Zap to the future

Television is a slow form of technology that hasn’t evolved in years. Until now, because television is not just changing channel but also medium, says Rachel Agius.

If you were born any time after the 1950s, then like a faithful nanny, television has kept you company as you grew up. For parents, television must have been a blessing, keeping the children quiet until dinner time.

For children, it was this amazing new invention that showed cartoons on Saturday mornings – of course, this meant your parents could never sleep in past six in the morning on weekends unless they taught you how to fiddle around with the controls.

Things have changed since then, but not by much. And that’s strange because other forms of technology have evolved at breakneck speed.

Take mobile phones, for instance – from the early, self-defence monsters (one can easily imagine clocking an assailant on the head with the portable monster and then using it to call the police), mobile phones have become slender, touch-screen feats of design, micro-technology and processing power that is either on the wish list or in the pocket of almost anyone in the developed world.

In 38 years, mobile phones have infiltrated language, social relationships, economy, workplace, home and life with startling alacrity.

Looking at television’s timeline, one has to admit its journey to its current form has been rather conservative. Its earliest scientific concepts were being explored as early as 1878 and these discoveries were considered to be analogous to the telephone; a long-distance transmission of data that took the shape of light instead of sound.

The first televisions available to the public made their debut at the 1939 New York World’s Fair but the outbreak of World War II suspended large scale production.

In 1948, the first network programming began in the US. From then on, television occupied a very special place in pop culture. But despite some technical changes (such as the transition from black and white to colour broadcasting in 1953), television as we imagine it today, in all its high definition, flat-screen, surround-sound glory only came into existence in 1998, with the first units selling for a staggering $8,000.

Recently, 3D television has made something of a splash in the gadget geek community. Three-dimensional technology has been around since the 1950s, when charming Americana productions like Bwana Devil startled cinemagoers through a pair of odd-coloured glasses.

IMAX replaced the earliest polarising technique with an eclipse system (in itself a clever manipulation of image, light and human retinal behaviour) and brought 3D cinema to a whole new level.

The next step was to bring that cinema experience right into the living room, a challenge producers like Sony gladly accepted and overcame.

In 2010, Toshiba took the concept even further. So far, the 3D experience went hand in hand with the silly glasses, which are uncomfortable to wear, especially if you need prescription lenses to be able to see the remote, let alone the television screen.

Toshiba took one look at those glasses, tossed them aside (metaphorically speaking) and began working on a no-glasses alternative to 3D. While this has been revealed in Japan and was due to feature in the US at the beginning of this year, no word yet on when the average Joe can get his hands on one.

The sense of urgency propelling the consumer electronics market is also affecting the content and context of the television we watch. Anything from smartphones to personal music players to being able to order a pizza online is driven by the mantra of “I want that and I want it now”.

One doesn’t have to wait to get home to make a phone call or for a favourite song to play on the radio. One buys it online instantly. Television has also climbed onto the instant gratification bandwagon. With services like Boxee, Amazon on Demand, Netflix and Apple TV, long gone are the days when you have to go to the video rental shop to get a copy of your favourite flick.

With an internet connection and a television screen, you have hundreds of titles to choose from without having to get out of your pyjamas. At least in theory. The local lack of access to television on demand services is not in fact an issue created by local authorities but by EU legislation.

Mandy Calleja, for the Malta Communications Authority, explains that the MCA does not have control over content accessed through the internet but only over the provision of the internet service itself.

“The primary role of the authority is to ensure these services are available to all on a competitive basis, at affordable rates and appropriate quality. The MCA is now focusing its efforts on the quality of broadband services,” she says.

The social element of watching television has also been the subject of technologically fuelled change. I remember gathering around the TV set, schedule in hand, with the family, waiting eagerly for the film after the 6 p.m. news.

Sometimes the schedule was inaccurate and the film wouldn’t show – then my parents had to quickly think of something to do because no one really wanted to watch a documentary about palm weevils, and disappointed children are a notoriously difficult crowd.

This dependence on the whims of the broadcasting entity is also becoming a thing of the past. Films can be downloaded (through fair means or foul) and stored. They can be transferred onto an iPod, phone, laptop or tablet and can be watched whenever and as often as one likes.

Malcolm Briffa, head of PR and Strategic Projects at Melita, says that across the world, television services are moving towards a more interactive and multi-platform product.

Melita already offers High Definition content and provides analogue, digital and High Definition television services as well as PVR (pause, play, rewind) services.

“The focus in the near future will be on the personalisation of the customers’ experience and on delivering that personalisation in a way that is consistent and easy to use. In the near future we will also see more interaction between devices, with content being available on multiple platforms, such as a smartphone, a television set, a tablet and more,” Mr Briffa says.

Go representative John Agius believes the viewer-television relationship is changing.

“A major change over the past few years has been that from analogue to digital, which brought along the introduction of the Electronic Programme Guide. Rather than zapping endlessly through channels and trying to decipher what programme is going on by watching it for a few seconds, a viewer now zaps through the EPG content of an extensive channel list and then decides to tune into that channel,” Mr Agius explains. “Viewers are therefore gradually expecting their TV sets to interact with them and this is an important shift in the viewer-technology relationship.”

Some might point out that watching television has undergone a transition from being a collective experience to an individual one. Ardent sports fans would probably find fault with that last statement.

There is still a strong sense of community and camaraderie when sports fans congregate to cheer their teams. But for other content, such as documentaries and episodes of popular series, companions are optional.

This might also be down to the fact that nowadays, anyone over 12 has a computer and when the television is occupied, they can still watch their programme of choice.

While this eliminates potential arguments, it also removes one more opportunity for compromise and communication – two important skills that are beginning to wane in our homes and communities.

Whether you need to unwind, get informed, get motivated or just while away the time, television is here to stay. But with the technology, which is just beginning to unfurl its potential, the ways and means of watching television are bound to change

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