SONY KV-29C3A TRINITRON YEAR 2000.

SONY KV-29C3A TRINITRON is a 30 inches color television with Digital 100HZ scan rate color television from SONY.

It has 29 Inches (68Cm) screen format and lots of features including PIP (Picture in Picture) and stereo sound and integrated picture improvements needed in such class of television set. ,display system with increased field frequency ; digital scan converter means including field-memory means supplied with an input video signal of an interlaced television system having a selected plurality of fields per second different from PHILIPS 100HZ scan system.
The television receiver has an alphanumeric display  which appears on the picture tube screen, to give the user data on the tuned channel number, colour settings and other operating data. The digital processor which generates the characters for display also controls the channel setting, etc., under the control of a digital remote control unit . The processor  has an associated memory circuit  for permanente tuning back up. The control of the capacitance diode tuner  is achieved by the processor  altering the dividing factor of a feedback loop to a phase/frequency comparator . The other input to the comparator is a divided frequency from a quartz oscillator.

The SONY KV-29C3A TRINITRON   is A 100HZ frame rate TELEVISION In a known arrangement, the frame rate of a television signal is doubled by using a field store. In a first operating mode, each field of the television signal is entered into the field store in this arrangement and read out twice at twice the frequency. In a second mode, only every second field is entered into the field store and read out four times at twice the frequency. In an arrangement for converting an original picture signal representing a sequence of frames, each of which is composed of two interlaced fields, into a converted picture signal which has a double field frequency with respect to the original picture signal, is for doubling the field frequency, for the purpose of noise reduction, motion compensation and line flicker reduction.

 The SONY KV-29C3A TRINITRON  features also Beam Scan Velocity modulation.
When the phosphor screen of a video signal reproducing apparatus, such as, the screen of the cathode ray tube in a television receiver, is scanned by an electron beam or beams so as to form a picture or image on the screen, the beam current varies with the luminance or brightness level of the input video signal. Therefore, each electron beam forms on the phosphor screen a beam spot whose size is larger at high brightness levels than at low brightness levels of the image so that sharpness of the reproduced picture is deteriorated, particularly at the demarcation between bright and dark portions or areas of the picture. Further, when a beam scanning the screen in the line-scanning direction moves across the demaraction or edge between dark and bright areas of the picture, for example, black and white areas, respectively, the frequency response of the receiver does not permit the beam intensity to change instantly from the low level characteristic of the black area to the high level characteristic of the white area. Therefore, the sharpness of the reproduced image is degraded at portions of the image where sudden changes in brightness occur in response to transient changes in the luminance or brightness of the video signal being reproduced. The increase in the beam current and in the beam spot size for bright portions of the reproduced picture or image and the inadequate frequency response of the television receiver to sudden changes in the brightness or luminance level of the incomming video signal are additive in respect to the degradation of the horizontal sharpness of the reproduced image or picture.
It is well known that an improvement in apparent picture resolution can be achieved by modulating the beam scan velocity in accordance with the derivative of the video signal which controls the beam intensity. This video signal is referred to as the luminance signal and the derivative of the luminance signal is employed for such control. An advantage of this method over a peaking approach to picture sharpness enhancement is the avoidance of blooming of peaked white picture elements.

TV signals are defined primarily the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC), the Phase Alternative Line (PAL) or the Sequential Couleur Avec Memoire (SECAM) systems, and used in different countries around the world. An analog TV signal utilizes mainly two or three RF carriers, combined in the same channel band. One carrier may commonly be amplitude modulated (AM) with video content, and the other may be frequency modulated (FM) and/or amplitude modulated (AM) with audio content. An analog TV receiver functions by performing a series of operations comprising adjusting the signal power, separating the video and audio carriers, and locking to each carrier in order to down-convert the signals to baseband. The baseband video signal may then be decoded and displayed by achieving horizontal and vertical synchronization and extracting the luminance and color information. After demodulating the received signal, the resulting baseband audio may be decoded, and left, right, surround channels and/or other information may be extracted.

 - The   SONY KV-29C3A TRINITRON   Features a multistandard PAL/SECAM/NTSC 3.58 ; 4.43 CCIR B/G/H/I/L/D/K/M. The different coding processes, e.g. NTSC, PAL and SECAM, introduced into the known colour television standards, differ in the nature of the chrominance transmission and in particular the different systems make use of different colour subcarrier frequencies and different line frequencies.

The following explanations relate to the PAL and NTSC systems, but correspondingly apply to video signals of other standards and non-standardized signals.
The colour subcarrier frequency (fsc) of a PAL system and a NTSC system is fsc(NTSC) = 3.58 MHz or fsc(PAL) = 4.43 MHz.
In addition, in PAL and NTSC systems the relationships of the colour subcarrier frequency (fsc) to the line frequency (fh) are given by fsc(NTSC) = 227.50 * fh or 4•fsc(NTSC) = 910 • fh fsc(PAL) = 283.75 * fh or 4•fsc(PAL) = 1135 • fh so that the phase of the colour subcarrier in the case of NTSC is changed by 180°/line and in PAL by 270°/line.

The invention relates to a digital multistandard decoder for video signals and to a method for decoding video signals. Colour video signals, so-called composite video, blanking and sync signals (CVBS) (chroma-video-blanking-sync) signal is a signal comprising both the chrominance and the luminance component of the video signal. Therefore, the CVBS video signal may be PAL video signal, a SECAM video signal, or an NTSC video signal. are essentially composed of a brightness signal or luminance component (Y), two colour difference signals or chrominance components (U, V or I, Q), vertical and horizontal sync signals (VS, HS) and a blanking signal (BL).

In order to decode a video signal and restore a color image, a color TV set has to identify the color TV standard used at the emission. Conventional color TV sets are equipped with a system for automatically identifying the norm or standard of the color TV set used for the emission. The invention more particularly relates to an automatic method for identifying a color TV standard in a multistandard TV set.

Presently, the most commonly used color TV standards are PAL, NTSC and SECAM standards. For these three standards, each line of the composite video signal comprises a synchronization pulse, a burst of a few oscillations of the chrominance sub-carrier signal, then the signal itself corresponding to the image, comprising superimposed luminance and chrominance information, the latter information being carried by the luminance signal.

The characteristics of the chrominance sub-carrier in the various PAL, NTSC and SECAM standards are defined in the published documents concerning these standards and will not be described in detail here. However, the main characteristics of these various standards will be briefly reminded because these indications are useful for a better understanding of the invention.

In the PAL standard, the frequency of the chrominance sub-carrier is equal for all the lines, but the phase of one of the modulation vectors varies + or -90° from one line to another. The frequency of the chrominance sub-carrier is standardized at 4.43 Mhz. In this system, the burst signal is also shifted by + or -90° from one line to the next.

In the NTSC standard, the chrominance sub-carrier is equal for all the lines.

In the SECAM standard, one uses two chrominance sub-carrier frequencies which alternate from one line to another, at 4.25 Mhz and 4.40 Mhz, respectively. These two chrominance sub-carriers are frequency modulated.

The multistandard color TV sets must have distinct internal systems designed to decode the luminance and chrominance signals for each standard used.

Therefore, these TV sets have to previously identify the received standard.

Systems for automatically identifying the standard used already exist. Generally, for such an automatic standard identification, the systems known use the bursts of the chrominance sub-carrier signal that are present at the beginning of each line. In fact, these bursts are standardized and calibrated samples of the chrominance sub-carrier transmitted on the video signal and comprise all the characteristic information concerning the transmitted color standard. The information contained in these bursts represents the frequency, the phase of one of the modulation vectors and the frequency or phase variation of one line with repect to the next one.

- CTI Picture Improvements circuitry in which colour signal, e.g. the line-sequential colour difference signals (R-Y,B-Y), is processed by an edge steepening circuit e.g. a colour transient improver and/or a two-line delay line in which the colour signals from two lines are added. The delay line may be part of a drop-out compensation circuit in which the colour signal of line n is replaced by the signal present for line n-2. A CCD-line may be used as the two-line delay line, and an amplitude limiter included. ADVANTAGE - Increased picture sharpness and improved signal-to-noise ratio.


The Tv set here shown features a PIP  picture-in-picture (PIP or pix-in-pix) feature; in a digital television system having a picture-in-picture (PIP or pix-in-pix) feature, two images from possibly unrelated sources are displayed simultaneously on the TV screen as a single composite image. The composite image includes a small picture (defined by an auxiliary video signal, for example, from a VCR) displayed as an inset within a large main picture (defined by a primary video signal, for example, from the TV antenna). The output signal of one tuner or of other TV signal sources in the base band are digitized and stored in a part of a memory. After automatic switching over to another TV-channel, this new signal is stored in another part of the memory and so on. The whole memory is then read out continuously and produces the displayed multipicture on the screen.
More specifically, the present invention pertains to a television receiver with a multipicture display.
In a television receiver with multipicture display a single video signal can be reproduced simultaneously in two or more subareas, or two or more different video signals can each be reproduced in associated subareas. Each of the subareas can display either a reduced-size picture or a part of the picture supplied by a video-signal source. A digital signal-processing circuit converts the signals from the video-signal source to picture data consisting of luminance and color data for each picture element. A random-access memory (RAM) holds the picture data of the entire screen. A control unit controls the writing of the picture data into an area of the RAM depending on the number of video signals to be reproduced and the line-by-line readout, with only selected lines being transferred from the video-signal source into the associated memory area. A digital-to-analg converted which is furnished with the picture data read from the RAM delivers the analog red, green, and blue signals.
A television receiver of this kind is described in a printed publication by Intermetall Semiconductors ITT, "VMC Video Memory Controller", August 1985.
That television receiver circuit uses random-access memories (RAMs). For the multipicture display, the screen is divided into up to nine equal-sized subareas which each contain a part of a picture of normal size or a complete picture of reduced size. In that mode, successively produced "snapshots" of up to nine different video signals can be displayed simultaneously. The switching of the video signals takes place manually.
Offenlegungsschrift DE No. 24 13 839 A1 describes a circuit for a television receiver with a facility for simultaneously reproducing two or more programs. In a part of the picture of the directly received main program, the secondary program, received with a single switchable tuner, is stored in a memory with a reduced number of lines and is called up line by line when the electron beam of the picture tube sweeps across the predetermined part of the picture. The disadvantage of this method lies in horizontal grating-like interference in the main picture which results from the fact that lines of the main picture are missing at regular intervals when the tuner has been switched to the secondary program, and which can only be incompletely compensated.
Accordingly, the problem to be solved by the invention is to provide a circuit of the above kind with which the grating-like interference caused during reproduction using the above-described single-tuner switching method is eliminated.
The output signal of one tuner or of other TV signal sources in the base band are digitize and stored in part of a memory. After automatic switching over to another TV-channel, this new signal is stored in another part of the memory and so on.
The whole memory is then read out continuously and produces the multi-picture display on the screen. Another advantage consists in the fact that, for the construction of the whole screen picture, all picture data are withdrawn from the RAM, so that the usual picture-improvement techniques can be applied. By fast readout from the memory rows, the displayed picture is freed from both line flicker and background flicker.
By changing the sampling rates of the different video-signal sources, it is readily possible to monitor the latter, nearly up to the still picture. In an arrangement in accordance with the invention digital picture processing and digital storage are used thereby permitting the circuit to process analog or digital signals,from video signal sources.

The Trinitron colour tube, designed by and used exclusively by Sony in all its colour receivers, was the first to have an in -line gun arrangement. The Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) has been slowly changing since its con- ception about 50 years ago. Since then the emitter, accelerator and focus structures at the “gun” end have been added to the vacuum tube to shape and control the amount of electrons from the gun. At the target end of the CRT, the luminescent screen is made of a phos- phor mixture. Phosphor glows white when struck by electrons. Phos- phor brightness is directly proportional to the amount of electrons that strike the phosphor. The CRT sport brightness was controllable with a gun and phosphor screen. The electron beam produced a spot of light that was stationary on the phosphor screen. Placing an electromagnetic field near the electron beam after it left the gun created movement. The spot intensity and location were now controllable and the CRT became known as the pic- ture tube. To produce a color picture on the CRT screen; three independent gun structures are used. The electron guns produce different amounts of electrons targeted to their corresponding Red, Green and Blue phos- phors. Red, Green and Blue are the primary colors for light. In 1968 the Sony Trinitron picture tube was a departure from the tradi- tional three-gun color picture tube. Three major changes to the old color tube created a distinctive Trinitron picture tube:

 1. Instead of three small electron guns, focus was improved using one large electron gun structure that all three beams pass through.
 2. Electrostatic convergence plates were added to bend the outer elec- tron beams so they would land on the corresponding red and blue color phosphor.
 3. A continuous vertical slotted aperture grill at the screen end that: • Reduces the effects of terrestrial magnetism. • Prevents adjacent and stray electrons from striking the wrong phos- phor. • Allows more electrons to pass, increasing brightness without short- ening life. • Results in a flat screen. This reduces annoying room light reflections (glare).

It has a single gun assembly with three cathodes mounted in line horizontally, a striped -phosphor screen, an aperture grill with vertical slots instead of the traditional type of shadowmask, and a faceplate with cylindrical rather than parabolic curvature. The Trinitron tube produces a very good display - some people, including the   Obsolete Technology Tellye ! - author, would say the best aven if some exceptions with the PHILIPS ERF Series. There are sound technical reasons for making this claim, for example the design of the large electron lens which provides excellent resolution. An advantage of the cylindrical in comparison with the traditional parabolic faceplate is the fact that most of the external light that falls on it is reflected away from instead of towards the viewer, thus improving the. contrast and reducing eye strain.
The Black Trinitron introduced a couple of years ago gives a further improvement in this respect (the faceplate has been darkened to a black colour). Since the first Trinitron tubes appeared in the UK in the late sixties there has not been a great deal of change in the design, though a number of improvements have been introduced. More recently we have had the Black Trinitron mentioned above and the Pan -focus gun which gives uniform focusing over the entire screen area, eliminating any need for dynamic focusing but further added in large screen models in the 70's and 80's and 90's.

NOTE: This is NOT the first 100HZ from SONY.

You can see the first 100HZ digital scan rate from SONY made in 1988 click Here !

Note that this set was never serviced before and I opened it for first time.

(Weights a TON of course)

About Screen Formats...............

It is difficult to know exactly what to make of the unfolding widescreen TV saga, which seems to be yet another example of failure to agree to a TV standard. Is it perhaps simply an attempt by the European TV industry to snatch a temporary advantage over Far Eastern manufacturers?
 Certainly it's the European tubemakers that have developed the technology. 
But if this is the case the question that has to be asked is whether widescreen TV is a further example of an attempt by technology rather than consumer demand to drive the market forwards? If so it could well be a mistake. People won't buy technology for the sake of it: they'll buy only what suits them. 

The 16:9 aspect ratio sets that have been announced so far are a mixed batch. Nokia has opted for 625 -line PAL, Thomson has opted for 1,250 -line PAL while Philips has decided on 625 -line PAL with a 100Hz field rate. Nokia feels that the wide screen is the important thing rather than any change to basic TV standards. The company points to the cost advantage of using a standard chassis to drive the new type of tube. But evenhere the wide screen presentation is seen as essentially a top of the range phenomenon. In this case why not go the whole hog? With a chassis that features digital signal processing, why not take advantage of the opportunity to improve the definition and get rid of flicker once and for all? There are arguments as to exactly how much better a picture you get for your money at higher timebase frequencies. 

What this seems to boil down to is that compromises, as always with TV, have to be accepted. The argument is over what compromise to accept. It's a rather pointless argument really and one can't help but feel that the motivation behind it is simply a matter of gaining marketing clout rather than achieving the best in good picture reproduction.
There is much to be said for the view that a well set up display using conventional technology and a decent aerial system, with no corner cutting in circuit design, will with the presently available transmissionsprovide as good a picture as any for the viewer rather than the technology buff. 

Representatives of the main Japanese manufacturers in the UK have been making disparaging comments about widescreen TV. The case was put forcibly by Mark Todd, Toshiba's marketing director. He hit the headlines with coments that widescreen TV was "premature" and "a joke", but rather more to the point he suggested that instead of buying a set that is "too big" and "too expensive" the consumer would be better off with a 34in. Nicam set featuring surround sound. 

The money saved could, he added, be invested in a building society. The debate has been clouded by dispute over what programming is available. At present it seems to be limited to a few tapes and Continental satellite channels transmitted in D2-MAC form. Not much really to justify lashing out on a set that costs a few thousand pounds. Since some rather rude remarks about the 16:9 picture format  have been somewhat severely taken to task over what is and what isn't a natural display based on the characteristics of human vision, in particular who quoted a considerable amount of research. 
The fact that human eyes are horizontally displaced, giving perception somewhat elongated in the horizontal plane compared to the vertical plane, looks a clincher. 
But this rather overlooks the reason for us having two eyes in the first place to achieve bifocalvision. The images from the two eyes are superimposed to give us a three-dimensional fieldof view. It's nothing to do with aspect ratio!
 The aspect ratio debate continues in actual times with minor noise and debate is been  gratified by some support amongst more recent observations from people.

It all arrived too late for this issue, but watch this space as they say. What does rather intrigue me in all this is whether sight is really a scientific matter. It is, of course, as a subject for study. But as an aspect of natural history it seems more akin to disciplines such as economics rather than pure science. 
Those who take an interest in the endless economic debate, with one plausible argument after another seeming to establish opposite points of view, will appreciate this. The problem of course is that you can't conduct conclusive experiments with the subject matter of economics. You can't say right, call a halt,  go back five years and see what happens if we alter the conditions. Anything of an historical nature can only be observed and, in a more or less helpful manner, explained. That seems to be the case with human perception. You can't experiment with different vision systems. You have to understand as best you can the one we've ended up with. However that may be, the TV industry is not doing itself any great favours with its continual change.  

To the 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios we now have a proposed compromise 14:9. It's not easy of course to arrive at decisions with absolute certainty. Technological evolution continuously and often suddenly shifts, and new possibilities have a habit of coming at times that are inconvenient for the standards decision makers. Perhaps we should give up worrying about TV standards and accept the fact that there have always been and always will be different ways of going about things, with various advantages and disadvantages. Let's just sit back and watch the thing unfold. It would be nice to take a relaxed view like that. But of course there's more at stake.
 Sets have to be manufactured to standards, broadcasters have to observe system parameters and, at ourend of things, the public has to be presented with a good case for buying what's available. It doesn'thelp the salesman to have to work in an atmosphere of   continuing uncertainty.

One more comment about digital in 2000..............

Over the years we have learnt that one of the most important things in video/ TV technology is selecting the best system to use. We have also seen how difficult this can be. Prior to the start of the colour TV era in Europe there was an great to-do about the best system to adopt. The US NTSC system seemed an obvious choice to start with. It had been proved in use, and refine- ments had been devised. But alternative, better solutions were proposed - PAL and Secam. PAL proved to be a great success, in fact a good choice. 

The French Secam system seems to have worked just as well. Apart from the video tape battles of the Seventies, the next really big debate concerned digital TV. When it came to digital terrestrial TV (DTT), Europe and the USA again adopted different standards. 

One major difference is the modulation system used for transmission. Coded orthogonal frequency   division multiplexing (COFDM) was selected for the European DVB system, while in the USA a system called 8VSB was adopted. COFDM uses quadrature amplitude modulation of a number of orthogonal carriers that are spread across the channel bandwidth. Because of their number, each carrier has a relatively low bit rate. 

The main advantage of the system is its excellent behaviour under multipath reception conditions. 8VSB represents a rather older,  pre phase modulation technoogy: eight  state amplitude modulation of a single carrier, with a vestigial sideband. The decision on the US system was assigned to the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), reporting to the FCC. The system it proposed was approved by the FCC on December 26th, 1996. The curious date might suggest that there had been a certain amount of politicking. In fact there had been an almighty row between the TV and computer industries about the video standard to adopt, the two fearing that one or other would gain an advantage as the technologies converged. It was 'resolved' by adopting a sort of   "open standard"  we are talking about resolution and scanning standards here - the idea apparently being that the technology would somehow sort itself out.

 There seems to have been rather less concern about the modulation standard. 8VSB was adopted because it was assumed to be able to provide a larger service area than the alternatives, including COFDM, for a given transmitter power. Well, the USA is a very large place! But the US TV industry, or at least some parts of it, is now having second thoughts. Once the FCC had made its decision, there was pressure to get on with digital TV. In early 1998 there were announce- ments about the start of transmissions and broadcasters assured the FCC that DTT would be available in the ten areas of greatest population concentration by May 1999. Rapid advances were expected, with an anticipated analogue TV switch -off in 2006. So far however things have not gone like that. At the end of 1999 some seventy DTI' transmitters were in operation, but Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association estimates suggest that only some 50,000 sets and 5,000 STBs had been sold.

 There have been many reports of technical problems, in particular with reception in urban and hilly areas and the use of indoor aerials, also with video/audio sync and other matters. Poor reception with indoor aerials in urban conditions is of particular concern: that's how much of the population receives its TV. The UK was the first European country to start DTI', in late 1998 - at much the same time as in the USA. The contrast is striking. ONdigital had signed up well over 500,000 subscribers by the end of 1999, a much higher proportion of viewers than in the USA. Free STBs have played a part of course, but it's notable that DTT 's reception in the UK has been relatively hassle -free. In making this comparison it should also be remembered that the main aim of DTT technology differs in Europe and the USA. 

The main concern in Europe has been to provide additional channels. In the USA it has been to move to HDTV, in particular to provide a successor the NTSC system. There have been plenty of channels in the USA for many a year. For example the DirecTV satellite service started in mid 1994 and offers some 200 channels. Internationally, various countries have been comparing the US and European digital systems. They have overwhelmingly come down in favour of the DVB system. There have been some very damaging assessments of the ATSC standard. The present concern in the US TV industry results from this poor domestic take up and lack of international success. Did the FCC make a boob, in particular in the choice of 8VSB? Following compara- tive tests carried out by Sinclair Broadcasting Group Inc., the company has petitioned the FCC to adopt COFDM as an option in the ATSC standard. Not only did its tests confirm poor reception with indoor aerials: they also established that the greater coverage predicted for 8VSB failed to materialise in practice. Could the USA have two DTT transmission standards? It seems unlikely. It would involve dual standard receivers and non  standardisation of transmitters. In the all important business of system selection, it looks as if the FCC got it wrong.

              ....................................   It is obviously wasteful to duplicate terrestrial TV transmissions in analogue and digital form. Sooner or later transmissions will all be digital, since this is a more efficient use of spectrum space. The question is when? It would suit some to switch off the analogue transmitters as soon as possible. 2006 has been suggested as a time to start, with ana- logue transmissions finally ending in 2010. All very neat and tidy. Whether it will work out in that way is another matter. Strong doubts are already beginning to be aired. 

 The government has, quite properly, laid down conditions to be met before the switch off occurs. Basically that the digital signal coverage should equal that achieved for analogue TV, currently 99.4 per cent of the population, and that digital receiving equipment should be available at an affordable price. The real problem is that there is a difference between a coverage of 99.4 per cent and 99.4 per cent of the population actually having digital receiving equipment. Why should those who are interested in only free - to -air channels go out and buy/rent a digital receiver? It is already becoming evident that this represents a fair chunk of the population. 

The ITC has warned the government that the 2006-2010 timetable is in jeopardy. Peter Rogers, the ITC's chief executive, has said "we need to persuade people only interested in watching free -to -air television to switch to digital. "

Unless we do, there will be no switch - over." Well not quite, because the analogue receivers will eventually wear out and have to be replaced. But that could take a long, long time. Meanwhile many people will expect to be able to continue to watch their usual TV fare using their existing analogue receivers. 

Research carried out by Culture Secretary Chris Smith's department has established that between forty and fifty per cent of the population expects the BBC licence to cover their TV viewing, which means what they get at present in analogue form. A substantial percentage of the population simply isn't interested in going digital. In fact take up of integrated receiver -decoders, as opposed to the free digital set -top boxes, has so far been very slow. 

Of five million TV sets sold in the UK year 1999 , only 10,000 were digital. There are important factors apart from overall coverage and how many people have sets. There is the extension of coverage, which becomes more difficult to achieve eco- nomically as the number of those not covered decreases. There is the problem of reception quality. And there is the question of domestic arrangements and convenience. Extending coverage to the last ten fifteen per cent of the population by means of conventional terrestrial transmitters will be expensive. Mr Smith's department seems to have conceded that other methods of signal delivery may have to be adopted - by satellite, by microwave links or by cable. The latter has of course never been economic where few households are involved. 

The frequency planners have been trying to find ways of increasing coverage even to well populated areas. There are so many areas where problems of one sort or another make the provision of DTT difficult. Satellite TV is the obvious solution. 

The time may well come when it is wondered why anyone bothered with DTT. Signal quality is becoming an increasingly important factor as the digital roll out continues. In areas where the signal is marginal, viewers could experience the extreme irritation of picture break up or complete loss like even todays. This is quite apart from the actual quality of the channel, which depends on the number of bits per second used. There is a maximum number of bits per multiplex, the total being shared by several channels. The fewer the bits, the poorer the picture in terms of definition and rendering. 

There have already been complaints about poor quality. The question of domestic arrangements is one that has not so far received adequate public attention. Most households 2000 nowadays don't have just one TV set that the family watches. They have a main one, probably, almost certainly one or more VCRs, and several other sets around the house to serve various purposes. What 'the percentage of households that have digital TV' should really mean is the percentage willing to replace all this equipment. It will be expensive, and people would not be happy if they were told to throw away their other equipment when they get a single nice new all  singing all dancing widescreen digital TV set. It fact there would be uproar. The move from analogue to digital is not like that from 405 to 625 lines, which went fairly smoothly.

In those days few people had video equipment or a multitude of sets. The transition to digital is not going to be smooth, and the suggestion of a switch off during 2006-2010 already looks totally unrealistic. Unless the government subsidises or gives away digital TV sets - and why should it? - people will expect their existing equipment to continue to be usable.  

So it's likely that analogue TV will be with us for many years yet. But that would be the end of analogue too. 

.............................Indeed...............................

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Sony Corporation (Sonī Kabushiki Gaisha) (TYO: 6758, NYSE: SNE), or commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or US$77.20 billion (FY2010).  Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its eight operating segments – Consumer Products & Devices (CPD), Networked Products & Services (NPS), B2B ; Disc Manufacturing (B2B & Disc), Pictures, Music, Financial Services, Sony Ericsson and All Other.  These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Ericsson, and Sony Financial. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders. Its founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka derived the name from sonus, the Latin word for sound, and also from the English slang word "sonny", since they considered themselves to be "sonny boys", a loan word into Japanese which in the early 1950s connoted smart and presentable young men. History Masaru Ibuka, the co-founder of Sony: In late 1945, after the end of World War II, Masaru Ibuka started a radio repair shop in a bomb-damaged department store building in Nihonbashi of Tokyo. The next year, he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K., (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The company built Japan's first tape recorder called the Type-G. In the early 1950s, Ibuka traveled in the United States and heard about Bell Labs' invention of the transistor.  He convinced Bell to license the transistor technology to his Japanese company. While most American companies were researching the transistor for its military applications, Ibuka and Morita looked to apply it to communications. Although the American companies Regency[disambiguation needed] and Texas Instruments built the first transistor radios, it was Ibuka's company that made them commercially successful for the first time. In August 1955, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo released the Sony TR-55, Japan's first commercially produced transistor radio.  They followed up in December of the same year by releasing the Sony TR-72, a product that won favor both within Japan and in export markets, including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Featuring six transistors, push-pull output and greatly improved sound quality, the TR-72 continued to be a popular seller into the early sixties. In May 1956, the company released the TR-6, which featured an innovative slim design and sound quality capable of rivaling portable tube radios. It was for the TR-6 that Sony first contracted "Atchan", a cartoon character created by Fuyuhiko Okabe, to become its advertising character. Now known as "Sony Boy", the character first appeared in a cartoon ad holding a TR-6 to his ear, but went on to represent the company in ads for a variety of products well into the mid-sixties.   The following year, 1957, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo came out with the TR-63 model, then the smallest (112 × 71 × 32 mm) transistor radio in commercial production. It was a worldwide commercial success.
  University of Arizona professor Michael Brian Schiffer, Ph.D., says, "Sony was not first, but its transistor radio was the most successful. The TR-63 of 1957 cracked open the U.S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics." By the mid 1950s, American teens had begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, helping to propel the fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units in 1955 to 5,000,000 units by the end of 1968. Sony's headquarters moved to Minato, Tokyo from Shinagawa, Tokyo around the end of 2006.
  Origin of name When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a romanized name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials, TTK. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TKK.
The company occasionally used the acronym "Totsuko" in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was "Tokyo Teletech" until Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name. The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word Sonus which is the root of "sonic" and "sound" and the other was "sonny," a familiar term used in 1950s America to call a boy.
The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955 but the company name did not change to Sony until January 1958. At the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition: TTK's principal bank at the time, Mitsui, had strong feelings about the name. They pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company name tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank's chairman gave their approval.

By Japanese standards Sony is a comparative newcomer. It started out in May 1946, recently celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Most of the major Japanese companies in the consumer electronics field were formed much earlier. Hitachi and Toshiba for example date from the nineteenth century, Matsuhsita from the early years of the twentieth century. During those fifty years however Sony's achievements have been second to none. Sony started operations as Tokyo Tsuchin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). Its aim was "to make unique products", and to "create and introduce technologies that larger companies cannot match". One of its earliest achievements was Japan's first reel-to-reel audio tape recorder, which was launched in 1950. The tape to go with it, also developed by the company, was called Soni-tape. In 1954 the company launched the first all -transistor radio to go into production anywhere. When, in the following year, it decided to start exporting, a simple brand name that would be easily recognised in any part of the globe was required. Sony was the obvious answer, and in 1958 the company changed its name to the Sony Corporation. The Sony Corporation of America was set up in 1960. Sony UK, in 1968, brought Sony to Europe. Innovation continued apace. In 1960 Sony launched the fast fully transistorised portable TV receiver. Five years later the first open -reel video tape recorder for domestic use was introduced. The Trinitron colour system arrived in 1968. It was incredible, though typical, that Sony should develop its own colour TV tube from scratch. While relying on the traditional three primary colour phosphors and a shadowmask, the phosphors were laid down in stripes, the mask became a shadow grille, the guns were arranged in -line and the faceplate became much flatter. This was to be the way tube development would go. The Betamax VCR system was introduced in 1975. It is today generally accepted that it was the best of its time. But, as with the Trinitron system, Sony wouldn't licence it to other manufacturers. That mistake led to its demise, and wasn't repeated. The 8nun video system, which has come to dominate the camcorder field, was launched by Sony ten years later, in 1985. Meanwhile Sony had had an extraordinary success with the Walkman portable audio system, which was launched in 1979. This is claimed to have been "the single best-selling consumer electronics product ever marketed". Sony kept up the pace of development, moving on to digital systems. The MiniDisc, capable of both record and playback, arrived in 1993. In 1995 Sony was first to launch a digital camcorder. A home DV recorder is due later this year, along with a device called the DV cap: this links a DV camera to a PC for editing and image manipulation. There have been a number of other significant developments in recent times. The highly successful PlayStation established Sony in the video games market. Sony is to introduce its first PC later this year, while "a true living -room computer" is promised for next year. Plasmatron large, flat screen TV sets are already available in Japan. DVD players are another imminent prospect. All in all it has been an extraordinary story, and Sony's position at the centre of electronics development looks set to continue indefinitely. The company has combined world -class R&D capabilities, manufacturing excellence, the ability to read and to create markets, and remarkable marketing skills. The UK's main CE innovator for a long time, Amstrad, makes a sorry contrast. For a time Amstrad couldn't do anything wrong. It came up with a string of innovative ideas and products, skillfully meeting and developing user requirements. Packaged audio, wordprocessors then an IBM PC clone. There were the combined TV/VCR units, then the video Double Decker. Amstrad was in and out of audio, video and TV, always with highly competitive products. The company came up with the first Sky package at under £200. But while it came up with products that met contemporary needs, it never seemed to take root and grow. We are now witnessing its final dismemberment. Psion, the hand-held computer manufacturer, is negotiating to take over Amstrad's digital telephone interests, which fit in with its own product development programme. Amstrad's loss - making consumer electronics interests are to be split between Betacom, an affiliated company, and a new company to be called Digicom Technology. The latter will take over Amstrad's analogue satellite business and inherit a small R&D operation. How did Sony succeed, starting out with twenty employees, no machinery and negligible capital, while Amstrad simply shuffles off stage? Because Amstrad never developed a comprehensive business strategy. It came up with bright ideas, subcontracted production, stocked up then walked away as soon as the market turned.

It's the tragic story of much of UK and European industry.

R.I.P. EUROPE.

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• Further reading

• Made in Japan by Akio Morita and Sony, HarperCollins (1994)^{[ISBN missing]}Sony: The Private Life by John Nathan, Houghton Mifflin (1999)^{[ISBN missing]}Sony Radio, Sony Transistor Radio 35th Anniversary 1955–1990 – information booklet (1990)^{[ISBN missing]}The Portable Radio in American Life by University of Arizona Professor Michael Brian Schiffer, PhD (The University of Arizona Press, 1991).The Japan Project: Made in Japan – a documentary about Sony's early history in the U.S. by Terry Sanders.^{[ISBN missing]}