By ; Basel Khaled
World Television Day, marked globally on 21 November, recognizes the medium as a major source of news, information, education and entertainment. As television broadcasting increases its footprint globally, streaming onto multiple portable devices, TV has become an integral part of life, accounting for 80 per cent of all consumer Internet traffic.
ITU, since it first released technical standards for television 70 years ago in 1949, has developed the globally harmonized standards that have progressively enhanced television viewing experience in terms of both visual and audio quality. From early standards for colour TV to developing parameters for 4:3 and widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio television, ITU has championed the switch to digital TV broadcasting and High Definition Television (HDTV), enabling more services, better picture quality and improved coverage owing to an increase in transmitted bandwidth capacity. Building further on the superior colour fidelity of ITU's Ultra-High Definition Television (UHDTV), ITU introduced High Dynamic Range Television (HDR-TV) bringing increased realism to images.
As 5G services complying with ITU’s IMT-2020 spectrum allocations and standards (currently being addressed by the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt) are progressively rolled out over the coming years, the convergence of traditional broadcasting and Internet services could lead to the further merging of media content, data, and applications using broadband networks delivered over a combination of terrestrial, satellite and Internet platforms. These “Global Platforms” may one day facilitate delivery of content to end-users on a wide range of devices and receiving platforms, using both broadcasting and non-broadcasting technologies...
