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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram , March 29

INTERNET Protocol Television (IPTV) represents the latest in the series of revolutionary TV delivery solutions and India figures prominently in the rollout of the next-generation TV services being offered over existing broadband networks.

Reliance Infocomm will become the first in the region to prototype and trial the IPTV solution from Microsoft TV. It will bring together latest technologies from Microsoft and other industry leaders into an integrated, end-to-end solution that supports the full range of pay TV services while scaling to millions of subscribers.

The main features include instant channel changing, multimedia programming guides with integrated video, digital video recording and video-on-demand.

Groundbreaking technologies in television have been so fast in their unravelling and subsequent validation that Friday, August 25, 1900, when Constantin Perskyi introduced a "device called television" to the International Electricity Congress in Paris, would seem light years behind.

Giving an overview of television's evolution into the technological wonder of today, Mr N.T. Nair, Vice-President, CMS Computers, Thiruvananthapuram, said constant improvements in picture quality and sound, interactivity, varied choices and flexibility have provided viewers with exciting options at an increasingly affordable price.

He made these observations during a presentation on `The Emerging TV Delivery Technologies' to an invited audience hosted here by the Kerala State Centre of the Institution of Engineers-India.

The first-generation of television sets were not entirely electronic. The display (TV screen) had a small motor with a spinning disc and a neon lamp, which worked together to give a blurry reddish-orange picture about half the size of a business card. The period before 1935 is variously referred to as the mechanical television era.

On January 23, 1926, John Logie Baird (Scotland) gave the world's first public demonstration of a mechanical television apparatus to some 40 members of the Royal Institution.

On April 7, 1927, Bell Telephone Labs and AT&T gave a public mechanical television demonstration in the US through both wire and radio circuits. Pictures and sound were sent by wire from Washington DC to New York City.

Analog and digital signals get weaker with distance. But, while the image quality gets gradually affected with distance on an analog TV, a digital set will continue to produce perfect quality images until the signal becomes too weak for the receiver to pick it up.

India is also toying with direct-to-home (DTH) telecasting platforms these days. In the DTH dish farm, hundreds of channels from satellites, combined with local production and live broadcasts are combined and uploaded to the satellite transponder.

The encrypted signal is sent back to earth in the Ku band to form a footprint in select geographical area. A small 18-inch antenna receives the signal and sends it to the set top box connected to the TV.

More Stories on : Broadband | Entertainment & Leisure | Science & Technology | Kerala

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