Encyclopedia
Television is a
telecommunication system for
broadcasting and receiving
moving pictures and
sound over a distance. The term has come to refer to all the aspects of television from the television set to the programming and transmission. The word is derived from mixed
Latin and Greek roots, meaning "far sight": Greek
"tele", far, and Latin
visio-n, sight .
History
The origins of what would become today's television system can be traced back as far as the discovery of the photoconductivity of the element
selenium by Willoughby Smith in 1873 and the invention of a scanning disk by Paul Nipkow in 1884. All practical television systems use the fundamental idea of scanning an image to produce a time series signal representation. That representation is then transmitted to a device to reverse the scanning process. The final device, the television, relies on the human eye to integrate the result into a coherent image.
Electromechanical techniques were developed prior to World War II, most notably by Charles Francis Jenkins and
John Logie Baird. Baird gave the world's first public demonstration of a working television system to members of the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter on 26 January 1926 at his laboratory in London. Baird further demonstrated the world's first
color television transmission on 3 July 1928.
Completely electronic television systems relied on the inventions of
Philo Taylor Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworykin and others to produce a system suitable for mass distribution of television programming. Commercial broadcast programming, following years of experimental broadcasts seen only in a few specially-equipped homes, occurred in both the United States and the United Kingdom before World War II.
The first television broadcasts with a modern level of definition were made in England in 1936. So-called "System A" used 405 lines. Television did not become common in United States homes until the middle 1950s. While North American over-the-air broadcasting was originally free of direct marginal cost to the consumer and broadcasters were compensated primarily by receipt of advertising revenue, increasingly United States television consumers obtain their programming by subscription to cable television systems or direct-to-home satellite transmissions. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, the owner of each television must pay a
licence fee annually which is used to support the
British Broadcasting Corporation.
Technology
Elements of a television system
The elements of a simple television system are:
- An image source - this may be a camera for live pick-up of images or a flying spot scanner for transmission of films
- A sound source.
- A transmitter, which modulates one or more television signals with both picture and sound information for transmission.
- A receiver which recovers the picture and sound signals from the television broadcast.
- A display device, which turns the electrical signals into visible light and audible sound.
Practical television systems include equipment for selecting different image sources, mixing images from several sources at once, insertion of pre-recorded video signals, synchronizing signals from many sources, and direct image generation by computer for such purposes as station identification. Transmission may be over the air from land-based transmitters, over metal or optical cables, or by radio from synchronous
satellites. Digital systems may be inserted anywhere in the chain to provide better image transmission quality, reduction in transmission
bandwidth, special effects, or security of transmission from reception by non-subscribers.
Display technology
Thanks to advances in display technology, there are now several kinds of video displays used in modern TV sets:
- CRT: The most common displays are direct-view CRTs for up to 40 in and 46 in diagonally. These are still the least expensive, and are a refined technology that can still provide the best overall picture quality. As they do not have a fixed native resolution, in some cases they are also capable of displaying sources with a variety of different resolutions at the best possible image quality. The frame rate or refresh rate of a typical NTSC format CRT TV is 60 Hz, and for the PAL format, it is 50 Hz. A typical NTSC broadcast signal's visible portion has an equivalent resolution of about 640x480 pixels. It actually could be slightly higher than that, but the Vertical Blanking Interval, or VBI, allows other signals to be carried along with the broadcast.
- Rear projection: Most very large screen TVs use projection technology. Three types of projection systems are used in projection TVs: CRT-based, LCD-based, and DLP -based. Projection television has been commercially available since the 1970s, but at that time could not match the image sharpness of the CRT; current models are vastly improved, and offer a cost-effective large-screen display. A variation is a video projector, using similar technology, which projects onto a screen.
- Flat panel LCD or plasma: Modern advances have brought flat panels to TV that use active matrix LCD or plasma display technology. Flat panel LCDs and plasma displays are as little as 1 inch thick and can be hung on a wall like a picture or put over a pedestal
...
. Some models can also be used as
computer monitors.
It is important to think about the living environment of your television before deciding on a single display technology. Each has its pros and cons. Flat panel LCD display can have narrow viewing angles and so may not suit a home environment. Rear projection screens do not perform well in natural daylight or well lit rooms and so are best suited to dark viewing areas. A complete run down of the pros and cons of each display should be sought before purchasing a single television technology.
Terminology for televisions
Pixel
resolution is the amount of individual points known as
pixels on a given screen. A typical resolution of 800x600 means that the television display has 800 pixels across and 600 pixels on the vertical axis. The higher the resolution on a specified display the sharper the image.
Contrast ratio is a measurement of the range between the brightest and darkest points on the screen. The higher the contrast ratio, the better looking picture there is in terms of richness, deepness, and
shadow detail.
The brightness of a picture measures how vibrant and impacting the colours are. Measured in equivalent to the amount of candles required to power the image.
Transmission band
There are various bands of frequencies on which televisions work depending upon the country. The VHF and UHF signals in bands III to V are generally used. Lower frequencies do not have enough
bandwidth available for television. Although the BBC initially used Band I VHF at 45 MHz, this frequency is no longer in use for this purpose. Band II is used for FM radio transmissions. Higher frequencies behave more like light and do not penetrate buildings or travel around obstructions well enough to be used in a conventional broadcast TV system, so they are generally only used for satellite broadcasting, which uses frequencies around 10 GHz. TV systems in most countries relay the video as an AM signal and the sound as a FM signal. An exception is
France, where the sound is AM.
Aspect ratios
Aspect ratio refers to the ratio of the horizontal to vertical measurements of a television's picture. Mechanically scanned television as first demonstrated by
John Logie Baird in 1926 used a 7:3 vertical aspect ratio, oriented for the head and shoulders of a single person in close-up.
Most of the early electronic TV systems from the mid-1930s onward shared the same
aspect ratio of 4:3 which was chosen to match the Academy Ratio used in cinema films at the time. This ratio was also square enough to be conveniently viewed on round
cathode-ray tubes , which were all that could be produced given the manufacturing
technology of the time. The BBC's television service used a more squarish ratio from 1936 to , when it too switched to a 4:3 ratio. This did not present significant problems, as most sets at the time used round tubes which were easily adjusted to the 4:3 ratio when the transmissions changed.
In the 1950s, movie studios moved towards
widescreen aspect ratios such as
CinemaScope in an effort to distance their product from television. Although this was initially just a gimmick, widescreen is still the format of choice today and square aspect ratio movies are rare. Some people argue that widescreen is actually a disadvantage when showing objects that are tall instead of
panoramic, others say that natural vision is more panoramic than tall, and therefore widescreen is easier on the eye.
The switch to digital television systems has been used as an opportunity to change the standard television picture format from the old ratio of 4:3 to an aspect ratio of 16:9 . This enables TV to get closer to the aspect ratio of modern widescreen
movies, which range from 1.66:1 through 1.85:1 to 2.35:1. There are two methods for transporting widescreen content, the better of which uses what is called anamorphic widescreen format. This format is very similar to the technique used to fit a widescreen movie frame inside a 1.33:1 35mm film frame. The image is compressed horizontally when recorded, then expanded again when played back. The anamorphic widescreen 16:9 format was first introduced via European PALPlus television broadcasts and then later on "widescreen"
DVDs; the ATSC
HDTV system uses straight widescreen format, no horizontal compression or expansion is used.
Recently "widescreen" has spread from television to computing where both
desktop and
laptop computers are commonly equipped with widescreen displays. There are some complaints about distortions of movie picture ratio due to some DVD playback software not taking account of aspect ratios; but this may subside as the DVD playback software matures. Furthermore, computer and laptop widescreen displays are in the 16:10 aspect ratio both physically in size and in pixel counts, and not in 16:9 of consumer televisions, leading to further complexity. This was a result of widescreen computer display engineers' uninformed assumption that people viewing 16:9 content on their computer would prefer that an area of the screen be reserved for playback controls or
subtitles, as opposed to viewing content full-screen.
Aspect ratio incompatibility
The television industry's changing of
aspect ratios is not without difficulties, and can present a considerable problem.
Displaying a widescreen aspect image on a conventional aspect display can be shown:
- in "letterbox" format, with black horizontal bars at the top and bottom
- with part of the image being cropped, usually the extreme left and right of the image being cut off
- with the image horizontally compressed
A conventional aspect image on a widescreen aspect display can be shown:
- in "pillar box" format, with black vertical bars to the left and right
- with upper and lower portions of the image cut off
- with the image horizontally distorted
A common compromise is to shoot or create material at an aspect ratio of 14:9, and to lose some image at each side for 4:3 presentation, and some image at top and bottom for 16:9 presentation. In recent years, the cinematographic process known as
Super 35 has been used to film a number of major movies such as
Titanic,
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,
Austin Powers, and
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a wuxia [i] film [i] released in 2000 [i]. ...
. This process results in a camera-negative which can then be used to create both wide-screen theatrical prints, and standard "full screen" releases for television/VHS/DVD which avoid the need for either "
letterboxing" or the severe loss of information caused by conventional "
pan-and-scan" cropping.
Sound
Television add-ons
Today there are many television add-ons including
Video Game Consoles,
VCRs, Set-top boxes for
Cable,
Satellite and DVB-T compliant Digital Television reception,
DVD players, or Digital Video Recorders . The add-on market continues to grow as new technologies are developed.
New developments
Geographical usage
Content
Advertising
Since their inception in the USA in 1940,
TV commercials have become one of the most effective, most pervasive, and most popular methods of selling products of many sorts, especially consumer goods. U.S. advertising rates are determined primarily by Nielsen Ratings.
Programming
Getting TV programming shown to the public can happen in many different ways. After production the next step is to market and deliver the product to whatever markets are open to using it. This typically happens on two levels:
- Original Run or First Run - a producer creates a program of one or multiple episodes and shows it on a station or network which has either paid for the production itself or to which a license has been granted by the producers to do the same.
- Syndication - this is the terminology rather broadly used to describe secondary programming usages . It includes secondary runs in the country of first issue, but also international usage which may or may not be managed by the originating producer. In many cases other companies, TV stations or individuals are engaged to do the syndication work, in other words to sell the product into the markets they are allowed to sell into by contract from the copyright holders, in most cases the producers.
In most countries, the first wave occurs primarily on free-to-air television, while the second wave happens on subscription TV and in other countries. In the U.S., however, the first wave occurs on the FTA networks and subscription services, and the second wave travels via all means of distribution.
First run programming is increasing on subscription services outside the U.S., but few domestically produced programs are syndicated on domestic FTA elsewhere. This practice is increasing however, generally on digital-only FTA channels, or with subscriber-only first run material appearing on FTA.
Unlike the U.S., repeat FTA screenings of a FTA network program almost only occur on that network. Also, Affiliates rarely buy or produce non-network programming that isn't centered around local events.
Social aspects
Technology trends
In its infancy, television was an ephemeral medium. Fans of regular shows planned their schedules so that they could be available to watch their shows at their time of broadcast. The term
appointment television was coined by marketers to describe this kind of attachment.
The viewership's dependence on schedule lessened with the invention of programmable video recorders, such as the
Videocassette recorder and the Digital video recorder. Consumers could watch programs on their own schedule once they were broadcast and recorded. Television service providers also offer
video on demand, a set of programs which could be watched at any time.
Both
mobile phone networks and the
internet are capable of carrying video streams. There is already a fair amount of internet TV available, either live or as downloadable programs. Mobile phone TV is planned to eventually become mainstream, after worldwide over-the-air digital TV takes over analogue and some technical difficulties can be overcome - especially the ones related to battery life.
Suitability for audience
Almost since the medium's inception there have been charges that some programming is, in one way or another, inappropriate, offensive or indecent. Critics such as Jean Kilborne have claimed that television, as well as other mass media images, harm the self image of young girls. Other commentators such as Sut Jhally, make the case that television advertising in the U.S. has been so effective that happiness has increasingly come to be equated with the purchasing of products. George Gerbner has presented evidence that the frequent portrayals of crime, especially minority crime, has led to the Mean World Syndrome, the view among frequent viewers of television that crime rates are much higher than the actual data would indicate. In addition, a lot of television has been charged with presenting propaganda, political or otherwise, and been pitched at a low intellectual level.
Further reading
- Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, Oxford University Press, 1992.
- Pierre Bourdieu, On Television, The New Press, 2001.
- Brooks, Tim and March, Earle, The Complete Guide to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, Ballantine, Eighth Edition, 2002.
- Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, 1995.
- Jacques Derrida, Bernard Stiegler, Echographies of Television, Polity Press, 2002.
- Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Perennial, 1978.
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin USA, 1985. ISBN 0-670-80454-1
- Dr. Aric Sigman, Remotely Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives — And What We Can Do About It, Vermilion, 2005.
- Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, Shaded Lives: African-American Women and Television, Rutgers University Press, 2002.
References
- David E. Fisher and Marshall J. Fisher, Tube: the Invention of Television, Counterpoint, Washington D.C. USA, ISBN 1-887178-17-1
- Albert Abramson, The History of Television, 1942 to 2000, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, USA, and London ISBN 0-7864-1220-8
See also
External links
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- at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
- Some of the rarest sets in America
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