Cable TV has come a long way in the past decade. This can be measured in a number of different ways. For instance the old fashioned analog signal that used to deliver cable TV programming has now been replaced by a digital one. Also, HDTV programming is widely available and the number of channels that provide this high resolution TV format is rapidly growing. The total number of channels that cable TV companies can provide is also growing, and video on demand options available through the cable TV industry promise to give viewers complete control over the TV that they watch.



First of all, the switch to digital TV provides some enormous benefits in terms of the quality of the TV viewing experience. The most obvious and widely known benefits are improved picture and clearer sound, but the benefits that this transmission format delivers goes way beyond that. The on screen program guides that are so helpful when it comes to choosing programming to watch are made possible by digital TV. These program guides are interactive features that can be brought up on the screen while viewing any channel. They're essentially TV listings that allow you to see what's on in every time slot on every available channel and even see what will be available to watch up to days in advance. Most entries include descriptions of the TV shows or movies and content rating information.

HDTV is another great feature that's delivered by cable TV companies these days. Where digital TV is a new transmission format for TV, HDTV is a completely new format for the programming itself. It features a higher resolution picture, wide screen aspect ratio, and a sound format that's designed to take advantage of a home theater quality sound system. The list of channels that provide HDTV programming is growing all the time and cable TV companies are highly motivated to include as many of these channels as possible.

Another improvement is the total number of channels that can be transmitted using cable TV technology. The transition to digital TV has gone a long way towards making this happen. More channels can fit onto a single cable using the digital transmission format and the digital signals can be compressed using special algorithms. In addition, many cable TV companies are in the process of implementing a technology called switched digital video, or SDV for short. Switched digital video is a clever way to get around the fact that a cable can only deliver a limited number of channels at a time. It does this by only transmitting the channel that the viewer is watching over the cable at any given time. Since only one channel is transmitted at a time, SDV removes the limits on the number of channels that a company can offer!

Video on demand is similar to SDV in that it delivers a specific video feed to a specific viewer. The difference is that the viewer can start watching the video at a specific time. Video on demand basically gives the viewer access to an entire database of videos to watch on a moment's notice. The selection of video that's available this way is limited, but expanding all the time.

These improvements make cable TV something to pay attention to.