How Does a Television Work ?

Television is a ubiquitous household item today – a must in every drawing rooms across the world. This piece of wonder brings entertainment and news to our homes without which life would have been completely boring and tiresome. Studies show that in an average, a person spends anywhere between 2-5 hours per day on television. For the last 60 years the household TV, as it is normally called, has been a part and parcel of the lives of millions of people around the world.

Much has happened since John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of a working television from his laboratory in London in 1926. Baird went on to develop the first color television in 1928. It is interesting to note that color television systems were invented and patented much before black-and-white television sets came in vogue.

The modern day television can be broadly classified into a set of 6 important modules or components
• An image source which typically is a camera picking up live feed or data
• A sound source which is coupled with the image
• A transmitter which can transmit both the image and the sound accompanying it
• A receiver which captures the image and sound signal from the broadcast
• A display device which basically converts the electrical signals into light that is visible
• A sound devise which converts electrical signal into sound waves to match the picture

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Modern TV systems boast of various display technologies right from the old cathode ray tube (CRT) to flat panel – LCD or Plasma screens. The CRT system still remains as one of the best economical display system with good picture quality. Flat panel TV does surely look extremely fanciful and sleek – they can be hung on a wall or fixed on a pedestal. However their low viewing angle makes them less suitable for home usage. Various countries use various transmission bands for TV signal transmission. The picture is generally transmitted through Amplitude Modulation (AM) whereas the sound is transmitted through Frequency Modulation (FM). Lower frequencies are generally not used as they do not have the bandwidth available to transmit TV signal whereas higher frequencies act like light and hence can not be used in conventional broadcast system.
The science of converting pictures to video signal forms the very first part of television systems. Olden day’s cameras had various forms of special tubes which had a special layer that was sensitive to light. An electron beam scanned this layer forming an image that was focused on the tube corresponding to the brightness of the image. With the advancement of science, modern cameras nowadays use solid state devices that pretty much do the same thing. Television screens rely on fusion-of-small-colored-dots capability in the human brain to chop pictures up into thousands of individual elements. On a TV the dots are called pixels. The effectiveness of a screen is measured by pixel - TV screen are available in 800x600 pixels, or 1024x768 pixels across the world. Satellite Television is now common across the world – the traditional satellite system uses microwaves with low frequencies and hence need large dish antennas for receiving the signal. Direct to home satellite systems (DSS) use higher frequencies and hence use small dishes to capture these signals. DSS signals are generally of a far better quality than traditional satellite systems. Modern day Television is one of the most important essentials in every home – from news to entertainment, from movies to sports – TV is the one-stop-shop for everything. With the advancement of science, TV systems have also improved over the years and today the ones that are available are very sophisticated meeting most luxury desires of individuals. One of the most important items towards luxury is the invention of remote control to operate a TV system.
Infra-red remote control works by the use of light to carry signals between a remote control and the device it's directing. Infrared light is in the invisible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Pushing a button on a remote control sets in motion a series of events that causes the controlled device to carry out a command. The process works similar to this: 1. When you push the "channel up" button on your remote control, it touches the contact beneath it and completes the "channel up" circuit on the circuit board. The integrated circuit detects this. 2. The integrated circuit therefore sends the binary "channel up" command to the LED at the front of the remote. 3. The LED sends out a series of light pulses that corresponds to the binary "channel up" command. 4. The command is then executed.

Infrared (IR) remotes have a range of only about 10 meters and they also require line-of-sight. This basically means the infrared signal won't transmit through walls or around corners – the remote needs to be in a straight line to the device you're trying to control. Interference can be a problem with IR remotes; to avoid interferences caused by other sources of infrared light, the infrared receiver on a TV only responds to a specified wavelength of infrared light. Filters are normally used on the receiver to block out light at other wavelengths.

The latest buzz is digital TV, also known as DTV or HDTV (high-definition TV). DTV uses MPEG-2 encoding; it decodes the MPEG-2 signal and displays it just like a computer monitor does, giving it incredible resolution and stability. There is also a wide range of set-top boxes that can decode the digital signal and convert it to analog to display it on a normal TV. The basic difference between DTV and analog TV is in the resolution available. The drive toward digital TV is fueled by the desire to give TV the same crispness and detail as a computer screen. If you have ever looked at a true digital TV signal displayed on a good digital TV set, you can certainly see the difference - the digital version of TV looks fantastic! With 10 times more pixels on the screen, all displayed with digital precision, the picture is incredibly detailed and stable.

This advancement has made watching TV far more realistic which reiterates the reason why homes across the world and hooked on to this medium. The medium is so strong and ever increasing that by far this medium happens to be the most exhaustive backbone of the advertising fraternity.

Article Contributed By: Sukanaya Banerjee


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