TELEVISION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3830, 6 November 1936, Page 5

TELEVISION

PROGRESS IN MANY COUNTRIES. ENGLAND’S LEAD. Regular daily programmes from the 8.8. C. high-defintion station at the Alexandra Palace will start sometime this month. This country will have the first public high-definition television service in the world, writes the television correspondent of the London Observer. Rather more than ten years ago—on January 27th, 1926 Mr J. L. Baird gave in London the first public demonstration of real television. Thtf original apparatus with the head of “Joey,” the ventriloquial doll, whose face was the first subject for true television, is now housed in the Science Museum, South Kensington. In the United States, Getrmany, and France a great deal of experimental work is being done. In the United States the work is wholly in thd hands of commercial concerns, and transmissions are spasmodic. In Germany transmission is in the hands of the Post Office, and programmes are sent out for one and ahalf hours three times a week. The Government will not allow receivers to be sold to the public as no decision has yet been reached as to the amount of detail to be transmitted. FRANCE AND RUSSIA. In France the. State broadcasting service uses the Eiffel Tower, and programmes are sent out regularly on Sunday when public viewing rooms are open. The sale of receiving apparatus is not encouraged. In Russia a low-definition system somewhat similar to the original Baird transmissions in this country has bean in operation for some time, two of the ordinary long-wave broadcasting channels being used. The pictures, which are very crude, are received in public viewing rooms. There does not see mto be any likelihood that television will become popular as rapidly as did broadcasting. When broadcasting first started in this country in 1922 it was possible for anybody to construct a simple receiver for £1 or so. By the aid of instruction anybody with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers could construct the necessary apparatus. Thd building of a television receiver

requires a high degree of technical skill, and even those who have the skill must be prepared to spend at least £3O on component parts. THE FUTURE. There is little doubt that if tha programmes sent out from Alexandra Palace are attractive, and there seems every possibility that they will be, there will be a slowly increasing sale of home receivers which will enable the present high price to be reduced. The best hope, for television, however, seems to lie in thei provision of special theatres akin to cinema theatres. The 8.8. C., through the Post Office, will, of course, have to make special arrangements for the licensing of such theatres. It is probable that television theatre licenses would be based on the seating capacity of the theatre. The fairly high cost of television experiments is now being borne from the ordinary broadcast license. The proportion of the license fee paid over to the 8.8. C. by the Post Office is to bd increased for this purpose, but it can be argued that television should not continue for long to be subsidised by ordinary broadcasting. The Alexandra Palace service will be available only to those living in London and some parts of the home countries. The statement has frequently bean made that within a comparatively short time a second station is to be erected near Birmingham. This statement is based on the fact that the Post Office will shortly have a very high efficiency telephone cable working between London and Birmingham and this cable will probably be capbale of carrying television signals. It is doubtful, however, that this cable would be available for television use. The Post Office has put it in to carry the very heavy telephone service! between London and Birmingham and it is hardly likely that it could be reserved wholly for television purposes for three, hours a day. When new television stations are budgeted for the 8.8. C. will have to weigh vtery carefully the alternative cost, of putting down a special “coaxial” cable of its own or making each station complete in itself with its own studios and programme staff.