Little People, Big Show

If you haven’t had a chance to catch the TLC channel’s reality television show entitled “Little People, Big World” you’re missing out on big entertainment. This TLC series that debuted in March of 2006, and is now currently in its fourth season on DirecTV’s channel 280 (or 1280 for the handy Video On Demand version), and is about a special family of six, of which half its members have dwarfism. . The parents Matt and Amy, as well as one child, Zach, are little people, whereas the other three children, Jeremy, Jacob, and Molly are all of average height.

Throughout the series, the viewer gets to see the daily lives of the Roloff family, who live on a fully functional thirty four acre pumpkin farm in Helvetia, Oregon. Since the success of “Little People, Big World”, Roloff Farms has seen such an increase in visitor traffic (30,000 visitors during the 2006 pumpkin season alone) that Washington County had to temporarily shut down the roadway that was leading to gridlock.

One of the most original aspects of this show is that while it deals with the daily challenges of everyday life for the little people in the Roloff family, it doesn’t feel exploitative or opportunistic. There’s your typical family drama, regarding finances, children being children and shopping excursions as well. Although the little people in the family have to do things slightly different than full sized folks, you won’t hear them complain.

In late October of 2006, Jacob Roloff and his friend were both severely injured in a farming related accident that resulted in high-risk surgery for Jacob to remove a small piece of skull from his brain when a pumpkin-launching machine discharged early.

Although camera crews did not catch the incident, the moments that followed the accident led to one of the most nail-biting season finale situations on DirecTV. Although Jacob and his friend both recovered fully, the event was one in many exciting events on this well-rounded show that you shouldn’t miss.

TV Does Color (Part 2)

In the first part of this article, we discussed the early beginnings and efforts of a few companies like RCA and CBS to establish a color standard to be broadcast on TVs in living rooms across the country.

After failed efforts at rudimentary coloring of black and white broadcasts, the public continued to buy black and white TVs. There wasn’t a lot of public interest in color television shows, at least not enough for RCA to continue their ongoing feud with the FCC to come to some agreement or ruling on color for TV standards. And during this time, RCA’s rival, CBS kept stumbling in their efforts to broadcast an effective and satisfying color system to the masses.

Flash forward a few years later to post-war 1946. RCA has finally developed and presented a type of color receiver that was compatible with existing standards, and was comprised of three separate picture tubes for each primary color (cyan, magenta and yellow). Lacking all the technology we have today regarding blur correction, the picture of this system seemed to suffer during video movement. This left many at a loss, despite the presence of bright colors finally.

Seven years later, the FCC finally came to implement a standard for broadcasting color TV. Both RCA and CBS did their best respectively to woo the FCC into choosing their systems, but the FCC surprised many and went with RCA. It was also a surprise when, in 1950, the FCC reversed their prior decision and decided to adopt CBS’s color standard. Lawsuits ensue and RCA loses, leaving CBS time to being producing millions color TV sets.

Strangely enough, the extension of the Korean War led CBS to stop producing color television shows and TVs alike. RCA got the help of the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) to believe in their proprietary color standards. This led the FCC to reverse their decision again, siding with RCA’s system compatibility.

On January 1st, 1954, the Tournament of Roses Parade was the first country-wide full color broadcast, brought to you on television sets made by such manufacturers as General Electric, Philco, and of course, RCA. Color blossomed on the TV sets of everyone across the land, and the rest, as they say, is history.

To see all of your shows and movies in the brilliant color capable by today’s technology, check out DirecTV! They provide the most channels in high definition so that you can get the best performance possible (and your money’s worth) from your modern television.

TV Does Color – A History Lesson

With all the talk these days about HDTV, flat screen TVs, satellite TV, video games and a myriad of other television related topics, its easy to forget the humble days of black and white television. With this article, I’d like to briefly explain how we got to this world of beautifully vivid color that is today’s modern TV.

Black and white television had not been around for very long before color TV came to be, but not before many failed attempts in the early 40s by a few overseas companies and some corporations like RCA. RCA developed a technique that involved broadcasting the television images separated into the three primary colors, cyan, magenta and yellow, through spinning filters transposed upon the original black and white image, rendering a colored but not truly color, video.

At the same time, rival company CBS had been developing it’s own color system, similar although completely incompatible with RCA’s current color standards. Basically this meant that if one wanting to view a black and white TV show on any other network broadcast, and then a color show on CBS, two completely different television sets would have to be owned. After this issue, the two companies battled it out over channel space, ultra-high frequency (UHF), and a few other technological issues that heavily involved the oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). These events led to a stalling of CBS’s efforts while RCA continued to profit off the sale of thousands of black and white TV sets.

Next time, we’ll discuss the other stumbling blocks tossed in the way of getting color broadcast into our homes, and what technological and legal hurdles had to be traversed to create the world of color we all now enjoy in our movies, satellite TV shows, video games, and other media.

To see all of your shows and movies in the brilliant color capable by today’s technology, check out DirecTV!  They provide the most channels in high definition so that you can get the best performance possible (and your money’s worth) from your modern television.

Do I have, Analog or Digital And How Do I Know?

Everyone has heard that analog television signals are going to end in February of 2009, in order to even watch local channels unless you do one of several things you will be without television. The first thing would be to purchase the converter box that is being talked about, the second thing is if you have a television with a digital tuner you can still receive the new digital signals that will be transmitted. The third thing that you can to is go with a cable or satellite TV provider.

What you need to know is what type of television you have, is it a standard television that receives analog signals or is it a television with a digital tuner.

Ways to tell if have a digital tuner:

If the television was purchased prior to 1998 it is most likely a standard television.

While it varies there were many of the television models that have been sold from the year 2004 that have digital tuners. Although this is not a hard and fast rule, it does depend on the model.