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Is digital technology really that good?

First it was digital clocks and watches and now everything is turning digital. I know people who have had digital TV's who have been disappointed, especially considering the price. Do you think digital technology is cracked up to what it's made out to be?

Public Comments

1. Personally, I do. It's all much more efficient, though I can see people on the other hand liking it "simple" or thinking it's unnecessary. Companies NEED to manufacture new products to keep the interest of the public, this technology especially attracts the attention of today's youth. How else are companies going to make money other than improving what we already have?
2. There are trade-offs. Digital technology has its pros and cons. I could fix my old 'analogue' car. Now everything is controlled by the engine management system, the work has to be done by the dealer. An upside is that less goes wrong. A downside is that, when it does, it is more serious and expensive. In photography, the convenience of digital photography has opened up new and cheaper ways to enjoy this hobby. The ability to re-use digital memory means I can take more chances and have more fun. At the same time, I still use film where quality is paramount. I don't like the way digitisation puts control in the hands of other people - the makers or the media companies - or the way it facilitates our Big Brother state. But, like most people, I like a quiet life and appreciate the new toys so I tolerate this invasion of my liberties ... up to a point.
3. As a means of transmission, that is to say sending data from point to point(s) digital is much more robust than analogue, as it is capable of correcting errors that occur in the transmission process. The ability to compress digital data allows much greater amounts of data to be sent in a given bandwidth, but this does cause some impairment to the signal, and particularly when high levels of compression are used and there are a lot of fast changes in the image. Since there is a financial incentive to increase the number of channels of TV that can be sent over a carrier, it is not entirely unexpected that compression may be excessive. However, these degradations are generally brought about by your usual friendly profit motive, and the possibility to encrypt and make signals available only to selected destinations by reason of content or on the basis of payment, is also reckoned as advantageous in this respect. Certainly FM radio is slightly better quality than DAB, again due to the comprson used in DAB to allow a greater number of channels on the carrier. Digital clocks and watches? Surely these differ only in the format of the display, rather than using digital means of operation? However, if any comment is appropriate here, a programme or timetable listing necessarily uses a printed digital format, so a digital clock, displaying time in the same format is surely quite acceptable, and given that there are 24 hours in a day, a digital time display can be easier to read than a sweep hand indication. In practice, a digital clock is easier to read "time now", whilst a sweep hand (analogue) clock is easier used to show "time until, or since". The matter you raise about disappointment with digital TV's is more about the system of display rather than digital or analogue. The modern flat screen TV's (which are, admittedly, digital) use LED and Plasma display panels rather than the traditional CRT which many regard as providing a better picture.
4. hi tango, yes and no