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Terrestrial television is the traditional method of television broadcast signal delivery, by radio waves. Terrestrial television broadcasting dates back to the very beginnings of television as a medium itself with the first long distance public television broadcast from Washington, DC on April 7, 1927. In fact, there was virtually no other method of television delivery until the 1950s with the advent of cable television, or community antenna television (CATV). The first non-terrestrial method of delivering television signals that in no way depended on a signal originating from a traditional terrestrial source began with the use of communications satellites during the 1960s and 1970s.In the United States and most of North America, terrestrial television underwent a revolutionary transformation with the eventual acceptance of the NTSC standard for color television broadcasts in 1953. Later, Europe and the rest of the worldIn English, World is rooted in a compound of the obsolete words were man, and eld age; thus, its oldest meaning is "Age of Man. World can refer to the domain of discourse, but it can also mean many other things: Physical locations dymaxion map World is of either chose between the later PALFor other meanings of "PAL" see PAL (disambiguation). PAL short for Phase Alternating Line Phase Alternation by Line or for Phase Alternation Line is a colour encoding used in broadcast television systems, used throughout the world except in most of the A and SECAMSECAM Sequentiel Couleur avec Memoire French for "sequential color with memory") is an analog color television system first used in France. SECAM has been invented by a team lead by Henri de France and working at Thomson. It is historically the first Euro color television standards, or adopted NTSC.
In addition to the threat from CATV, analog terrestrial television is now also subject to competition from satellite televisionSatellite television is television delivered by way of orbiting communications satellites located 37,000 km (22,300 miles) above the earth's surface. The first satellite television signal was relayed from Europe to the Telstar satellite over North America and distribution of video and film content over the InternetThis article is about the Internet the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking''. WWW information network structu. The technology of digital terrestrial televisionDigital Terrestrial Television DTTV or DTT is an implementation of Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) technology to provide a greater number of channels, and digital quality of sound and picture, through a conventional aerial instead of a satellite dish or has been developed as a response to these challenges. The rise of digital terrestrial television, especially HDTVHigh-definition television HDTV means broadcast of television signals with a higher resolution than traditional formats ( NTSC, SECAM, PAL) allow. Except for the early analog HDTV format in Japan, its introduction coincides with that of digital television, may mark an end to the decline of broadcast television reception via traditional receiving Antennas, which can receive over-the-air HDTV signals.
In North America, terrestrial broadcast television operates on TV channels 2 through 6 (VHF-low band, known as band I in Europe), 7 through 13 (VHF-high band, known as band III elsewhere), and 14 through 69 (UHF television band, elsewhere bands IV and V). Channel numbers represent actual frequencies used to broadcast the television signal. Additionally, television translators and boosters can be used to rebroadcast a terrestrial TV signal using an otherwise unused channel to cover areas with marginal reception. A chart showing the North American television bandplan can be found here.
In the UK, UHF frequencies were first used in 1964 with the introduction of BBC2. Television broadcasting on VHF frequencies was discontinued in 1983.
