By Ken Simons, Jerrold Electronics Corporation
Since the first CATV Systems in this country were installed, Community Television has come a long way. The early systems had few amplifiers and s served relatively small towns. Almost without exception there were no satisfactory air signals in the areas being served. Today’s Systems use dozens of amplifiers in cascade, extend for many miles and serve thousands of people o Very often a CATV System operates in direct competition with one or two good air signals. These facts strongly affect the technical requirements placed on the System. To compete against air signals the quality of the CATV pictures must be comparably good. To make the service attractive under these competitive conditions, the operator must provide many more channels than were needed i n the earlier Systems.