HDTV Tuner Information

High Definition Television (HDTV) is one of the newest innovations in digital television technology. It results in the broadcasting of better quality images and sound. As a matter of fact, HDTV is able to handle resolutions that are two times higher than the more traditional analog technology.

HDTV Tuner

Basics

Up until the 2007, most of the television sets sold on the market were made to make use of analog technology. Thus, they are unable to handle high resolution and surround sound features. Also known as digital or TSC tuners, these allow the reception of digital television signals. HDTV tuners may be attached to various devices, such as the television, VCR and video recorders.

Necessity

The U.S. Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 made it mandatory for over-the-air television stations to stop using analog broadcasts following a cutoff date. Thus, television sets sold after March 1, 2007 are required to have a built-in HDTV tuners. External HDTV tuners may also be used on television sets to allow access to high definition programming.

Functions

An HDTV tuner works by creating audio and video signals that can be picked up by TV broadcasts. It provides functions, such as error connection. In this process, the HDTV tuner compensates the loss of data from interference and poor quality signals. As a result, the signal can still be viewed clearly on the television set.

An HDTV tuner also has the capability of decompression. Digital signals are usually compressed or made smaller when they are broadcast. Once the HDTV tuner receives them, they are unpacked to their original size without losing their clarity. Other functions of this particular device include demodulation, image reformatting and AV reformatting.

Operation

The setup and use of HDTV tuners are simple and easy to follow. Most of them make use of on-screen menus that automatically revert to the setup screen when the tuner is turned on. To set it up, the user has to pick their time zone as well as make adjustments to the daylight-savings time. This is important because television stations make use of Coordinated Universal Time. A band scan of stations also needs to be accomplished. What happens is that the channels are inspected for digital carrier waves. When one is detected, it is added to the channel map.

Errors

There are some errors that can occur with the use of HDTV tuners. However, most of these may actually be attributed to inaccurate data sent by the stations rather than the tuner itself. Most HDTV tuners record the information for each station after a few hours of viewing a channel on it. When a station broadcasts erroneous information, such as time, this can cause problems, such as the skewing of the data guide for all stations. This may only be corrected once the correct time is received from a correctly programmed station.

References

• DTV 2009 website

Resources

• Federal Communications Commission