Inside view
20 YEARS OF GENEROUS PUBLICATIONS
How To Upgrade Your TV To The
DIGITAL AGE With the digital switch-over looming, it's time to learn how to upgrade your television viewing to the digital age. Most of regional NSW went digital-only in 2012 and now it's Sydney's turn, with analog broadcasts set to end on December 3. This time next year, old televisions and video cassette recorders (VCRs) won't be able to tune into the handful of fuzzy analog channels that served us well for so long. More than 90 per cent of Australians have already embraced digital television, according to the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy. Many lounge rooms have upgraded to new widescreen screens with built-in digital TV tuners, offering access to the traditional channels along with a range of new digital-only channels. But if you're not ready to put your old television on the nature strip, it's easy to upgrade an old television to digital with a cheap set-top box. ''A good analog signal is no guarantee of a good digital signal,'' Ford says. ''It's worth borrowing a digital set-top box to test your digital signal strength, so you'll know in advance if you should get advice from a local antenna specialist before making your purchase.''
DECEMBER
''If you run into interference issues, with the picture freezing, try upgrading your aerial cable to RG6 quad-shielded cable and removing unnecessary signal splitters. Sometimes these changes alone are enough to fix the problem.'' High-definition set-top boxes are slightly more expensive than standard-definition boxes, but Ford says it's worth the extra money to gain access to the five additional HD digital channels. If you don't yet own an HD television, an HD set-top box can downscale these channels for your old television. This way you can still watch the HD channels but they won't look any sharper than the others. A cheap HD digital set-top box is the easiest way to prepare for the jump to digital TV. Look for a digital set-top box with an antenna output as well as input, Ford says, so you can loop the aerial signal through the box to your television as you perhaps did with your VCR. A digital settop box will plug into an old television's composite or component video inputs, just like a VCR or DVD player. ''Now to watch digital television you simply turn the television to the AV channel, a concept people should already grasp if they own a VCR.
34
The Highly Circulated Satellite Magazine
2013