The idiot box as the pseudonym for the television goes, is not so much of an insignificant piece of technology, if one tries to look beyond its screen. Since the introduction of commercial television broadcasts in the early 1940s, the scope of television has grown enormously. Long accepted as the primary source of entertainment and information in the home, by the late 1990s the impact of television had expanded in important nonbroadcast areas, and digital video had become an integral part of the broad field of information technology.