Developing Technologies in the Television & Film Industries

Consumer Products:
Theses days, it has become a lot easier for anyone to create their own amateur to professional quality media products in the comfort of their own home, due to the increase in technology and the ease of getting it. Equipment like cameras, editing software and microphones for example, all which used to be very pricey if somebody wanted them to be good quality, can now easily be bought for affordable prices off of sites like Amazon, or in some cases, even from stores. This increase in what can now be described as "prosumers" (people who buy electronic goods of a standard between those aimed at consumers and professionals) is partly what has led to the successes of many creators on websites like YouTube, as well as an increase in high quality independent short or feature films, as it is now easier than it ever has been to create these forms of media on your own without the funding or support from any large production company for example.


















Satellite:
Television that fits under the term of 'satellite TV' is delivered to viewers by the use of a satellite dish being attached to their homes. The programming found on this type of television is relayed from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth, directly to them using their dish. This type of TV is usually cheaper for the consumer, but it can be disrupted easily by bad weather. Examples of companies that provide satellite TV include Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Sky.

Cable:
'Cable television' is delivered to consumers by the use of cables located below the ground, either using radio frequency transmitted through coaxial cables, or light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This type of television is very stable, but is also typically more expensive that satellite as a result. Some examples of providers that are cable TV services are Virgin Media and BT.


Analogue:
The original television technology was known as 'analogue television', which worked by using analogue signals in order to be able to transmit audio and video. The colours, brightness and sound were represented by rapid variations of either the frequency, amplitude or phase of the signal the TV set was receiving.  At midnight on the second of January, 2019, the 'digital transition' of TV was fully complete, leading to all normal programming on analogue televisions to be replaced by an information screen, until the analogue signals stopped transmitting all together four days later on the sixth.

Digital:
Modern television is transmitted by the use of DTV (or simply digital television). This involves audiovisual signals being transmitted using digital encoding (converting the picture into a stream of one and zeros) instead of analogue signals. This type of transmission allows 'high definition' programming, since modern digital television transmits with greater resolution than analogue TV did. Although digital offers a lot more channels compared to what analogue used to be able to, a common complaint by people is that with so many channels to fill, the quality of a lot of programming has decreased.

Internet:
Since the introduction of the internet, people's consumption of television and film content has changed a lot - in some ways positively, but in others not so much. For example, the existence of the internet and high download speeds has allowed for services such as Netflix or Hulu to exist,where a consumer can pay a certain fee monthly or yearly in order to have the chance to legally watch movies and shows from home for one price instead of buying each separately and spending more money in the process. However, it can also be used for many illegal ways of media consumption, such as people logging on to a website like 123movies in order to watch a film without paying, since people now have the option of streaming it onto their computers for free instead of paying for a ticket or a copy of it for themselves due to people illegally uploading the content onto these sites so anyone can access them easily.

Interactive:
The existence of social media has allowed creators of media like movies and TV shows to now have a better connection and understanding of what exactly it is that their audience like or want from their media, allowing anyone with internet to sign up and interact with these people like they never could before. For example, if a particular episode of a show was received badly by viewers, Twitter is often used by many to express their opinions (either respectively or not so much), which can be seen by the creators of the show, sometimes potentially leading to changes in the media product in the future due to their now better understanding of what they do right or wrong in the eyes of their viewers. The option to manipulate content from media, either on television or online, is now easily available to the viewers, due to as mentioned before, the much easier access to equipment like editing software. This access allows things like fan-edits of the content to be uploaded online, reviews using footage from the media, and other content that uses the shows ease of access nowadays to its advantage.Viewers can also interact easier with shows like Britain's Got Talent or X Factor, where they can use the shows apps or phone lines to decide who they want in or out of the competition in the next episode.


High Definition:
'High definition video' is the term used usually for pieces of media that play at a resolution of typically at least 720p (1280 pixels wide, 720 pixels high) or higher nowadays. Although this is now seen by many as the average way to watch content, especially film in the cinema, it was not always as common as it is now. These days though, countless amounts of channels (including BBCs, ITVs, Channel 4, and many more) have HD versions of their channels to watch, even though a more expensive subscription to whatever television provider the consumer has is often needed to watch it, with cinema IMAX screenings showing their films in the improved quality of 2K (2048 pixels wide, 720 pixels 1080), websites like YouTube able to upload and watch video at 4K (3840 by 2160 or 4096 by 2160 pixels ), and existing pieces of technology that allow footage to be filmed at 8K (7680 by 4320)! In terms of television, HD programming became hugely common when Digital TV was introduced, and has been improving in quality since,with the existence of some UHD (Ultra High-Definition) channels nowadays as well, due to higher resolution TVs being out on the market now.

3D:
The first 3D feature to be released was 'It Came from Outer Space' in 1953. The idea of watching stuff in 3D was originally only a concept used in cinema, but has since been used in many other media forms, like in television and even in video games, to varying levels of success. 3D entertainment works by capturing the footage, whether the film or TV show, using two lenses placed side by side, like eyes (or sometimes nowadays, just producing computer generated images to replicate the same effect). The human brain when watching these two images fuses them together, allowing us to seemingly see them in three dimensions. Often, special glasses are provided at 3D screenings of movies due to them being needed for the effect to work (originally being ones with a single blue and a red lens for each eye but in more modern times simply being black, tinted ones), but there are examples of technology using 3D successfully without needing them, like the 3DS in 2011. The popularity of 3D movie watching constantly increases and decreases, with there being a few points in time where it was the big thing for all films to do, the slowly fading out again a few years later.













Pay Per View:
The model of 'Pay-per-view' watching is often used for large sporting events, such as wrestling or boxing events being aired. The first major pay-per-view event was in 1981, with the basic idea of them being that the consumer must pay a one-off price the broadcaster puts in place so they're able to watch when it happens, with the event being shown to each person who ordered it at the exact same time (since they are almost always live events). Companies like Sky use this model to lock events they air on their Sky Sports channels, but other companies take advantage of using pay-per-view as well, such as HBO and even online places like YouTube now.

On-Demand Viewing:
Viewing television 'on-demand' is the act of watching a piece of TV whenever you want, as opposed to when it is airing on the channel. This can be done using, more often than not, free on-demand services and apps (excluding BBC's due to the technical requirement of possessing a TV license in order to be legally allowed to use the service) that many of the big channels on modern television provide for their own content, including BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub (previously known as ITV Player), UKTV Play, and so on. Often, these services also allow the viewer to watch them in ways other than just on their TV, like on their phones, tablets or video-game consoles. Usually, stuff that has aired on a channel, for example ITV 2, will be placed on their on-demand service quickly after airing for a limited amount of time, letting people watch them whenever they want until they are taken off again.

Streaming Content:
The ability to stream content has become an extremely common business model these days. Somewhat similarly to on-demand viewing, streaming services are paid subscription based services which allow the consumer to watch a wide variety of mainstream television shows and movies from a wide variety of creators (in some cases even including original exclusives to that service) that the service provides whenever they want, even being able to download them to their devices app in some cases as well. This idea hit big when Netflix switched over to it from DVD rentals in 2007, but since then a huge amount of other companies have tried making their won streaming service due to the huge success of them, like Hulu, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+. Since then, even video game companies have tried out the streaming service format too, like PS Now, Xbox Game Pass and UPlay+. What all these companies fail to notice though is that the original massive of success of Netflix was due to it being one place to easily find everything to watch, but with all the newer services coming out and splitting up the content behind their own pay walls, the original purpose of it all in the eyes of the consumer has almost been lost completely.

Digital Recorders:
Something that can be seen as similar to both streaming content or watching on-demand is the idea of recording television. Companies like Sky for example sell what they call 'boxes', which combine a satellite TV receiver and a 'Personal Video Recorder' (also known as a PVR). These boxes, beginning with Sky+ and now with them selling the modern version called Sky Q, come with loads of hours of built in hard-disk storage, used specifically to allow the consumer to choose programmes that airing on television and select the option to 'record' them for later viewing whenever they want on their Sky box, whether their reasoning being because they cannot watch the original airing because they are busy or just so they can simply watch them again whenever. Many other companies now have this option built in with their TV boxes too, such as Freesat Smart TV Recorders, Virgin TV Boxes and Tivo.