This book deals with the various ways Netflix reconceptualises television as part of the process of TV IV. As television continues to undergo a myriad of significant changes, Netflix has proven itself to be the dominant force in this development, simultaneously driving a number of these changes and challenging television’s existing institutional structures. This comprehensive study explores the pre-history of Netflix, the role of binge-watching in its organisation and marketing, and Netflix’s position as a transnational broadcaster. It also examines different concepts of control and the role these play in the history of ancillary technologies, from the remote control to binge-watching as Netflix’s iteration of giving control to the viewers. By focusing on Netflix’s relationship with the linear television schedule, its negotiations of quality and marketing, as well as the way Netflix integrates into national media systems, Netflix and the Re-invention of Television illuminates the importance of Netflix’s role within the processes of TV IV.

Now if I just remembered where I put that original TV play device--the universal remote control . . . Television is a global industry, a medium of representation, an architectural component of space, and a nearly universal frame of reference for viewers. Yet it is also an abstraction and an often misunderstood science whose critical influence on the development, history, and diffusion of new media has been both minimized and overlooked. How Television Invented New Media adjusts the picture of television culturally while providing a corrective history of new media studies itself. Personal computers, video game systems, even iPods and the Internet built upon and borrowed from television to become viable forms. The earliest personal computers, disguised as video games using TV sets as monitors, provided a case study for television's key role in the emergence of digital interactive devices. Sheila C. Murphy analyzes how specific technologies emerge and how representations, from South Park to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, mine the history of television just as they converge with new methods of the making and circulation of images. Past and failed attempts to link television to computers and the Web also indicate how services like Hulu or Netflix On-Demand can give rise to a new era for entertainment and program viewing online. In these concrete ways, television's role in new and emerging media is solidified and finally recognized.

Digital television (DTV) is a new television service representing the most significant development in television technology since the advent of color television in the 1950s. DTV can provide sharper pictures, a wider screen, CD-quality sound, better color rendition, and other new services currently being developed. A successful deployment of DTV requires: the development by content providers of compelling digital programming; the delivery of digital signals to consumers by broadcast television stations, as well as cable and satellite television systems; and the widespread purchase and adoption by consumers of digital television equipment. A key issue in the Congressional debate over the digital transition has been addressing the millions of American over-the-air households whose existing analog televisions will require converter boxes in order to receive digital signals when the analog signal is turned off.

Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's design and use. Since the late 1960s the Internet has grown from a single experimental network serving a dozen sites in the United States to a network of networks linking millions of computers worldwide. In Inventing the Internet, Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internets design and use. The story she unfolds is an often twisting tale of collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players, including government and military agencies, computer scientists in academia and industry, graduate students, telecommunications companies, standards organizations, and network users. The story starts with the early networking breakthroughs formulated in Cold War think tanks and realized in the Defense Department's creation of the ARPANET. It ends with the emergence of the Internet and its rapid and seemingly chaotic growth. Abbate looks at how academic and military influences and attitudes shaped both networks; how the usual lines between producer and user of a technology were crossed with interesting and unique results; and how later users invented their own very successful applications, such as electronic mail and the World Wide Web. She concludes that such applications continue the trend of decentralized, user-driven development that has characterized the Internet's entire history and that the key to the Internet's success has been a commitment to flexibility and diversity, both in technical design and in organizational culture.

John Logie Baird loves inventing things! When he hears about another inventor who has built a machine to show real live pictures, John sets about trying to do the same. Equipped with bits and pieces found in his house, John begins a journey which will change the course of history forever. Mister T.V. follows the life of John Logie Baird and the story behind the invention of the television.

Explore the history and development of the television and find out how a television works. Learn about the inventors who helped influence the invention of the television.

These two volumes provide in-depth coverage of 24 of history's most important inventors and their inventions. Who invented the sewing machine, the telephone, the internal combustion engine? Who pioneered vaccination? Who gave the world television, nylon, the nuclear reactor? The answers to some of these questions are straightforward, the answers to others much less so. All of them are explored in the fascinating Icons of Invention: The Makers of the Modern World from Gutenberg to Gates. This in-depth resource tells the stories of 24 of the most influential and well-known inventions of the modern age—and of the individuals most responsible for their development. Presented in chronological order, the entries provide background on the lives and work of inventors such as Thomas Edison, Alexander Fleming, and Tim Berners-Lee. At the same time, the set profiles their competitors and details the sometimes-controversial, often-mistake-plagued routes almost all of them took to their most famous creations.