In a message dated 1/10/2004 9:48:13 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
Plug@BryceCo.Net writes:
the very same reason why the FCC is mandating DTV, the digital signal
will weaken with distance but it will not degrade; a one is still a one
and a zero is still a zero no matter how faint.
It will degrade because there has to be a bound on what consitutes 1 and 0 to
differentiate data from noise. If you can't make out a "1", it's degraded.
Also note that you could have "additive" RFI-- like the white lines you get if
you turn the vaccuum on near the TV
The story I hear is that DTV is more efficient on spectrum (the current space
for 1 analogue channel can have 4 digital ones of equal quality), so they
want to sell off a lot of spectrum (I believe 20 channels worth or so).