Television is 100 years old today • Hacker News Board

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#281

Post by MoonWalk » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #227

Dwedit wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which unfortunately also has continued to plague us much longer than we have used any display technology where that might have made any sense.

Yep, once again thanks to broadcasters spreading FUD. When the progressive vs. interlaced debate raged during the development of ATSC, broadcasters whined that progressive would disrupt their entire production pipeline... which was utter BS because they'd been showing film-based content for generations.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#282

Post by MoonWalk » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

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…

I understand the origin of the 29.97 frame rate. They did have a choice, though: Shift the audio signal's frequency and orphan the (relatively limited number of) receivers at the time, or saddle generations of people with this dumb frate rate.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#283

Post by MoonWalk » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

eternauta3k wrote: post #24

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…

Why is an integer frame rate better?

In addition to the other poster's on-point remarks, film cameras have always run at integer frame rates. We have generations of motion pictures shot at 24 FPS.

Many TV shows (all, before video tape) were shot on film too, but I'm not sure if they were at an even 30 FPS.