Color television in the context of "Colors"

Color (or colour in Commonwealth English) is the visual perception produced by the activation of the different types of cone cells in the eye caused by light. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorption, emission, reflection and transmission. For most humans, visible wavelengths of light are the ones perceived in the visible light spectrum, with three types of cone cells (trichromacy). Other animals may have a different number of cone cell types or have eyes sensitive to different wavelengths, such as bees that can distinguish ultraviolet, and thus have a different color sensitivity range. Animal perception of color originates from different light wavelength or spectral sensitivity in cone cell types, which is then processed by the brain.

Colors have perceived properties such as hue, colorfulness, and lightness. Colors can also be additively mixed (mixing light) or subtractively mixed (mixing pigments). If one color is mixed in the right proportions, because of metamerism, they may look the same as another stimulus with a different reflection or emission spectrum. For convenience, colors can be organized in a color space, which when being abstracted as a mathematical color model can assign each region of color with a corresponding set of numbers. As such, color spaces are an essential tool for color reproduction in print, photography, computer monitors, and television. Some of the most well-known color models and color spaces are RGB, CMYK, HSL/HSV, CIE Lab, and YCbCr/YUV.

Terrestrial television, or over-the-air television (OTA) is a type of television broadcasting in which the content is transmitted via radio waves from the terrestrial (Earth-based) transmitter of a TV station to a TV receiver having an antenna. The term terrestrial is more common in Europe and Latin America, while in Canada and the United States it is called over-the-air or simply broadcast. This type of TV broadcast is distinguished from newer technologies, such as satellite television (direct broadcast satellite or DBS television), in which the signal is transmitted to the receiver from an overhead satellite; cable television, in which the signal is carried to the receiver through a cable; and Internet Protocol television, in which the signal is received over an Internet stream or on a network utilizing the Internet Protocol. Terrestrial television stations broadcast on television channels with frequencies between about 52 and 600 MHz in the VHF and UHF bands. Since radio waves in these bands travel by line of sight, reception is generally limited by the visual horizon to distances of 64–97 kilometres (40–60 miles), although under better conditions and with tropospheric ducting, signals can sometimes be received hundreds of kilometers distant.

Terrestrial television was the first technology used for television broadcasting. The BBC began broadcasting in 1929 and by 1930 many radio stations had a regular schedule of experimental television programmes. However, these early experimental systems had insufficient picture quality to attract the public, due to their mechanical scan technology, and television did not become widespread until after World War II with the advent of electronic scan television technology. The television broadcasting business followed the model of radio networks, with local television stations in cities and towns affiliated with television networks, either commercial (in the US) or government-controlled (in Europe), which provided content. Television broadcasts were in greyscale (called black and white) until the transition to color television in the 1960s.

Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. In the 2000s it was represented as the first significant evolution in television technology since color television in the 1950s. Modern digital television is transmitted in high-definition television (HDTV) with greater resolution than analog TV. It typically uses a widescreen aspect ratio (commonly 16:9) in contrast to the narrower format (4:3) of analog TV. It makes more economical use of scarce radio spectrum space; it can transmit up to seven channels in the same bandwidth as a single analog channel, and provides many new features that analog television cannot. A transition from analog to digital broadcasting began around 2000. Different digital television broadcasting standards have been adopted in different parts of the world; below are the more widely used standards:

• Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) uses coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and supports hierarchical transmission. This standard has been adopted in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, for a total of approximately 60 countries.
• Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) standard uses eight-level vestigial sideband (8VSB) for terrestrial broadcasting. This standard has been adopted by 9 countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Bahamas, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Suriname.
• Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB) is a system designed to provide good reception to fixed receivers and also portable or mobile receivers utilizing OFDM and two-dimensional interleaving. It supports hierarchical transmission of up to three layers and uses MPEG-2 video and Advanced Audio Coding. This standard has been adopted in Japan and the Philippines. ISDB-T International is an adaptation of this standard using H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, which has been adopted in most of South America as well as Botswana and Angola. 1seg (1-segment) is a special form of ISDB. Each channel is further divided into 13 segments. Twelve are allocated for HDTV and the other for narrow-band receivers such as mobile televisions and cell phones.
• Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcast (DTMB) adopts time-domain synchronous (TDS) OFDM technology with a pseudo-random signal frame to serve as the guard interval (GI) of the OFDM block and the training symbol. The DTMB standard has been adopted in China, including Hong Kong and Macau.
• Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) is a digital radio transmission technology developed and adopted in South Korea as part of the national information technology project for sending multimedia such as TV, radio and datacasting to mobile devices such as mobile phones, laptops and GPS navigation systems.

John Logie Baird FRSE (/ˈloʊɡi bɛərd/; 13 August 1888 – 14 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first mechanical television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube.

In 1928, the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission. Baird's early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television's history.

NTSC (from National Television System Committee) was the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1957, the EIA defined NTSC performance standards in EIS-170 (also known as RS-170). In 1961, the color version of NTSC was designated NTSC-M by the CCIR, with the Japanese variant, which used a somewhat different color implementation, designated NTSC-J.

In 1953, a second NTSC standard was adopted, which allowed for color television broadcast compatible with the then existing stock of black-and-white receivers. It was one of three major color formats for analog television, the others being PAL and SECAM. NTSC color was usually associated with the System M; this combination was sometimes called NTSC II. The only other broadcast television system to use NTSC color was the System J. Brazil used System M with PAL color. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos used System M with SECAM color. Vietnam later switched to PAL in the early 1990s.

RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was a major American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1987. Initially, RCA was a patent trust owned by a partnership of General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company. It became an independent company in 1932 after the partners agreed to divest their ownerships in settling an antitrust lawsuit by the United States.

An innovative and progressive company, RCA was the dominant electronics and communications firm in the United States for over five decades. In the early 1920s, RCA was at the forefront of the mushrooming radio industry, both as a major manufacturer of radio receivers and as the exclusive manufacturer of the first superheterodyne receiver. In 1926, the company founded the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the first nationwide radio network. During the '20s and '30s RCA also pioneered the introduction and development of broadcast television—both black and white and especially color television. Throughout most of its existence, RCA was closely identified with the leadership of David Sarnoff. He became general manager at the company's founding, served as president from 1930 to 1965, and remained active as chairman of the board until the end of 1969.

CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, the Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network and the flagship property of the CBS Entertainment Group division of Paramount Skydance. It is one of Paramount Skydance's three flagship subsidiaries, along with partial namesake Paramount Pictures and MTV.

Founded in 1927, headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City and being part of the "Big Three" television networks, CBS has major production facilities and operations at the CBS Broadcast Center and One Astor Plaza (both also in that city) and Television City and the CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles. It is sometimes referred to as the Eye Network, after the company's trademark symbol of an eye (which has been in use since October 20, 1951), and also the Tiffany Network, which alludes to the perceived high quality of its programming during the tenure of William S. Paley (and can also refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in the former Tiffany and Company Building in New York City in 1950).