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What's the difference in power for analog vs digital TV broadcast?? Is that mostly because ATSC broadcasts moved towards UHF, and NTSC broadcasters preferred VHF when available? Or is there some other property of ATSC broadcasts that require lower energy?

Analogue video has to have a very high SNR at the receiver, because any noise is directly visible in the picture.

But with a digital signal, as long as you can distinguish individual bits, the picture is always perfect, so you can get away with a much lower signal strength.

Can you quantify the difference in electricity costs? Start with difference in Watts, guess 0.15$/kWh and then find $/year saved?

I bet the increase in quality and maybe the reliability or support costs for the old analog equipment were bigger factors.

...so how much would it have improved the reception if they kept using the same amount of power for digital?