Marking the 70th anniversary of the start of TV broadcasting in Japan: Efforts undertaken by STRL

February 1, 2023 will mark the 70th anniversary of the start of television broadcasting in Japan. NHK STRL was founded on June 1, 1930 and has been researching television and other broadcast technologies ever since; NHK launched its Tokyo Television Station (Fig. 1) and began its primary television broadcast on February 1, 1953. With the exception of the Image Orthicon Camera, all broadcast equipment used at that time were designed by STRL and made in Japan. This trend continued in the ensuing years, as STRL research led to a long line of tools and devices developed and made in Japan—including the technology needed for the launch of color television broadcasting in 1960 and the cameras and satellite-broadcasting technology used to live-broadcast the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (Fig. 2). Later developments included high-vision research (begun in 1964), research on satellite broadcasting (begun in 1966), and the launch of satellite and terrestrial digital broadcasting in 2000 and 2003, respectively. More recently, we have studied 8K UHDTV broadcasting—featuring 16 times the pixel count of HDTV—and in 2018 we launched our new 4K/8K satellite broadcast service, testifying to STRL’s ongoing commitment to pioneering new broadcast technologies.

Today, our focus is Future Vision 2030–2040, our attempt to look forward to the media landscape of the 2030s, in which viewers will experience immersive, edge-of-your-seat content delivered by services offering unprecedented levels of convenience and portability. Going forward, STRL is committed to research and development initiatives to support the advance of media technology.