What is the difference between analog and digital communication?

What is the difference between an Analog and a Digital Tuner?

• I am buying a TV tuner for my Laptop computer and I found two different kinds; analog and digital. What is the difference? I know that analog is the older one, but does it effect the channels I get? What changes if I get digital compare to if I get an analog tuner? Thank you.

• Answer:

  Without knowing the brand and model of the two tuners you speak of, I am only guessing here, but analog TV signals are the kind that are transmitted through the air in the VHF and UHF frequency bands, and are transmitted over old-type cable. Digital TV signals are the kind that are transmitted over satellite TV, broadband cable, or digital cable. You would need the analog tuner to go from an older VCR or DVD player's video outputs, and a digital tuner if you wanted to plug it into your DirecTV or digital cable hookup, or use it in place of TiVo. Most digital TV signals have to be converted to analog anyway, and the analog tuner can get anything that's going to channel 3, so it will be able to read in just about anything. A digital tuner will be much less useful, so I would get the analog (unless you need to get some new digital HDTV signal into your PC or something).