Developing Technologies

Developing Technologies in Film and TV

When TV and film was first becoming a commonplace thing, the technologies used were very primitive. At the initial rise to power for TV it only had one channel, commonly stated as coming around in 1928, W2XB. It was broadcast from the General Electric facility in New York and was more commonly known as WGY Television. It was a black and white channel, as everything was back then, and is now known as the American Channel 6. Because of the many technical limitations of the time, ranging from the manufacturing size of cathode ray tubes to a lack of materials to be able to make smaller components, people wanted to make things better. After the invention of the black and white television set people were immediately trying to make things play in colour, and experimented using three different monochrome images overlaid onto each other to produce a colour image. American TV powerhouse CBS began to work on making a colour TV set as early as 1940, almost 20 years after black and white was invented. Up until around the 1950’s there was only terrestrial broadcasting systems and this was one of the main factors that limited the creation of many channels. All of the channels that were around back then were what’s called analogue, meaning they used a wide wavelength to transmit a signal, and because of this there wasn’t room for many channels. Because it used what’s called a varying wave, any little interference would disrupt the quality of the audio and video. Things like bad weather or a faulty connection would make your TV set almost useless, and combining this with a lack of channels at the time, the only thing keeping people buying TV’s was the fact it was the hip new household appliance. At this point there was also the added limitation of having to use the cable system of broadcasting channels. This was done by passing the signal through coaxial cables, or more recently, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. To be able to watch a cable channel you must first be subscribed to the publisher, and then you would receive the ability to view their content, only after having a set-top box installed, and each separate TV set in each household will need their own individual set-top box installed if they all want to watch the same channel. Cable broadcasting would also need to be scrambled to reduce cable service theft. This is where digital, or satellite, television comes in, and is what almost everyone uses these days, simply because of how versatile it is. A viewer has no worries of a bad connection because it uses binary, a 1 and 0 system, in which a connection can only be on or off, not in between like analogue. This cancels the worry of a bad signal because binary is a non-variable system, meaning it can’t just change because of bad weather. On top of this it uses a much smaller wavelength, meaning you can create many more channels for it, allowing producers to go crazy with what they were creating, and giving the audience a much greater pool of things to watch, in turn leading to more people wanting to buy a TV set. The only real downside to using satellite TV is sun outage, where the sun lines up directly

behind the satellite broadcasting the signal, and the microwave radiation will drown out the satellites ability to transmit a signal. Since this is the only real danger satellite has of being interfered with, it is a much more popular form of broadcasting, however in America, cable is still much more popular than satellite because of the large land masses. It is also the only form of broadcasting available in remote areas of the world that do not have terrestrial broadcasting. The first satellite TV systems were a now obsolete form known as television receive-only. These systems would receive a weaker signal meaning you needed a much bigger satellite dish to use it, making them more expensive. In 2007 – 2012, the UK began the Big Switch, in which, by region, everyone changed from analogue to digital. All of this goes to show that the way we get our TV is always changing and evolving, but so is our way of watching TV, as is the case with things like pay-per-view and on demand and streaming services. Pay-per-view is a service that requires the viewer to pay an individual charge per programme they watch, usually in the range of around 5 dollars, but can go up to insane prices like 50 dollars for big events such as boxing championships or American football and baseball matches. Pay-per-view services work by telling everyone when the event will be broadcast and then taking everyone’s payment for the programme, and afterwards showing it to everyone at the same time. This can cause some annoyance with customers if the event is being broadcast in one time zone at midday but is on at 3 in the morning somewhere else. While certain companies don’t release specific numbers on how many people actually buy into a programme, industry insiders have stated that they can rise into the millions of people watching, as in the case of the MMA fight between Connor McGregor and Nate Diaz, where the buy rate (how many people bought into the service) was around 1.65 million, making the company an astounding 82.5 million dollars. This shows that pay-per-view events are a great way for producers to make money and to give the general audience a good time watching something. The antithesis to this would be something along the lines of Netflix or Amazon Prime, which are both on demand streaming services. On demand works by having a customer pay a fee, usually monthly but in some cases can be more or less frequent, and then the consumer will get a specific service each month until they change or cancel the service. When the streaming service was first created, it was used for something called Muzak and was used in stores to play music in the background. The most commonly known form of streaming would be live streaming online, in which a creator will announce a service and, sometimes, a time to watch it, and at that time will ‘come online’ and show in real time the service they advertised. Many actors and directors use these services such as Facebook's new Live feature to talk with a live public about an upcoming film or event, strengthening the bond between creator and audience. Producers caught onto the popularity of streaming pretty quick and decided they could monetize it and become quite successful, and so Netflix was created to capitalize on this.

Netflix charges around 7 dollars a month for unlimited streaming of available films and shows, and charges more for use on more TV sets and accounts. Netflix currently has around 98 million active users, and if they all pay for one month, it will result in Netflix as a company making around 686 million dollars, in one month, proving that this is a highly lucrative form of watching TV and films. Amazon leapt at the opportunity to rival Netflix and created Amazon Prime, a similar service that does basically the same thing as Netflix but also shows subscribers Amazon Prime original shows and films, similar to Netflix Originals. This all goes to show that the way we acquire our TV and film is constantly changing, but it is still advancing at an incredible rate, with this like Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) screens that allow users to bend and fold their TV screens like paper, or 3D TV’s, which allow the viewer to experience similar things to what they would need to pay extra for in cinemas. Things like DVD’s and HD DVD’s are also evolving to be sold with more features and more reasons to buy them. Certain TV channels also now have the ability to pause live programmes so that you can go away and come back later to watch it, and you can even record a programme to watch it at a later date. Panasonic have also revealed a new ‘see-through TV’ using OLED technology that allows a screen to turn into transparent glass when not in use, as well as some TV screens that can now turn into mirrors. This kind of advancement in technology is proof that the world of television and film is advancing at an incredible rate. The future is now.