Amateur television (ATV) is the transmission of Broadcast quality video and audio over the wide range of frequencies of (radio waves) allocated for Radio amateur (Ham) use. ATV is used for non-commercial experimentation, pleasure and public service events. Ham TV stations were on the air in many cities before commercial television stations came on the air. Various transmission standards are used, these include the broadcast transmission standards of NTSC in North America and Japan, and PAL or SECAM elsewhere, utilising the full refresh rates of those standards. ATV includes the study of building of such transmitters and receivers, and the study of radio propagation of signals travelling between transmitting and receiving stations.
ATV is an extension of amateur radio. It is also called HAM TV or Fast Scan TV (FSTV) (as opposed to slow-scan television (SSTV), which can be transmitted on shortwave ham bands due to its narrowband structure, but is not decodable by a commercially available television receiver).
Read more about Amateur Television: North American Context, European Context, Transmission Characteristics, Content
Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or television:
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)