Basic TV Technology: Digital and Analog

Basic TV Technology: Digital and Analog, Fourth Edition addresses students' and nontechnical professionals' need for a basic guide to the fundamentals underlying all television and video systems. Although readers can find many books on production techniques, this book will illustrate how the principal pieces of equipment work, what their functions are, and how they are integrated to form a complex video system. This knowledge will make readers more adaptable to different models, makes, and features of equipment and enable them to figure out new applications and solve problems for themselves.

This new edition of Basic TV Technology includes updated information on the advances in digital technology and HD and new information on LCD displays, disc based recording, and compression. Other topics covered include:
*Nonlinear editing
*Open architecture vs. dedicated equipment
*Electrical theory and application
*Special effects and graphics
*The PAL system

This book is in the accessible Media Manuals format, which integrates abundant illustrations and lucid text. Readers will become proficient in the technical concepts of video and television. Basic TV Technology: Digital and Analog, Fourth Edition is an essential resource for students and professionals of video media.

Booknews

Teaches students and nontechnical professionals fundamentals underlying all television and video systems. Demonstrates how principal pieces of equipment work, their functions, and how they are integrated to form a complex video system. Includes many b&w diagrams and schematics. This edition includes new information on SDTV, HDTV, and the FCC's plans for its future. The author is broadcast program director at Cuesta Community College. Lacks a subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robert Lee Hartwig was born and raised in a small northern California farming town. At the age of 13, his parents bought an 8mm movie camera. He spent the next couple of years fooling around with animation and teaching himself simple film editing. He spent his teenage summers on the family farm. He attended Chico State University where, quite by accident, he got involved in the college radio station. While involved in college radio, he served as Business Manager of the station and was appointed to be the student manager of the station. At the same time, the school was developing a Mass Communications Degree program, which he transferred to as soon as the program opened. While in school, he worked at both AM and FM radio stations as an on-air announcer. He still worked summers on the farm because the 80 - 100 hour weeks made a lot more money for him. He was a member of the first graduating class in Mass Communications from Chico State where the faculty awarded him the "Leadership Merit Award" upon graduation.


He went to San Diego State University for his Master's Degree in Radio and Television. Coming from a rural background, living in a city the size of San Diego drove him nuts. The culture shock was the greatest challenge to completing the MA. While working on the MA, he also worked for the San Diego Area Instructional Television Authority, was a Television Specialist for the Adult Division of the San Diego Community College District, worked as a photographer on a special project for the San Diego Community College Association, and taught a night class in TV Production for the Adult Division of the San Diego Community College District. This teaching experiencegave him the teaching bug. He was granted his MA in December of 1973.

He moved back to northern California and got a part-time teaching job in the Mass Communications Department at Butte Community College in Oroville, CA. While at Butte he also produced and directed video programs for the Instructional Media Center there. Another assignment was to act as play-by-play announcer for football, women's volleyball, and men's basketball for Butte produced cablecasts of those sports events.

Seeing that a full-time position wasn't going to develop at Butte Colege, he started looking elsewhere and in December of 1976,started full-time at Cuesta Community College in San Luis Obispo. It was his job to take a brand new studio and a program that existed only on paper and bring it into being. His first effort was to develop a strong relationship with the local broadcast and cable industry. It was his feeling that they could be strong allies by providing internships and jobs, if he did his part at the school. This has turned out to be the case. He has always emphasized gibing a strong technical foundation and developing a professional attitude. He has been head of the Broadcast Communications department fat Cuesta for 28 years and in 1998, was given the added responsibility of Division Chair for the Languages and Communications Division, which includes the disciplines of Broadcast Communications, International Languages, Journalism, Sign Language, and Speech.