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Why the comparison between color and HD had a clear winner
There has been a lot said about the two emerging technologies, but the fact remains that the engineers that developed compatible color had no CAD programs to assist them, the technology in general was very rudimentry, no solid state devices and the like, color had no guidelines or map to help them on the road to success, but the results were simply spectacular. Color took a lot to get the picture just right, from the bright studio lights to the constant adjustments required by the early color equipment, due the temperature changes, not to mention the 300 ohm wiring in the home that was suseptable to noise and impedance changes due to weather, but If I had the chance I'd go back to that time in a second
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#2
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I've often thought about stuff like this. Way back when, engineers had their own brains and a slide rule, and look what they managed to give us! Now, with the CAD programs you mention, and computers for research and number crunching, marketing data, polls, demographics, surveys, etc., it seems to me that designers (not just electronics, but all sorts of consumer goods, from light bulbs to locomotives) always try to take the easiest way out of a problem and always put saving every last cent in the forefront.
Restricting my thoughts to television, to me all HDTV is is television run by computer chips, an evolution rather than a revolution, and driven by cash flow, at that. If it had been driven instead by the arts and the sciences of electronics and television design, just imagine what we could have gotten instead, and perhaps ushered in a new golden era! Tom
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Tom Last edited by OvenMaster; 10-21-2005 at 06:01 AM. |
#3
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Yeah, I've always wondered what a TV built to "mil-spec" would cost, & how much better it would be than the tripe you buy at Wally-World.-Sandy G.
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Last edited by andy; 12-07-2021 at 02:30 PM. |
#5
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I really marvel at the early color sets, and the men who made them. Every time I crank up my CTC-5 I think of the engineers who designed it. I envision them driving Chrysler 300s & living in nice homes in the suburbs...and being sharp as a tack.
I agree, we could be doing so much better these days than we are. Think of all the junk being made these days in China. Its not that the Chinese can't do better, its that they are making stuff to a price, not a level of quality. Thanks to this, you can't buy a "transistor" radio or can opener or toaster oven thats as good as it was 20-40 years ago. (when they were made in the US or Japan)
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Bryan |
Audiokarma |
#6
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It certainly took some brainy guys to shove that color signal into the existing black and white, no doubt about it. Lot more restrictive to have to do it within those limits and not make people throw out their B&W tvs than to be able to start something from scratch like HDTV.
As I see it: Color TV - got better and better as the sets got better while the signal basically remain unchanged. HDTV - The cameras and the sets aren't really the problem, the broadcasters trying to skimp on bandwidth with subchannels is. Even a theoretical 'perfect' HDTV set, even if it was a massive picture tube the best that had ever been built, could not help degraded picture from guys trying to do 1080i and then not give it all the juice (bandwidth). If I don't see pixelization then HDTV is wonderful, stupendous, fantastic. When I see pixelization - I start to get ticked off. And pixelization has nothing to do with the sets, only the signal, even if it's coming in 5 by 5. But - people were ticked off in the old days with picking up color on antennas with ghosting, static, interference, etc., also. |
#7
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We’ve gone from “...ghosting, static, interference, etc.” to HDTV’s equivalent bugs/visualizations. These bugs/visualizations in my experience progress FROM small-area pixelization TO broad-area pixelization TO broad-area green pixelization TO broad-area green pixelization freezing for a few seconds TO a black screen. All this time the audio rotates through Dolby digital 5.1, Dolby surround matrix, and silence. It’s a mess. But I’m still able to maintain program continuity by switching to reliable, old-fashioned, soon-to-be-toast, NTSC-channels to watch the rest of the program (in spite of interference from my neighbor’s computers, multipath distortion, and “ghosting, static, interference, etc.”). Nevertheless, ATSC is a fabulous television system with brilliant engineering behind it. As I’ve said before, this the same 6-MHz NTSC channel that supported 3-MHz bandwidth video amplifiers in the first color receivers now supports 30-MHz video amplifiers in ATSC receivers. It reminds me of computer modem advances. In 1983 a Commodore 64 had a 300-baud modem. No grass grew under the feet of design engineers. Now my same 3-kHz phone line supports a ‘slow’ dialup 56k modem. Nearly twenty times the data rate in the same voice-grade line. Ten times the detail in the same 6-MHz channel. Talk about compression. |
#8
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Last edited by andy; 12-07-2021 at 02:30 PM. |
#9
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It's a start
at least they've established a digital platform, I ready today in the Wall Street journal, that the cuf-off date for all digital television has been pushed back to june 1st 2009. at that time you will have to puchase an adaptor box to watch programs on an analog television. Like Frenchy said even though the signal is digital, the program material may not be.
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#10
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What happens when NTSC gets discontinued in 2009? Does that mean that none of the lower VHF channels will work?
Personally, I think most of the problem with over the air HDTV is that it has been relegated to UHF spectrum. UHF is pure crap for reception. If HDTV was coming over VHF channels, I think we would see a lot more reliable reception and a lot less pixelating. I heard somewhere that the military is going to steal all of the VHF spectrum after they close them down for TV. Is that true? I'm not so much against the HDTV format but I think we will all regret losing the VHF spectrum. |
Audiokarma |
#11
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Last edited by andy; 12-07-2021 at 02:30 PM. |
#12
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(oh ok this was for illustration, I eat at Mc'ds once in a while! : ) |
#13
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FCC will sell analog frequencies
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As I understand it the FCC will sell off a portion of the frequency band, needed for cell and data transmissions. I'm not sure if all of them will be sold or not.
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Anyway - when you see it, it sucks! |
#15
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I think that back then when color first came out, they started all the engineering from the ground up. The engineers back then really smoked their brains from the designing of the 15GP22 to the chroma oscillator, they really came up with a sweet ass system years ago from the ground up.
With HDTV, the technology was modified. The same MPEG2 standard, the same dolby digital stream, the same high resolution CRTs and LCDs used in computer displays. Everything was there, it was just modified. ATSC transport stream had some heavy masth in it, but thats about it, but it was probably borrowed from DVB specs. Now adays, manufacturers are more concerned about pushing out tv's as fast as they can at large quantities, but cheap in price. I have NO respect for these manufacturers. NONE. It's a shame that engineers are told to come up with the cheapest design available that works. I can't stand this made in China crap. Jonathan |
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