Rolling the Dice on Resolution

Given that the word ‘television’ means, literally, vision at a distance, it is a little strange that the large entertainment screens which dominate our living rooms today still bear the name. It made perfect sense throughout the black-and-white era, and when we switched to colour television in 1975. But about a decade after that, things started to change. VCRs appeared, spawning a revolution in what we watched on television and when. A decade after that, the coming of the internet brought other screens into our lives and other program sources onto the ‘television’ screen. The share of TV content from those distant broadcasters has been steadily eroded by VHS, DVD, cable TV, Blu-ray, downloads, Chromecasts, and multiple streaming services.

For some time now, replacement TV buying has been driven largely by features that have not been taken up by broadcast television (at least in Australia).