Brief History of TV in the UK and abroad

The five main terrestrial TV channels in the UK.

History of Broadcasting in the UK


Mainstream broadcasting in the United Kingdom began in November 1936 when BBC Television was launched using an analogue signal, at the time it was the only TV channel available in the country and was known as the 'BBC Television Service'. The channel became known as 'BBC 1' in 1964 when a new terrestrial TV station was created, this was 'BBC 2' a second channel made by the company. The BBC met their rival broadcaster in 1955 when 'ITV' was launched by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), this was the first commercial TV channel in the UK. In 1981 the IBA launched 'Channel 4', a second commercial TV channel, it wasn't until 1997 when Channel 5 appeared on British screens making it the fifth and final terrestrial TV channel in the UK, this too was a commercially funded.




By 2012 analogue signals will be entirely replaced by digital in all parts of the UK. Most regions have converted to the system already, the process is done by switching off the analogue signal at one transmitter at a time.


Worldwide Broadcasting systems


In UK television broadcasting, we use the Phase Alternating Line simply known as PAL, it is a type of TV standard which encodes colour into analogue broadcasts. Here is a list of the different TV standard used in analogue TV today...


PAL
Origin: 1963 in Germany
Basis: 25 frames per second, 625 lines; 576 of which are used to show the picture.  
Phase Alternating Line. The first television broadcast using PAL was in 1967, the first two countries to use it where Germany and the UK, ever since it has become the most popular standard, being used in more countries than any other TV standard as it is used in Oceania, most of Europe, Africa and Asia as well as parts of South America.


NTSC
Origin: 1941 in USA
Basis: 29.97 frames per second, 525 lines; 480 of which are used to show the picture.
The National Television System Committee. The oldest type of Television standard, until 1953 it was unable to transmit colour television. Due to it's lack of advanced capability it is currently being replaced by ATSC in North America which is a more advanced version of NTSC. The standard is also used in small parts of South America, Japan and the Philippines.


SECAM 
Origin: 1956 in France
Basis: 625-line
Sequential Colour with Memory. It was the first television standard in Europe to transmit in colour and first used in 1967 on French channel 'France 2'. SECAM was bought by the Soviet Union, due to the cold war they refused to buy PAL from the Germans or NTSC from the Americans and decided to use the French system instead. As of today, the standard is still used in France despite the rest of Europe using PAL, most former Soviet states and several countries in Africa also use the SECAM system.

A world map with each country highlighted a certain colour depending on their TV standard.