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

241–250 of 283 posts

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#241

Post by grishka »

account42 wrote: post #230
grishka wrote: post #211

Having just finished my software-defined analog video decoder[0], I've gotta say, my mind is thoroughly blown by just how much of an engineering achievement television must've been at the time when it was invented. It must have also been the first ever communication system to have backwards compatibility. [0] https://github.com/grishka/miscellaneous/blob/master/AVDecod...

Cool project. Anything in particular that you use it for? There are some great films or TV series that were never released in digital form and some more where the digital releases were butchered in some way (e.g. cropped) compared to the original analog broadcast / VHS / Laserdisc releases.

I made this to teach myself about digital signal processing and scratch an itch I had for a long time, starting back when these technologies were still current.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#242

Post by reactordev »

msla wrote: post #206
reactordev wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baird did. Farnsworth invented the all-electric version (sans mechanical parts). A kin to Ed Roberts, John Blakenbaker and Mark Dean invented the personal computer but Apple invented the PC as we know it.

You're skipping a few steps (like the Altair 8800) if you say that Apple invented the PC as we know it. Apple didn't even invent the GUI as we know it.

No, I mentioned Ed Roberts. Up until Apple, you had to solder your own or buy one that was put together for you.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#243

Post by gman83 »

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.

This is a cool little project you might be interested in - https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#244

Post by Schmerika »

ortusdux wrote: post #194
tzs wrote: post #174

I've sometimes wondered how things would have been different if the TV pioneers had went with circular CRTs instead of rounded rectangles. Circles would have had a couple of advantages. First, I believe they would have been easier to make. From what I've read rectangles have more stress at the corners. Rounding the corners reduces that but it is still more than circles have. With circles they could have more easily m…

Reminds me of how every single piece of paper on Battlestar Galactica has the corners cut off. Somewhere in their timeline paper became 8 sided, and it's just as odd as our 4 side paper and rectangular TVs

Whoa. Guess I need to watch the entire series again :)

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#245

Post by Schmerika »

Diederich wrote: post #91
jedberg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've been lamenting for a long time. The lack of shared culture. Sometimes a mega-hit briefly coalesces us, but for the most part everyone has their own thing. I miss the days when everyone had seen the same thing I had.

I found this the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFhXFuRblg "NBC Nightly News, June 24, 1975" I strongly urge people to watch this, it's 30 minutes but there are many very illuminating insights within. One word for you: Exxon. While I was young in 1975, I did watch ABC's version of the news with my grandparents, and continued up through high school. Then in the late 1980s I got on the Internet and well yo…

> 'back then' it was possible, and even common, to have ground political discussions with people 'on the other side'

As long as that common ground falls within acceptable parameters; couldn't talk too much about anything remotely socialist or being anti-war.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#246

Post by accounting2026 »

iberator wrote: post #172
torginus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it super weird that while we struggle with latency in the digital world, storing anything for any amount of time is an almost impossible challenge in the analog world.

You should check out: - Core memory - Drum memory - Bubble memory - Mercury delay line memory - Magnetic type memory :P And probably many more. Remember that computers don't even need to be digital!

This stores a whole scanline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsk4WWtRx6M. This or something similar was in almost any decent color TV except for the oldest.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#247

Post by HelloMcFly »

account42 wrote: post #235
HelloMcFly wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is likely to be true for every artistic creation that requires lots of capital and widespread human coordination. Ultimately for a TV show to be great many, many things have to go right, and much of what could go wrong happens after the money is spent and the air date is already assured. I'm grateful we've had so many great things, certainly far more than I'll have time to watch in my life. But I'm not a…

TV has a fairly bad record of keeping shows that are already shown to be good alive though because good does not equate profitable for the network or individual decision makers (which are again no the same thing).

That's just one of the things that has to go right: marketing, finding the audience, being in the right places and place in time for your target viewers, etc.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#248

Post by lebuffon »

Doxin wrote: post #214
lebuffon wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our station had an art department that used a hot press to create text boards that were set on an easel that had a camera pointed at it. By using a black background with white text you could merge the text camera with a camera in the studio and "super-imposed the text into the video feed. "And if you tell the kids that today, they won't believe it!"

It's kind of amazing the sort of hoops people needed to jump through to make e.g. the BBC-1 ident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfpEZDeVo00

It seems like imagination was more common in those days. There was no "digital" anything to lean on.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#249

Post by cf100clunk »

account42 wrote: post #224
cf100clunk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't match my experience of deliberately dropping an old CRT monitor off the roof. Implosions are unfortunately not as exciting as explosions.

The ''tube'' was indeed extrememly fragile and thus extremely dangerous. I'm talking about only the unguarded ''tube'' itself. Repair and manufacturer technicians had to deal with that on a regular basis. Later, consumer protection laws and other standards came into effect that made TV and monitor superstructures more capable of guarding such a dangerous internal component. Your experience was clearly with those much safer, later types.
Post reply on HN