NOT READY YET

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 89, 3 February 1947, Page 7

NOT READY YET

TELEVISION FOR N.Z.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES Television would not be practical in New Zealand for at least some years, states a Wellington report. Both the cost and the technical difficulties were at present prohibitive. In addition, as there was yet no world standard, equipment installed now could easily become obsolete in a short time. These were the views expressed by Mr W. D. Foster, technical editor of Radio and Electronics, in an address to the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Electronics Institute. Detailing the difficulties in electrical reproduction of pictures or images compared with the reproduction of sound, Mr Foster said a television transmitter could not give a programme even to the whole of Wellington city. Television .waves, travelling straight and on high frequencies, were obstructed by hills and buildings. Unless receivers were in direct line of sight of transmitters, no signal was received. The only way Wellington could be given coverage was by way of a system of unattended relay transmitters dotted about the hills. While the fundamental principles of the ■ English and American television systems were the same, Mr Foster said they differed in technical detail. It would be impossible to interchange receivers. Therefore programmes could not be interchanged until a world-wide standard had been laid down. This was one of the principal diffiiculties of introducing television into a small country like New Zealand. Commercial Use “Television is not just a novelty. It has a real entertainment value. This is proved by the fact that it is being used commercially in America,” Mr Foster went on. At the same time the number of transmitters was limited. In Britain there was only one television transmitter giving regular programmes, and the BBC was working to establish a second. As long as equipment was ex-, tremely costly programmes would be tremendously expensive, Mr Foster said. Plays would have to be rehearsed, dressed and produced to the full standard of stage shows. Thei'e would be only one performance of each play and no direct return from the box office. In America it cost 3,000,000 dollars a year for one tele-

vision station to put on a programme for three hours a night. There, as in England, the television transmitters were placed where they could serve very large populations within a radius of about 50 miles without loss of coverage by intervening hills and mountains.