Sony KDL-HX800

The Sony KDL-HX800 series is the company's least expensive to feature 3D compatibility.
(Credit: Sony)

Sony announced three series of 3D-compatible TVs at CES in January, and on Wednesday the company filled in the remaining details with pricing, availability, and a list of included 3D material. The principal throw-in is "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" on 3D Blu-ray, as well as vouchers for 3D games on the PS3.

Pricing, as with that of rivals Samsung and Panasonic, is pretty high. Sony's 3D models, all with LED backlights, start at 40 inches and $2,100 for the Sony KDL-40HX800. Samsung's least expensive LED-based 3D TV at that size is the UN40C7000 ($1,800), although the similarly-priced 50-inch Samsung PN50C7000 plasma and the non-LED-based 46-inch Samsung LN46C750 LCD (about $1500) both provide bigger screens for the buck. Panasonic, for its part, charges about $2,500 for its cheapest 3D TV, a 50-inch plasma known as the TC-P50VT25/TC-P50VT20.

One of the three Sony series, the flagship XBR-LX900, includes two pairs of the necessary 3D glasses, which is more than Panasonic (1 pair) and Samsung (zero pair). The other two, dubbed HX909 and HX800, require you to buy the glasses ($150 a pair--the same as Panasonic and Samsung) as well as a separate emitter to synch the glasses to the TV ($50--both Samsung and Panasonic build the emitters into their TVs).

Sony does offer the most extensive throw-in bundle of the three at the moment, at least for PS3 owners. According to the press release:

Consumers who purchase and register one of the new 3D Bravia models will receive a copy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's Blu-ray 3D title "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" as well as Blu-ray 3D title "Deep Sea." The sets will also include a PlayStation Network voucher enabling 3D BRAVIA purchasers to download stereoscopic 3D gaming experiences on the PlayStation3 (PS3) System (sold separately). The titles include Pain (partial game) and MotorStorm: Pacific Rift (demo) and full game downloads of WipEout HD and Super StarDust HD.

If you're keeping track, Panasonic's current 3D Blu-ray throw-in is either "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" or "Coraline"; while Samsung offers a "starter kit" with two pairs of glasses and "Monsters vs. Aliens" ($350, or free when you buy a BDP-C6900 Blu-ray player). Having played Super Stardust HD in 3D at CES, I can tell you it's the most satisfying 3D TV content I've experienced so far, so Sony's free offer could be compelling to people who don't care about childrens' animation (I am looking forward to "Coraline," though).

Content aside, the real question is how well Sony's sets deliver the 3D experience, something we don't know for sure until we've had a chance to review them. In the meantime here are Sony's 2010 3D TVs in a nutshell, including LED backlight schemes. All are available for preorder at the prices listed.

1970, FCC enacts the Financial Interest Syndication Rules

FCC enacts the Financial Interest Syndication Rules (effective 1971), prohibiting the three major networks from owning and controlling the rebroadcast of prime-time shows. The rules ended controversial policies of withholding or delaying network hits from independent stations that could then program them against network news and prime-time fare. In the same action, FCC enacts the Prime Time Access Rule, limiting the networks' use of peak viewing time to three hours per night. The rule effectively shaved off 30 minutes of prime-time programming from the networks each night and returned it to the local stations in the top 50 markets.

Action for Children's Television petitions the FCC to eliminate all commercials from children's TV programs, citing a variety of shortcomings in terms of quality and regulation of advertising. The petition fueled existing debate within the industry about advertising and children.

Coca-Cola's "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" commercial saturates the radio and broadcast airwaves, becoming an instant hit. Coca-Cola goes on to sell a million records featuring a non-commercial version of the popular jingle.

1959, 1960 June Allyson Show,

DuPont Co. begins a two-year sponsorship of the "June Allyson Show," a series of dramatic plays.

The first of four "great debates" between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon is broadcast on Sept. 26 across the country, breaking new ground in presidential campaigning.

The most popular shows of the year include "Gunsmoke" and "Wagon Train." Audience share figures regularly exceed 50% for many of the most popular entries in prime tim

The cartoon ad character Mister Magoo becomes the nearsighted spokesman for General Electric bulbs.

NBC's Sunday night hit "Bonanza" makes its debut. It becomes the highest-rated program of the 1960s and is on the air 14 years.

first color film

Kinemacolor was the first successful color motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith of Brighton, England in 1906. He was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson.^[1] It was launched by Charles Urban's Urban Trading Co. of London in 1908. From 1909 on, the process was known as Kinemacolor. It was a two-color additive color process, photographing and projecting a black-and-white film behind alternating red and cyan filters.

"How to Make and Operate Moving Pictures" published by Funk and Wagnalls in 1917 notes the following:

Of the many attempts to produce cinematograph pictures... the greatest amount of attention so far has been attracted by a system invented by George Albert Smith, and commercially developed by Charles Urban under the name of "Kinemacolor." In this system (to quote from Cassell's Cyclopædia of Photography, edited by the editor of this present book), only two colour filters are used in taking the negatives and only two in projecting the positives. The camera resembles the ordinary cinematographic camera except that it runs at twice the speed, taking thirty-two images per second instead of sixteen, and it is fitted with a rotating colour filter in addition to the ordinary shutter. This filter is an aluminium skeleton wheel... having four segments, two open ones, G and H; one filled in with red-dyed gelatine, E F; and the fourth containing green-dyed gelatine, A B. The camera is so geared that exposures are made alternately through the red gelatine and the green gelatine. Panchromatic film is used, and the negative is printed from in the ordinary way, and it will be understood that there is no colour in the film itself.^[2]

[edit] Premiere

The first motion picture exhibited in Kinemacolor was an eight-minute short filmed in Brighton titled A Visit to the Seaside, which was trade shown in September 1908. On 26 February 1909, the general public first saw Kinemacolor in a programme of twenty-one short films shown at the Palace Theater in London. The process was first seen in the United States on 11 December 1909, at an exhibition staged by Smith and Urban at Madison Square Garden in New York.^[3]

In 1910, Kinemacolor released the first dramatic film made in the process, Checkmated. The documentary film With Our King and Queen Through India (also known as The Durbar at Delhi, 1912) and the dramas The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1914), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1914) were the first three feature films made in color. Unfortunately, these latter two features were also among the last films released by Kinemacolor.

[edit] Success and decline

Kinemacolor projectors were eventually installed in some 300 cinemas in Britain, and 54 dramatic films were produced. Four dramatic short films were also produced by Kinemacolor in the United States in 1912–1913,^[4] and one in Japan, Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura (1914).

However, the company was never a success, partly due to the expense of installing special Kinemacolor projectors in cinemas. Also, the process suffered from "fringing" and "haloing" of the images, an insoluble problem as long as Kinemacolor remained a successive frame process. Kinemacolor in the U.S. became most notable for its Hollywood studio being taken over by D. W. Griffith, who also took over Kinemacolor's failed plans to film Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, which eventually became The Birth of a Nation (1915).

The first (additive) version of Prizma Color, developed by William Van Doren Kelley in the U.S. from 1913 to 1917, used some of the same principles as Kinemacolor. In the U.K., William Friese-Greene developed another additive colour system for film called Biocolour. However, in 1914 George Albert Smith sued Friese-Greene for infringing Kinemacolor's patents, slowing the development of Biocolour by Friese-Greene and his son Claude in the 1920s.

[edit] List of films made in Kinemacolor

• The Adopted Child (1911)
• Aldershot Views (1912)
• All's Well That Ends Well (1914)
• Alpes-Maritimes — Cascade de Courmes (1912)
• The Alps (1913)
• An American Invasion (1913)
• The Amorous Doctor (1911)
• Artillery Drill at West Point (1910)
• Atlantic City (1912)
• The Baby (1910)
• A Balkan Episode (1911)
• Band of Queen's Highlanders (1909)
• Big Waves at Brighton (1912)
• Biskra and the Sahara Desert (1910)
• The Blackmailer (1911)
• Boys Will Be Boys (1911)
• Brown's German Liver Cure (1911)
• The Bully (1910)
• The Burglar as Father Christmas (1911)
• Butterflies (1913)
• By Order of Napoleon (1910)
• By the Side of the Zuyder Zee (1912)
• Caesar's Prisoners (1911)
• Cairo and the Nile (1912)
• The Call of the Blood (1913)
• The Cap of Invisibility (1912)
• Carnival at Nice (1914)
• Carnival in Ceylon (1913)
• Carnival Scenes at Nice and Cannes (1909)
• Cart Horse Parade-May 31-Regent's Park (1912)
• Castles in the Air (1912)
• Cat Studies (1908)
• Charles Barnold's Dog and Monkey (1912)
• Checkmated (1911)
• Children Forming United States Flag at Albany Capitol (1912)
• Children's Battle of Flowers at Nice (1909)
• Choosing the Wallpaper (1910)
• A Christmas Spirit (1912)
• Church Parade of the 7th Hussars and 16th Lancers (1909)
• A Cingalese Fishing Village in Ceylon (1913)
• A Citizeness of Paris (1911)
• The Clown's Sacrifice (1911)
• Coney Gets the Glad Eye (1913)
• Coney as a Peacemaker (1913)
• Coronation of George V (1911)
• The Coster's Wedding (1910)
• The Crusader (1911)
• Dandy Dick of Bishopsgate (1911)
• A Detachment of Gordon Highlanders (1909)
• Detective Henry and the Paris Apaches (1911)
• A Devoted Friend (1911)
• Egypt (1910)
• Elevating an Elephant (1913)
• An Elizabethan Romance (1912)
• Entertaining Auntie (1913)
• Esther: A Biblical Episode (1911)
• The Explorers (1913)
• The Fall of Babylon (1911)
• Farm Yard Friends (1910)
• Fate (1911)
• Fifty Miles from Tombstone (1913)
• The Fisherman's Daughter (1911)
• Floral Fiends (1910)
• The Flower Girl of Florence (1911)
• Following Mother's Footsteps (1911)
• For the Crown (1911)
• A French Duel (1911)
• From Bud to Blossom (1910)
• From Factory Girl to Prima Donna (1911)
• The Funeral of Edward VII (1910)
• Galileo (1911)
• A Gambler's Villainy (1912)
• Ganges at Benares (1913)
• The General's Only Son (1911)
• George V's Visit to Ireland (1911)
• Gerald's Butterfly (1912)
• Girl Worth Having (1913)
• Gladioli (1913)
• Haunted Otter (1913)
• Hiawatha (1913)
• A Highland Lassie (1910)
• The Highlander (1911)
• His Brother's Keeper (1913)
• His Conscience (1911)
• His Last Burglary (1911)
• The House That Jack Built (1913)
• How to Live 100 Years (1913)
• The Hypnotist and the Convict (1911)
• Ice Cutting on the St. Lawrence River (1912)
• In Gollywog Land (1912)
• In the Reign of Terror (1911)
• Inaugurazione del Campanile di San Marco, Venice (1912)
• Incident on Brighton Beach (1909)
• Indiens sur le terrain M. A. A. A. (1910)
• The Inventor's Son (1911)
• The Investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon (1911)
• Italian Flower and Bead Vendors (1912)
• Italy (1910)
• Jack and the Beanstalk (1912)
• Jane Shore (1911)
• Japan (1913)
• Johnson at the Wedding (1911)
• Julius Caesar's Sandals (1911)
• Kinemacolor Fashion Gazette (1913)
• Kinemacolor Panama Pictures (1913)
• Kinemacolor Photo Plays (1913)
• Kinemacolor Puzzle (1909)
• Kinemacolor Songs (1911)
• The King and Queen on Their Way to Open the Victoria and Albert Museum (1912)
• The King of Indigo (1911)
• Kitty the Dressmaker (1911)
• Lady Beaulay's Necklace (1911)
• Lake Garda Northern Italy (1910)
• Launch of the S.S. Olympic (1912)
• The Letter (1909)
• Liquors and Cigars (1910)
• The Little Daughter's Letter (1911)
• Little Lady Lafayette (1911)
• Little Lord Fauntleroy (1914)
• The Little Picture Producer (1914)
• The Little Wooden Soldier (1912)
• The London Fire Brigade (1910)
• London Zoological Gardens (1910)
• Lost Collar Stud (1914)
• The Lost Ring (1911)
• Love and War in Toyland (1913)
• Love Conquers (1911)
• Love in a Cottage (1911)
• Love of Riches (1911)
• Love Story of Charles II (1911)
• Love's Strategy (1911)
• A Lucky Escape (1911)
• The Lust for Gold (1912)
• Magic Ring (1911)
• The Making of the Panama Canal (1912)
• The Marble Industry at Carrara Italy (1913)
• A Merry Monarch (1913)
• The Mighty Dollar (1912)
• The Millionaire's Nephew (1911)
• The Minstrel King (1912)
• Miscellaneous Flowers (1914)
• Mischievous Puck (1911)
• Mission Bells (1913)
• Modelling Extraordinary (1912)
• A Modern Hero (1911)
• The Modern Pygmalion and Galatea (1911)
• Motor and Yacht Boating in England (1910)
• Music Hath Charms (1911)
• Mystic Manipulations (1911)
• A Narrow Escape (1913)
• Nathan Hale (1913)
• Natural Color Portraiture (1909)
• Naval Review at Spithead (1910)
• Nell Gwynn the Orange Girl (1911)
• Nobility (1912)
• A Noble Heart (1911)
• Normal Melbourne (1912)
• Nubia, Wadi Halfa and the Second Cataract (1911)
• Oedipus Rex (1911)
• Ofia, the Woman Spy (1912)
• The Old Guitar (1912)
• The Old Hat (1910)
• Oliver Cromwell (1911)
• Only a Woman (1912)
• Other People's Children (1913)
• Pageant of New Romney, Hythe, and Sandwich (1910)
• Pagsanjan Falls (1911)
• Paris Fashions (1913)
• The Passions of an Egyptian Princess (1911)
• The Peasants and the Fairy (1911)
• Performing Elephants (1913)
• Phil Rees' Stable Lads (1912)
• Picking Strawberries (1910)
• Pisa Italy (1913)
• Pompeii (1912)
• Potomac Falls Virginia (1910)
• The Power of Prayer (1913)
• The Priest's Burden (1911)
• The Princess of Romana (1913)
• The Rabbits-Sheep-Carrots for the Donkey (1909)
• Rambles in Paris (1913)
• Reaping (1909)
• The Rebel's Daughter (1911)
• Representatives of the British Isles (1909)
• Reptiles (1912)
• Review of Troops by George V (1910)
• Revues des Boy Scouts a Montreal (1910)
• The Richmond Horse Show (1910)
• The Rivals (1913)
• Riviera Coast Scenes (1909)
• Riviera Fisher Folk (1909)
• Robin Hood (1913)
• A Romance of the Canadian Wilds (1910)
• Romani the Brigand (1912)
• Royal Ascot (1912)
• A Run with the Exmoor Staghounds (1912)
• Sailing and Motor Boat Scenes at Southwick (1909)
• Samson and Delilah (1911)
• Santa Claus (1913)
• Saved From the Titanic (1912) (only two scenes were filmed in Kinemacolor)
• The Scarlet Letter (1913)
• Scenes a Montreal comprenant le Gymkhana (1910)
• Scenes in Algeria (1910)
• Scenes on the Mediterranean (1913)
• A Scrap of Paper (1913)
• A Seaside Comedy (1912)
• The Silken Thread (1911)
• Simpkin's Dream of a Holiday (1911)
• Small Game at the Zoo (1912)
• Soldiers' Pet (1909)
• Spreewald (1913)
• St. John the Baptist (1912)
• Stage Struck (1913)
• Steam (1910)
• The Story of the Orange (1913)
• The Story of the Wasp (1914)
• Strange Mounts (1912)
• Suffragette's Parade in Washington, D.C. (1913)
• The Sugar Industry of Jamaica (1913)
• Sunset on the Nile (1913)
• Swank and the Remedy (1911)
• Swans (1909)
• Sweet Flowers (1909)
• Tartans of Scottish Clans (1906)
• Telemachus (1911)
• Three Cape Girls (1912)
• The Tide of Fortune (1912)
• Theodore Roosevelt (1912)
• There Is a God (1913)
• Tobogganing in Switzerland (1913)
• La Tosca (1911) with Lillian Russell based on the play by Victorien Sardou
• A Tragedy of the Olden Times (1911)
• Trilby and Svengali (1911)
• A Trip Up Mount Lowe USA (1913)
• A True Briton (1912)
• Two Can Play at the Same Game (1911)
• The Two Chorus Girls (1911)
• Two Christmas Hampers (1911)
• Two Clowns (1906)
• The Two Rivals (1912)
• Uncle's Picnic (1911)
• The Unveiling of the Queen Victoria Memorial (1911)
• The Vandal Outlaws (1912)
• Venice and the Grand Canal (1910)
• The Vicissitudes of a Top Hat (1912)
• View of Brighton Front (1909)
• A Visit to Aldershot (1909)
• A Visit to the Seaside (1908)
• Visite de son Altesse Royale le Duc de Connaught a Montreal (1910)
• Voyage de Liverpool a Vancouver via Montreal (1910)
• Washington's Home and Grounds at Mount Vernon (1910)
• Water Carnival at Villefranche-sur-Mer (1909)
• Waves and Spray (1909)
• William Howard Taft (1912)
• William Tell (1914)
• Winter in Moscow (1913)
• Winter Sports at Are (1913)
• With Our King and Queen Through India (The Durbar at Delhi) (1912)
• The Wizard and the Brigands (1911)
• Women Draped in Patterned Handkerchiefs (1908)
• The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1914)
• Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura (Japan, 1914)

first color TV

CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS) is a major American television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of the company's logo. It has also been called the "Tiffany Network", which alludes to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of its founder William S. Paley (1901–90).^[1] It can also refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in a former Tiffany & Co. building in New York City in 1950,^[2] thus earning it the name "Color broadcasting system" back when such a feat was innovative.

The network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc., a collection of 16 radio stations that was bought by William S. Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System.^[3] Under Paley's guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States and then one of the big three American broadcast television networks. In 1974, CBS dropped its full name and became known simply as CBS, Inc. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired the network in 1995 and eventually adopted the name of the company it had bought to become CBS Corporation. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which coincidentally had begun as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom split itself and reestablished CBS Corporation with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation and the new Viacom are controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, the parent of the two companies.

Electromechanical television

The beginnings of mechanical television can be traced back to the discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith in 1873, the invention of a scanning disk by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in 1884 and John Logie Baird's demonstration of televised moving images in 1926.

As 23-year-old German university student, Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1884.^[1] Although he never built a working model of the system, variations of Nipkow's spinning-disk "image rasterizer" for television became exceedingly common, and remained in use until 1939.^[2] Constantin Perskyi had coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on August 25, 1900. Perskyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others.^[3] The photoconductivity of selenium and Nipkow's scanning disk were first joined for practical use in the electronic transmission of still pictures and photographs, and by the first decade of the 20th century halftone photographs, composed of equally spaced dots of varying size, were being transmitted by facsimile over telegraph and telephone lines as a newspaper service.^[4]

However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology, by Lee DeForest and Arthur Korn among others, made the design practical.^[4] The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of still silhouette images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909, using a rotating mirror-drum as the scanner and a matrix of 64 selenium cells as the receiver.^[5]

In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a television system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the "Braun tube" (cathode ray tube or "CRT") in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy".^[6]

On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge's Department Store in London.^[7] AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted halftone still images of transparencies in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Francis Jenkins transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.^[8][9]

However, if television is defined as the live transmission of moving images with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking, Baird had not yet achieved moving images on October 2. His scanner worked at only five images per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion, usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second. Then he gave the world's first demonstration of a working television system to members of the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter on January 26, 1926 at his laboratory in London. Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disk embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face.^{[citation needed]}

In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow. In 1928, Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and the first shore-to-ship transmission. He also demonstrated an electromechanical color, infrared (dubbed "Noctovision"), and stereoscopic television, using additional lenses, disks and filters. In parallel, Baird developed a video disk recording system dubbed "Phonovision"; a number of the Phonovision recordings, dating back to 1927, still exist.^[10] In 1929, he became involved in the first experimental electromechanical television service in Germany. In November of the same year, Baird and Bernard Natan of Pathe established France's first television company, Télévision-Baird-Natan. In 1931, he made the first outdoor remote broadcast, of the Epsom Derby.^[11] In 1932, he demonstrated ultra-short wave television. Baird's electromechanical system reached a peak of 240 lines of resolution on BBC television broadcasts in 1936 though the mechanical system did not scan the televised scene directly. Instead a 35 mm film was shot, rapidly developed and then scanned while the film was still wet. This intermediate film system was discontinued within three months in favor of a 405-line all-electronic system developed by Marconi-EMI.^[12]

On December 25, 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a television system with a 40-line resolution that employed a Nipkow disk scanner and CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan. This protype is still on display at the Takayanagi Memorial Museum in Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu Campus. His research in creating a production model were halted by the US after Japan lost World War II.^[14]

Mechanical scanning systems, though obsolete for the more familiar television systems, nevertheless survive in long wave infra red cameras because there is no suitable all-electronic pickup device.^{[citation needed]}