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

41–50 of 283 posts

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#41

Post by criddell »

masfuerte wrote: post #38
Deanallen wrote: post #35

> Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which implies a complete absence of connection between the separate topics the phrase ostensibly connects. This idea is why I always take media with a grain of salt. The decontexualization makes it easy for people to be reactive towards something, that isn’t logical Eg “now this is why is good/evil” People call me the devils advocate when I point out these…

What are you quoting?

Sounds like something from Neil Postman’s excellent book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#42

Post by willturman »

ofrzeta wrote: post #27

Neil Postman's theory still holds up and is extended to the Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

> In the introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state violence.

And modern America asked itself, why can't it be both?

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#43

Post by masfuerte »

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…

In the UK the two earliest channels (BBC1 and ITV) continued to broadcast in the 405 line format (in addition to PAL) until 1985. Owners of ancient televisions had 20 years to upgrade. That doesn't seem unreasonable.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#44

Post by throw0101a »

In interesting plot point in the novel/movie Contact (early, so not much of a spoiler):

> […] This puts her at odds with much of the scientific community, including Drumlin, who pushes to defund SETI. Eventually, the project detects a signal from Vega, 26 light-years away, transmitting prime numbers.[a][b] Further analysis reveals a retransmission of Adolf Hitler's 1936 Olympic speech, the first TV signal to escape Earth's ionosphere.[1]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#45

Post by willturman »

> It’s entirely possible that my plangent noises about the impossibility of rebelling against an aura that promotes and vitiates all rebellion say more about my residency inside that aura, my own lack of vision, than they do about any exhaustion of U.S. fiction’s possibilities. The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naïve, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows. Today’s most engaged young fiction does seem like some kind of line’s end’s end. I guess that means we all get to draw our own conclusions. Have to. Are you immensely pleased.

- David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#46

Post by Dwedit »

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…

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

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#47

Post by derektank »

Geste wrote: post #18
bilsbie wrote: post #10

Odd we never adapted to it. Video has a strange hypnotic power over most people and messages seem to bypass normal mental defenses.

I'd say we did, you need more and more for the same effect. Here is the first ad ever, for a watch : https://youtu.be/ho2OJfXkvpI For comparison, here is the latest ad for the best selling watch as of today : https://youtu.be/kdMTc5WfnkM

In case anyone accuses you of not comparing like to like, even a contemporary Bulova commercial is much more similar to the latter than the former: https://youtu.be/trp7p634qAU?si=fGvyxHp_cayuw5xa

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#48

Post by hnlmorg »

Deanallen wrote: post #35

> Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which implies a complete absence of connection between the separate topics the phrase ostensibly connects. This idea is why I always take media with a grain of salt. The decontexualization makes it easy for people to be reactive towards something, that isn’t logical Eg “now this is why is good/evil” People call me the devils advocate when I point out these…

Your example isn’t what your quote is referring to.

“Now this” is just a segue between unrelated topics.

Eg “and now a word from our sponsors”.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#49

Post by UncleSlacky »

empressplay wrote: post #36

Related: Baird's Mechanical Television https://paleotronic.com/2018/09/15/gadget-graveyard-bairds-m...

Also this site, which shows how the recorded Phonovision broadcasts were eventually recovered:

http://www.tvdawn.com/earliest-tv/phonovision-experiments-19...

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#50

Post by wat10000 »

Geste wrote: post #18
bilsbie wrote: post #10

Odd we never adapted to it. Video has a strange hypnotic power over most people and messages seem to bypass normal mental defenses.

I'd say we did, you need more and more for the same effect. Here is the first ad ever, for a watch : https://youtu.be/ho2OJfXkvpI For comparison, here is the latest ad for the best selling watch as of today : https://youtu.be/kdMTc5WfnkM

Wow, I haven't watched any ads for a while and that was pretty jarring.
Post reply on HN