Understanding Digital Television explains complex technical systems and solutions in an easy to comprehend manner along with visual 3D graphics. It helps non-technical individuals such as managers, executives, general media professionals, as well as TV and home cinema enthusiasts gain a practical understanding of the equipment, technical aspects of digital television, and various ways of distributing. Most examples are from a European perspective but also include comparisons with North American systems. This book answers the confusing questions about new devices and digital formats, what to do and when the analogue TV transmitters are switched off, watching TV using your broadband connection, and much more.

This is a book written for the layman when it comes to language and descriptions, but on the other hand is full of technical content that would make it an interesting read for technicians working in the audio-visual industries who may know how to connect systems together, but have no idea how the signal got there in the first place. Lundström admits to a long history working in TV broadcasting from early days as youngster using the old home TV to try and receive DX (long distance) signals from other countries, through University where he worked on receiving the first satellite broadcasts, and to his work in modern-day digital broadcast methods.

And that latter point is what the book is concerned with. Digital TV transmissions now come to our homes and places of work via four principle means - satellite, cable, internet and terrestrial broadcasts and each is explored in turn. Firstly though, as is common with books of this nature, the reader is guided on a little historical tour of television, commencing with the somewhat startling, if obvious, revelation that we've not changed much from prehistoric times - back then man used to work during the day with stone tools and sit around the fire at night telling stories; now man works during the day with computers and mobile phones and then sits around the TV at night watching stories!

Lundström then moves on through the basics of digitising video signals and the various compression methods before starting the meat of the book with an exploration of satellite transmission and reception, looking at every aspect of uplinks and downlinks, receiver and dish setup and an interesting explanation of satellite technology. From here, the next topic covered is cable TV, which receives the same in-depth analysis as satellites - as does terrestrial broadcasting.

Perhaps the newest of the technologies is TV over the internet, or IPTV. This - in the UK at least - has been fairly slow to catch on, although that's not to say it won't become more popular. As well as covering current technologies such as compression methods, decoding and the like, it also looks at setting up networks and the 'computer' related parts of such systems.

The final chapters cover the actual setting up of such systems, and contain sections on cable types and interconnect methods, such as SCART or RGB, and even gives pictures of how to correctly wire up the various different types of connector. The final chapters look at recent developments in high definition TV and the practical aspects of receiving and setting up HDTV systems. There are also two appendices that give engineering information on satellite positions and alignment data.

In all, a very well-written book and well worth investing in if you work in this area, or want to - it would be well suited to those wanting to move into broadcast reception installations as there is plenty of advice and instruction on the practical aspects of setting up systems, aligning dishes and so on.