Television

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Template:Redirect See also History of television.

For the punk-rock band, see Television (band).

Image:Braun HF 1.jpg Template:Portal 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 programming and transmission as well. The word is derived from mixed Latin and Greek roots, meaning "far seeing".

1 Origins
2 Geographical usage
3 Content
- 3.1 Advertising
4 Social aspects
5 Further reading
6 References
7 See also
8 External links

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Origins

Template:Main article The origins of what would become today's television system can be traced back at least as far as the scanning disk of Paul Nipkow of 1885. All practical television systems use the fundamental idea of scanning an image to produce a time series signal representation which is then transmitted to a device which reverses the scanning process and which relies on the human eye to integrate the result into a coherent image again. While electromechanical techniques were developed extensively prior to World War II, most notably by John Logie Baird, all-electronic televison 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, starting with experimental broadcasts seen only in a few specially-equipped homes, occurred in both the United States, and the United Kingdom before World War II, but television did not become commonplace in homes until the middle 1950s. While North American over-the-air broadcasting was originally free of direct cost to the consumer and supported primarily by advertising revenue, increasingly television consumers obtain their programming by subscription to cable television systems or direct-to-home satellite transmissions.

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Geographical usage

Summary of first countries that introduce TV

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Content

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Advertising

Since their inception in the USA in 1941, 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.

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Social aspects

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Alleged dangers

Paralleling television's growing primacy in family life and society, an increasingly vocal chorus of legislators, scientists and parents are raising objections to the uncritical acceptance of the medium. For example, the Swedish government imposed a total ban on advertising to children under twelve in 1991 (see advertising). In the U.S., the National Institute on Media and the Family (not a government agency) points out that U.S. children watch an average of 25 hours of television per week and features studies showing it interferes with the educational and maturational process.

A February 23 2002 article in Scientific American suggested that compulsive television watching was no different from any other addiction, a finding backed up by reports of withdrawal symptoms among families forced by circumstance to cease watching.

A longitudinal study in New Zealand involving 1000 people (from childhood to 26 years of age) demonstrated that "television viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with poor educational achievement by 26 years of age". In other words, the more the child watched television, the less likely he or she was to finish school and enroll in a university.

In Iceland, television broadcasting hours were restricted until 1984, with no television programs being broadcast on Thursday, or during the whole of July.

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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, while mobile phone tv is planned to become mainstream, if it can be effectively sold, early in 2006.

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