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

251–260 of 283 posts

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#251

Post by jlokier »

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.

Some recent HN comments about CRT implosions people have experienced.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355765

"I still have a piece of glass in back of the palm of my right hand. Threw a rock at an old CRT and it exploded, after a couple of hours I noticed a little blood coming out of that part of hand. Many, many years later was doing xray for a broken finger and doctor asked what is that object doing there? I shrugged, doc said, well it looks like it's doing just fine, so might as well stay there. How lucky I am to have both eyes."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46354919

"2. Throwing a big big stone to an abandoned next to the trashcan CRT TV while I had it placed normally because it didn’t break when I threw it facing up and the next thing I remember after opening my eyes which I closed from the bang was my friends who were further down the road looking at me as it I were a ghost since big big chunks for the CRT glass flew just right next to me.

CRTs were dangerous in many aspects!"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356432

"I'll never forget the feeling of the whoosh when I was working as a furniture mover in the early 2000s and felt the implosion when a cardboard box collapsed and dumped a large CRT TV face-down on the driveway, blowing our hair back. When the boss asked what happened to the TV, I said it fell, and our lead man (who had set it on the box) later thanked me for putting it so diplomatically."

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#252

Post by accounting2026 »

grishka wrote: post #204
brewmarche wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can decode a PAL signal without any memory, the memory is only needed to correct for phase errors. In SECAM though, it's a hard requirement because the two color components, Db and Dr, are transmitted on alternating lines, and you need both on each line.

Yes that is called "PAL-S". But the system was designed to use the delay-line method and it was employed since the inception (first broadcast 1967).

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#253

Post by accounting2026 »

mrandish wrote: post #212
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.

It's worth deep diving into how analog composite broadcast television works, because you quickly realize just how insanely ambitious it was for 1930s engineers to have not only conceived, but perfected and shipped at consumer scale using only 1930s technologies. Being old enough to have learned video engineering at the end of the analog days, it's kind of fun helping young engineers today wrap their brains around com…

Yes agreed! And while it is not quantized as such there is an element of semi-digital protocol to it. The concept of "scanline" is quantized and there's "protocols" for indicating when a line ends, and a picture ends etc. that the receiver/send needs to agree on... and "colorbursts packets" for line, delay lines and all kinds of clever technique etc. so it is extremely complicated. Many things were necessary to overcome distortion and also to ensure backwards compatibility - first, how do you fit in the color so a monochrome TV can still show it? Later, how do you make it 16:9 and it can still show on a 4:3 TV (which it could!).

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#254

Post by smithza »

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman is the book that comes to mind with this article link. 2 years ago my wife and I took the TV off the wall. My kids don't have Bluey or the latest Disney cartoon to keep them company. I am not going back... It has been the most blissful time. Amazing that the TV is not required to lead a thriving life despite what the incessant sales-industrial-complex will tell you.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#255

Post by WorldMaker »

accidentallfact wrote: post #215
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.

'Steampunk' means no electricity. You need to come up with another term. Analogpunk, maybe?

"Dieselpunk" is sometimes considered the next door neighbor term for WW1 through early 1950's retrofuturism with electricity and radios/very early televisions.

Sometimes people use "Steampunk" for shorthand for both because there are some overlaps in either direction, especially if you are trying for "just" pre-WWI retrofuture. Though I think the above poster was maybe especially trying to highlight the sort of pre-WWI overlap with Steampunk with more electricity but not yet as many cars and "diesel".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieselpunk

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#256

Post by alamortsubite »

lebuffon wrote: post #248
Doxin wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The live-action PBS idents from the early 90's were some of the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ap_JRofNMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJpiIyBkUZ4

This mini doc shows the process:

https://youtu.be/Q7iNg1dRqQI?t=167

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#257

Post by gcanyon »

WalterBright wrote: post #207
gcanyon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The invention of the "airplane" is just a simplified term for "controlled and sustained powered flight" Maybe? But most people think of it as "invented the airplane," and the two terms have different connotations in common use. Likewise, the title here says "television," not "real-time capture, transmission, and display of moving images" -- and similarly, I think the terms have different connotations.

People who do not have a technical education tend to have a less precise definition of things. There's not a great deal of point to arguing semantics. There were precursors to Edison's light bulb, and people use that to denigrate Edison's achievement. But the technical reality of the Edison bulb is his bulb was practical, and the precursors were just curiosities.

> Edison

Sure, and (as far as I know) Edison's basic pattern at discovery was much the same as what we use today (less so these days obviously):

   1. Fill a sealed container with non-reactive gas or vacuum 
   2. String something conductive and heat-tolerant through it
   3. Run enough current through it to make the thing glow
I think the same can be said for the Wright brothers -- perhaps less so for the reasons I gave previously.

I think a system that involves mechanical elements is farther from what most people think of when they think "TV"

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#258

Post by accounting2026 »

cf100clunk wrote: post #69
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.

The shadow mask system for colour CRTs was a huge improvement that thwarted worries about ''beams everywhere'': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask

Actually, the voltages had to be raised due to the shadow mask, and this rise in voltage meant you were now in x-ray territory, which wasn't the case before. The infamous problems with TV's emitting x-rays and associate recalls were the early color TV's. And it wasn't so much from the tube, but from the shunt regulators etc. in the power supply that were themselves vacuum tubes. If you removed the protection cans around those you would be exposed to strong radiation. Most of that went away when the TV's were transistorized so the high-voltage circuits didn't involve vacuum tubes.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#259

Post by k4rli »

the_af wrote: post #52
shevy-java wrote: post #51

In a way television was kind of cool. I loved it as a child, give or take. Nowadays ..... hmmm. I no longer own a TV since many years. Sadly youtube kind of replaced television. It is not the same, quality-wise I think youtube is actually worse than e. g. the 1980s era. But I also don't really want to go back to television, as it also had low quality - and it simply took longer, too. On youtube I was recently watchin…

> It is not the same, quality-wise I think youtube is actually worse than e. g. the 1980s era Is it though? I of course watched TV as a kid through the 80s and have some feelings of nostalgia about it, but is it true that YouTube today is worse? I mean, YouTube is nothing in particular. There's all sorts of crap, but Sturgeon's Law [1] applies here. There is also good stuff, even gems, if you curate your content care…

Same as reddit pretty much. 98% is trash but good parts do exist.

Diving into new topics on YT is delightful. The site becomes much better with sponsorblock+ublock origin+hide shorts/trending (unhook or blocktube)+replace clickbait titles+replace thumbnails (dearrow)+return youtube dislike.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#260

Post by Night_Thastus »

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…

The device? Absolutely. Cable service? Absolutely not.

The device is fantastic. Games, movies, shows, etc. There's a lot of utility in having a big, high-resolution screen as compared to a computer screen or, worse, a tiny phone screen. I love getting to relax on a couch and watch a favorite movie.

Cable and streaming are crap. Every year the prices go up, the content gets more fractured, the experience and service get worse, and it's just a bad time. I'm sick of promising new shows getting cancelled after 2 seasons. I'm sick of ENDLESS budget being spent on the most absurd CGI and effects instead of making something simpler and focused more on the story.

Post reply on HN