A characteristic that causes DTV reception to deteriorate dramatically with a small change in signal reception. Unlike analog television where the picture gets ”snowey” and gradually disappears, a Digital picture will be prefect one minute, and lost entirely the next.
Failure of a system when a receiver can no longer receive a vaible signal
When approaching the fringes of reception, analog TV pictures begin to degrade by becoming "snowy." With DTV its all or nothing. In an area with a weak digital signal, a relatively small reduction in signal strength may cause the DTV signal to abruptly change from perfect to nothing; hence the name "cliff effect."
An abrupt loss of a digital TV signal, caused by an interruption of the data to the TV receiver.
When approaching the fringes of reception, analog TV pictures begin to degrade by becoming "snowy." By contrast, when in a weak digital signal area, a relatively small change in received power may cause the DTV picture to abruptly change from perfect to nothing; hence the name, "cliff effect."
(Also referred to as the 'Digital Cliff') This is a phenomenon found in digital video systems that describes the sudden deterioration of picture quality due to excessive bit errors, often caused by excessive cable lengths. The digital signal will be perfect even though one of its signal parameters is approaching or passing the specified limits. At a given moment however, the parameter will reach a point where the data can no longer be interpreted correctly, and the picture will be totally unrecognisable
The sudden breakdown or loss of digital signal reception when it contains more errors than the error correction system can cope with. Up to this point there is no degradation in reception quality; a significant advantage over analog where there is a gradual deterioration.
In telecommunications, the cliff effect or digital cliff describes the sudden loss of digital reception. Unlike analog signals, which gradually fade when signal strength decreases or electromagnetic interference or multipath increases, a digital signal provides data which is either perfect or non-existent at the receiving end. It is named for a graph (shown at right) of reception quality versus signal quality, where the digital signal "falls off a cliff" instead of having a gradual rolloff.