Analogue Vs Digital

Today in the UK all broadcast television signals are digital, the previous standard
of analogue broadcasting having been slowly phased out region-by-region from
2007 to 2012.
Analogue television was abolished for a number of reasons, including bandwidth.
With digital, multiple channels and programs can share a single frequency,
allowing for a much greater number of channels to broadcast simultaneously.
Digital broadcasting has far superior image quality compared to analogue
television, and allowed for the development of 1080i resolution HDTV.
Additionally, while analogue broadcasting was developed to support
stereophonic sounds, digital TV allows up to 5 audio signals (plus a base channel)
for surround sound of the quality only previously found in cinema theatres.
Working fundamentally differently, the two types of broadcasting have different
shortcomings and are effected differently by poor reception. While an analogue
reception can deteriorate due to poor signal, becoming blurrier and noisy, but
still remain watchable, digital TV doesnt deteriorate slowly due to poor signal,
instead jumping straight from perfect to totally unwatchable.
Aside from broadcasting, developments in digital technology regarding video
have been instrumental to the film and television industries, in terms of the
quality of their output, as well as the production process.
In terms of editing, the process was extremely simple when splicing celluloid film
by hand, cutting the physical strips and stitching them back together in the
desired way. Comparatively, computer-based non-linear editing dominates
today. The journey from A to B was not simple.
The process of editing became much more difficult and cumbersome with the
advent of analogue tape while tape could be cut and stitched back together in
the same way as film, you couldnt see where you were cutting, because of
tapes inability to store still frames (storing each frame as two separate fields,
each of which recorded horizontal line-by-line one after the other). Because of
this, editing became a purely technical profession rather than an artistic one,
simply working from EDLs (Edit Decision Lists of each shots in and out points),
and because things had to be assembled in a linear fashion, going back to make
changes to an edit would result in everything after that point having to be reassembled from scratch. As a result, there was no such thing as a rough cut, and
celluloid film was the only place for creative or experimental editing.
With the advent of powerful digital computers, however, non-linear editing
became possible, allowing great freedom of editing. Nonlinear editing is nondestructive, leaving the source content completely intact, and allowing infinite
tweaks and changes to be made without disrupting or effecting the rest of the
assembly. It also eliminated the problem of generation loss which had
previously resulted in poor image from copying from one film roll or tape to
another.
Additionally, in terms of cinematic distribution, the move away from analogue
film and instead to digital projection has greatly simplified distribution. Without
the restriction of costly film rolls having to be shipped to individual theatres,

films can be easily released nationwide or globally. In this case, however, the
move from analogue to digital hasnt necessarily resulted in a superior viewing
experience for the consumer many argue that the digital image quality at the
cinema isnt superior to the quality of digital home video platforms, robbing the
consumer of the unique cinematic experience.