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Television is 100 years old today

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Re: Television is 100 years old today

#101

Post by gcanyon »

mrbluecoat wrote: post #93

Inventor status is a bit murky: https://farnovision.com/wp/no-iconoscope-in-1923/

The interesting question (to me) is how directly a line can be drawn from the original invention to what we in modern times think of as “the thing”?

As an example, the Wright brothers built a biplane that had wing warping instead of ailerons and a canard design. That bears little resemblance to most modern airplanes, but people have little trouble crediting it as “the invention of the airplane” —- questions of whether the Wrights were first or not notwithstanding.

Can ”TV” be thus simplified so that an electromechanical device with spinning discs qualifies?

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#102

Post by poisonarena »

timonoko wrote: post #70

I saw TV first time in 1957. Finland had no TV transmitters, so programs came from Soviet Estonia. I distinctly remember watching romantic Russian film with a catching tune. Perhaps named "Moscow Lights"? How this is even possible that I remember all this, because I was 4 yrs old? Gemini knows: The Film: In the Days of the Spartakiad (1956/1957) The song "Moscow Nights" was originally written for a documentary film c…

link to "Vladimir Trochin - Moscow nights (1956)" https://youtu.be/fRFScbISKDg?si=UsVHVnlnUnU2SP6v

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#103

Post by parpfish »

elevation wrote: post #100
tadfisher wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when we organized our lives around television. On Saturday mornings it would be cartoons (including the first full-CGI television shows, Reboot and Transformers: Beast Wars), Wednesday evenings would be Star Trek: TNG, Fridays would be the TGIF block of family shows (from early-to-mid-90s USA perspective here). It felt like everyone watched the same thing, everyone had something to talk about from last nig…

> but I do have a feeling of missing out on that shared connection lately Mass media isolates individuals who don't have access to it. I grew up without a TV, and when TV was all my neighbors could talk about, I was left out, and everyone knew it. While other children were in front of the television gaining "shared experience", I built forts in the woods with my siblings, explored the creek in home made boats, learne…

it feels like you're advocating that "unless everybody can form a shared connection through common culture, nobody should for a shared connection through common culture".

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#104

Post by tibbydudeza »

Watching Dallas on a Tuesday evening with the entire family gathered in our parents' bedroom with me and brother and sister at the end of the bed on the floor watching the latest schemes of JR Ewing and poor hapless brother Bobby.

We never had the TV set in the lounge - it was meant for special occasions like tea and cake for family gatherings.

We still have a TV but it hardly used - everybody has iPads in the house.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#105

Post by parpfish »

eloisant wrote: post #76
tadfisher wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when we organized our lives around television. On Saturday mornings it would be cartoons (including the first full-CGI television shows, Reboot and Transformers: Beast Wars), Wednesday evenings would be Star Trek: TNG, Fridays would be the TGIF block of family shows (from early-to-mid-90s USA perspective here). It felt like everyone watched the same thing, everyone had something to talk about from last nig…

This is why I like it when streaming services release one episode every week instead of dropping the whole season in one shot.

i hate the single season dumping at once for a big binge. it always feel like i'm plugging into the content trough and gorging myself to pass the hours.

you can't talk about a show with somebody until they're also done binging, so there's no fun discussion/speculation (the conversation is either "did you watch that? yeah. " or "you should watch this. ".

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#106

Post by dylan604 »

iso1631 wrote: post #26
MoonWalk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read about the invention of color television. There were two competing methods, one of which depended on a spinning wheel with colored filters in it. If I remember correctly, you needed something like a 10-foot wheel to have a 27-inch TV. Sure enough, this was the system selected as the winner by the U.S. standard-setting body at the time. Needless to say, it failed and was replaced by what we ended up wit…

Originally you had 30fps, it was the addition of colour with the NTSC system that dropped it to 30000/1001fps. That wasn't a decision taken lightly -- it was a consequence of retrofitting colour onto a black and white system while maintaining backward compatibility. When the UK (and Europe) went colour it changed to a whole new system and didn't have to worry too much about backward compatibility. It had a higher ban…

understanding the affect of the 1.001 fix has given me tons of job security. That understanding came not from just book learning, but OJT from working in a film/video post house that had engineers, colorists, and editors that were all willing to entertain a young college kid's constant use of "why?". Then being present for the transition from editing film on flat beds to editing film transfers to video. Part of that came from having to transfer audio from tape reels to video by changing to the proper 59.94Hz or 60Hz crystal that was needed to control the player's speed. Also had a studio DAT deck that could slow down the 24fps audio record in the field to playback at 23.976.

Literally, to this day, am I dealing with all of these decisions made ~100 years ago. The 1.001 math is a bit younger when color was rolled out, but what's a little rounding between friends?

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#107

Post by rubslopes »

tgtweak wrote: post #82
therein wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I easily have many memories from age 4. I think I even remember the first time that I started forming memories. It was a few years before that, I had come out of my room and saw some toys I was playing with the night before. I realized they were at the same spot I left them, which made me realize the world had permanence and my awareness had continuity. I could leave things at a certain spot and they would be there t…

Definitely have some memories from 3 years old - some people claim earlier and I wouldn't doubt that, although it's very rare for memories before 2 to be recalled episodically.

I have one memory that I can place between late 2 and early 3: my mum telling me I was going to have a brother. When he was born, I was 3 years and 6 months old.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#108

Post by dylan604 »

Dwedit wrote: post #46
iso1631 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally you had 30fps, it was the addition of colour with the NTSC system that dropped it to 30000/1001fps. That wasn't a decision taken lightly -- it was a consequence of retrofitting colour onto a black and white system while maintaining backward compatibility. When the UK (and Europe) went colour it changed to a whole new system and didn't have to worry too much about backward compatibility. It had a higher ban…

60 interlaced fields per second, not 30 frames per second. The two fields do not necessarily contribute to the same frame.

If you get those fields out of sync, you will have problems though, so it's okay to consider them in pairs per frame for sanity's sake.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#109

Post by cf100clunk »

tosti wrote: post #3

High definition is nearly 90 years old? I guess their definition of high is quite low by more modern standards.

Analogue interlaced-scan TV systems like PAL and SECAM were actually ''higher'' definition in relation to NTSC by visual line count, although the former's 25Hz refresh rate was noticeable for flickering compared to NTSC's ~30Hz, which was much closer to the human eye's comfort level.

There was a prototype 819-line analogue ''high definition'' system used to record The T.A.M.I. Show in 1964, with excellent results, but the recordings were committed to film for distribution since there was no apparatus for broadcasting it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.A.M.I._Show

There were also experiments by NHK of Japan with analogue HD broadcasting, but digital TV was so close on the horizon that it was mooted.

''High definition'' has been a relative term in the professional TV world all along, but became consumer buzzwords with the advent of digital TV in the early 2000's. Nowadays we know it to mean 720, 1080, or higher lines, usually in progressive scan.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#110

Post by nephihaha »

Avalaxy wrote: post #87

Does anyone here still have television? Ever since I moved out of my parents house (15 years ago), I never had a TV subscription. I did own a TV screen, but only to run apps like Netflix and Youtube. I'd rather have a simple monitor without the TV options to do so, but strangely that never existed or was too expensive. Edit: to make it clear, I absolutely did not miss having TV for even a second in all of those years…

I got rid of mine. Predictable mind numbing content. I do stream occasionally but I have not paid a TV licence in over twenty years.
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