Hooked on Cable - Cable Television

Along with satellite, cable television is one of the most popular ways to receive television broadcasts in this day and age.  A wide variety of channels and other services such as internet are now provided by cable television companies.  Cable television has a relatively long history, beginning with a solution to the practical problem of receiving television broadcasts in remote or mountainous areas. 

History of Cable Television

This solution was first implemented in 1948 in Pennsylvania, where large antennas were constructed on hills and then connected to private homes so that those living in the valleys could watch broadcast TV.  Early cable service providers used this as their model, but it was plagued with problems.  Since broadcast signals weakened as they traveled through the cable, numerous amplifiers were needed to maintain the signal so that the television broadcasts were still at an acceptable quality level when they reached individual homes.  Unfortunately, the amplifiers caused some problems with the picture and sound quality and if an amplifier went down so would the picture on your television screen.  Needless to say this didn’t give cable television the best reputation in its early years. 

Although cable providers were able to add multiple channels of the same network through experimentation with microwave transmitting and receiving towers, it wasn’t until the 1970s that satellite signals were used to replace the basic model of a giant antenna receiving the broadcasts.  This was begun by the Home Box Office channel, forging the path that would lead to the numerous channels available on cable television today.  Further advances were made with the introduction of fiber optic cables at the “head end” of cable systems where programming is received, given channels and transmitted onto the cables.  The fiber optics didn’t suffer as great a signal loss which reduced the need for amplifiers. 

Digital Cable

Further advances led to the conversion of analog signals to digital, which allowed for the massive channel selections available through digital cable today.  With digital cable 1,000 channels are in fact possible but far fewer channels than that are currently offered by digital cable service providers.  Nevertheless, more channels are on offer than the typical consumer would ever watch, with entire channels devoted to weather, cooking, home improvement, science fiction, and more; and that’s not including the huge number of movie channels now available!  Cable television has evolved from a solution to a problem to one of the leading providers of television programming today.