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Television is 100 years old today

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Re: Television is 100 years old today

#271

Post by nephihaha »

account42 wrote: post #236
nephihaha wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem nowadays is that there are so many channels and so much space to fill. TV runs 24/7 now on hundreds of channels. In many cases, it isn't worth the while of a small channel to make an expensive programme as they would lose money. Sometimes, the "wrong" programme is the hit. I know the History Channel started off with serious documentaries (some of them excellent quality) which not enough people wat…

How many people even watch TV "channels" these days? Seems most people have moved to a la carte streaming services. I don't really like either myself and prefer local copies of films but seem to be in a very small minority there.

I've been having a lot of trouble with Amazon Prime. I specifically have it so that I can download films and watch them offline when I don't have internet, and yet the player keeps glitching. I do prefer physical media because at least I'm owning it instead of just hiring it.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#272

Post by bobthepanda »

hahahahhaah wrote: post #188
bobthepanda wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circles don’t pack together well. And they need a different solution for standing up.

Circle tube, rectangle case.

The issue is not so much that you can't pack them at all but any packing solution is going to waste a lot of space in the truck compared to a bunch of box shaped TVs.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#273

Post by accidentallfact »

WorldMaker wrote: post #269
accidentallfact wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Steam and electricity seem more like a coincidence that they were developed at the same time, so worlds without one seem natural. Another possibility might be no semiconductors. No nuclear also feels plausible, but it's just not interesting. Anything else requires a massive stretch to explain why technology got stuck in such a state.

Perhaps, if you are worried about realism from the perspective of modern technology. But a lot of the concept of retrofuturism is considering the possible futures from the perspectives of the past. You don't necessarily need realism for why you would consider an exercise like that. Steampunk is "rootable" in the writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and others. We have scifi visions from Victorian and Edwardian len…

I mean that steampunk looks plausible, because it indeed seems to be purely a historical coincidence that electricity was developed at the same time. They are unrelated, one doesn't follow from the other in any way, so there is no obvious need to have both.

You pretty much need to have both chemistry and electricity, or neither.

Even Jules Verne understood the impossibility (or at least absurd impracticality) of a steam powered submarine, and made Nautilus electric.

It's unclear if internal combustion engines would be developed without electricity, and to what degree they would become practical.

I'm not sure about semiconductors, but the discovery does seem fairly random, and it seems plausible that electronics could just go on with vacuum tubes.

It seems perfectly plausible that nuclear wasn't noticed or practically developed, but, as I said, it just isn't an interesting setting.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#274

Post by account42 »

nephihaha wrote: post #271
account42 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people even watch TV "channels" these days? Seems most people have moved to a la carte streaming services. I don't really like either myself and prefer local copies of films but seem to be in a very small minority there.

I've been having a lot of trouble with Amazon Prime. I specifically have it so that I can download films and watch them offline when I don't have internet, and yet the player keeps glitching. I do prefer physical media because at least I'm owning it instead of just hiring it.

Yeah, I don't really consider it a local copy when I can't play it in a player of my choice on any device I want. I'd be fine with digital files (although having a movie shelf is nice) but that isn't really an option so physical media (ripped to a hard disk for convenience) it is.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#275

Post by briantoknowyou »

smithza wrote: post #254

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.

Ew. Reeks more of a paranoid victim complex than true embodied virtue. I’d consider therapy there uh bud

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#276

Post by metalman »

I owned a TV for aproximatly 30 seconds, when an obnoxtious roomy sold me theres for $20, thinking they could still watch there horrid shit, but I promptly threw it off the balcony. Obviously doing this with a screen, but I have zero "accounts" for social media that are not text based, and block everything by default. My basic practice is to resist and avoid asymetric situations that are not defined by a negotiated contract or agreament, up or down.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#277

Post by pezezin »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #182
G_o_D wrote: post #181

I still only have CRT, No matter how much i browse shopping sites or visit showrooms, i cannot make up my mind buying newer tv, lcd, led, plasma, oled etc, so much new technologies have arrived but i have'nt tried them for TV Yet as of today My tv's have gone through real stress test in real life unlike factories During childhood, we had our tv Switched on in morning 4:00 till 22:00 at night, constantly being watched…

CRTs are a very interesting display technology with their refresh rate and clarity. I'd like to see an "HD" CRT someday, and however many tons it would weigh!

PC monitors were already HD. If you have the chance, watch a HD video on a big enough PC monitor, the picture quality is quite impressive.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#278

Post by pezezin »

pinnochio wrote: post #72
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.

We're getting awfully close to recreating CRT qualities with modern display panels. A curved 4:3 1000Hz OLED panel behind glass, and an integrated RetroTink 4K with G-Sync Pulsar support would do it. Then add in a simulated degauss effect and electrical whine and buzzing sounds for fun.

Why curved? We didn't like the CRT curvature back then and manufacturers struggled to make them as flat as possible, finally reaching "virtually flat" screens towards the end of the CRT era. I have one right here on my desk, a Sony Multiscan E200.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#279

Post by aidenn0 »

leguminous wrote: post #178
accounting2026 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

At some point, most NTSC TVs had delay lines, too. A comb filter was commonly used for separating the chroma from the luma, taking advantage of the chroma phase being flipped each line. Sophisticated comb filters would have multiple delay lines and logic to adaptively decide which to use. Some even delayed a whole field or frame, so you could say that in this case one or more frames were stored in the TV. https://www…

If a motion adaptive 3d comb filter (which requires comparing successive frames) was present on a TV, you can bet that it would be plastered all over the marketing material for the TV.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#280

Post by Xirdus »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #163
Xirdus wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solid state is the superior technology for almost everything. No moving parts means more reliable, quieter, and very likely more energy efficient since no mass has to move.

Do modern hdd's last as long as the old platter ones? For me, when the SSDs fail it's frustrating because I can't open it up and do anything about it--it's a complete loss. So I tend to have a low opinion of their reliability (same issue I have with old versus new electronic-everything cars). I don't know the actual lifetimes. Surely USB sticks are universally recognized as pretty crappy. I can leave those in the sam…

I feel like I'm the only person in the world who never had an issue with USB flash drives. Or HDDs for that matter. Or SSDs. I don't think I've ever had any storage die on me except optical disks.

Internet says both HDDs and SSDs have similar average lifespans, but with HDDs it's usually a mechanical failure so yes, you can often DIY it back to life if you have the right parts. With SSDs it's almost always the memory cells themselves wearing out. On the flip side, data recovery is usually much easier since SSD will usually keep working in read-only mode for a while, whereas a faulty HDD won't work at all.

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