Digital TV pirate questions

[ogrevorbis]

Recently I have been thinking about pirate TV (probably won't actually do it, but the thought is interesting to me).

Does anyone know the percentage of new digital TVs that can still receive analog over the air?

I suspect it's a low number, so this got me thinking about digital. I managed to find a digital TV exciter on ebay.

If I was to do this, I would want to use VHF low band. The VHF high and UHF I don't think will go very far around here.

I am very confused about the channels. So the low channels appear to have been remapped. However, based on what I read, the digital can co-exist with the analog. So the main question is: What happens if I broadcast on original channel 4 for example and there is a digital station on the fake channel 4? Does it work?

Basically, I just want to know if I can broadcast in digital on the VHF low band (55-88)? I think many FM amps will work down there, so I think I just need to get the exciter and alter the antenna a bit. It seems like all the digital stations are on UHF, does it even work on the original channels 2-6?

[ogrevorbis]

Oh, looks like TV requires a linear amplifier. I thought I could just use one of my FM amps. Is this true for both digital and analog TV?

[Kage]

The info I am looking at is conflicting. I know the old analog format had the video in AM and audio in FM.
From what wiki describes it's in COFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) and describes using QAM or PSK so my guess is that linearity might be necessary for DVB-T or ATSC?

This article shows DVB-T using wideband FM though so I'm not so sure..
www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/dvb-t/

8VSB modulation is used for ATSC and wiki states that "An 8VSB transmitter needs to have a peak power capability of 6 db (four times) its average power."
That leads me to believe linear amplification is required. If radio and analog TV is a dark art, this digital stuff is black hole art. Finding information is sparse. I wonder what good books exist that goes into depth on digital TV topics. I know the ARRL book probably dabbles a little into DVB transmissions.

If you find further info I'd be interested if you could post it here. I don't know jack about DTV transmissions but find it very interesting and if I ever delve far deeper into SDR stuff it would be fun to experiment with even at low power.