On 1 October 1934, Soviet first television receivers were produced. The B-2 had a 3×4-
centimetre (1¼×1½-inch) screen and a mechanical
raster scan in 30 lines at 12.5 frames per second. On 15 November 1934,
Moscow had its first television broadcast, of a concert. On 15 October 1935, the first broadcast of a film was made. After the television laboratory was established at the Moscow radio station, the first Soviet cartoons were made. In 1936, 300 television broadcasts with a total duration of 200 hours were produced. In 1938, television
broadcasting began in
Moscow and
Leningrad under the auspices of the All-Union Committee for Radiofication and Radio Broadcasting at the USSR
Sovnarkom (Всесоюзный комитет по радиофикации и радиовещанию при СНК СССР). On 9 March 1938, a first experimental studio television program was broadcast, from
Shabolovka tower, in
Moscow. Three weeks later, the first full film,
The Great Citizen (Великий гражданин), was broadcast. On 7 June 1938, a television broadcast was tried in
Leningrad. Between 1937 and 1939 an experimental network of cable television, called Broadcasting Television Node (Телевизионный Трансляционный Узел), was mounted inside a house, located at Petrovsky Bouleward,17, Moscow. Technicians of VNII of Television, Leningrad and TsNII of Communication, Moscow developed the cable distribution system of radio programms and TV signal for high rank Soviet military commanders as well as Communist Party members. The system included up to 30 ATP-1 (АТП-1) TV receivers. On March 10, 1939, the first documentary film was shown on television in Moscow. On 4 November 1948, the Moscow television centre began broadcasting in a 625-line standard. Later, the
Dushanbe TV studio began producing a 45-minute television program "Офарин!" ("Well done!") for a local TV channel (it was used in school
physical education classes in rural areas of the
Tajik SSR). A major boost to television in the Soviet Union occurred with the implementation of the
Ekran system. The first Ekran satellite was launched on October 26, 1976, into geostationary orbit at 99° E. The system covered 40% of the country's territory (5 million square kilometers) and was intended for small settlements in Siberia, the Far East, and the Far North of the Soviet Union. Unlike Orbita, Ekran already had elements of direct satellite television broadcasting. The satellite-to-earth channel operated on UHF television frequencies of 714 MHz and 754 MHz, and was originally planned to broadcast from orbit in the format of terrestrial television, which would allow signals to be received directly on a television. However, this required high peak transmitter power and did not meet the requirements of the Radio Regulations on limiting the power flux density in the territory of states adjacent to the Soviet Union. At the suggestion of V. A. Shamshin, frequency modulation was used in the satellite-to-earth channel, which required ground-based signal conversion. However, class II collective reception stations were small and relatively inexpensive, each of them had a built-in low-power terrestrial TV repeater with a power of 1 W (Ekran KR-1) or 10 W (Ekran KR-10), or distributed the signal via a cable network inside an apartment building. Class I stations were created for large television centers. The Ekran system became the first step towards the creation of modern direct television broadcasting systems. The further development of the Ekran system was the creation of the Moscow satellite TV broadcasting system, developed by the
Radio Research Institute and operated on the basis of the Gorizont
geostationary satellites, but used a tube with a central frequency of 3675 MHz. This solved the problems with frequency compatibility and made it possible to cover the entire territory of the Soviet Union with broadcasting (Ekran served only
Siberia, the
Far North and part of the
Russian Far East). The basic model of the Moscow-B earth station, also developed at the
Radio Research Institute, had a receiving
parabolic antenna with a diameter of 2.5 m and, when working together with the RCTA-70/R-12 TV repeater, provided a zone of confident reception with a radius of about 20 km. Development began in 1974 on the initiative of
Nikolai Talyzin and
Lev Kantor; in 1979, the first satellite was launched at a geostationary position of 14° W. d., and the system was put into operation. Later, satellites at positions 53° E, 80° E, 90° E and 140° E were connected to broadcasting. Each satellite broadcast a
Soviet Central Television program with a time shift for different time zones of the USSR and
Radio Mayak, and a tele
fax channel for transmitting newspaper strips also operated. Systems of the "Moscow" type were widely used in the USSR and in some foreign missions of the country, a total of about 10 thousand earth stations of various modifications were released. In 2005, with the transition to a digital signal, broadcasting of several TV programs in a package began through the system. In 1977, a short experimental cartoon was made and released, all of the images for which were created on a computer. On October 13, 1980, an agreement on cooperation in television between the USSR and Mexico was signed in Moscow. As a result, some Mexican films and music began to be shown in the USSR, and some Soviet films and songs began to be shown in Mexico. In early 1981, the first Soviet standard serial
remote control device for TV sets began to be produced by the
Minsk plant "Gorizont". In 1986–1988, under the leadership of Yuri Zubarev, Lev Kantor, the "Moscow-Global" system was developed specifically for broadcasting to domestic missions abroad. It used the same Gorizont satellite trunk as the Moskva system, but connected to an antenna that covered the maximum possible area of the Earth's surface. Two satellites at 11° W and 96.5° E covered most of the Earth's territory and provided work with receiving stations that had an antenna mirror with a diameter of 4 m. The system transmitted one TV channel, three digital channels at 4800 bit/s and two at 2400 bit/s. ==Distance and geography==