Digital video production can be traced back to professional formats in the mid-1980s, notably the Sony Digital Betcam, which made its debut in 1986. Consumer digital production became possible only in the early 1990s, as Apple debuted its Quick Time architecture and MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 playback standards were developed. With the launch of inexpensive and relatively easy-to-use digital linear editing systems in the late 1990s, such as AVID, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and the like, along with digital Mini-DV camcorders, digital video production slipped the bounds of professional studios and moved into the living rooms, bedrooms, backyards and offices of the general population. The concept of ‘digital cinematography’ as a growing practice both in the industry and by individuals had gained sufficient ground by 2002 that Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones was produced entirely on digital video. Animation practices have been completely transformed by the possibilities inherent in digital production. Combined with digital recording and playback technologies like the DVD, independent and low-budget film-making has experienced an enormous renaissance; it is estimated that the cost of making a fully digital feature film amounts to one-tenth or less of the costs of a 35mm production. Of course, currently most theatres are not yet equipped with digital projection, so that feature films for mainstream theatrical release must still be transferred to 35mm film before they can be distributed. There is still much dispute over the quality of sound and image in digital video as opposed to traditional film. However, as digital media are increasingly transmitted via the web and wireless, image quality takes on a different meaning, especially when the screen of the future is the one on your cell phone or iPod.
Thanks to the enormous transformation of connectivity brought about by the Internet and World Wide Web, it is in the area of distribution that digital technology has most affected television. From a medium originally sent out from a few fixed analogue transmitters mounted high above the ground on antennas, to the advent of coaxial cable and, later, fibre-optic cable that took the television signal through fat wires into the home, to satellite signals caught by, at first, dishes big enough to block the sunlight, or, beginning in the 1980s, via bulky videotapes, television has become a medium that can be broken up into bits, streamed and captured by virtually anyone to virtually anyone. Digital television is, effectively, digitally transmitted television, no matter what form it originated in or what form it ultimately takes at the reception end.
Digital satellite services, the first to debut globally, brought multiple channels of existing television programming and channels with material uniquely developed for satellite and cable directly into the living rooms of people around the world. Satellite television works by beaming signals from a ground station up to a satellite in geostationary orbit, 2,300 miles above the earth’s surface. In this position they are just at the right point in the earth’s gravitational pull to rotate at the same speed as the earth, keeping them in a fixed position relative to points on the ground. A mix of government and privately owned satellites occupy the geostationary band; there are so many now that the band is getting crowded. Signals are relayed by the satellites transponders operating in the KU band of frequencies back down to earth, where they are received by satellite dishes, placed either on individual roofs or balconies, or in a satellite array set up by companies who retransmit their signals in another form (like cable or broadcast). Satellite ‘feeds’ stream into news-producing organizations from all points of the globe day and night, transforming news operations and opening up a million new eyes on the world. In the USA, DirectTV, launched in 1994, and Echo Star’s Dish Network, launched in 1996, are the two primary providers of digital DBS. They carry most of the regular US terrestrial and cable channels, but also provide a host of channels from other parts of the world, available in special subscription packages. These are particularly important for diasporic populations, in the USA and around the globe, who keep in touch with home cultures and languages via satellite television. In the UK Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB brought some of the first satellite offerings into British and European airspace, challenging the hegemony of public service broadcasters and threatening another wave of Americanization of culture, since so many of the channels carried US-originated programming. These fears have abated somewhat, however, by the many indigenous channels that have sprung up, along with transnational cooperative ventures like Arte, a joint venture between France and Germany; the Euronews and Eurosports channels; the US-based but internationally programmed Discovery Channels; Azteca, based in Mexico but serving all of South and Central America; and the pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera.
Cable television in its analogue version is almost as old as television itself. Coaxial (meaning many-wired) cables were strung from poles and buried underground throughout many countries in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s as a simple way to get television signals to communities with poor or nonexistent transmission from terrestrial broadcasters. Not until the advent of the broadcast satellite in the late 1970s did cable begin to come into its own as a medium that originated its own programming; in the USA one of the first successful cable-only channels was Home Box Office (HBO) which began beaming major sports events and uncut theatrical films up to a satellite and thendownto cable operators across the country. Cable took off in the USA in the 1980s; by the late 1990s over 85 per cent of the US audience received its television via cable or DBS. Digital cable was introduced in the late 1990s; the average digital cable home can receive over 100 channels with many further pay per view and on-demand options. In countries with strong central public broadcasters, cable was slower to develop. There are some exceptions: the Netherlands remains one of the most heavily cabled European countries since only by low power stations linked by cable could the small nation surrounded by larger neighbours find the transmission space to have multiple national channels. Elsewhere, cable sometimes sprang up illegally in countries where access to television was limited or highly political; in Taiwan, pirate cable operators helped to bring about a liberalization movement in the 1980s, in politics as well as media policy. Cable operators in Canada thrived on offering US channels unavailable over the air. Now digital cable is becoming a popular way to receive the Internet service, and the provision of telephone service via cable is not far behind as cable television and traditional telecommunications companies converge.
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