The standard adopted by the US was called NTSC, which stood for National Television Standards Committee. NTSC is the television standard in the US, Canada, and Japan.

Germany developed the television standard called PAL, which stood for Phase Alternating Line, and introduced it in 1967. PAL is the television standard in the United Kingdom, much of Europe, Africa, Australia, and some parts of South America.

The French developed in 1967 the television standard called SECAM, Sequentiel Couleur avec Mémoire, French for “sequential color with memory”. The SECAM standard was used mostly in France and Eastern European “Warsaw Pact” countries.

There are various kinds of television broadcast systems:

Terrestrial television

NTSC, PAL, PAL2 and SECAM analog signaling

Satellite television using standard digital signaling

Cable television

both analog and digital systems are available.

MMDS (Wireless cable)

TV aspect ratio

All of these early TV systems shared the same aspect ratio of 4:3, which was determined by the Cathode Ray Tube manufacturing technology of the time — today’s CRT technology allows the manufacture of wider tubes. However, due to the negative heavy metal health effects associated with disposal of CRTs in landfills and the space-saving attributes of flat screen technologies that lack the aspect ratio limitations of CRTs, CRTs are becoming obsolete.

The switch-over to DTV systems co-incides with a change in picture format from a aspect ratio of 4:3 (1.33:1) to an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.78:1). This enables TV to get closer to the aspect ratio of movies, which range from 1.85:1 to 2.35:1. The 16:9 format was first introduced for “widescreen” video and DVDs. The current technical implementation of 16:9 uses the same pixel raster as 4:3 video, in a full screen anamorphic format.

There is no technical reason for this aspect ratio change to be coupled with the introduction of DTV, but it has been decided to synchronize these changes for marketing reasons.

Aspect ratio incompatibility

A wide image on a conventional screen can be shown:

with “letterbox” black stripes at the top and bottom

with the extreme left and right of the image falling off (or in “pan and scan”, parts selected by an operator)

with the image horizontally compressed

A conventional image on a wide screen can be shown:

with black parts at the left and right

with the top and bottom of the image falling off

with the image horizontally expanded

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 a room where several people watch one TV, horizontal expansion is not so bad, it compensates for watching at an oblique angle.

New developments

Digital television(DTV) — High Definition TV (HDTV) — Pay Per View — Web tv — programming on-demand.

TV sets

The earliest television sets were radios with the addition of a television device consisting of a neon tube with a mechanically spinning disk (the Nipkow disk, invented by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow) that produced a red postage-stamp size image . The first publicly broadcast electronic service was in Germany in March 1935. It had 180 lines of resolution and was only available in 22 public viewing rooms. One of the first major broadcasts involved the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The Germans had a 441 line system in the fall of 1937.

From the earliest days of the medium, television has been used as a vehicle for advertising. Since their inception in the late 1940s, TV commercials have become far and away the most effective, most pervasive, and most popular method of selling products of all sorts. Advertising rates are determined primarily by Nielsen Ratings

Television usage skyrocketed after World War II with war-related technological advances and additional disposable income. (1930s TV receivers cost the equivalent of $7000 today (2001) and had little available programming.)

Television in its original and still most popular form involves sending images and sound over radio waves in the VHF and UHF bands, which are received by a receiver (a television set). In this sense, it is an extension of radio.

Color television became available on December 30, 1953, backed by the CBS network. The government approved the color broadcast system proposed by CBS, but when RCA came up with a system that made it possible to view color broadcasts in black and white on unmodified old black and white TV sets, CBS dropped their own proposal and used the new one.

Starting in the 1990s, modern television sets diverged into three different trends:

standalone TV sets;

integrated systems with DVD players and/or VHS VCR built into the TV set itself (mostly for small size TV with up to 17″ screen, the main idea is to have a complete portable system);

component systems with separate big screen video monitor, tuner, audio system which the owner connects the pieces together as a high-end home theater system. This approach appeals to videophiles who prefer components which can be upgraded separately.

There are many kinds of video monitors used in modern TV sets. The most common are direct view CRTs for up to 40″ (4:3) and 46″ (16:9) diagonally. Most big screen TVs (up to over 100″) use projection technology. Three types of projection systems are used in projection TVs: CRT based, LCD based and reflective imaging chip based. Modern advances have brought flat screens to TV that use active matrix LCD or plasma display technology. Flat panel displays are as little as 4″ thick and can be hung on a wall like a picture. They are extremely attractive and space-saving but they remain expensive.

Nowadays some TVs include a port to connect peripherals to it or to connect the set to an A/V home network, like LG RZ-17LZ10 that includes a USB port, where one can connect a mouse, keyboard and so on ( very interesting for WebTV).

Even for simple video, there are five standard ways to connect a device. These are as follows:

Component Video- three separate connectors, with one brightness channel and two color channels, and is usually referred to as Y, B-Y, R-Y or Y Pr Pb. This provides for high quality pictures and is usually used inside professional studios. However, it is being used more in home theater for DVDs and high end sources. Audio is not carried on this cable.

SCART- A large 21 pin connector that may carry Composite video, S-Video or for better quality, separate red, green and blue (RGB) signals and two-channel sound, along with a number of control signals. This system is standard in Europe but rarely found elsewhere.

S-Video- two separate channels, one carry brightness, the other carrying color. Also referred to as Y/C video. Provides most of the benefit of component video, with slightly less color fidelity. Use started in the 1980s for SVHS, Hi-8 and early DVD players to relay high quality video. Audio is not carried on this cable.

Composite video- The most common form of connecting external devices, putting all the video information into one stream. Most televisions provide this option with a yellow RCA cable. Audio is not carried on this cable.

Coaxial or RF (coaxial cable)- All audio channels and picture components are transmitted through one wire and modulated on a radio frequency. Most TVs manufactured during the past 15-20 years accept coaxial connection, and the video is typically “tuned” on channel 3 or 4.

Satellite TV Service

There are two major companies that provide satellite TV service – DISH Network, DIRECTV. Here’s a breakdown of what each company offers:

DISH Network

DISH Network is the fastest growing satellite TV provider and is currently ranked second in customer satisfaction by J.D. Power & Associates. DISH network service features:

* More than 350 program channels – network channels, movie channels, sports channels, news and weather channels, pay-per-view programs, international programming, game channels, adult programming, and a whole host of special interest programs.

* Sixty Sirius satellite radio channels that broadcast rock and roll, country, soul, easy listening, jazz, classical, heavy metal, hip hop, and new age music.

* Seventy-five pay-per-view movies per month.

* Five program packages with prices starting at $19.99 a month.

Note: When you order DISH Network service you get a complete satellite TV – dish, receivers, and remotes – free of charge. Local channels are $5 extra per month.

DIRECTV

DIRECTV is the largest satellite TV provider and is currently ranked number one in customer satisfaction by J.D. Power & Associates. DIRECTV service features:

* More than 255 program channels including the network channels, movie channels, news and weather channels, sports channels, international programming, pay-per-view programs, adult programming, and lots of special interest programs.

* Sixty-seven XM satellite radio channels that play soft rock, hard rock, country/western, soul, easy listening, jazz, heavy metal, hip hop, classical, and new age music.

* Sixty pay-per-view movies a month.

* Six program packages with prices starting at $29.99 a month.

Note: When you order DIRECTV programming you get a complete satellite TV system – dish, receivers, and remotes – free of charge, plus all your local channels are free.

Bottom Line

Purchasing satellite TV service doesn’t make much sense if you don’t watch much TV or you’re happy with your cable TV. But if you watch a lot of TV, are tired of cable TV rate hikes, and you don’t mind paying $20 to $60 dollars a month to get an unlimited variety of programs, then you should check out what DISH Network and DIRECTV have to offer.

I recommend DIRECTV if you watch a lot of sports, as they have the biggest variety of sports programming, including NFL Sunday Ticket. And if variety is your thing, then I’d go with DISH Network, as they have the biggest variety of programs and the most channels.

Visit http://www.thesatellitetvguide.com or click on the following link for more information on satellite TV service, plus where to get the best deal on DISH Network and DIRECTV. You can also see their latest special offers and order their service online.

Unlike Blu-ray and HD DVD, HD VMD takes advantage of existing red lazer technology to read the data off of the discs. This use of an already established technology makes the HD VMD technology much cheaper than HD DVD or Blu-ray. In fact, while HD DVD players are stuck around three hundred dollars a piece and Blu-ray players have only recently dropped below five hundred dollars, HD VMD players will probably cost about a hundred and fifty dollars when they first hit retail stores like Costco and Radio Shack. In addition to lower cost players, the discs themselves should cost less too. HD VMD discs are expected to cost significantly less than either of the two established formats (if you could call two formats that are in the middle of a bitter and protracted format war established) and slightly more than conventional DVD’s.

Before anyone gets too excited about being able to watch movies in high definition off of a disc, it should be pointed out that there are still very few titles available in the HD VMD format. In fact, there will only be about twenty titles that come from the United States and most of them will come from smaller independent studios- including one owned by Mel Gibson. In addition to those twenty American titles, there will also be a variety of foreign titles including Indian movies from Bollywood.

Of course, there is a considerable amount of skepticism about the possibility of a small start up company coming out of nowhere to take down the best efforts of two massive companies like Toshiba and Sony. This is especially difficult to believe when you consider the fact that Blu-ray and HD DVD are both backed by some pretty major motion picture studios, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. After all, the ability to buy a player for half that of the nearest competitor and less than a third of the price of the other nearest competitor can be pretty attractive to consumers and the big companies ultimately have to give the consumers what they want. There will be a lot of economic pressure to release movie titles on HD VMD.

At this point the technical details of the HD VMD format still aren’t very clear, but there are a number of things that we can guess about this new format. First of all, since we know that HD VMD is based on the same red lazer technology that conventional DVD’s and CD’s are based, we can guess that an HD VMD disc can’t store as much data as Blu-ray or HD DVD discs which are both based on blue violet lazer technology. This is a reasonable guess because of the fact that a blue violet lazer has a shorter wavelength and can therefore encode more information, more finely onto a disc than the longer wavelength of a red lazer can. This might not actually be much of a problem when you look at the fact that a Blu-ray disc can store far more data than an HD DVD can, yet they can still both be used for HDTV movie storage.

Only time will tell how this challenge to the big HDTV DVD formats will play out, but it could be a case where more primitive technology vanquishes more advanced technology because of economics.

Best Deal on Dish Network

Rather than ordering the product from Dish Network, take some time and browse through their dealers. These dealers will offer you much better deals and much more freebies. The reason behind this is pretty simple. They are online, so the investment is much less when compared to a brick and mortar store. They pass on this cost savings to the consumers as discounts and freebies. The other reason is plain old competition. There is cut throat competition nowadays. One wants to beat the other. Hence the consumer benefits again. So, start browsing and looking for the best deal on Dish Network.

What Will You Get?

Dish Network offers up to 3 different packages according to your preferences. The three packages are All American Top 60s, 120s, and 180s. The packages differ in rates and content. DirecTV is another service provider, which offers more of sports channels, while Dish Network offers more of international and movie channels. You may get freebies depending on what the dealer is offering. You may get up to 4 satellite TV receivers, Dish Network access card, DVD players, Home theater systems etc. You may also get free subscriptions to movie channels.

How Can I Get And Install?

You can get dish network special offers online and make secure online payments with your credit cards using Dish network’s secure payment system. Dish network also has an automated phone system at 1-800-333-3474. You can call and follow the IVR. Dish network offers free installation and shipping. The apparatus is also pretty easy to setup and you can also do it on your own.

Beware Of Frauds!

With the good comes the bad as well. There are a million websites out there offering Dish Network satellite TV with freebies that are unbelievable. However, many of these are scams and once you order you will find hidden costs for everything including the freebies and shipping. Make sure that you are ordering from a dealer who is certified by the Dish Network. Check to see if there are any hidden costs involved. Some operators even charge outrageous cancellation fees. So, be careful and choose best deal on dish network!