DIGITAL television is far more dramatic than the change from black and white to colour. No one really knows what it will do to television watching. What we do know it is will mean hundreds of new channels.
It will improve the quality of the image we watch and before long we will be watching television on wide screen sets.
It will allow a range of services - home shopping, home banking, access to the Internet, pay per view, and video on demand. It will complete the cultural change television has been making since its introduction 70 years ago.
The race towards digital television is getting more competitive daily. Mr Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB has promised 200 new services by the end of this year.
Last week details of the interest in Britain's digital terrestrial licences were announced. Thirty digital channels will be available to the successful applicant.
Within Europe pay based digital television services are already on offer to subscribers. Every week new services are announced and the motor driving this forward is sport.
New channels need content. After films, cartoons, shopping and repeats, there is little left. Sport offers the attraction of getting people to accept the idea of paying for television.
With 200 channels, Mr Murdoch could offer subscribers every English Premier League match every Saturday.
MEPs have tried to use the renewal of the EU's TV Directive, Television without Frontiers, over the past two years to offer some protection to public service television and maintain a so called public service ethos.
The directive has been blocked and is now in conciliation. Even though Television Without Frontiers was designed to offer greater competition in the television sector, it is now being used to protect access to certain events.
In the Republic, the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins, is to propose a cultural heritage designation for certain events as part of his new broadcasting legislation.
Coverage of such an event would have to be licensed by the proposed Broadcasting Commission. The commission can place conditions and require that the rights to broadcast must be made available to a non subscription television service.
Now the European Commission is seeking to place national policies on an EU wide basis. Yesterday it was not clear what would happen to sports events sold to a US satellite company, for instance, and beamed into Europe on a pay per view basis.
By using Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, dealing with access to information and freedom of expression as the legal basis, the Commission will be open to a court challenge from the major European media conglomerates.
Ten years ago Television without Frontiers deregulated television. Since then it has proved to be an inadequate tool to deal with what has been happening to Europe's television. Yesterday's announcement by the Commission will probably do little more than allow the MEPs to suggest they are in favour of keeping sports free. Mr Murdoch and other media moguls have other ideas.