TELEVISION TESTS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 80, 16 March 1934, Page 4

TELEVISION TESTS

PROGRESS IN BRITAIN Entertainment of the Futur< WAITING FOR A LEAD The’re are in Britain about ten thousand television receivers in the hands of enthusiastic amateurs, whose work is bringing nearer the day when this fascinating art will be just as available to the general public at is the present highly successful sound broad casting, says Captain Ernest H. Robinson, writing in the London "Ob server.” The British Broadcasting Company took television under its wing in 1032, and at first proved a very real help, particularly during the period when there were daily morning transmissions of both sound aud vision. These transmissions have been re duced to four a week, between 11 end 11.30 at night, but now there is a prob ability that from March 31 they will cither bo discontinued entirely in their present form or reduced to two halfhour transmissions a week. It is act possible to get from the Corporation any definite statement of future policy, but in the meantime the whole comtner cial development of receiving apparatus is at a standstill. PLEASING RESULTS The 8.8. C. says that the televiaion transmissions are costing them £5OOO a year. This is about a third of one per cent, of their share of licence fees. It would not hurt the 8.8. C., ami would give an enormous fillip to television, if it would make a definite statement that the present thirty-line transmissions would be continued for at least another two years, and that a sum of £20,000 for these two years would be allocated to transmissions and experimental work. Even so, the 8.8. C. would be far behind efforts ma<l< on behalf of television, say, by the Germa: Post Office authorities, during the last few years. Mr S. Sagall, the managing director of Scophony, Ltd., and a pioneer oi television in this country, recently put to me an aspect of television which i. entirely new to me. ' Television, in Mr Sagall ’b opinion, should not be treated as talking films. In talkies emphasis is laid on the picture, i.e., on the visual entertainment, which has undoubtedly reached a high degree of perfection. Sound is us< comparatively sparsely, and the great masters of the art of film direction ue<. sound merely as an illustration, i.e.. something supplementary to the pictor ial side, never allowing it to gain a pre dominating influence. DIFFERENT TECHNIQUE. In wireless the nature of both the technique and the entertainment pro vided is entirely different. The sound reproduction on a good home receiver is every excellent indeed; on the other hand, for many years to eome a television picture would for several bash reasons Jag in quality behind that of a cinema picture. It follows that a process reversed to that used in talkie production must he used in television technique. Television must be looked on and used as an adjunct to ordinary "sound” entertainment. Used judiciously in such a way, television would receive an enormous stimulus and public appreciation would rise steadily. It is very likely, according to Mr Sagall, that in a few years’ time we shall have separate television broadcasting stations (on ultra short waves, for instance), from where specially arranged programmes based on a new technique of a careful blending of sound and vision effects will be radiated. A new entertainment, different from that if the present wireless "sound” entertainment, as provided by the 8.8. C., and also different from the present cinema entertainment would then emerge.