Television is the widely known telecommunication method for the sending and receiving of moving pictures, with sound, over distances.
The first generation of television sets, seen in the late 20s and early 30s, were not entirely electronic. The screen had quite a small motor with a neon lamp and spinning disc, which worked together to give a blurry orange-reddish picture, around half the size of a regular business card! Not too impressive by today’s standards but revolutionary at the time. These early TV sets are also known as Mechanical TVs. These sets are not compatible with today’s fully electronic TV systems.
Today's television sets operate on a number of display technologies. The most common up until a few years ago was the CRT display. The CRT display was the cheapest to produce from a manufacturing perspective. Many manufacturers are now phasing out CRT displays, as there is a growing demand for larger, flat screen displays. Flat screen technology is used in LCD TVs and also PLASMA TVs. Flat screens, whilst more expensive, offer a far superior viewing experience.
Conventional
television used analog signals.
Digital television, a fairly recent invention, allows for high
definition TV (HDTV) programming that has up to 10 times the definition of a
regular TV picture. With digital
TV the broadcaster encodes the television signal in to a digital format of
zeros and ones. The TV then has to
decode those zeros and ones in order to convert them back in to picture and
sound. Most digital TVs have
built-in decoders. In addition to
better picture quality, digital TV also brings about the possibility of
additional services, such as subtitling for the hearing impaired and audio
description for the visually impaired.