Portal:Television

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Television Portal

Flat-screen televisions for sale at a consumer electronics store in 2008.

Television, sometimes shortened to TV or telly, is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome (black and white), or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a television set, a television show, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports.

Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but it would still be several years before the new technology would be marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white television broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom and United States, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the U.S. and most other developed countries. The availability of various types of archival storage media such as Betamax and VHS tapes, high-capacity hard disk drives, DVDs, flash drives, high-definition Blu-ray Discs, and cloud digital video recorders has enabled viewers to watch pre-recorded material—such as movies—at home on their own time schedule. For many reasons, especially the convenience of remote retrieval, the storage of television and video programming now also occurs on the cloud (such as the video on demand service by Netflix). At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity. Another development was the move from standard-definition television (SDTV) (576i, with 576 interlaced lines of resolution and 480i) to high-definition television (HDTV), which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in different formats: 1080p, 1080i and 720p. Since 2010, with the invention of smart television, Internet television has increased the availability of television programs and movies via the Internet through streaming video services such as Netflix, Amazon Video, iPlayer and Hulu. (Full article...)

Selected article - show another

"The Joy of Sect" is the thirteenth episode of The Simpsons' ninth season. It originally aired on the FOX network in the United States on February 8, 1998. In the episode, a cult called the "Movementarians" takes over Springfield, and Homer and the rest of the Simpson family become members. Homer and Bart are initially introduced to a pair of young Movementarian recruiters in an airport. Homer becomes brainwashed, and moves his family into the cult compound. David Mirkin had the initial idea for the episode, Steve O'Donnell was the lead writer, and Steven Dean Moore directed. The writers drew on many groups to develop the Movementarians, but were principally influenced by Scientology, Heaven's Gate, the Unification Church and Peoples Temple. The episode was later analyzed from religious, philosophical and psychological perspectives, and books compared the Movementarians to many of the same groups that the writers had drawn influences from. The show contains many references to popular culture, including the title reference to The Joy of Sex and a gag involving Rover from the television program The Prisoner.

More selected articles...

More...

Selected image - show another

Credit: USDA

Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs (either verbatim or in edited form), sometimes including descriptions of non-speech elements. Other uses have been to provide a textual alternative language translation of a presentation's primary audio language that is usually burned-in (or "open") to the video and not selectable (or "closed"). HTML5 defines subtitles as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue ... when sound is available but not understood" by the viewer (for example, dialogue in a foreign language) and captions as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue, sound effects, relevant musical cues, and other relevant audio information ... when sound is unavailable or not clearly audible" (for example, when audio is muted or the viewer is deaf or hard of hearing").

More selected pictures...

More...

Did you know

...that noitulovE, a cinema and television advertising campaign for Guinness draught stout, won more awards than any other commercial worldwide in 2006?

...that Molly Badham, co-founder of Twycross Zoo, trained the chimpanzees who appeared in the long-running Brooke Bond PG Tips television advertisements?

...that actress, writer and producer Michelle Paradise created the television series Exes and Ohs without an agent?

...that the WWF in 1986 introduced a stable of masked wrestlers to keep the injured wrestler Andre the Giant on television, but off the ring?

...that the Zambian district of Chiengi has no television or telephone service?

More did you know...

More...

Selected quote - show another

Television is for appearing on, not looking at.

— Noel Coward

More selected quotes...

More...

News

Wikinews television portal

Upcoming events

Upcoming television series

Selected biography - show another

Brokaw in 2015

Thomas John Brokaw (/ˈbroʊkɔː/; born February 6, 1940) is a American retired network television journalist and author. He first served as the co-anchor of The Today Show from 1976 to 1981 with Jane Pauley, then as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News for 22 years (1982–2004). In the previous decade he served as a weekend anchor for the program from 1973 to 1976. He is the only person to have hosted all three major NBC News programs: The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and, briefly, Meet the Press. He formerly held a special correspondent post for NBC News. He occasionally writes and narrates documentaries for other outlets.

Along with his competitors Peter Jennings at ABC News and Dan Rather at CBS News, Brokaw was one of the "Big Three" U.S. news anchors during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. All three hosted their networks' flagship nightly news programs for more than 20 years. They began and retired from their anchor chairs (or died, in Jennings' case) with Dan Rather notably being replaced by CBS due to false reports broadcast on 60 Minutes II within a year of each other. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies
James T. Aubrey Kroger Babb Rudolph Cartier Sydney Newman Eric Bana Kylie Minogue Peter Jennings KaDee Strickland Austin Nichols Aaron Sorkin Jake Gyllenhaal Dan Rather Brad Pitt Walter Cronkite John Le Mesurier George Formby Dan Castellaneta Perry Como Red Skelton Rose Catherine Pinkney

General images

The following are images from various television-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Smart TVs on display (from Smart TV)
Image 2Baird in 1925 with his televisor equipment and dummies "James" and "Stooky Bill" (right). (from History of television)
Image 3LG Smart TV using the Web browser (from Smart TV)
Image 4The Nipkow disk. This schematic shows the circular paths traced by the holes, which may also be square for greater precision. The area of the disk outlined in black shows the region scanned. (from History of television)
Image 5Comparison of image quality between ISDB-T (1080i broadcast, top) and NTSC (480i transmission, bottom) (from Digital television)
Image 6This live image of actress Paddy Naismith was used to demonstrate John Logie Baird's first all-electronic color television system, which used two projection CRTs. The two-color image would be similar to the basic telechrome system. (from Color television)
Image 7Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York City by RCA in 1939 (from History of television)
Image 8A color television test at the Mount Kaukau transmitting station, New Zealand, in 1970. A test pattern with color bars is sometimes used when no program material is available. (from Color television)
Image 9RCA CT-100 at the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention playing Superman. The RCA CT-100 was the first mass-produced color TV set. (from Color television)
Image 10Color bars used in a test pattern, sometimes used when no program material is available. (from History of television)
Image 11Family watching TV, 1958 (from History of television)
Image 12DBS satellite dishes. (from History of television)
Image 13Hovannes Adamian (from Color television)
Image 14The first mass-produced Czechoslovak TV-set Tesla 4001A (1953-57). (from History of television)
Image 15A map depicting digital terrestrial television standards (from Digital television)
Image 16RCA 630-TS, the first mass-produced television set, which sold in 1946–1947 (from History of television)
Image 17The Philco Predicta, 1958. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (from History of television)

Featured content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Television}}) or categorized correctly. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.