Broadcast Systems

NTSC (National Television System Committee) is the analogue television system that is used in most of North and South America (excluding Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina and French Guiana), as well as South Korea, Japan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Taiwan and some Pacific Island nations.

In NTSC, 30 frames are transmitted each second and each frame consists of 525 individual scan lines.

            NTSC was developed in 1941 and it wasn’t compatible with colour television. However, a second version of NTSC was adopted in 1953, which allowed for colour television broadcasting. It remained the dominant form of broadcasting until the 21^st century when it was replaced with digital ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). This was due to the fact that digital broadcasting allowed for HDTV.

            PAL (Phase Alternating Line) is a colour encoding system for analogue television broadcasts, which is widely used within Europe and Asia, as well as parts of South America.

            PAL is one of the predominant video systems, (next to NTSC), which consists of 625 individual scan lines (making the resolution larger than NTSC). It transmits 25 frames per second, making NTSC’s frame rate larger.

            PAL originally came about due to the fact that NTSC standard demonstrated multiple weaknesses, including colour tone shifting under poor transmission conditions. In the 1950s, the Western European countries wanted to introduce colour television, which lead to the development of PAL and SECAM. The aim was to provide colour television for the European picture frequency of 50 hertz (bigger bandwidth and better picture quality) and to eliminate the problems of NTSC.

            SECAM (Sequential Colour with Memory) is a colour TV standard that was introduced in the early 1960s. It’s used sparingly around the world in places such as: France, parts of Greece, Eastern Europe, Russia and Africa.

SECAM uses the same resolution/ bandwidth as PAL (625 lines), but transmits the colour information sequentially. SECAM splits the colour information into several different signals to provide a higher quality image. However, if one of these signals were to get blocked, the colour of the image would appear (for example) bluer.

Sky is a British satellite broadcasting, broadband and telephone company that was formed in 1990. It’s the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK and Ireland with over 10 million subscribers.

The benefit of a satellite-based broadcast is that it provides the user with the ability to watch TV on their phones and other wireless devices. However, it might not be as reliable or fast as a cable-based broadcast, such as Virgin Media.

Virgin Media was formed in 2006 in an attempt to predominantly rival Sky in the pay-TV market. Virgin was created by the merge of two cable companies: Telewest and NTL Both companies were too small to compete with popular broadcasting services like Sky, hence the merge.

Despite the fact that Virgin might be a more reliable and perhaps cheaper alternative to Sky, it doesn’t offer as many channels, including the High Definition movies and sports channels. Also, what with Virgin being cable-based, there isn’t much choice in where to watch the broadcasts (e.g. you can’t watch it wirelessly; it requires a connection).

Freeview is a free to air digital and terrestrial television service for the UK. It’s delivered by the company DTV services, which is collaboration between BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and transmitter operator Arqiva, which was launched in 2002. It works by providing consumer access via an aerial to the six DDT multiplexes covering the UK.

The benefits of Freeview are that it’s free and contains plenty of the most viewed channels (specifically ITV and BBC).  It’s also available in HD, however, it requires special tuner, capable of handling HDTV signals.

The disadvantages are that Freeview still doesn’t offer as many channels as the big broadcasters (e.g. Sky) and it’s only available in the UK.

            LoveFilm is a provider of streaming video on demand and DVD/ video game rentals that’s based in the UK. It was founded in 2002 and over time has grown due to 10 mergers and the acquisition of several other online DVD rental companies (e.g. Online Rentals Limited, ScreenSelect and Video Island). By January 2012, LoveFilm announced that it had reached 2 million subscribers, as well as over 70,000 titles and over 4 million DVD, Blu-ray or Games rentals per month across 5 countries.

            On demand TV has become increasingly popular, as it means that you can watch what you want when you want. The Internet itself has almost completely abolished the need for things like music channels, as everyone watches music videos on YouTube. LoveFilm allows people to watch whatever they want (provided it’s available in their library). Compared to another on demand service, such as Netflix, LoveFilm would be considered the better service, as Netflix doesn’t allow you to rent DVDs and video games.

            However, on demand TV costs extra per month. For example, if I was a Sky TV customer and I wanted to watch movies on demand I could get Sky Anytime, but I’d have to pay for that additional service.