Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Television is 100 years old today

diamondgeezer.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 283 posts

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#151

Post by ASalazarMX »

fecal_henge wrote: post #66
sosomoxie wrote: post #64

CRTs are peak steam punk technology. Analog, electric, kinda dangerous. Just totally mindblowing that we had these things in our living rooms shooting electric beams everywhere. I doubt it's environmentally friendly at all, but I'd love to see some new CRTs being made.

Extra dangerous aspect: On really early CRTs they hadn't quite nailed the glass thicknesses. One failure mode was that the neck that held the electron gun would fail. This would propell the gun through the front of the screen, possibly toward the viewer.

I don't know, "Killed by electron gun breakdown" sounds like a rad way to go. You can replace "electron gun" with "particle accelerator" if you want.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#152

Post by ASalazarMX »

cf100clunk wrote: post #73
fecal_henge wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra dangerous aspect: On really early CRTs they hadn't quite nailed the glass thicknesses. One failure mode was that the neck that held the electron gun would fail. This would propell the gun through the front of the screen, possibly toward the viewer.

Likewise, a dropped CRT tube was a constant terror for TV manufacturing and repair folks, as it likely would implode and send zillions of razor-sharp fragments airborne.

I can't still get over how we used to put them straight in our faces, yet I never knew of someone having an accidental face reshaping ever.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#153

Post by jacquesm »

accounting2026 wrote: post #149
retrac wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a synchronous and instantaneous nature you don't find in modern designs. The image is not stored at any point. The receiver and the transmitter are part of the same electric circuit in a certain sense. It's a virtual circuit but the entire thing - transmitter and receiving unit alike - are oscillating in unison driven by a single clock. The image is never entirely realized as a complete thing, either. While s…

> The image is not stored at any point. Just wanted to add one thing, not as a correction but just because I learned it recently and find it fascinating. PAL televisions (the color TV standard in Europe) actually do store one full horizontal scanline at a time, before any of it is drawn on the screen. This is due to a clever encoding used in this format where the TV actually needs to average two successive scan lines…

The physical components of those delay lines were massive crystals with silver electrodes grafted on to them. Very interesting component.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#154

Post by banku_brougham »

nephihaha wrote: post #112
banku_brougham wrote: post #95

for every episode of the A-Team, for Saturday morning cartoons, for I Love Lucy, and for Miami Vice, I give thanks. Edit: And Star Trek, and Cosmos

Diamonds on a dung heap. For every good series which we love there are dozens of terrible/forgettable ones. A shame since TV has so much potential as a medium.

Well, A-Team was objectively terrible but I have a nostalgic connection to kids shows like that, Knight Rider etc. In retrospect Bay Watch was an effective CPR training tool at unprecedented scale.

I would be hesitant to pass judgement.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#155

Post by ninkendo »

retrac wrote: post #128
sosomoxie wrote: post #64

CRTs are peak steam punk technology. Analog, electric, kinda dangerous. Just totally mindblowing that we had these things in our living rooms shooting electric beams everywhere. I doubt it's environmentally friendly at all, but I'd love to see some new CRTs being made.

There's a synchronous and instantaneous nature you don't find in modern designs. The image is not stored at any point. The receiver and the transmitter are part of the same electric circuit in a certain sense. It's a virtual circuit but the entire thing - transmitter and receiving unit alike - are oscillating in unison driven by a single clock. The image is never entirely realized as a complete thing, either. While s…

It doesn’t begin at the transmitter either, in the earliest days even the camera was essentially part of the same circuit. Yes, the concept of filming a show and showing the film over the air existed eventually, but before that (and even after that, for live programming) the camera would scan the subject image (actors, etc) line-by-line and down a wire to the transmitter which would send it straight to your TV and into the electron beam.

In fact in order to show a feed of only text/logos/etc in the earlier days, they would literally just point the camera at a physical object (like letters on a paper, etc) and broadcast from the camera directly. There wasn’t really any other way to do it.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#156

Post by MBCook »

accounting2026 wrote: post #149
retrac wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a synchronous and instantaneous nature you don't find in modern designs. The image is not stored at any point. The receiver and the transmitter are part of the same electric circuit in a certain sense. It's a virtual circuit but the entire thing - transmitter and receiving unit alike - are oscillating in unison driven by a single clock. The image is never entirely realized as a complete thing, either. While s…

> The image is not stored at any point. Just wanted to add one thing, not as a correction but just because I learned it recently and find it fascinating. PAL televisions (the color TV standard in Europe) actually do store one full horizontal scanline at a time, before any of it is drawn on the screen. This is due to a clever encoding used in this format where the TV actually needs to average two successive scan lines…

All PAL TVs had a delay line in them? Crazy.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#157

Post by avadodin »

tzs wrote: post #150
tgtweak wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's also hard to be sure if early memories are actually memories from the actual event or are memories your brain constructed from later hearing people describe the event. There was one experiment where researchers got a man's family at a holiday gathering of the extended family to start talking about funny things that had happened to family members when they were children. In particular the man's parents and siblin…

The memories are probably nothing like how they were at the time, but I vividly remember running away from my parents with my elder sister, getting bullied by an extremely blond girl at day care, and falling and literally eating dirt including that it was salty around 2-3.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#158

Post by fyrn_ »

Only 100 years old. Wow. I mean you know the world has changed rapidly but it's hard to get perspective enough to really feel that change. Something about it only having been 100 years since televsion really does that for me.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#159

Post by keithnz »

timonoko wrote: post #137
scotty79 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it wild that you are asking 5th (or so) technological miracle that happened in your life time about the first one you remember?

I actually thought that the "Computer" was some kind of abstract construct in 1971. And "programs" were just a method of expressing algorithms in textual manner. Only when we were allowed to have brief interactions with Teletype, did I believe there was actual machine that understands and executes these complex commands. Mind Blown.

I was busy being born that year :)

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#160

Post by brewmarche »

accounting2026 wrote: post #149
retrac wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a synchronous and instantaneous nature you don't find in modern designs. The image is not stored at any point. The receiver and the transmitter are part of the same electric circuit in a certain sense. It's a virtual circuit but the entire thing - transmitter and receiving unit alike - are oscillating in unison driven by a single clock. The image is never entirely realized as a complete thing, either. While s…

> The image is not stored at any point. Just wanted to add one thing, not as a correction but just because I learned it recently and find it fascinating. PAL televisions (the color TV standard in Europe) actually do store one full horizontal scanline at a time, before any of it is drawn on the screen. This is due to a clever encoding used in this format where the TV actually needs to average two successive scan lines…

I only knew about SECAM, where it’s even part of the name (Système Électronique Couleur Avec Mémoire)
Post reply on HN