
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication
medium for
transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a
television set, or the medium of
television transmission. Television is a
mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports.
Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but only after several years of further development was the new technology marketed to consumers. After
World War II, an improved form of black-and-white television broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing
public opinion.
[Diggs-Brown, Barbara (2011]
''Strategic Public Relations: Audience Focused Practice''
p. 48 In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the U.S. and most other developed countries.
The availability of various types of archival storage media such as
Betamax
Betamax (also known as Beta, as in its logo) is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, ...
and
VHS tapes,
LaserDisc
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diam ...
s, high-capacity
hard disk drives
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk platter, platters ...
,
CDs
The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...
,
DVDs,
flash drives, high-definition
HD DVDs and
Blu-ray Disc
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and c ...
s, and cloud
digital video recorders has enabled viewers to watch pre-recorded material—such as movies—at home on their own time schedule. For many reasons, especially the convenience of remote retrieval, the storage of television and video programming now also occurs on
the cloud (such as the video-on-demand service by
Netflix). At the end of the first decade of the 2000s,
digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity. Another development was the move from
standard-definition television
Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...
(SDTV) (
576i
576i is a standard-definition television, standard-definition digital video mode, originally used for digitizing analog television in most countries of the world where the utility frequency for electric power distribution is 50 Hz. Because ...
, with 576
interlaced
Interlaced video (also known as interlaced scan) is a technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video display without consuming extra bandwidth. The interlaced signal contains two fields of a video frame captured consecutively. This ...
lines of resolution and
480i
480i is the video mode used for standard-definition digital television in the Caribbean, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Laos, Western Sahara, and most of the Americas (with the exception of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay). The ''480 ...
) to
high-definition television (HDTV), which provides a
resolution
Resolution(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
* Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate
* Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body
* New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual mak ...
that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in different formats:
1080p
1080p (1920×1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen vert ...
,
1080i
1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the screen. ...
and
720p. Since 2010, with the invention of
smart television,
Internet television has increased the availability of television programs and movies via the Internet through
streaming video
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
services such as Netflix,
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American Video on demand#Subscription models, subscription video on-demand Over-the-top media service, over-the-top Streaming media, streaming and Renting, rental service of Amazon (c ...
,
iPlayer
BBC iPlayer (stylised as iPLAYER or BBC iPLAYER) is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers and smart televisions. iPlayer services del ...
and
Hulu
Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...
.
In 2013, 79% of the world's
households
A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is impo ...
owned a television set. The replacement of earlier
cathode-ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms (oscilloscope), pictur ...
(CRT) screen displays with compact, energy-efficient, flat-panel alternative technologies such as
LCDs (both
fluorescent-backlit and
LED
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...
),
OLED displays, and
plasma displays was a hardware revolution that began with computer monitors in the late 1990s. Most television sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs. Major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT,
Digital Light Processing (DLP), plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s.
In the near future, LEDs are expected to be gradually replaced by OLEDs.
Also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TVs in the mid-2010s.
Smart TVs with integrated Internet and
Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s.
Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered
radio-frequency television transmitters to
broadcast
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...
the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by
coaxial cable or optical fiber,
satellite systems and, since the 2000s via the Internet. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analo ...
signals, but a
transition to digital television was expected to be completed worldwide by the late 2010s. A standard television set consists of multiple internal
electronic circuit
An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electrical ...
s, including a tuner for
receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual
display device
A display device is an output device for presentation of information in visual or tactile form (the latter used for example in tactile electronic displays for blind people). When the input information that is supplied has an electrical signal the ...
which lacks a
tuner is correctly called a
video monitor rather than a television.
Etymology
The word ''television'' comes . The first documented usage of the term dates back to 1900, when the Russian scientist
Constantin Perskyi
Constantin Dmitrievich Perskyi (Константин Дмитриевич Перский) (2 June 18545 April 1906) was a Russian scientist who is credited with coining the word television (''télévision'') in a paper that he presented in French ...
used it in a paper that he presented in French at the first International Congress of Electricity, which ran from 18 to 25 August 1900 during the
International World Fair in Paris.
The
anglicised
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...
version of the term is first attested in 1907, when it was still "...a theoretical system to transmit moving images over
telegraph or
telephone wire
A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or ot ...
s".
It was "...formed in English or borrowed from French ."
In the 19th century and early 20th century, other "...proposals for the name of a then-hypothetical technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote (1880) and televista (1904)."
The abbreviation ''TV'' is from 1948. The use of the term to mean "a
television set" dates from 1941.
The use of the term to mean "television as a medium" dates from 1927.
The slang term ''telly'' is more common in the UK. The slang term "the tube" or the "boob tube" deri