Electro-Mechanical to Digital Projection

Abstract

The history of television’s development is a voluminous one, spanning facsimile, electro-mechanical, all-electronic, and digital technology. After the advent of broadcast radio, work in the field became focused on the creation of broadcast television services following radio’s business model and taking advantage of its technology. While television developed along these lines, the concentration in these pages is on the creation of the electro-digital cinema, which unlike broadcast TV requires projection. In this chapter we’ll take a look at video projection methods that invariably were more complicated than those required for the celluloid cinema, which when all is said and done uses a magic lantern to rapidly project a series of frames. The magic lantern, a transparency projector, even in its incarnation as a motion picture projector, is relatively easy to understand and build. But a television projector is a far more complicated device because basic television technology doesn’t innately store images and it can’t readily use the transparency projection method. It’s been a challenge for inventors to come up with good video projection techniques, and it has taken many decades and advances in technology to achieve performance comparable to photochemical-celluloid film motion picture projection. Moreover, high definition video had to be developed for television to become a candidate to replace celluloid cinema projection.