Inventing Digital Television: the Inside Story of a Technology Revolution

Summary: How engineers developed new technologies to broadcast television in digital form, and how Britain in 1998 became the first country to launch a digital terrestrial service. Based on interviews with engineers who were involoved, and including simple explanations of the engineering involved, this is a book for the general reader. In More Detail: This is an account of how an international team of engineers developed new technologies which would allow television to be broadcast in digital form, and how Britain in 1998 became the first country to launch a digital terrestrial service. Beginning with efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to improve the existing analogue television technology, and the appearance in the 1980s of the ill-fated MAC system, the book traces the development and gradual introduction of digital techniques for manipulating and storing pictures in the studio, through the collaborative efforts of the early 1990s to specify a new family of standards for digital broadcasting, to the triumphs and tribulations which followed the early launch of digital television in Britain and in some other countries.. Based on interviews with a number of the people who made it happen, and including simple explanations of the engineering involved, this is a book for the general reader with an interest in the history of technology and how things work.