Characteristics of Light and Sound The word ‘television’ has its origin in two Greek words ‘tele’ and ‘vision’. Tele means ‘at distance’ and vision means ‘seeing’. After the successful development of radio broadcast of sound, man started dreaming of seeing pictures too at a distance beyond barriers. There was one serious problem in broadcasting the pictures. While in sound, there is only one amplitude at a time, in a scene there are thousands of points, each having different amplitude of light (brightness and colour) at any instant of time (spreading through width, height and depth in space). Each point of variation at a time requires a channel for transmission, hence to transmit the whole picture, several thousands of radio frequency channels were needed. This was not feasible. These space variations of intensity and colour occurring simultaneously were to be converted into electrical signals varying with time (.. single valued function of time) for transmission through a single radio frequency channel, To achieve this, values of light in a picture-image were first converted into an electrical charge-image on a photo-sensitive target and then the charge was extracted from point to point in quick succession by a process called scanning. The scanned signal represented variation of light with time and so it was in a form suitable for radio transmission. Again at the receiver, the detected signal varying with time was reconverted into light varying in space on the fluorescent screen of aspecially designed cathode ray tube. The scanning speed was faster than the persistence of vision, an important characteristic of the eye. This made the discrete points appear as one whole picture. The original picture was thus reproduced and man’s dream of seeing pictures at a distance was realised. Before the study of the elements of a TV transmitting and receiving system is taken up, it is necessary to study the characteristics of light and sound which have to be transmitted for receiving TV programmes at a distance. Units in which the values of light and sound are expressed have been defined in Appendix 1. 1.2 INTENSITY OF LIGHT IN A PICTURE The intensity of illumination can vary from darkness (light of faint stars in the universe, which is taken as reference = 0 dB) to light of bright sun on snow (110 dB). On this scale, twilight is 50 dB and good reading light is 80 dB, Similarly colour can have countless variations in a picture within the limits of visible spectrum (red to violet). A scene consists of variations of intensity of light and colour in space in three dimensions and its image in two dimensions. The variations may be sharp (abrupt) or may show slow gradation of shade from white (brightest light) to black (ero light). The rate of variation of the intensity represents frequeney of variation. In TV it may vary from 0 to about 6 MHz. 1,3 IMAGE Bye senses the variations of light occurring in its field of view and forms an image of the scene on the retina. Similarly a camera picks up a portion of the scene falling in its field of view and forms its image on a photographic film (as in cinema) or on a semiconductor plate (as in TV camera tube). The image is thus a two dimensional picture on a plane surface. The effect of the third dimension (depth) in the image is produced by the fact that light from the distant objects is of reduced intensity, the reduction being proportional to the distance. Good artists create the impression of depth in their paintings by using this prineiple. Like When a scene is filmed, the field of view of the lens being limited, the camera catches a small portion of the scene when its shutter is opened. The image recorded on the film in an exposure is called picture framein cinema terminology. Each exposure gives a still picture. If a scene does not change (eg. a hill or a building), all exposures will give the same image. But when an event is filmed, the scene changes from instant to instant. Recording of a changing scene requires several exposures in quick succession. In cinema, there are 24 exposures (photographs) per second recorded on 24 films, moving and coming in the focus of the camera lens one after the other. Each exposure gives a still picture, but each still is a different picture while filming a changing scene (or movie picture). In television, the situation is slightly different. The TV camera lens continuously focuses the scone on a target plate. There are no shutter opening or closing. Instead the image is converted into an electrical charge-image, and electrical signal is extracted from each point of the charge image in quick succession by a continuous extraction process with interruption (akin to closing the shutter) every 40 millisecond (explained in detail in Chapter 4). In TV, the process of extraction of signal from point to point is called scanning and interruption is called blanking (these are described in Chapter 2). 25 frames are scanned in one second in European system (adopted by India) and 30 in American system (This difference in the two systems is due to electric mains frequency being 50 in Europe and 60 in America). Each sequence of scanning in TV (like each exposure in cinema) is called a frame. U5 “ASPECT RATIO. (eae keine aa aA Width to height ratio of a picture frame is called aspect ratio. Width is kept longer than height because of the following facts: 1. Horizontal dimension of a scene is generally more than its vertical dimension. 2, Byes can move with more ease and comfort in the horizontal plane than in the vertical, 3. The fovea, the surface of maximum sensitivity and resolution at the centre of the retina in the eye has greater width than height. Hence, the longer width of the image ensures more efficient use of the fovea. » As a result of intensive subjective tests by the cinema people, aspect ratio of 4: 3 was found to be most pleasing aesthetically, and less fatiguing to the eyes. The same ratio was accepted by the television engineers as the cinema films formed a major part of the ‘TV programmes. This enabled direct transmission of films without wastage of any film area.