Modern Facilities of Entertainment – Television/Movies

The Invention of Television

Timeline
Television was not invented by a single inventor, instead many people working together and alone over the years, contributed to the evolution of television.

1831
Joseph Henry’s and Michael Faraday’s work with electromagnetism jumpstarts the era of electronic communication.
1862 First Still Image Transferred
Abbe Giovanna Caselli invents his Pantelegraph and becomes the first person to transmit a still image over wires.
1873
Scientists May and Smith experiment with selenium and light, this reveals the possibilty for inventors to transform images into electronic signals.
1876
Boston civil servant George Carey was thinking about complete television systems and in 1877 he put forward drawings for what he called a selenium camera that would allow people to see by electricity.
Eugen Goldstein coins the term “cathode rays” to describe the light emitted when an electric current was forced through a vacuum tube.
Late 1870s
Scientists and engineers like Paiva, Figuier, and Senlecq were suggesting alternative designs for Telectroscopes.
1880
Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison theorize about telephone devices that transmit image as well as sound.
Bell’s Photophone used light to transmit sound and he wanted to advance his device for image sending..
1881
Sheldon Bidwell experiments with his Telephotography that was similiar to Bell’s Photophone.
1884 18 Lines of Resolution
Paul Nipkow sends images over wires using a rotating metal disk technology calling it the electric telescope with 18 lines of resolution.
German engineering student, Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the world’s first electromechanical television system in 1884. Paul Nipkow devised the notion of dissecting the image and transmitting it sequentially. To do this he designed the first television scanning device. Paul Nipkow was the first person to discover television’s scanning principle, in which the light intensities of small portions of an image are successively analyzed and transmitted. In 1873 the photoconductive properties of the element selenium were discovered, the fact that selenium’s electrical conduction varied with the amount of illumination it received. Paul Nipkow created a rotating scanning disk camera called the Nipkow disk, a device for picture analyzation that consisted of a rapidly rotating disk placed between a scene and a light sensitive selenium element. The image had only 18 lines of resoution.
1900 And We Called It Television
At the World’s Fair in Paris, the first International Congress of Electricity was held. That is where Russian Constantin Perskyi made the first known use of the word “television.”
1906 – First Mechanical Television System
Lee de Forest invents the Audion vacuum tube that proved essential to electronics. The Audion was the first tube with the ability to amplify signals.
Boris Rosing combines Nipkow’s disk and a cathode ray tube and builds the first working mechanical TV system.
1907 Early Electronic Systems
Campbell Swinton and Boris Rosing suggest using cathode ray tubes to transmit images. Independent of each other, they both develop electronic scanning methods of reproducing images.
Electronic television is based on the development of the cathode ray tube – CRT – which is the picture tube found in modern television sets. A cathode ray tube or CRT is a specialized vacuum tube in which images are produced when an electron beam strikes a phosphorescent surface. Television sets, computers, automated teller machines, video game machines, video cameras, monitors, oscilloscopes and radar displays all contain cathode-ray tubes. Phosphor screens using multiple beams of electrons have allowed CRTs to display millions of colors.
1923
Vladimir Zworkin patents his iconscope a TV camera tube based on Campbell Swinton’s ideas. The iconscope, which he called an electric eye becomes the cornerstone for further television development. Zworkin later develops the kinescope for picture display (aka the reciever).
1924/25 First Moving Silhouette Images
American Charles Jenkins and John Baird from Scotland, each demonstrate the mechanical transmissions of images over wire circuits. What John Logie Baird did towards the development and promotion of mechanical television in Britain, Charles Jenkins did for mechanical television in North America.
John Baird becomes the first person to transmit moving silhouette images using a mechanical system based on Nipkow’s disk.
Charles Jenkin built his Radiovisor and 1931 and sold it as a kit for consumers to put together.
Radiovisors were mechanical scanning-drum radiovision devices manufactured by the Jenkins Television Corporation, founded in 1928. The radiovisor was a multitube radio set that had a special attachment for receiving pictures, a cloudy 40 to 48 line image projected onto a six-inch square mirror. Jenkins preferred the names radiovisor and radiovision over television. Charles Jenkins also opened and operated North America’s first television station, W3XK in Wheaton, Maryland. The short-wave radio station began transmitting across the Eastern U.S. in 1928, regularly scheduled telecasts of radiomovies produced by Jenkins Laboratories Incorporated.
Vladimir Zworkin patents a color television system.
1926 30 Lines of Resolution
John Baird operates a television system with 30 lines of resolution system running at 5 frames per second.
John Logie Baird is remembered as being an inventor of a mechanical television system. In the 1920’s, John Logie Baird and American Clarence W. Hansell patented the idea of using arrays of transparent rods to transmit images for television and facsimiles respectively. Baird’s 30 line images were the first demonstrations of television by reflected light rather than back-lit silhouettes. John Logie Baird based his technology on Paul Nipkow’s scanning disc idea and later developments in electronics.
The television pioneer created the first televised pictures of objects in motion (1924), the first televised human face (1925) and a year later he televised the first moving object image at the Royal Institution in London. His 1928 trans-atlantic transmission of the image of a human face was a broadcasting milestone. Color television (1928), stereoscopic television and television by infra-red light were all demonstrated by Baird before 1930
1927
Bell Telephone and the U.S. Department of Commerce conduct the first long distance use of television that took place between Washington D.C. and New York City on April 9th. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover commented, “Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.”
Philo Farnsworth, files for a patent on the first complete electronic television system, which he called the Image Dissector.
Philo Farnsworth was the first inventor to transmit a television image comprised of 60 horizontal lines. The image transmitted was a dollar sign. Farnsworth developed the dissector tube, the basis of all current electronic televisions.
1928
The Federal Radio Commission issues the first television station license (W3XK) to Charles Jenkins in Wheaton Maryland. The short-wave radio station began transmitting across the Eastern U.S. in 1928, regularly scheduled telecasts of radiomovies produced by Jenkins Laboratories Incorporated.
1929
Vladimir Zworkin demonstrates the first practical electronic system for both the transmission and reception of images using his new kinescope tube.
John Baird opens the first TV studio, however, the image quality was poor.
1930
Charles Jenkins broadcasts the first TV commercial.
The BBC begins regular TV transmissions using the Baird 30-line system. It was the first simultaneous sound and vision telecast.
July, 1930 – the first British Television Play was transmitted, “The Man with the Flower in his Mouth.”
1933
Iowa State University (W9XK) starts broadcasting twice weekly television programs in cooperation with radio station WSUI.
1936
About 200 hundred television sets are in use world-wide.
The introduction of coaxial cable, which is a pure copper or copper-coated wire surrounded by insulation and an aluminum covering.
These cables were and are used to transmit television, telephone, and data signals.
The first experimental coaxial cable lines were laid by AT&T between New York and Philadelphia in 1936. The first regular installation connected Minneapolis and Stevens Point, WI in 1941.
The original L1 coaxial-cable system could carry 480 telephone conversations or one television program. By the 1970’s, L5 systems could carry 132,000 calls or more than 200 television programs.
1937
CBS begins its TV development.
The BBC begins high definition broadcasts in London.
1939
Vladimir Zworkin and RCA conduct experimentally broadcasts from the Empire State Building.
Television was demonstrated at the New York World’s Fair and the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition.
RCA’s (Radio Corporation of America) David Sarnoff used his company’s exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair as a showcase for the 1st Presidential speech (Roosevelt) on television and to introduce RCA’s new line of television receivers, some of which had to be coupled with a radio if you wanted to hear sound.
The Dumont company starts making tv sets.
1940
Peter Goldmark invents a 343 lines of resolution color television system.
1941
The FCC releases the NTSC standard for black and white TV.
1943
Vladimir Zworkin developed a better camera tube called the Orthicon. The Orthicon had enough light sensitivity to record outdoor events at night.
1946
Peter Goldmark, working for CBS, demonstrated his color television system to the FCC. His system produced color pictures by having a red-blue-green wheel spin in front of a cathode ray tube.
This mechanical means of producing a color picture was used in 1949 to broadcast medical procedures from Pennsylvania and Atlantic City hospitals. In Atlantic City, viewers could come to the convention center to see broadcasts of operations. Reports from the time noted that the realism of seeing surgery in color caused more than a few viewers to faint.
Although Goldmark’s mechanical system was eventually replaced by an electronic system he is recognized as the first to introduce a broadcasting color television system.
1948
Cable television formerly known as Community Antenna Television or CATV is introduced in Pennsylvania as a means of bringing television to rural areas.
Community antenna television (now called cable television) was started by John Walson and Margaret Walson in the spring of 1948. The Service Electric Company was formed by the Walsons in the mid 1940s to sell, install, and repair General Electric appliances in the Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania area. In 1947, the Walson also began selling television sets. However, Mahanoy City residents had problems receiving the three nearby Philadelphia network stations with local antennas because of the region’s surrounding mountains. John Walson erected an antenna on a utility pole on a local mountain top that enabled him to demonstrate the televisions with good broadcasts coming from the three Philadelphia stations.
Walson connected the mountain antennae to his appliance store via a cable and modified signal boosters. In June of 1948, John Walson connected the mountain antennae to both his store and several of his customers’ homes that were located along the cable path, starting the nation’s first CATV system.
John Walson has been recognized by the U.S. Congress and the National Cable Television Association as the founder of the cable television industry. John Walson was also the first cable operator to use microwave to import distant television stations, the first to use coaxial cable for improved picture quality, and the first to distribute pay television programming (HBO).
One million homes in the United States have television sets.
1950
The FCC approves the first color television standard which is replaced by a second in 1953.
1956
Ampex introduces the first practical videotape system of broadcast quality.
1956
Robert Adler invents the first practical remote control called the Zenith Space Commander. It was preceded by wired remotes and units that failed in sunlight.
1960
The first split screen broadcast occurs on the Kennedy – Nixon debates.
1962
AT&T launches Telstar, the first satellite to carry TV broadcasts – broadcasts are now internationally relayed.
1967
Most TV broadcasts are in color.
1969
July 20, first TV transmission from the moon and 600 million people watch.
1972
Half the TVs in homes are color sets.
1973
Giant screen projection TV is first marketed.
1976
Sony introduces betamax, the first home video cassette recorder.
1978
PBS becomes the first station to switch to all satellite delivery of programs.
1981 1,125 Lines of Resolution
NHK demonstrates HDTV with 1,125 lines of resolution.
1982
Dolby surround sound for home sets is introduced.
1984
Stereo TV broadcasts approved.
1986
Super VHS introduced.
1996
The FCC approves ATSC’s HDTV standard.
A billion TV sets world-wide.

Video Cassette Recorder (VCR)

The videocassette recorder (or VCR, more commonly known in the British Isles as the video recorder), is a type of video tape recorder that uses removable videotape cassettes containing magnetic tape to record audio and video from a television broadcast so it can be played back later. Many VCRs have their own tuner and a programmable timer (for unattended recording of a certain channel at a particular time).

History
Early machines and formats
The history of the videocassette recorder follows the history of videotape recording in general. Ampex introduced the first commercially successful videotape recorder in 1956. It was referred to as the 2″ Quadruplex format, using two-inch (5.1 cm) tape. Due to its US$50,000 price, 2″ Quadruplex could be afforded only by the television networks and the largest individual stations. Sony marketed in 1963 the first reel-to-reel VTR intended for business, medical, airline, and educational use. The Sony model CV-2000 in 1964 was the world’s first VTR intended for home use. Ampex and RCA followed in 1965 with their own reel-to-reel monochrome VTRs priced under US$1,000 for the home consumer market.

The late 1970s: Mass-market success
It was not until the late 1970s, when European and Japanese companies developed more technically advanced machines with more accurate electronic timers and greater tape duration, that the VCR started to become a mass market consumer product. By 1980 there were three competing technical standards, with different, physically incompatible tape cassettes.

VHS vs. Betamax: The format war
The two major standards were Sony’s Betamax (also known as Betacord or just Beta), and JVC’s VHS, which battled for sales in what has become known as the original and definitive format war.
Betamax was first to market in November 1975, and was argued by many to be technically more sophisticated. The first machines required an external timer, and could only record one hour. (A “Betastacker” was later introduced to load up to four more tapes automatically.) The timer was later incorporated within the machine as a standard feature.
However, the rival VHS format (introduced in the United States in September 1976 by RCA) boasted a longer two-hour recording time. Sony halved the tape speed to allow two hours; RCA copied the change to allow four hours. Sony made thinner tape and still slower speed to allow over five hours, while RCA, which now had licensed the VHS format to many other manufacturers, copied the move and enabled six-hour recording time. Ultimately, VHS offered nine-hour recording with T-180 tapes, but never had any kind of automatic tape-changing technology, although some would argue that for VHS this was never truly needed.
Beta was arguably superior in picture quality, but VHS, because of wide licensing, was easier to get hold of, particularly in the rental market. One feature still not seen today on VHS VCRs, or DVD players, was Beta’s “speed play”, which allowed the viewing of programs at twice normal, but with clipped rather than “chipmunk” voices.

Various reasons are given for the failure of the Beta consumer format:
• Some accounts claim that VHS won because it initially allowed for twice the recording time — the original Beta format was limited to one hour, but this was soon replaced by the two-hour Beta II version. Beta I was obsolete by the time Betamax reached Europe, in 1978
• Others attribute the success of VHS to the greater availability of pornography on that medium, reflecting the long standing tradition of pornography being the driving force for the takeup of new media (the Internet being another obvious example).
• JVC and Sony used different marketing models for their technology: JVC licensed their VHS technology to consumer electronics companies like Zenith and RCA, which then produced low-cost VCRs, enriching JVC through royalties paid under its license. Fewer companies were licensed to produce Beta machines.
• The VHS camp had access to high-street TV rental chains (in the UK) like DER and MultiBroadcast. With a VCR costing about a month’s wages, two competing standards, and a reputation for expensive repair bills, rental was considered the more attractive option at the time.

Video CD

Video CD (aka VCD, View CD, Compact Disc digital video) is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc. VCDs are playable in dedicated VCD players, nearly all personal computers, most modern DVD-Video players, and some video game consoles.The VCD standard was created in 1993 by Sony, Philips, Matsushita, and JVC and is referred to as the White Book standard.
Commercial VCDs are very popular throughout Asia (except Japan) because of the low price of the players, their tolerance of high humidity (a notable problem for VCRs), and the lower-cost media. Ease of duplication and the negligible cost of the media gave rise to widespread unauthorized copying in these areas.
Due to relative small storage capacity, feature-length films sold on VCD are usually divided into two or three discs and television series may come in a box set package with multiple discs. In both cases, most films run at roughly 60 minutes per VCD, before viewers are prompted to change discs. In many Asian movies, subtitles are not removable on standard VCDs, unlike DVDs.
VCD is gradually being replaced by DVD, which offers most of the same advantages to Asian buyers as VCD, as well as a much better quality picture (higher resolution with less digital compression artifacts) and sound (often in Dolby Digital and/or DTS), due to its larger storage capacity.

VCD does however have a few points in its favor:
• Like VHS and unlike DVD-Video, the VCD format has no region coding. Many VCD players are capable of compensating for the different frame rate and pixel count between NTSC and PAL TV systems, which means that discs can be played on any compatible machine worldwide.
• Some titles available on VCD may not be available on DVD and/or VHS in the prospective buyer’s region.
• They are much cheaper than DVDs. The DVD of a film may cost anywhere from three to nine times as much as the VCD. On the other hand, VCDs do not come with the bonus features like that of DVDs, such as choice of language, (removable) subtitles, chapters, deleted scenes, theatrical and television previews, interviews, outtakes and production notes.

DVD

DVD (also known as “Digital Versatile Disc” or “Digital Video Disc”) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. DVDs resemble compact discs as their physical dimensions are the same (120 mm (4.72 inches) or occasionally 80 mm (3.15 inches) in diameter) but they are encoded in a different format and at a much higher density. The official DVD specification is maintained by the DVD Forum.

History
In the early 1990s two high density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density disc (SD), supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. IBM’s president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.
Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba’s SD format (not to be confused with secure digital cards) with two modifications that are both related to the servo tracking technology. The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows “push-pull” tracking, a proprietary Philips/Sony technology. The second modification was the adoption of Philips’ EFMPlus (Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation). EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than Toshiba’s SD code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB as opposed to SD’s original 5 GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the DVD specification Version 1.5, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996. In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum , which is open to all companies.
“DVD” was originally an initialism for “Digital Video Disc.” Some members of the DVD Forum believe that it should stand for “Digital Versatile Disc” to reflect its widespread use for non-video applications. Toshiba, which maintains the official DVD Forum site, adheres to the latter interpretation, and indeed this appeared within the copyright warnings on some of the earliest examples. However, the DVD Forum never reached a consensus on the matter, and so today the official name of the format is simply “DVD”; the letters do not officially stand for anything.
The first DVD players and discs were available in November 1996 in Japan, March 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia. The first pressed DVD release was the film Twister in 1996. The film had the first test for 2.1 surround sound. The first titles released in the U.S., on March 19, 1997, by Lumivision, authored by AIX Entertainment, were IMAX adaptations: Africa: The Serengeti, Antarctica: An Adventure of a Different Nature, Tropical Rainforest, and Animation Greats.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Television and Movies

Advantages:
• Television is highly effective no matter what its contents may be because its power springs in large part from the fact that it combines the wonders of sight and sound.
• A source of entertainment and a wide range of information
• Advertising on television can give a product or service instant validity and prominence
• Can easily reach very large audiences

Disadvantages:
• Imaginative element especially among children is largely stripped away, leaving a slack-jawed mind completely immersed in what it is being fed.
• Subjects are often openly discussed on television about which even adults hardly used to know. As a result of this exposure, children can come to accept these things.
• People who spend hours watching television are more likely to have a poor attention span, poor brain development and become desensitized to violence.
• New research out of the archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine shows that watching television really is not relaxing. In fact, excessive television viewing interrupts sleep, causing nightmares, problems falling asleep, and morning irritability.

~ by sixgee on February 2, 2007.