The television industry's changing of aspect ratios is not without difficulties, and can present a considerable problem.
Regular network broadcasting began in the United States in 1946, and television became common in American homes by the middle 1950s.
Television (or TV) (from the Greek tele, meaning "far," and the Latin visio, meaning "sight") is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over long distances.
The television was not invented by a single person, but by a number of scientists' advancements contributing to the ultimate all-electronic version of the invention.
Other commentators, such as Sut Jhally, make the case that television advertising in the U.S. has been so effective that happiness has increasingly come to be equated with the purchase of products.
Many televisions today have stereo jacks so people can attach amplifiers to the television for better sound.
Paralleling television's growing primacy in family life and society, an increasingly vocal chorus of legislators, scientists, and parents is raising objections to the uncritical acceptance of the medium.
Fifty years of research on the impact of television on children's emotional and social development demonstrated that there are clear and lasting effects of viewing violence.
The term “appointment television” was coined by marketers to describe this kind of attachment.
Critics such as Jean Kilborne have claimed that television, as well as other mass media images, harm the self image of young girls.
A typical resolution of 720 by 480 means that the television display has 720 pixels across and 480 pixels on the vertical axis.
One technique for sound is called a simulcast (simultaneous broadcast) where the sound is broadcast on radio while the video is broadcast on television.
Original televisions that were sold to the public were a small box that showed the image and was attached to a radio.
Color television systems were invented and patented even before black-and-white television was working.
Today there are many television add-ons including video game consoles, VCRs, set-top boxes for cable television, satellite and DVB-T compliant digital television reception, DVD players, or digital video recorders (including personal video recorders, PVRs).
Television service providers also offer video on demand, a set of programs which could be watched at any time.
The first regular television broadcasts with a modern level of definition (240 or more lines) were made in England in 1936, soon upgraded to the so-called "System A" with 405 lines.
The sound provided by television was originally was similar to monophonic radio.
Aspect ratio refers to the ratio of the horizontal to vertical measurements of a television's picture.
The switch to digital television systems has been used as an opportunity to change the standard television picture format from the old ratio of 4:3 (1.33:1) to an aspect ratio of 16:9 (approximately 1.78:1).
Mechanically scanned television as first demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1926 used a 7:3 vertical aspect ratio, oriented for the head and shoulders of a single person in close-up.
Lower frequencies do not have enough bandwidth available for television.
Widescreen spread from television to computing where both desktop and laptop computers are commonly equipped with widescreen displays.
Completely electronic television systems relied on the inventions of Philo Taylor Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworykin and others to produce a system suitable for mass distribution of television programming.
Farnsworth gave the world's first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on August 25, 1934.
The BBC's television service used a more squarish 5:4 ratio from 1936 to April 3, 1950, when it too switched to a 4:3 ratio.
All practical television systems use the fundamental idea of scanning an image to produce a time series signal representation.
The switch to digital television systems has been used as an opportunity to change the standard television picture format from the old ratio of 4:3 (1.33:1) to an aspect ratio of 16:9 (approximately 1.78:1).
Baird further demonstrated the world's first color television transmission on July 3, 1928.
The anamorphic widescreen 16:9 format was first introduced via European PALPlus television broadcasts and then later on "widescreen" DVDs; the ATSC HDTV system uses straight widescreen format, no horizontal compression or expansion is used.
Almost every household in the United States has at least one television set.