Here’s How Your Television Set Works

There probably aren’t many people alive today who can remember a world with a television set. That means that unless you’re an electrician or someone else who needs to know, you might never have thought about how, exactly, those blessed streaming shows come into your home.

If you’re curious, though, read on!

The Radio Corporation of America first brought television to the public in 1939 at the World’s Fair. It was another 20 years before they were showing up in most (around 85%) of American homes, and another ten years or so after that before color programs hit the waves.

Viewers chose from three or four channels, there was no DVR, and no way to watch something you missed if you were out having an actual life when it aired.

Things have obviously changed a lot.

That said, televisions still do three basic things: receive audio and video data, use that data to present you sound and a picture, and to offer ways to set the channel and volume at home.

Early televisions worked with radio waves that contained both the picture and sound of a television program.

The local television station sent those radio wave through the air using a giant transmission tower, antennas on the roofs of buildings and homes intercepted those waves and transported them through cables to the television sets inside.

Around 2009, television stations replaced all of those “analog” signals with digital ones. Our high-definition televisions have much better picture and sound quality, but the basic method of using radio waves hasn’t changed.

Modern digital television uses different streams for picture and audio.

Pictures are created by pixels; there are tens of thousands of them on your screen and each has a “color index” and “intensity.” All of the pixels work together to create the desired images.

Groups of bits are formed into bytes, which are the communication link between the content and your particular television set. Your modem packages and unpackages the information, and it is the essential piece of the puzzle.

The information can be transmitted through wifi or sent through fiber or cable – or, in the case of streaming, through a computer network.

Your smart TV allows to you to control all the functions; it’s basically a huge computer, monitor, and receiver in one pretty package.

If there’s one thing history has taught us it’s that things will continue to change and develop going forward.

Look for more virtual reality, augmented reality, and ultra-high definition coming your way, probably sooner rather than later.