TV Through the Years
A quick look at some key milestones

1948 - Television takes off in Canada, one year before the first Emmy Awards are presented and four years before the CBC debuts.

1952 - No more rabbit ears? Cable television debuts in Canada. 

1960 - Roughly 100 million television sets are sold worldwide. 

1962 - First satellite TV transmission takes place between France and the U.S.

1965 - Sony introduces Betamax, a small home video recorder, which later loses out to the VHS machine.

1966 - Colour television signals are transmitted by Canadian stations for the first time. Two years later, the 200 millionth TV is sold worldwide.

1969 - The first television transmission from the moon. 

1976 - Broadcasted from Montreal, the Olympics draw an estimated 1 billion viewers worldwide.

1978 - Ninety-eight percent of households have a television; 300 millionTVs are available worldwide.

1980 - CNN, the Cable News Network, is born. It's followed by MTV (and then MuchMusic in Canada).

1989 - Pay Per View debuts.

1996 - There are over a billion television sets in operation around the world. Small satellite dishes (18-inches) replace the huge ones that take up most of a backyard.

1997 - The DVD player debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show. 

1999 - TiVo surfaces in the U.S.; personal video recorders change the way you watch television.

2005 - Flat-panel high-definition televisions become the "musthave" product of the year. The Slingbox product uses the Internet to stream your local television anywhere in the world you've got a highspeed Internet connection.

2006 - Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD debut in the summer and battle to become the successor to the DVD. It's still unknown today which format will prevail.