Perhaps the first recording of television on disc occurred in the 1920s, when John Logie Baird transcribed his crude 30-line signals onto 78-rpm phonograph records. Baird’s Phonovision was not a commercial product, and indeed he never developed a means to play back the recorded signal. A more sophisticated system was introduced commercially in 1981 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The RCA VideoDisc, which superficially resembled a long-playing phonograph record, was 300 mm (12 inches) in diameter and had spiral grooves that were read by a diamond stylus. The stylus had a metal coating and moved vertically in a hill-and-dale groove etched into the disc, thereby creating a variable capacitance effect between the stylus and a metallic coating under the groove. The marketing philosophy of the VideoDisc was that consumers would want to watch videos in the same way they listened to phonograph recordings. However, the discs could not be recorded upon—a fatal flaw, because the VCR had been introduced only a few years earlier. RCA withdrew its disc from the market in 1984.

An optical video disc was developed by Philips in the Netherlands and was brought to market in 1978 as the LaserDisc. The LaserDisc was a 300-mm plastic disc on which signals were recorded as a sequence of variable-length pits. During playback the signals were read out with a low-power laser that was focused by a lens to form a tiny spot on the disc. Variations in the amount of light reflected from the track of pits were sensed by a photodetector, and electronic circuitry translated the light signals into video and audio signals for the television receiver. By using optical technology, the LaserDisc avoided the physical wear-and-tear problems of phonograph-type video discs. It also offered very good image quality and achieved limited success with consumers as a high-quality alternative to the home VCR. However, like the RCA VideoDisc it could not be recorded upon, and its analog representation of the video signal prevented it from offering the interactive capabilities of the emerging digital technologies.

A new approach to optical video recording is represented by the digital video disc (DVD)—also known as the digital versatile disc—introduced by Sony and Philips in 1995. Like the LaserDisc, the DVD is read by a laser, but it utilizes MPEG compression to store a digitized signal on a disc the same size as the audio compact disc (120 mm, or 4.75 inches). Programs recorded on DVD offer multiple languages and interactive access. DVD is truly a multiple-use platform, in the sense that the same technology is used in personal computers as an improved form of CD-ROM with much greater storage capacity.

Special techniques

Many variations of the basic techniques of recording television program material were developed in sports telecasting. The first to be introduced was the “instant replay” method, in which a magnetic recording is made simultaneously with the live-action pickup. When a noteworthy episode occurs, the live coverage is interrupted and the recording is broadcast, followed by a switch back to live action. Often the recording is made from a camera viewing the action from a different angle. Other variations include the slow-motion and stop-action techniques, in which magnetic recording plays the basic role. The magnetic recordings for these kinds of temporary storage are usually made on rotating discs.

Use has been made, particularly in sports broadcasting, of split-screen techniques and the related methods of inserting a portion of the image from another camera into an area cut out from the main image. These techniques employ an electronic switching circuit that turns off the signal circuit of one camera for a portion of several line scans while simultaneously turning on the signal circuit of another camera, the outputs of the two cameras being combined before the signal is broadcast. The timing of the electronic switch is adjusted to blank out, on successive line scans of the first camera, an area of the desired size and shape. The timing may be shifted during the performance and the area changed accordingly. One example of this technique is the wipe, which removes the image from one camera while inserting the image from another, with a sharp, moving boundary between them.

The technology and techniques of interactive computer graphics are used to create the graphics and text broadcast over television, particularly in news and weather programs. The material created using the computer is stored in a temporary buffer memory, from which it is then converted into the scanned version needed to be inserted into the television picture. Many of the animated main titles for television programs are created on computers and involve sophisticated shading, colouring, and other effects.

Flying spot scanner

A form of television pickup device, used to record images from film transparencies, either still or motion-picture, is the flying spot scanner. The light source is a cathode-ray tube (CRT) in which a beam of electrons, deflected in the standard scanning pattern, produces a spot on the fluorescent phosphor surface. The light from this spot is focused optically on the surface of the photographic film transparency to be recorded. As the image of the spot moves, it traces out a scanning line across the film, and the amount of light emerging from the other side of the film at each point is determined by the degree of transparency of the film at that point. The emerging light is focused onto a photoelectric cell, which produces a current proportional to the light entering it.

This current thus takes on a succession of values proportional to the successive values of film density along each line in the scanning pattern; in other words, it is the picture signal current. No storage action occurs, so the light from the CRT must be very intense and the optical design very efficient to secure noise-free reproduction. If an optical immobilizer is used, the flying spot system may be used with motion-picture film, as described below.