DTV Countdown - Report 36

That's what happens in this new digital television age.

"With digital it's computer coded, it's 1s and 0s and all of those numbers have to come in and get in the right order, but if you're missing one of those numbers, one 0 or one 1, you get nothing," explains Megan Pollock of the Consumer Electronics Association.  "I think that's going to be the big difference consumers see is they say i was williing to watch that channel and i could sort of hear it and every now and then i saw something - you're not going to have that option with digital, but the good option is that you will get everything crystal clear that you receive."

Megan compares it to VHS versus DVD.  VHS, you can only run straight through.  DVD, there are many options with many information components.  That's what you get when you switch from analog to digital.

"Your station point one, point two, point three and consumers are going to start to get these for free just like they did your one channel, now you may get four or five cause you can put more information in this digital bandwidth," says Pollock.  "I did a channel scan here, i plugged in the converter box to see how many channels, this is again, all broadcast all over the air, no cable, and it's twenty-something channels...it used to be broadcast you got four channels, maybe one or two more and now you're getting twenty channels in this area - it's really exciting."