From today’s perspective, it’s hard to believe that in 1956, “Time Magazine” lambasted color television as “the greatest industry flop of 1956”, despite the fact that color viewing and even remote controls had been introduced during that decade.
The “digital transformation” then kicked off at the start of the new millennium, leading to the replacement of the veteran analog terrestrial broadcasting system by digital networks.
SPINNER was involved in this revolution from the start. Our first project, in 1998/99, involved taking a country-wide network live in England. By that time, we were already well-known as an internationally leading producer of DVB filters and combiners. SPINNER supplied around 50 parallel switching systems and over 100 dual-mode filters as well as diverse high-power container combiners and low-power switching panels for the undertaking. All of these components and systems were used between the transmitters and antennas of the transmitting stations.
The next major project kicked off in the spring of 1999: Spain’s state television broadcasting company at the time, Retevisión, wanted to build a country-wide DVB network in several stages, starting with the largest cities. SPINNER bid to supply DVB four-way combiners in the power classes from 20 watts to 4 kilowatts for each transmitter.
As of 2021, nearly 150 countries have switched over to digital terrestrial television. To enable this change, hundreds of thousands of transmitting stations have needed to be converted to digital technology and viewers have also had to install new, up-to-date TV sets.
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