PRESS YOUR FACE UP AGAINST THE SCREEN [467]

Well, my television broke again, losing power to the screen for the second time in four years, in the same way it happened last time. With the memory of the previous two-week wait for it to be fixed rising to the surface, I threw up my hands and bought a replacement. Provided this one lasts for a few more years, I have realised this may be the last regular television I will buy.

My first personal TV was a fourteen-inch cathode ray tube TV bought for £139 in 1996, weighed seven kilograms (15.4 lbs), had two one-watt speakers, no subtitles or teletext ability, and used approximately 150 watts an hour, CRT screens holding high voltages even after turn-off. The back of it was riven with ventilation holes, because they were surely needed.

My new TV, a Sharp 32FH8KA, weighs half as much, has a thirty-two-inch LED screen like my previous Toshiba model, but this time with high dynamic range so effective that the backlight can be turned down to save power. Along with two twelve-watt speakers that have some bass, the unit is only a few inches thick – the circuit board and connectors stick out from the back of the TV, and is the only part that remains ventilated, because the screen hardly produces any heat, and because so little energy is lost through heat, it only uses twenty-six watts an hour. It is also fully Android compatible, making it pretty much a computer, into which other computers can be connected. With inflation, £139 in 1996 is now £271 – this new TV cost only £199.

Aside from the minimum expectations of a TV’s ability having greatly expanded over time, connectivity has also greatly changed. I only ever connected a VHS video recorder to the old portable TV in the 1990s, via the single SCART connector, but I now have an Apple TV box – “Android” is something that other people do – a Blu-ray player, a separate DVD player that accepts region 1 DVDs from North America, and an Atari Flashback console, all connected at once, covering all possibilities. 

While I am happy with the speakers on my new TV, a sound bar is usually the first add-on others would buy nowadays, especially if streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and the BBC iPlayer are accessible through the TV itself – apart from the Sky Glass TV, made for subscribers to that service, TVs with built-in soundbars have not appeared, as if better sound is expected to be something that needs to be added to a TV. I could easily have bought a large computer monitor with enough connectors for what I require, but these doesn’t really exist either.

The ability to just buy an all-purpose screen may arrive if no unified decision is made on the future of broadcasting. It is not clear if “5G Broadcast”, using the mobile phone network to deliver TV signals, is the ultimate choice if more of the current TV signals are repurposed for mobile use, while satellite TV, my main source for “regular” broadcasts on my new TV, may only remain if Sky commits to continuing with it beyond the end of the 2020s – if not, why should SES build more Astra satellites? If then, my TV will become that all-purpose screen, but I should never fear, for the box and manual states it supports the H.265 video codec, should any UK broadcaster decide to start using it – that’s good, I suppose.

BY THE MAGIC RAYS OF LIGHT [445]

The opening of BBC Two on Tuesday 21^st April 1964 marked the first time British audiences needed to update their televisions, to receive the more detailed 625-line pictures sent over the air by the new channel. Early adopters may have had a Baird mechanical set from the first experimental transmissions in the 1930s, but this was the first time that the regular TV standard changed. This switch happened at a glacial speed: 625-line versions of BBC One and ITV began later in 1969, two years after BBC Two became Europe’s first colour TV channel, but the old 405-line system used by them continued until 1985 as households and television rental firms slowly replaced their sets.

The television standard in the UK has arguably changed three times since then, in more rapid succession. The first came after digital television began in 1998, using the DVB-T standard, the switch-off of analogue signals was completed from 2008 to 2012 – this coincided with the introduction in 2009 of the updated DVB-T2 standard used mostly for high-definition channel, prompting a further push for new TVs. But perhaps the biggest change hardly involves the television, because the inexorable move to online streaming of programmes is really the end of the physical act of “broadcasting”, as sharing one channel from a transmitter is replaced by everyone having their own discrete link their device and a content provider’s server, known as “unicasting”. 

I then remembered that BBC Research & Development had carried out a trial of something named “5G Broadcast” in 2019 on Stronsay, one of the Orkney Isles. A 5G network was constructed that provided mobile internet to one of the most poorly-connected places in the UK, while also using that network to broadcast radio stations, including BBC Radio Orkney, to devices with the software capable of receiving the signals. By all accounts, the exercise proved successful, leaving the island with more reliable internet access after the trial ended.

The 4G and 5G mobile signal standards allow for broadcast capabilities, which is a naturally more efficient use of bandwidth in situations where many people are watching the same thing at the same moment, freeing up capacity on the mobile network. The computer chip manufacturer Qualcomm, which had a hand in developing the technology used for these mobile standards, explained on their website that no extra equipment is needed to receive 5G Broadcast, as mobile devices already have the necessary technology built into them, and existing television transmitters, more physically resilient than mobile signal masts, can broadcast the 5G signal too. Furthermore, if someone is outside the range of the 5G Broadcast signal, their device will seamlessly move to “unicast” mode.

However, that depends on the will of broadcasters to keep their own transmitters going at all. Switzerland is a country that already switched their TV transmitters off, in 2019, but most viewers already received their services via cable. This shift is perhaps inevitable: the cost of keeping networks of high-powered transmitters in working order would be avoidable if you can piggy-back on the internet, but relying on that network poses problems in binding one service, once available to all over the air, into another service that requires payment to access. Even Qualcomm’s article made clear that “In the unfortunate scenario that the cellular network becomes disabled from structural damages (e.g., in case of an earthquake), public authorities could still use the broadcast infrastructure to communicate with smartphones that support broadcast services” – the will has to be there.