Preface
By the end of the 1960s, when I started to get interested in how the TV set at home really worked, color television and the second national TV channel was introduced in Sweden. The old medium-wave radio, with glowing electron tubes underneath its cover, made it possible to listen to voices from distant countries, but the TV programming choices were quite small at this time. I only had Swedish TV 1 and TV 2 and the one national Danish channel to watch during my childhood. But I was lucky to live on the south coast of Sweden, which gave me some special opportunities.
During the summer, and sometimes during winter high pressure weather conditions, we could receive TV channels from other countries. The proximity to the European continent meant we received two East German channels in black and white and three West German channels in color. In those days, Germany was divided, and these two parts used different color TV systems.
To my parents’ consternation, I put large antenna constructions on the roof of our house. And after a while, I succeeded in bringing even more exotic channels in our house. In addition to more East European TV signals, we could also watch TV from Spain and Italy. A very special event occurred in June, 1978, when I succeeded in receiving an Icelandic test card.
The most challenging task for a DXer in Europe has always been to be able to receive a trans-Atlantic signal. After reading about this in one of the few books that existed at the time about TV DXing, receiving trans-Atlantic broadcasts became my quest. I believe that I did succeed for a short while, somewhere in the lower VHF bands. Using my (in those days) well-trained eyes, I saw what I think was a North American station identification sign. But to be honest, I'm not 100 percent sure that I really saw that sign deep down in the noise a quarter of a century ago. Sometime you just see what you want to see.
To sporadically be able to watch exotic TV and listen to exotic radio from distant countries became a compelling journey from the living room into the surrounding world. But being able to watch sporadic fragments of a TV show or a movie is not very amusing for people who expect to be able to watch a program from its beginning to end.
By the end of 1979, I got the opportunity to participate in a very interesting project while I finished my exam at the Lund Institute of Technology. The aim was to receive signals from the newly launched European test satellite OTS 2. The first European TV satellite, OTS 1 (Orbital Test Satellite) was destroyed when the launch failed. Now its replacement, OTS 2, was in orbit and had begun its test transmissions. Philips in Sweden wanted to receive the signals in a project for test and demonstration. Of course it was also a way to get PR. According to the experts a dish with a diameter of 7 to 8 meters (23 to 26 feet) would be required to get something moving on the screen. However the only dish that we could produce had a diameter of 3 meters (less than 10 feet).
But by the end of summer 1980, a picture showing a frogman was displayed on the test monitors in the Philips TV factory. This success excited me and my colleague, Lars Andersson, about the potential of satellite TV, so the next step was to construct our own satellite receivers to be able to watch satellite TV at home. While building these receivers, we developed two handbooks that, when published in 1983, described the basics for receiving satellite TV signals in your home for the first time in Scandinavia. These two handbooks were followed by several more during the 1980s and 1990s as technology evolved.
Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, I have had the pleasure of participating in most of the projects that have revolutionized TV distribution in the Nordic countries, such as the first Nordic TV Satellite, the introduction of Cable TV and digital stereo TV sound and the construction of the commercial terrestrial TV4 distribution network in Sweden. Finally I was also involved in establishing the Nordic Sirius satellite system.
Much has happened in the world of TV broadcasting during the last 10 years. The most dramatic change has been the transition to digital TV, though it has not been easy. The advantage in using digital techniques is not easy for the everyday man to understand. And most certainly there have been lots of “digital fundamentalists” to whom the transition to digital is almost a religious way. But by the end of the day, the whole issue is what the viewer really wants. He or she does not really care if the signals are analog or digital. It is what is possible and what is useful that counts.
Throughout the years I have followed the development by writing articles in the Swedish magazine for home electronics “Elektronikvärlden” (The World of Electronics). In the past five years, almost every article has treated some aspect of the analog to digital transition of media devices in your home. As a result of all these articles, one day I realized I had a large gallery of illustrations for various aspects of the TV media. And looking at these illustrations made me realize that there was a need for a book that encompassed most aspects of digital TV. So, I collected all material in a structure covering four main ways of digital TV distribution. The result was a 12-chapter book for the Swedish market.
My next intention was to develop the book even further and to bring it to European readers outside my home country. This was quite simple since the same satellite systems and technical standards are used all over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Then I realized that adding appendices about broadcasting in North America makes the first 12 chapters interesting to the North American reader and makes an interesting technical comparison between European and North American broadcasting. The differences proved to be not as large as I thought they would be. In a world of globalization, this must be an interesting as well as an important task to try to fulfill.
I have had the advantage of working with the three traditional ways of distributing TV: satellite, cable and terrestrial transmitters. These distribution forms make up a large portion of the book. During recent years a fourth media has entered the scene -- the Internet. These four ways of distribution not only compete with each other but they also complement each other. Together they form our new world of media.
Also my ambition has been to give the historic aspects of the TV media as a part of the development of human storytelling and the fantastic technical developments in this field. The book may also give a hint about where we might be heading in the future. Digital TV and HDTV are most certainly not the end of the road. Instead it is the beginning of a new era that provides us with completely new ways to tell stories and to get stories told to us.
As I completed this book, I realized that it is actually three books in one. You can choose yourself how you want to read it. It can be read as an historical book describing the timeline of the TV media from the early days and its development into today's situation, with speculations about the future. Another way is to regard the book is as a textbook about digital TV that covers most of the basics facts in this subject. And finally, perhaps the most important way to read it is as a handbook for the everyday viewer who has problems in connecting all the electronic devices required in modern home media systems. Throughout the years, I have met hundreds of people who needed to have these practical questions answered. Many of these answers are, I hope, covered in this book.
One challenge that is difficult to overcome for topics such as digital TV is the constantly changing nature of the technology. I have tried to keep the content as “time resistant” as possible. My hope that the book will still provide interesting information in 10 years time, even if the material about the future of television will at that point represent the past.
When I was a child, before man set foot on the moon, it was technology that set the limits for human progress. But after the first moon landing, something strange happened. Suddenly, economy and politics set the limitations instead. Today, more than 30 years later, it seems as the digital technology has also provided the economical means to get advanced home entertainment that no one could have expected 20 years ago. In a world based on flat-panel TV sets, computers, satellites, optical fibers and many other digital communication systems, instead it must be the human fantasy that seems to set the limits.
Malmö, Sweden in the summer of 2006
Lars-Ingemar Lundström