DIGITAL TV

BREF HISTORY

The first televised political debate in the U.S. was during the 1960 presidential race between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Some believe that the television debate clinched the victory for the younger, more charismatic Kennedy.

MECHANICAL TV

little invention by Paul Nipkow in 1884 consisting of a disk with holes spiraling into its center Engineers like John Logie Baird and Charles Francis Jenkins, among others, used Nipkow's disk to create the first systems for scanning, transmitting, and receiving images in the 1920's.

John Logie Baird and Charles Francis Jenkins created entire television systems based on mechanical image scanning and receiving. No Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) here

The scanning and reproducing discs are similar. Both are mounted on driving motors, and each is punched with a spiral of small holes along the outer edge. The number of holes matches the number of lines of picture definition. At the transmitter in this mechanical system, the studio is in total darkness. A light emanates from a lamp behind the disc and, projected through the holes set in the spiral on the outer edge, scans the features of the subject's face. The photocell converts these variations in the reflected light into the electric impulses, which, once amplified, can be transmitted by radio waves.

At the receiver, the signal is converted into a sequence of bright flashes by the neon tube. The reproducing disc rotates rapidly in front of this tube, and converts each flash of the lamp into a small element of the image. The rapid speed of the disc makes "persistence of vision" possible for the looker- in. looker"Persistence of vision" means that the brain retains an image for one tenth of a second after it is perceived by the eye. The rapid repetition of moving images (in film or television) tricks the brain into perceiving continuous images.

Electronic television systems lagged behind mechanical systems for several years, mostly because mechanical television was cheaper to build and it didn't use delicate parts. Not only that, but it was really hard to get financial backing to develop electronic TV when mechanical TV worked so much better at the time. With a cheaper system that already worked, few people saw the need to change Vladimir Kosmo Zworykin and Philo T. Farnsworth made some critical breakthroughs, and electronic television began to catch up.

ELECTRONIC TV

Vladimir Zworykin found financial backing from David Sarnoff, Senior Vice President of RCA. Sarnoff was watching mechanical television development and predicted that electronic TV would eventually be more commercially viable. Later, when Philo Farnsworth found some investors to back his ideas, he and Zworykin competed to get their electronic televisions to the public first. Both Farnsworth and Zworykin, working separately, made great advances towards commercial television and affordable TV sets

ELECTRONIC TV

1928 with an all mechanical television system. 1935, both were broadcasting intermittently, using all - electronic systems all1939, RCA and Zworykin were ready for regular programming and they kicked it all off by televising the World's Fair in New York

ELECTRONIC TV

The small audience of viewers was watching a blurry picture on a 2 or 3 inch screen. The future of television looked bleak, but the competition for dominance in television broadcasting was hot.

MONOCHROME TV

ICONOSCOPE

The Iconoscope was the camera pick - up picktube that was most commonly used in 1939 TV cameras. It was the "eye" of television. Inside the Iconoscope, the image is projected onto a photosensitive plate and scanned by an electron beam, breaking the elements of the image into a series of electrical impulses. These impulses can be transmitted as a radio signal to a TV set.

The receiver contains a picture tube (Kinescope). The Kinescope tube creates another electron beam which varies in intensity while being magnetically deflected very rapidly. When this beam strikes the back of the phosphor coating inside the Kinescope, each spot glows for a split second, until the beam has a chance to return for the next pass.

The receiver contains a picture tube (Kinescope).

The Kinescope tube creates another electron beam which varies in intensity while being magnetically deflected very rapidly. When this beam strikes the back of the phosphor coating inside the Kinescope, each spot glows for a split second, until the beam has a chance to return for the next pass.

1941 the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) decided it was time to write guidelines for television transmission in the United States. Five months later, all 22 of the nation's television stations converted to the new electronic standards.

COLOR TV
CBS developed a workable color system years before their rival, RCA, but it was incompatible with the huge number of black and white sets in homes around the country RCA, motivated by CBS's work on a color system, bet on their own color system. They soon had a color system that would work on monochrome monitors too. After RCA demonstrated their system, the NTSC adopted it for commercial broadcasting in 1953.

A DIFFERENT ASPECT

The current aspect ratio used for television was originally developed by W.K.L. Dickson in 1889 while he was working at Thomas Edison's laboratories. Dickson was experimenting with a motion motionpicture camera called a Kinescope, and he made his film 1" wide with frames 3/4" high. This film size, and its aspect ratio, became the standard for the film and motion - picture motionindustry In 1941, when the NTSC proposed standards for television broadcasting, they adopted the same ratio as the film industry. It made sense fifty years ago.

This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

in the 1950's Hollywood wanted to give the public a reason to buy a ticket instead of stay home and watch their sets. Wider screens, such as Cinerama, Cinemascope , Cinerama , Cinemascope, and VistaVision, VistaVision , give the theater audience a more visually engulfing experience. Because our two eyes give us a wider view, a wider movie makes more sense.

THE COMING RESOLUTION

PIXEL - Picture El ement, Pic ture Element , and it's the smallest resolvable rectangular area of an image. Actually, each pixel is itself composed of three close dots of color: red, green, and blue. together on the phosphor screen, the three separate colors appear to blend into a single color.

Combined

Each phosphor emits light in proportion to the spectral range of about 16.8 million colors. Ideally, the three phosphors intensity of the electron beam hitting it. On a standard television screen, the electron beam has about 256 levels of intensity for each of the three colored phosphors. Therefore, each pixel has a would be in exactly the same spot, but they're only close enough together to fool your eyes into thinking they are.

HIP TO BE SQUARE
The old NTSC format uses rectangular pixels that are slightly taller than they are wide. The new HDTV format is composed of square pixels, just like most computer monitors The digital pixels are also smaller.

How small is the pixel in HDTV ? 4.5 pixels of standard NTSC TV

The Big Picture

NTSC total lines active lines Sound aspect ratio max resolution 525 486 2 channels (stereo) 4x3 720 x 486 HDTV (ATSC) 1125 1080 5.1 channels (surround) 16 x 9 1920 x 1080

DIGITAL VS ANALOG

BANDWIDTH SQUEEZE

MPEG 2 MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)

coding standard - definition television standardat bit rates from about 3 - 15 Mbit /s 3Mbit/s and high - definition television at 15high15 30 Mbit /s Mbit/s multimulti - channel surround sound coding MPEGMPEG - 1 principally supports video coding up to about 1.5 Mbit/s giving Mbit /s quality similar to VHS and stereo audio at 192 bit/s. It is used in the CDCD - i and Video- CD systems for Video storing video and audio on CD - ROM. CD-

DIGITAL SOUND

GHOSTS IN MACHINE

In the United States, a standard ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) screen can have up to 1080 lines of 1920 pixels each, or 2,073,600 pixels per frame.

DTV TECHNOLOGY

Enhanced TV / ITV Interactive TV sending pictures, sounds, multimedia games, and illustrated articles, all related to the television program you're watching. You can still passively watch TV, but you can also customize the experience and make it your own

MULTICASTING