How they work: “Television”

How the television set works From its name, “Television”, synonymously known as TV (T for Tele and V for Vision) is an amazing invention. The term can pass for both the Verb and the noun, why not? In a simple language, the word or can we call it preposition “Tele” is used to denote an element of distance. The distance is a constant; it could be a few metres or several if not hundreds or thousands of metres or kilometres. After describing the term Tele, I suppose, anyone can guess the last tag of the word, “Vision”, I suppose, we keep it simple and precise; vision may be used as a verb or noun too. We sometimes see visions (pictures in the mind), people have vision for the country e.g. “Vision vingt vingt”(Vision 2020) etc. Simply put, this could be used to define an action of seeing or “picturing”. We can confidently assert that, when we combine the two terms together, we get yet another verb as well as noun. In this case though, the noun “Television” is used to describe a physical object or device or apparatus commonly used in our daily life to relay motion pictures from one place to the other via the airwaves. The verb part is the act of transmitting those pictures from point A to point B, through a distance. As we said earlier, Tele is to do with distances as in Tele-Scope, Tele-phone, Tele-printer, and so on and so forth. Have you ever imagines how the TV broadcasts get to your home TV set? These are transmitted through the air in form of “Electromagnetic” waves. This is a form of radio waves (radiation), this travels from the transmitters (either via terrestrial or Satellite links) to the receivers, where the receiver is your TV set. We shall look at this another time. Let us try to understand how the TV sets handles those waves. Can we forget the waves for the time being and assume that, the TV set is connected to either a Video deck or Home DVD Player. (Assuming that we all know that, the TV sets requires electricity in order to function) The device called a “TV” set more or less works by using your (viewer’s) brain, yes; it plays on the minds of the viewers via their sight. The most important aspect of a TV or even computer Screen or display is the fact that, these devices split any image into thousands of dots, these dots are what is known “Pixels”, this term is even used with printers, digital cameras etc, simply put, it is the number of dots per given square area, like DPI (dots per inch), the high the DPI, the finer the image; this dot factor is what we know as “RESOLUTION”. The higher the dot factor the higher the resolution of that device. The brain builds these dots into a picture. In brief, the set displays dots and the brain of the viewer quickly assembles the dots to make an image. That is why, if one is sitting too close of too far, he might not be able to see what is on the screen because, the dots are either too small or too large for the brain to assemble. For motion pictures, the set displays up to 15 different pictures per second (some can even go to 25 frames per second), because the pictures are changing very rapidly, the brain re-assembles them into a continuous film. Simple test, look at a stationary Motorcycle, you can count the number of spokes in its wheel, when the bike is started and the when spins, your eyes cease to see any; you might be tempted to believe that, the bike has none. Have you ever wondered how cartoons are made to walk and talk? Their makers make very many pictures (frames) each slightly different from the other, they are displayed at the rate of 15 frames per second, the brain deciphers them into a movie, however, they do not talk, and someone does the talking for them; as for the actual working of the TV set (electronic functioning), that is another topic, we could cover more on it our future editions. eddie@afrowebs.com