is crystal clear.

As I've been sitting around a truck stop in NJ all day waiting for dispatch to find me a load out of here, I've been doing a bit of channel surfing and getting familiar with the new device. (While typing this she just called and said that she hasn't had any luck finding a load out of here today. Maybe we'll have better luck tomorrow.)

Broadcasters are taking advantage of  the fact that one can easily multiplex several broadcasts on a single carrier when broadcasting in digital format and many channels have more than one sub-channel. The most frequent use of these sub-channels so far is 24 hour weather broadcasting, but a few stations are using them to broadcast more than one program at a time, giving the viewer more of a choice.

While on the analog side I can pick up 5 or 6 chnnels clearly enough to watch, when switching over to the digital broadcasts those same 5 or 6 channels become not only crystal clear, but thanks to the sub-channels suddenly become more like 11-15 channels of programming.

I think as time goes on and analog broadcasting fades into distant memory, most broadcasters will be taking advatage of digital sub-channels to provide broadcast viewers with a much broader range of programs to watch, as well as making more money for themselves by being able to sell much more advertising in the same time slot.

For those of you who don't subscibe to cable and get your television signal through an antenna, and you haven't yet bought a DTV ready television or a converter box, go ahead and make the move. You're cheating yourself out of a lot more choices of what to watch.

With the high picture quality and the inevitable increase of programming to come, broadcast television may soon be gving cable a run for it's money.