Your older televisions will work just fine if you purchase a "converter" which acts as a digital tuner for sets with analog tuners. When accessing cable systems the cable company already converts the signals so no converter box would be necessary. Digital has some great advantages over analog signals with it's perfect picture but it's perfect or it's NOTHING so most don't get as many long distance stations as with analog systems. Used to be you could watch a somewhat snowey picture on a lot of stations which will no longer receive a signal at all.