Slashdot Mirror
Fifty Years of Color Television
peter303 writes "The Houston Chronicle notes that color TVs were first manufactured on March 25, 1954 at a price of $1000 (about $4000 in today's dollars). Some of the older folk here remember the excitement of your first neighbors acquiring one of these in the 1960s and as the TV series one-by-one switched to color. Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV."
Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV.
Was HDTV really even necessary? Our tax dollars were spent mandating its deployment, our money will be wasted purchasing the receivers (which are going to have to be in all TVs), and what does it do for us? Nothing.
We worry about the effects of lack of exercise, overeating, diabetes, etc, yet we mandate better TV signals and are double paying for it.
They did it right back then. Good technology (lasted 50 years), allowed the market, not the government, to push adaptation. Somehow I doubt we will still be using HDTV (at least what the current incarnation is) in 50 years.
What changeover in 2006? HDTV is being broadcast now. At least here in Boston, most broadcast channels are available in HDTV. Much like in the 60s when shows were switching over to color, the same trasnition to HDTV is taking place now.
what about the quality in video cameras (ignoring inferior digital ones)? just asking for your opinion. has that had any effect?
I don't know about the TV image qualities where you are, but Cable TV certainly improved image qualities. Ok, ok, this is not an improvement on image quality, but on transmission, but to the people sitting at home, it didn't make a difference. Why do I bring it up? Because Cable TV allowed for additional channels and offered image quality good enough that people are willing to pay to subscribe to it. And quite frankly, no matter how good the pictures, if you don't have good transmission/reception, it's still pretty crappy.
I concur, reading /. is much more productive.
But what about digital TV broadcasts, we've had these for a few years, and they've certainly made a big difference to the old analogue signal. Plus there's also audio improvements including Mono -> Nicam Stereo, and Doly Digital 5.1 broadcasts through digital satellite transmissions (using Sky+ for example). AND we also have receiver improvements, including CVBS -> S/Video -> RGB -> Component, and 100Hz TVs, widescreen TVs...
Yes I can remember seeing color TV in the late '60s, but it wasn't until the mid '70s when my family finally replaced our old black & white TV. A lot of people held off saying they'd wait "until color is perfected." In my memory, color didn't look reliably good until the '80s.
-- Boycott Shell
So your problem is with people, and not tv, right?
Give life
No they don't. NO ONE GIVES a SHIT.
The current standard has been around for 50 years because it's "Good enough". Nobody saw (and still, few people see) a reason for switching to higher resolution television. I suppose it would be nice for your hardware to show movies in hi-res, but who can honestly say they can't wait to see The Simpsons broadcast in hi-res?
You might as well ask why it is that every time there's an article about NASA doing this or ESA doing that, we get the same people complaining that those funds could be used to something much more beneficial. Or maybe you could even ask why just about every new post gets an immediate GNAA-response or three.
Incidentally, the TV has a very positive feature that Slashdot, too, has. If you don't like what you see, you can just not see it anymore with one click of a button. Pretty neat, huh?
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV.
Assuming HDTV actually switches over in 2006...
I would argue that there were two major quality improvements in TV with the advents of video tape and digital compression. The first was a revolution of time, since people could now watch what they wanted when they wanted regardless of when the stations/theaters were showing it. The second enabled a revolution in distribution, as it allows cleaner transmission in smaller channels and arbitrary additional content. This is mainly manifested in DVD but is equally applicable to digital cable, video on demand, and online distribution (legal or otherwise, with anime fansubs and other non-domestic shows being the most striking application). Thanks to digital tech you can bundle on a ton of extras, edit with ease, and lower the cost of distribution and replication to inconsequential levels.
HDTV is a nice improvement in video quality to theater-grade levels. But the video and digital revolutions are far more significant, and will continue to trump HD where both can not be accomodated. After all, what matters the most is not the presentation but content.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
As someone who is extremely interested in DV production, HDTV and more specifically HD DV are going to be a boon to the industry.
Consumer and pro-sumer cameras are going to get a whole lot better in terms of color sampling and resolution. The ability for the start-up movie maker or videographer to turn in a superior product will prove to be much better with this technology, also.
I don't know how much different the standard is for HDTV between different countries, but I'm sure if pros and the like don't have to choose between NTSC, PAL, and SECAM, there will also be quite a few happy people out there.
You know, the broadcast flag feature. That alone will kill Digital TV.
What's next?:
-No channel skipping during commercials?
-No mute during commercials?
-Involuntary channel changes?
-Can't turn off the TV during commercials?
-Mandatory commercials during power on?
At that rate they should just make the precious controled-content pay-per-view then but don't touch my remote after that!
They want complete control but don't want to pay for the TV. Who's TV is it anyway? I paid for the dawn thing! Keep your MPAA/RIAA/xxAA hand off my Frelling remote!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Actually the solution to too much Tv is a MythTV or for the incapable the Tivo or tivo types.
Tv watching in my home has dropped by at least 90% cince we got the mythtv server and playback units running. My daughter watches her 2 shows within the timespan of one show and spends more time playing outside or with the dog, whatever.. Myself and the wife are spending more time together, the house is cleaner, we eat better as the evening entertainment is cooking, talking and other tasks.. we spend 1 hour to watch 3 TV shows we usually WANT to catch at the end of the night. skipping all the commercials and the boring parts makes it cool. the rare times we dont watch mythtv and watch live tv we all get annoyed as we cant skip commercials or pause.
you can have your TV and a real life too.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
1) Anything about Americans
2) Anything about not owning a TV
3) Anything about being superior
That was not a troll comment, it was a sad commentary on just how much TV people watch. I think you might be a troll however...
--rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Books aren't a waste of time. Well, unless they're vitriolic political commentaries about the evils of the left or the evils of the right.
TV doesn't encourage you to think, it's just sitting there in front of you, a lot of it full of mind-numbing reality TV garbage. Now if PBS was winning the ratings war, I wouldn't be worried.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Keep your eyes to the sky.
You're right, because by the time you acquire all the parts, assemble them, download the 18 different driver versions, compile the right kernel with the right support and get it all working and have a functioning MythTV, TV will be long dead.
Yes, this is meant as sarcastic humor. I own a TiVo, but was interested in putting together a MythTV. However, like many great ideas, the MythTV is poorly implemented from an assembly instruction. What I wanted was documentation saying "buy these components (and optionally these others)", "download this software" and "it works". What I found instead was a discussion of what hardware might happen to work with a particular driver version under a particular kernel. Ugh.
Cause the improvements I've seen over the last 20 years don't qualify as Ironic.
When I was a kid, we got two and a half channels with crummy reception. A few years later, we got a 15 foot dish and watched much better signals before the channels started encrypting....but they STILL had issues with sparklies when sunspots were active....18-32 analog channels on 10-15 satellites, requiring a dish to rotate to get to them. Then we went to an 18" dish that gets 150+ channels on two satellites that don't require repositioning, and all look uniformly good (some compression artifacting) especially when compared to two and a half channels in the late 1970s.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
They do the same thing today with HDTV. They love to show you a bunch of tiny old TVs next to a huge new HD screen so the disparity is as great as possible. Of course, they try to show you the "quality" of the new system. I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to judge a higher-resolution screen as viewed through my low-resolution screen. Yet sometimes they show a HD screen by itself and say "look at the quality!" as if they think it's somehow going to show through to me. I think it's pretty funny actually.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
My wife and I use it every day, but I haven't had to do ANY sort of admin work or changes since I got it up and running. It's really easy to use.
Also, ditto on the parent post. We watch many more programs now, but in A LOT less time. It's great.
-- null
I disagree. Just as there are bad television programs, there are also bad books. _Lots_ of bad books. Most books are indeed a waste of time. I'm sure you can name a list that aren't, but that list would only encompass a small fraction of the number of books out there.
The thing about the anti-TV elitists that I've noticed is that, unless you read the same list of books as they do, you are a "lesser" man. "Oh you haven't read ?" as they look down on you.
No, because changing your clock doesn't make the earth orbit the sun any faster, it'll still take about 365.25 days.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.