The First High-Definition TV, Circa 1958

An anonymous reader sends us to Gizmag for a look at a recent auction of a large collection of antique TVs. The star of the show was the Teleavia type P111, one of the earliest examples of high-definition TV. This rare 1958 console-stand television was designed by Flaminio Bertroni, who was also responsible for the iconic Citroen DS. The TV featured dual resolution capability, with the higher setting offering better resolution than 720p — 819 lines. This early attempt at a high-def standard, originating in France in 1949, didn't catch on in the marketplace.

Comments

First hidef first post

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look closely at the fine kerning!

Re:First hidef first post

[Hurricane78]

Fine kerning doesn't matter, if there's only Arial and Comic Sans MS to look at.

Re:First hidef first post

[CarpetShark]

Just look closely at the fine kerning!

I'm browsing on a Spectrum 48k, you insensitive clod!

The Citroen

[conureman]

Way ahead of it's time, as well. What a ride!

Re:The Citroen

[conureman]

Is that web page ahead of it's time or do I just need to update my browser? ow.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other Citroens than cute little 2CV.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

Confusing a 2CV with a DS is like confusing Win 3.11 with NeXTSTEP.

(or do these car analogies work the other way around?)

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

Citroen is not only the 2CV. 2CV was the French Beetle and it was perfectly suited for the needs of ruined postwar France. But aside from from 2CV, Citroen built the marvelous DS model, the most advanced car of it's time available to customers.

Judging Citroen by the 2CV is like saying that all inhabitants of the USA are like rednecks from the Bible belt, which obviously is not true.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't?

Re:The Citroen

[qc_dk]

First of all I think he was refering to the CitroÃn DS. Secondly the point of the 2CV was to have no engine power. The 2CV stands for 2 horse power. The taxation of cars was based on their horse power rating, so a low number meant very little tax.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

It is still quite snappy.
Max speed uphill/slope was 105 Kilometer per hour in 1986 (Rented for 3 days from AVIS, Norway)
It looks a bit odd for most folk, but it is still in daily use with many.
On German Ebay there are at the moment 12 2CV up for sale.
A roadworthy 1986 model TÃoeV August 2010 has an asking price of EURO 1100 :-

Re:The Citroen

[Chrisq]

Way ahead of it's time, as well. What a ride!

When asked about the 2CVs performance and acceleration, many owners said it went "from 0-60 in one day". Others jokingly said they "had to make an appointment to merge onto an interstate highway system".

Yep, a heck of a ride ...

I was once driven around Strasbourg in a 2CV, on a route that involved going up and down kerbs, steps, pedestrian areas and gardens (don't ask). I can honestly say that it did things that would be impossible in most modern cars, and much more smoothly than a 4x4. I remember bracing myself for the bump I expected when we approached a kerb at 20 mph, and none came - the ultra spongy suspension just took the impact and the car raise up slowly. The same soft suspension made the car lean on every bend in a most disconcerting way though.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

Something to do with the design of the 2CV was that it had to carry a box of eggs over a bumpy field without breaking any.

Re:The Citroen

[smoker2]

Who mentioned the 2CV (apart from you) ? The DS is nothing like a 2CV, and is considered an icon.

Re:The Citroen

[obarthelemy]

DS != 2CV.

The DS was a luxury car, I think De Gaulle used one, with a hydraulic suspension, you could make the care go higher or lower on its wheeels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroen_DS

The 2CV was a very cheap, noisy, reliable and easy to maintain people's car. It set some kind of record, with 40+ years in production. I had one for a while, I remember trying to go as fast as possible when going downhill, so that I wouldn't slow down to 10 mph before I reached the top of the next hill. Felt kinda like a bike. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroen_2cv. The one in their picture looks classy in black. Mine was bright yellow, with duck stickers all over

Re:The Citroen

[obarthelemy]

They cheated, I think later models had up to 6HP, instead of the basic 2, then 4.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You completely miss the point.
2. Besides, it was the DS he designed, not the 2CV.

Re:The Citroen

[Rennt]

The 2CV was not designed for highways. It wasn't even designed for roads. It was developed as an upgrade from horse and cart and as such spent most of its time on dirt tracks and fields.

Off-road (especially in soft mud) they are still extremely capable and can out perform most anything not 4WD.

Re:The Citroen

[Toothpick]

2CV: http://dummidumbwit.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/26-citroen-2cv.jpg
DS: http://theinvisibleagent.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/citroen_ds.jpg

Needless to say, about the only thing they have in common is the chevron badge... and front-wheel drive.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

The DS, not the 2CV. ;)

Re:The Citroen

[R2.0]

And they're both fucking ugly.

It always baffled me how the French, who defined "fashion" for the WORLD at one time, could produce vehicles so singularly...odd. It would be like developing plus fours for women instead of the miniskirt.

Re:The Citroen

[R2.0]

"Needless to say, about the only thing they have in common is the chevron badge... and front-wheel drive."

And their hideous countenance.

Re:The Citroen

[operagost]

The DS was still a hideously slow car, thanks to French "horsepower" taxation; it just appears reasonable next to a 2CV.

Re:The Citroen

[conureman]

I was referring to the moderne looking one with the air suspension. My brother, Maharishi Bob, who lives in Arnhem has a Deux Cheveaux but I've never ridden in one. Bob, BTW has a bold driving style that probably compensates for lack of acceleration. You don't have to speed up if you never slow down.

Re:The Citroen

[Anonymous Coward]

actually this is french taxation horse power, rising from 2 to 6 over the years. It has not much to do with real power. Real power was about 27 european horse power in the later models.

Re:The Citroen

[c6gunner]

I was referring to the moderne looking one with the air suspension.

Yeah, I figured. It was supposed to be a joke. Unfortunately, 12 dumb-asses and a couple guys with mod points have no sense of humour. I especially love the fact that almost all 12 of them wrote the same damn response. I guess it's too much effort to scroll down a bit and see if anyone else has responded.

Re:The Citroen

[conureman]

I never drove the DS, it was the girlfriend's dad's car, so I didn't get to do any of my usual stunt driver/test pilot stuff. I thought it was a nice bonus that we could get in some extra kissing while we waited for the suspension to raise up.

This didn't catch on. .

[Master Moose]

.. Only because it didn't have HDMI input, which as we all know is imperative to receiving HD content.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[StreetStealth]

Obviously the movie studios were afraid of having their content available to consumers in such high resolutions!

But for all I know, that may not be entirely a joke.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Firehed]

I wouldn't doubt that (you can certainly fit a feature film's worth of 1080p on a dual layer DVD, but copyright holders waited for a more DRM-infected format), but I think bandwidth would have been the bigger issue. Lord knows they didn't have digital compression back then, never mind a decent implementation like h.264. I don't know a damn thing about analog compression, but I imagine that it's all inherently lossy so applying much would defeat the purpose of having the increased resolution in the first place.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Anonymous Coward]

As a frequent pirate of movies, let me just say: 8-9GB for a 1080p movie (in h.264) is not sufficient to make compression artifacts non-noticeable on any decent display. And I've yet to find a codec that is better than h.264.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[mcrbids]

Sure, HDMI is a joke. But there's a deeper issue going on... who hasn't noticed that TV as we've known it is almost dead?

1) I don't bother with rabbit ears.

2) I have a television but it's never on except to play video games.

3) I never turn on a set to see "what's on".

4) When I want to "watch TV", I turn to my Mac Mini, and surf to Hulu, Netflix or sometimes directly to the major networks.

5) I'm oblivious to the network behind most of the shows I watch. I typically go to the networks' sites last, and then only when I have time to kill. Which is rare.

6) I watch the shows I want, when I want, starting from the beginning. If I don't like a show, I switch to another show, which also starts right up, exactly when I want it to. When I stay at a Hotel, I find the "channel surfing" experience annoying since I can't start the shows at the beginning!

I have plenty of money to buy a TV. I just don't care to - Hulu/Netflix/Mac-Mini with a nice screen and Altec Lansing speakers give me a much more satisfactory experience. (seriously, who knew speakers so small could PUMP like that with good fidelity to boot?)

The only thing I really miss is the remote - the Mac Mini remote doesn't work with the browser. Wireless mice are annoying since the pointer tends to bounce around, and the batteries die quickly. But it's a small price to pay...

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[bemymonkey]

Huh, I'm the same, but everyone still looks at me weird when I tell them I don't actually own a TV... :P

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[mcrbids]

Don't be sheepish! When they say "TV" you say: "Why would you want one of those?".

Turn the conversation around, and make them justify spending $XX money without even getting video "on demand".

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[DigiShaman]

It wasn't until the late 70s (early 80s) that the VCR became a consumer mass-market product. Sure, there have been other devices prior for niche markets; but they wouldn't have had much of an impact on content piracy.

I think a more down-to-earth explanation as to why that hi-def analog format failed was due to the cost of the infrastructure to support it. In fact, were there any cameras with the technology to support 819 lines at the time?

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[plastbox]

Here in Norway the outdatedness of TV is taken to a whole other level. Over here, you can't even own a TV (or anything else with a TV tuner) without paying about $456 a year in "broadcast tax" (loosely translated)! Even if you only use your TV with your media PC, you still have to pay this broadcast tax, even though there is no actual broadcasting going on, Hell, you have a TV in your basement? What you say !! Pay up, biatch! =(

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[adolf]

Hrm. My 52" Samsung does just fine with these "on demand" tasks, coupled with a PS3 and a spare core on my Q6600. A little pricey, and a lot wasteful, for sure. But then, I'm a lot more comfortable on my couch with a beer and a smoke than in front of my PC when it comes to consuming passive entertainment. And it lets me watch with my friends and family, as well.

To each his own, I guess.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[k-vuohi]

Here in Finland they've really noticed the outdatedness (mainly from people canceling their subscriptions to the "TV fee"), and starting from 2012 they're going to charge about $250 or more per household, TV or no TV present.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Ant P.]

Have you tried that on video that wasn't horribly compressed to begin with?

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[dotgain]

New Zealand is way ahead of you lot at uniformly shafting everyone, in 1998. Try to keep up!

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[LordSnooty]

You'll prise the BBC from my cold dead hands, or something

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[ChienAndalu]

7) You are not the average TV consumer

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[plastbox]

Thing is, if you try to cancel it (if that is even possible), they send some fat old fart to your doorstep. You know, the kind who never did much with his life and thus thoroughly enjoys what imagined power and influence this job gives him. I didn't send in any papers to tell them I did in fact have a TV, and sure enough, an overweight, middle-aged man comes to visit to check.

Not only was he impolite and all together quite unlikable, he got someone else to let him in the front door of our old apartment complex whereupon he promptly proceeded to attempt entering our apartment on his own, without knocking!

When I unlocked and opened the door, I had to physically stand in his way as he attempted to just walk inside, right into our living room. Seeing the TV from the doorway, he proceeded with a brusque lecture about how serious this was while filling out the bill.

What makes the situation particularly infuriating is that before they changed the fee's name to "broadcasting license" it was called "NRK license", with NRK being a government owned channel with fewer voluntary viewers than goatse.cx. Good thing they changed the name, eh? This complicates things further, because if you try to contest the claim you get exactly nowhere. "Kringkastingsbyrået" (the broadcast bureau) is government owned and if you don't pay, they simply subtract what you own from your next paycheck prior to taxes. No matter what you do, the only thing you end up achieving is having 2600 NOK + 1000 NOK give or take (for the expenses involved in robbing you) subtracted from your income, and you still have to pay taxes on the full sallary!

Meaning, I make 25000 a month. They take 3600 from my paycheck, leaving me with only 21400 but still paying income tax for 25000!

This goes even if I get my TV from some private company through their fiber, and find some channel package that doesn't include the ever useless NRK. Kind of funny that I can pay some company to get the channels I want as well as rent on the fiber, and I still have to pay "broadcasting license" to the government even though they play no part in the broadcasting that takes part!

Obligatory car analogy:
A few years back we had a government owned oil company named Statoil. What they are doing with this retarded license equates to me owing Statoil money even if I buy my gas/diesel from Esso or Shell. It's highway robbery is what it is! Damn dirty PIRATES!

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[DangerFace]

I still have a copy of Burn After Reading that was a little over 700MB and 720p, with good quality sound and no artifacts that I noticed. Maybe it'd need to be a gig and a half to be perfect quality, but I couldn't tell the difference between it and Blu-Ray on a 24" monitor. So being very harsh indeed with the upscaling, maybe 4 to 5 gigs for full 1080? The only problem is finding that rare uploader who cares enough or uses a professional level edit suite.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[mdwh2]

My monitor is a TV. When I watch TV, like you I do it through my Intel Core Duo PC using my LG TV/monitor. Since HDTV, most TVs also function as monitors - there's no difference.

So it doesn't really make sense to say that TVs are going away, when you obviously still need that "nice screen" to watch things on. All it means is that the monitor and TV markets will converge, which yes is already happening.

A more fundamental change would be the TV channel networks. You still watch the TV, you still need something to watch it on - but you're no longer dependent on the TV channels themselves.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[vegiVamp]

Hmm, peculiar. Here in Belgium, the "kijk- en luistergeld", roughly translated "watch- and listen money", basically a tax on all radios and tellies, was abolished a few years ago.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[commodore64_love]

>>>I don't know a damn thing about analog compression, but I imagine that it's all inherently lossy so applying much would defeat the purpose of having the increased resolution in the first place.
>>>

You can read all about analog compression by searching for "MUSE TV" on wikipedia. In brief it created a beautiful 1060x1080 still image, but as soon as movement happened the resolution dropped to about 530x1080, due to not having enough analog bandwidth. Also it required 3 channels to operate, whereas today's digital TV can fit inside just one channel.

TRIVIA - When PAL was first introduced in the UK it was called "high definition" since it had almost twice as many scanlines as the older television standard. That's similar to how 640x480 gaming consoles used to be called "high resolution" versus the older 320x240 standard. It's all a matter of perspective.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[commodore64_love]

>>>(1) I don't bother with rabbit ears. (2) I have a television but it's never on except to play video games. (3) I never turn on a set to see "what's on".

There's still about 60 million Americans who use rabbit ears or rooftop antennas to receive their television. Not everyone has cable running past their homes, or enough spare cash to get a satellite dish (although the cost has dropped to $20/month) so they keep using their antennas. Speaking for myself, I have that "free tv" turned-on all day and use the built-in program guide to locate interesting movies, so yes I'm still checking to see "what's on". Of course I supplement that television with my computer with sits directly next to me, so I'm often watching hulu.com at the same time as the live TV.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[commodore64_love]

>>>Even if you only use your TV with your media PC, you still have to pay this broadcast tax, even though there is no actual broadcasting going on

If your TV is not connected to an antenna, there's no way that they can detect your television in the basement, so just don't pay the tax. I'm glad in the States we don't have a tax. We do have PBS which costs about $10 a year higher income tax, but that's trivial.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[operagost]

I've heard...

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[operagost]

So it's a no-TV tax? How's that socialism thing going, again?

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[operagost]

This is what we bat-crazy libertarians are talking about when say we are for limited government. Because some bureaucrat wants his tax money, a government official is allowed to search your house for TVs without a warrant.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Turiko]

Well then, a remote can usually be found for a decent price. If you want something good, turn to logetech, they always work with apple. They're a bit expensive tough.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[plastbox]

Well, thing is I like to have a TV with good channels. No, we don't have antennas but I do have a cable TV subscription and I guess they somehow get that info. Again, government overstepping it's boundaries.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't abolished. It is now part of the normal tax system, so you don't see it any more.

The government saw the rise of non-tv displays and anticipated to avoid less tax income.

So you're still shafted, you just don't see it as such.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Anonymous Coward]

make them justify

Fuck you, asshole.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because YOU can't tell the difference, doesn't mean NOBODY can tell the difference. I occasionally notice artifacts in 8-9GB 1080p movie rips, but they're perfectly watchable for me. Certainly not as bad as some cable tv compression...eg the artifacts on the 1080i evening news are horrible.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm primarily talking about Blu-ray rips that are re-encoded with x.264. So, yes.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Master Moose]

If I remember correctly, the same year the TV tax was dropped. Vehicle registration went up by the same amount. We all know the NZ gov never sends money where it is intended to go and thus all payments go to a slush fund. . This was quite tricky of them as TV tax was only per household whereas vehicle registration is per car.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[SBrach]

ATSC is often a much better picture than cable or satellite. That's why I have an antenna for the locals, dish for the pay channels, and a HTPC for Hulu, bluerays, recording ATSC, youtube, anything else you can do with a pc, etc. I'm close to not needing dish anymore either, if only I could convince the wife.

Also, HDMI is not pointless like others have claimed in this thread. The difference between running a DVI or Component cable AND a high def audio cable compared to a single HDMI is worth it. Not to mention the cost and ease of finding long cables, I just bought 3 25ft cables for 19.99 each.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[mattack2]

You personally don't bother with rabbit ears, but if you include rooftop antennae, I suspect the usage has gone *up* since the OTA digital transition has occurred in the US.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[adolf]

Interesting rant.

Here in the States, we used to have federally-funded public television and radio services. It wasn't a line-item tax, and it wasn't optional -- it was just paid for out of the general fund (which, in turn, is fueled mostly by income taxes).

A decade or so ago, the public services were pretty much de-funded and left to fight on their own. We seem to get about the same amount of programming as we used to, but now it comes along with a lot more stuff that resembles advertisement, and far more frequent beg-a-thons where they'll interrupt the program at some great length to solicit donations.

I, for one, far preferred the publicly-funded way over this new(ish) begging-to-stay-on-the-air methodology.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[plastbox]

Well, thing is only NRK (and NRK2/NRK3, all equally useless) have anything to do with the government. All the remotely interesting channels have to rely on advertising to make money. With the entertainment value of the government owned channels being about equal to the commercial breaks on other channels, I'd much rather have a few minutes of commercials every 15-20 minutes (or 30-45 minutes during movies) while watching something interesting and rather spend the licensing money on a weekend in London, or Paris.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Try living in Denmark.

We pay roughly the same amount as you do in Norway. Don't own a TV? You still have to pay full price if you have an internet connection faster than 256kbit/s or a 3G-capable phone.

There's no escaping the "Media License"!

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[plastbox]

Well, at least you guys can go to any convenience store or gas station and buy alcohol at 1/10 the price we pay here at the liquor store and drink your sorrows away! =P

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[Kethinov]

The blu-ray content on the original disk is compressed though. So when you transcode blu-ray to x.264, you're compressing a compression. However, yes, I tend to agree with you that any 9gb x.264 2 hour film is going to look worse than its equivalent 50gb blu-ray counterpart, even if the x.264 was transcoded from the original source as well.

Re:This didn't catch on. .

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Damn straight! Incidentally, Denmark also has some of the highest alcoholism and teen drinking rates in the world, which is hardly a coincidence.

Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[Rantastic]

The TV featured dual resolution capability, with the higher setting offering better resolution than 720p â" 819 lines.

Nice try, but "by today's standards, it could be called 737i with a maximum theoretical resolution of 816x737 pixels with a 4:3 aspect ratio (10Mhz * 40.8 / 1000 *2 = 816)" Now compare this to the 720p standard which is 1280x720 pixels and a much higher resolution.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[Jartan]

TV CRT's don't have an actual horizontal resolution like you are thinking. The set is obviously 4:3 but if they had built a widescreen version it would indeed have higher resolution than 720p. There's nothing surprising about this either. The technology for high-def isn't some new fangled thing.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, it's interlaced (the i in 737i), not progressive. And black-and-white. And it did catch on - France used it from the 40s to the 80s. Calling it HDTV is dumb - it had a few more lines than the 625-line system. Which in turn had more lines than the American 525-line system. Which in turn had more lines than the British 405-line system.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[Anonymous Coward]

This is wrong, not insightful. The horizontal resolution is restricted by the video bandwidth. The 819-line system had up to 10MHz of video bandwidth. That translates to ~488 cycles per line (bandwidth / (lines + frame rate)). Some of that is wasted on blanking and sync (the 625-line system "wastes" 12us out of 64us per line). Correct digitization requires at least 2 pixels per cycle, so that translates to a horizontal resolution of ~800 pixels, no matter what aspect ratio. 720p is 1280 pixels wide.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[Rantastic]

If you want to get technical, here is a quote from Wikipedia:

Also in analog connected picture displays such as CRT TV sets, the horizontal scanlines are not divided into pixels, and therefore the horizontal resolution is related to the bandwidth of the luminance and chroma signals. For television, the analog bandwidth for luminance in standard definition can vary from 3 MHz (approximately 330 lines edge-to-edge; VHS) to 4.2 MHz (440 lines; live analog tv) up to 7 MHz (660 lines; DVD). In high definition the bandwidth is 37 MHz (720p/1080i) or 74 MHz (1080p/60).

Even a hypothetical widescreen System E (the 819 line French system) would not be as high resolution as 720p due to its relatively limited 10MHz analog bandwidth.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[kheldan]

What you're saying is true, I think the horizontal resolution would be defined by the usable bandwidth of the whole system from camera through transmission all the way up to the actual CRT itself.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[commodore64_love]

>>>"maximum theoretical resolution of 816x737 pixels with a 4:3 aspect ratio (10Mhz * 40.8 / 1000 *2 = 816)." Now compare this to the 720p standard which is 1280x720 pixels and a much higher resolution.
>>>

Okay first off, their math is a mystery. I come-up with a much higher resolution. 10 million cycles per second divided by 25 frames == 400,000 cycles per second, per frame. Divide by 819 scanlines == 488 cycles per line, or 976 distinct black/white elements per line. Subtract 5% for the vertical blanking interval and you get 927.

Second, you are confusing pixel count with resolution, which is not the same thing. A widescreen 720 image has an *ideal* horizontal resolution of 720 pixels from left-to-right, per picture height (i.e. inside a perfect square). The standard width 816x727 of this 1940s set would be 695 pixels of horizontal resolution, per picture height.

So in other words, the old 1940s high-def set and the modern 720p digital set would be virtually identical in their ability to resolve fine detail in the center of the screen.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[commodore64_love]

>>>horizontal resolution of ~800 pixels, no matter what aspect ratio. 720p is 1280 pixels wide.

It's actually closer to ~920 pixels per line..... and also you didn't take into account that the 1280x720 image is stretched across a wider screen. If you use the IEEE method of measuring horizontal resolution (i.e. how many pixels fit inside a standard square image), the older set and the new digital set are virtually identical at approximately 700 pixels. i.e. They resolve the fine detail in the center of the screen equally.

Re:Summary is wrong, not higher res that 720p

[commodore64_love]

Hey! You quoted me! I wrote that paragraph. :-) Although the resolution quoted for 7 megahertz is wrong. It's supposed to be 6.5 megahertz == 660 lines edge-to-edge.

off the rez

[JackSpratts]

black and white crt sets are essentially infinite resolution since they don't employ shadow masks like color sets (they use color wheels when color is needed). in manufacturing the use of ultra resolution b&w sets to check welds is common so i'm not sure what's unique about this tv. the tuner perhaps but even a common tube can be used for high definition.

Re:off the rez

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm assuming that, in this case, the resolution is defined either by the maximum resolution of the signal standard it was intended to pick up, or by the quality of the circuitry that handled the signal. Infinite resolution on the tube side isn't going to help you if some other component is letting you down, and analog components definitely have finite ability to transfer signals cleanly(as do digital components, those just take the entire hit up front).

As for the unique bit, probably just the "vintage 1958" bit, and not a whole lot beside that.

Re:off the rez

[MichaelSmith]

They had finite bandwidth.

Re:off the rez

[camperslo]

The screens in the black and white tubes didn't limit resolution, but the spots size (focus) of the beam could. In practice that's mainly a problem with very small screens and high brightness levels, as seen with c.r.t.s in projection sets. Those sure could look awful...

In practice the resolution from left to right is limited by the video bandwidth. On a high end analog computer monitor that may exceed 100 MHz. That essentially limits the minimum width of vertical lines.
But unlike the case with analog computer monitors where stored digital pixel information has a corresponding fixed position on a line, a true analog signal can have intensity changes occur anywhere along the line. To approximate that digitally would take a minimum of two pixels being averaged. (It's the same theory that dictates using at least 40 KHz sampling to sample 20 KHz audio). Trying to use too few of digital pixels (sub-sampling) is what causes aliasing (the jaggies). Analog tv does have that problem, but only in the vertical direction due to the fixed line count/position.

In an analog television, the bandwidth is limited not by the video amplifier section, but by the "i.f." intermediate frequency strip of filters/amplification. By mixing the incoming signals with an adjustable internal oscillator, the tv tuner shifts the desired channel down to the intermediate frequency, there the i.f. filters pass the desired signal while attenuating that of the adjacent channels. That design approach avoids the need to retune a whole group of filters just to change channels. (When first done with A.M. radios, the breakthrough was called SuperHetrodyne) To get higher horizontal detail requires wider filters, and tv channels spaced more widely (greater spectrum bandwidth). The use of too much spectrum was the main limiting factor in preventing opting for higher quality analog. Also, a wider channel means more noise bandwidth (more is captured), so higher resolution would require increased transmitter power to get the desired signal to noise ratio (not notice snow).

The U.S. system used A.M. transmission, but with only part of the lower sideband transmitted in order to save bandwidth. Normal A.M. sidebands are mirror images of each other. With that redundant carrying of information, one sideband could actually be eliminated (you've heard of S.S.B. or single-sideband), but that was too big of a feat to be viable when tv standards were set. The compromise of vestigal sideband gave U.S. black and white tv slightly less than 4.5 MHz of bandwidth out of a 6 Mhz channel. The sound signal (F.M.) was placed 4.5 MHz up from the visual carrier frequency, so the usable video spectrum could extend quite that far. As with single-sideband, putting the same sideband transmission power as A.M. into a narrow channel reduces noise, so coverage is improved.

N.T.S.C. color stuffs additional information into the spectrum used by black and white. Because of the horizontal (line) scan rate being a samping rate of sorts, the video bands exist in clusters spaced that rate (15.750 Khz for B&W, changed to 15.734 Khz for color) occupying spectrum like the teeth of a comb. The added color information centers on a frequency 3.579545 MHz above the video carrier, a choice which causes the sidebands created by the color information to have a comb=like spectrum with the peaks falling right between those of the black and white. If you every had someone trying to sell you a tv that used comb filtering, maybe now you can almost understand why that was a good thing. It allowed recovering as much as possible of the detail present in both the black and white and color parts of the signal while minimizing interferrence effects between them. On old black and white tvs with pretty good signal bandwidth one could actually see a pattern in the parts of the picture where there was bright color content. It looked sort of like regularly spaced lighter/darker dots from left to right on each line. But the choice of frequencies/spacing was such that al

Re:off the rez

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for a very informative posting...ah...the good old analog days....

Re:off the rez

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post. Thank you.

Re:off the rez

[adolf]

I'll third the motion: Thanks.

It's seldom a shame that posts can't be modded past 5, but reading this makes me wish it were possible.

Re:off the rez

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you no life nor job to type all of this???

Does it still work?

[No Grand Plan]

...if not, then the whole question of resolution is academic, n'est ce pas?

And how far we have not come

[NaCh0]

Computer displays are the same way. Twelve years ago I had a vertical resolution of 1200px in a 21" monitor. Today on a 24" monitor, that's still the best sold in any store. It's sickening.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Shadow of Eternity]

It gets worse if you just count 9 years ago. In 2001 we had a max vertical resolution of 1536 on a 22" monitor. Today on a 24" monitor you have either 1080 or 1200.

Re:And how far we have not come

[icegreentea]

Yeah. But that's the price you pay for having monitors that use half the energy, and use a tenth of the space.

Re:And how far we have not come

[alexfeig]

Really? I'm not all that hot on using a microscope just to see my cursor...

Re:And how far we have not come

[StreetStealth]

One of the biggest factors to the glacial pace of desktop display resolution this decade may be web standards.

A sudden jump in DPI just doesn't isn't practical for the pixel-for-pixel nature of the web (however much the W3C may try to change that). Sure, newer browsers will scale entire layouts to higher resolutions, but the image quality and often layout integrity lose a lot in the process. So, display manufacturers have kept everything in the 72-96 dpi range so that everything looks more or less the same.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why we use scalable graphics in modern computing. Thus you get a cursor of the same physical dimensions, but with MORE PIXELS!!! Woo hoo, smooth cursors.

Re:And how far we have not come

[setirw]

Two words: resolution independence, something most operating systems have supported for quite some time. (Even Windows 95 was reasonably res-independent.)

I like running high resolutions on smaller displays because everything looks sharper, not because I'd like more viewing area (and consequently, a minuscule UI, as you rightly pointed out.)

Re:And how far we have not come

[Anonymous Coward]

Computer displays are the same way. Twelve years ago I had a vertical resolution of 1200px in a 21" monitor. Today on a 24" monitor, that's still the best sold in any store. It's sickening. Get off my lawn you punks!

Today's monitors display at the correct resolution, with higher contrast ratios and better sharpness... Just sayin'

Re:And how far we have not come

[BitterOak]

It gets worse if you just count 9 years ago. In 2001 we had a max vertical resolution of 1536 on a 22" monitor. Today on a 24" monitor you have either 1080 or 1200.

That's because today's monitors are widescreen (16:9) instead of the old standard (4:3). Comparing 22" 4:3 with 24" 16:9 doesn't actually mean you have more space in the vertical direction, but you have many more pixels in the horizontal direction.

Personally, I hate widescreen monitors. Unless you watch movies on your computer (which I don't) I don't see the point. Most of the work I do is page layout, and the typical pages I work on have a vertical orientation, so going to a widescreen monitor is a step in the wrong direction. But go shopping for a monitor today, and it's impossible to find 4:3. Surely there must be other people like me who prefer standard to widescreen in a computer monitor.

Re:And how far we have not come

[ThrowAwaySociety]

It's sickening.

Yeah, but if you stop trying to focus on those tiny, flickering CRT pixels for a while, the queasiness will pass.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Anonymous Coward]

But that 21" monitor was likely 4:3 and around 1600 horizontal.
That 24" now monitor is likely 1920x1200 (16:10 ratio). Plus you have some 24" with a pivot(and video cards that can be set to rotate output) so they go 1200x1920 (10:16).

My thought on the whole 4:3 vs 16:9 thing, I got a 40" 16:9 and when watching 4:3 stuff it is only about the same(vertical height) as a 33" 4:3.
(Math: H = SQRT(Diag^2/(1+((Aspect)^(-2)))), V=SQRT(Diag^2-H^2)=SQRT(Diag^2/(1+((Aspect)^(2)))). Add a space between the first "(" and sqrt if you drop it into Google calculator. I've checked against the (40")screen and it is fairly close (calculated H=34.86, V=19.61 using a diag = 40 and aspect = (16/9). When I measure is is about 35x20 or so which I blame on the person(me) measuring ))
Just my thoughts and not much relevant to anything

And then the 30" monitors at 2560x1600.(The Apple Cinema HD Display is the first that comes to mind, although Dell and others have also had them)

Then there is this: (Slashdot article about the Viewsonic version in 2002), the IBM T221 which was a 200 DPI 22" at 3840 x 2400, was using 2 single link DVI connections for 24-25 Hz refresh. Add a third link for 48 Hz. (At least that's how I read it.) Think of it as 4 1920x1200 monitors(2x2) in a 22" space. (Seems to have been lots of $ however, and I don't think you would ever see them in any normal consumer store)

Re:And how far we have not come

[sbjornda]

Most of the work I do is page layout, and the typical pages I work on have a vertical orientation

Sounds like you would benefit from a dual monitor setup with one of the monitors in portrait orientation. This is surprisingly easy to do nowadays, and not expensive. Apologies if I've stated the obvious.

--
.nosig

Re:And how far we have not come

[izomiac]

And that is why magnification and resolution are two separate terms. Magnification relates to the physical size at which things appear. Resolution is the amount of detail. Unfortunately, many programs assume that one pixel is around a certain physical size, rather than use DPI settings and SVG for widgets. For that reason, it's difficult to find LCD screens that differ much in pixel size.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Shadow of Eternity]

Not everybody likes bioshockvision.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Shadow of Eternity]

That would make sense, except that widescreen's become horribly ubiqitous and at the same time even on a 4:3 most pages are still a narrow vertical strip in a field of background.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Jesus_666]

I simply got rid of the notion that applications have to run fullscreen. Granted, you end up with the browser taking up 75% of the screen but at least those 25% can be used for background apps you want to monitor.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Shakrai]

Unless you watch movies on your computer (which I don't) I don't see the point.

Or work with spreadsheets/financial software. Movies aren't the only purpose of a widescreen monitor and your experiences do not represent everybody else who uses a PC.

But go shopping for a monitor today, and it's impossible to find 4:3.

Yeah, it's as hard as going to Newegg, clicking on 'monitors', clicking on 'advanced search' and setting 'widescreen' to 'no'. I can see why you haven't been able to find any 4:3 monitors. Maybe a few links will help you?

Re:And how far we have not come

[Shakrai]

In America today, one can advocate torture and preventative detention without being assumed sarcastic, fringe, or insane

This is offtopic and will probably be modded as such, but who has advocated for "preventative detention"? There are a fair number of people who have advocated for detention of those captured on the battlefield until such time as hostilities end (as is usually the case in war) but I've not heard any mainstream American politician call for "preventative" detention.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like you want yourself a T221 oh GOD yes. They are still around, if you can afford to lose $5k on eBay.

Re:And how far we have not come

[imsabbel]

Funny Fact: none of those was actually able to display that resolution. Scanning, yes. But the pitch of the dot/grill mask was not sufficient.
-> "build in" antialiasing/blur filtering.

The "real" resolution of those monitors was usually at least 30% lower than the maximum supported one. everything above just pushed beyond nyquist and make your black lines gray.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 15.4 inch laptop with 147 dpi. Sometimes that really sucks.

Re:And how far we have not come

[bemymonkey]

Why does that bother you? It's not like you need to run your browser in full screen all the time...

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a widescreen advocate and I'd go back to my 2048x1536 CRTs if my eyes could still take it, but 16:10 isn't as bad as it sounds.

Even on 1680x1050 (which is perfect for me on 15.4" laptops in terms of pixel density, I've found), I've got enough room for a 1050x1050 browser window/Word/PDF and 630x1050 left for E-Mail, IM, widgets or whatever. Being able to view two full A4 PDFs side by side is also very useful...

As sad as it is, I don't think 4:3 or, God forbid, 5:4 displays are coming back - learn to make use of the benefits of 16:10 screens and you might realize that they're actually not as bad as they're made out to be...

Re:And how far we have not come

[sconeu]

I had that at my last job. The portrait monitor was great for web browsing and document writing. The landscape monitor did email, VxWorks, and Visual Studio.

Re:And how far we have not come

[93 Escort Wagon]

Really? I'm not all that hot on using a microscope just to see my cursor...

Bah. Lazy young whippersnappers. In my day the displays were fluorescent orange on black, and the cursor was only one pixel in size. You didn't hear us complaining about the size of the cursor - we were just glad to have one at all, after the cursor shortages brought on by the war! You kids and your lah-dee-dah arrow cursors and 16 million colors don't know what you've got!

Re:And how far we have not come

[traycerb]

To help with the window management required to do this (and if you run windows), look into the freeware app Gridmove. You can divide up your screen real estate into many different chunks, and have all sorts of handy ways of resizing your windows.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Yoozer]

Unless you watch movies on your computer (which I don't) I don't see the point

Photoshop, Illustrator. The tools palettes are wide enough to take up that extra piece of widescreen so you have 4:3 for the page you're working on. Music sequencers have a similar strip; either for browsing files or plugins. The extra width means you won't lose overview of what's happening in the tracks themselves. 3D applications; again, these have an object properties list that takes up a slab of the screen.

Need more points? ;)

Re:And how far we have not come

[Hurricane78]

Speak for yourself. I have two (also old) 21" Eizo FlexScans (I think they are from 2000) which can do 2048*1536. So I have a total of 4096*1536. Do you know what I payed? 200€!

Now those CRTs did cost 2500€ (converted price, ignored loss of value for simplicity) when they were new. For that price I would get twenty-five displays. With a total resolution of 10240*7680 !!

That is a bit more than those 1200px, isn't it? :)

Of course if you want those fancy TFTs, with their annoying problem to be able to see the single pixels, the bad color space for anything below the most expensive ones, and their inability to display more than one resolution... while still costing a arm and a leg for resolutions of 10240*7680... then you have to pay the price. ^^

Re:And how far we have not come

[OrangeCatholic]

I don't think he was complaining about widescreen. He was saying most web pages are constricted to 800x600. So regardless of the shape of the screen, you're going to get blank space on the sides.

What he was saying is that screens are getting even wider and web developers haven't noticed or changed their design habits.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Jared555]

It is possible to avoid making a narrow strip but most people don't do it.... Just make sure at least one column can be stretched horizontally without looking terrible. The biggest issue is there isn't an easy way to say 'make this x px (or name your favorite unit) wide and then expand the rest of the page to 100% of the screen's width'. Or at least I haven't found one that doesn't involve javascript.

Re:And how far we have not come

[OrangeCatholic]

Is President Obama a mainstream politician?

Damn, that's a clever put down.

Re:And how far we have not come

[adolf]

As long as we're lamenting the long-gone days of high-DPI displays:

My 4.5 year old Dell Inspiron 6000d with its 15.4" WUXGA+ display does 1920x1200 just fine, thanks.

And I just parked a 19" Viewsonic Trinitron by the dumpster after it developed a power supply problem. That thing managed ungodly resolutions at sane refresh rates, but it ain't shit compared to the 20" 1600x1200 IPS LCD in front of me in terms of total usability. The Trinitron tube, at high resolutions, had some real convergence issues which could only be partly compensated for -- the LCD is tits perfect from corner to corner, and the color is absolutely superb.

Re:And how far we have not come

[bemymonkey]

Obviously widescreen just exacerbates this problem... however, my reply is still valid, even for hi-res 4:3 or 5:4 screens... just use the extra space for something else ;)

Re:And how far we have not come

[IndieKid]

AMD (formerly ATI) offer some kind of free tool to users of their graphics card that does the same thing.

I think it might be called Hydravision or something like that. I used it until I installed Windows 7 when I found that the new Aero snap and improved multi-monitor stuff was enough for my needs.

Re:And how far we have not come

[nojayuk]

Actually the max resolution on a 22" LCD available to the general public is 3840 x 2400. This is the IBM T220 and it was first sold in 2001, later replaced by the T221 which used the same LCD panel but had better electronics support. Viewsonic and iiyama rebadged and sold them too. It was eye-wateringly expensive (more than ten thousand bucks) and frankly not very good with a low refresh rate, crap viewing angles, low contrast and brightness compared to other lower-res LCD panels on sale even back then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors

Their main market was financial companies and day-traders as the ability to put a lot of numbers and graphs on a single screen was considered more important than colour fidelity or gamer-twitch refresh speeds.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Yvan256]

Real browsers can zoom 200%, 300%, etc while preserving the layout (1 pixel becomes 2x2 or 3x3 pixels for JPEGs, CSS lines, etc) but at the same time give you much sharper text rendering.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Yvan256]

Text in newspapers is split up in small columns for a reason. Most people won't want to read text in lines of 200+ caracters at a time.

Re:And how far we have not come

[Yvan256]

He probably meant "go shopping" as in, you know, go to actual physical stores? It's impossible to find 4:3 monitors around here too.

Also, not everyone lives in the USA, so checking "Newegg" isn't a reflex for everyone. But thanks for the link, arcade cabinets with 16:9 monitors just look.... weird.

Re:And how far we have not come

[operagost]

Luxury! In my day, we didn't have any fancy pixels or phosphors! We had a screen of sharp needles that we had to stroke with our fingers like Helen Keller! The "lit" ones had 200 volts running through them so you could find them, although I ran mine at 300 just so there was no mistakin'. That's how I kept my job, fending off the pansy whippersnappers during the Great Depression.

Re:And how far we have not come

[sam0737]

But my 15.1" laptop has a 1920*1200....somehow the Desktop LCD monitor does not catch up, clearly the technology is not the issue...may be the demand is far too low?

Re:And how far we have not come

[Shadow of Eternity]

If I had to guess i'd say it was probably more expensive (and thus less desirable) to make higher resolution displays and with people buying into the "ZOMG1080P!" hype it's easy to get away with lower resolution screens.

Re:And how far we have not come

[mvdwege]

Resolution independence? Windows? Surely you're joking? Windows still measures everything in pixels. Try running it on a high-DPI display with larger fonts, and wince at how many dialogs totally mess up their layout. Maybe it has gotten better in Vista and 7, but up til XP running Windows at anything above 1600x1200 was frankly horrid. Especially if you were used to *nix or MacOS.

Mart

Re:And how far we have not come

[mattack2]

1) open System Preferences
2) open Displays Pref
3) choose Rotation 90 degrees
4) confirm
5) physically rotate monitor to match

I've seen people use monitors like this. Even though LCDs aren't "supposed" to be used this way, it is usable for some.

Re:And how far we have not come

[toddestan]

It costs a bit more than you might expect, as any of the cheap ubiquitous TN panels do not do well in a vertical orientation due to a poor viewing
angle. Once you start getting into the better panel types, you may run into the 1600x1200 4:3 panels that are still being made and aren't that unreasonably priced for an IPS panel.

Still a whole lot cheaper than trying to do something similar 10 years ago.

Re:And how far we have not come

[simplexion]

And they also don't weigh 50kg.

Re:And how far we have not come

[omnichad]

Like the subpixel font rendering that uses RGB ordering. I don't even know if ClearType or OSX's version has an option for rotated displays. Or if they are smart enough to disable it when you rotate.

John Logie Baird was thinking of this too

[AHuxley]

The Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first working television system was talking of a 1000 lines too in the1940's.
Nothing new, just a young person thinking wow they could do that back then :)
The revolution was the sweat shops of Asia and quality control.
Digital HD was a rush, needing real skill. A duct tape effort ;)
http://www.bairdtelevision.com/colour.html

Thin CRT?

[Danzigism]

As much as I love my 22" widescreen LCD monitor, I still miss the crisp, solid, and reliable CRT. This article is a prime example of why we have used CRT's for such a long time. But what I want to know is, why hasn't anyone mass produced a Thin CRT yet? I'm sure all of you remember the articles posted back in 2004 about Samsung developing a Thin CRT. What the hell happened and why did this idea fall through?

Re:Thin CRT?

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, (and I probably don't), the thin CRT idea used many electron guns.. either one for each pixel or( more likely) one for each small region of the screen. That translates to heat, energy consumption and more importantly higher cost.

That, and the development of OLED technology is probably what killed it.

Re:Thin CRT?

[Miamicanes]

> But what I want to know is, why hasn't anyone mass produced a Thin CRT yet?

They've been prototyped -- 10 years ago, I was convinced that the future of television was the Field Emission Display (FED) after I saw a demo at CES. Absolutely *beautiful*. The best of all worlds. Bright, saturated, distortion-free, and viewable from angles just like a regular CRT.

Basically, coat a sheet of glass with colored phosphors, and put individually-addressable solid-state electron sources behind them. To light up a particular phosphor group, turn on the emitters behind it to make it glow. Unfortunately, the technology went nowhere. :(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_emission_display

Re:Thin CRT?

[Colonel Korn]

> But what I want to know is, why hasn't anyone mass produced a Thin CRT yet?

They've been prototyped -- 10 years ago, I was convinced that the future of television was the Field Emission Display (FED) after I saw a demo at CES. Absolutely *beautiful*. The best of all worlds. Bright, saturated, distortion-free, and viewable from angles just like a regular CRT.

Basically, coat a sheet of glass with colored phosphors, and put individually-addressable solid-state electron sources behind them. To light up a particular phosphor group, turn on the emitters behind it to make it glow. Unfortunately, the technology went nowhere. :(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_emission_display

Isn't that roughly how an OLED display is put together? If so, maybe you'll have cause to celebrate in the next couple years.

Re:Thin CRT?

[rcolbert]

I still miss the crisp, solid, and reliable CRT.

Sorry to disagree, but boy am I glad we're in the age of the digital signal and flat panel display now. I agree that there are future flat display technologies that might make things even better (i.e. OLED). My memories of CRT's while fading fast, are not quite so favorable.

Re:Thin CRT?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

YOu're the only one.

Crisp, reliable CRT = big bux.

Crisp, reliable(ish) LCD = cheap.

Re:Thin CRT?

[Randle_Revar]

In OLED, the current is run directly into an organic light emitting diode. Whereas FED/SED had an electron gun pointed at each phosphor pixel (more or less). Still, I guess OLED is closer to FED/SED than an LCD.

Re:Thin CRT?

[TerranFury]

Plasmas are pretty close to CRTs technologically. Instead of energizing phosphors by shooting electrons at them, they make electric arcs jump through gas in tiny glass cells, which releases a bunch of UV which strikes the phosphors and energizes them. This process is easy to miniaturize but pretty inefficient, hence the perceptible heat radiated by one of these things. But that's beside the point; visually the result should be about the same. So maybe "thin CRTs" are plasma TVs -- just minus the "C" and the "R", and with the one big "T" replaced by millions of individual cells.

Re:Thin CRT?

[TerranFury]

...and, I hadn't been keeping up with this, but a quick google turns up "SED" and "FED" technologies which are even closer to CRTs and which will probably be rolled out eventually (just type these terms into Wikipedia if interested). Though with LED TVs already hitting stores I wonder if they'll offer any substantive advantages.

Re:Thin CRT?

[klui]

My back doesn't miss CRTs' lead-filled tubes. I'm pretty sure my desk doesn't either.

Re:Thin CRT?

[Jared555]

Prototype SED screens (thin CRTs) have been made and I think still are being worked on. They also eliminate some of the other downsides of CRT screens (flicker, for example)

Re:Thin CRT?

[OrangeCatholic]

Yeah, I had assumed plasma displays were basically a direct improvement of CRTs in terms of the visual effect. Thus, the OP who enjoys the "look" of a CRT can simply buy a plasma.

LCD's are actually quite different, and the result is brighter, but decidedly inferior picture quality in other respects. LCD's seem to require the constant presence of a line doubler/smoother algorithm. And the pixels are blockier, due to the shutters. The first time I played classic video games on my LCD, I was horrified.

Re:Thin CRT?

[plastbox]

I don't really feel much difference between my old Hansol 710P and whatever new LCD monitors I might be using.

What I really do find myself missing is the degauss button. SPIOOOING! Aaah, the things nostalgia makes you miss!

Re:Thin CRT?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what I want to know is, why hasn't anyone mass produced a Thin CRT yet?

They did for a while, but it turned out to be a bad idea.

When wide screen digital format was still a year or two new (relatively speaking), there actually were a few wide-screen short-tube CRTs on the market. I had both a Toshiba and a Samsung. Apparently if you alter the dimensions of a CRT to keep it compact enough while doing widescreen at the same time, there's something about those demands that make them highly prone to defects and much less fault tolerant. Both of those TVs required replacement within the first 6 months because the tube just decided to go "pop!" one day while under normal usage. Now if that problem seemed to be happening as often as it seemed (store people shaking their head and saying "not another one" when it's brought back), under two different manufacturers, while under warranty, then there is a clue that a CRT of that design just isn't going to be profitable to keep making in the long run.

Now if you ask why I had two CRT based TVs like failed like that, for the time they did have some better picture quality in comparison to similar sized LCDs. But another year later at the end of the second CRT's lifespan, LCDs actually improved in quality enough that the next choice was obvious.

With the widescreen LCD TV that replaced the last one there are no problems. And no dead pixels that I can tell of. It seems the LCDs and the cold cathode backlight technology have matured so that it's a much better option than CRTs when going past a certain dimension. (There may be some loss of color gamut, but I didn't notice.) Some other advantages of the LCD display is that it uses less electricity and that one person can actually move it by themself, unlike the two short-lived CRT predecessors that seemed to weigh a ton in comparison.

Of course there's plasma-screen, which seems to be a variation of CRT based technology. But in comparison to LCD that tech is more expensive and may have some of the faults of regular CRTs, even if they lack the problem of pushing a single CRT display tube to the edge of reasonable design limits. But the expense of the design seems to be pushing those off to the wayside as well.

Re:Thin CRT?

[omnichad]

Go buy yourself a DVI (or HDMI, or DisplayPort) cable. Analog video is crap on a digital screen for a good reason.

Re:Thin CRT?

[Trogre]

Uhm, do you mean like a Plasma display?

What they really need is a...

[Tablizer]

...high-definition server, because the regular one is kaputs.

We're still seeing the same thing today

[StreetStealth]

Just as we say today "wow, they had 737i prototypes in 1958!" one day in the future we will marvel "wow, they had 4096p prototypes all the way back in 2002!"

Re:We're still seeing the same thing today

[Xtravar]

Ha ha, quit joking around! The world won't exist that much longer!

Re:We're still seeing the same thing today

[kheldan]

If you want to go there, then we had video games with 4096x4096 graphics all the way back in 1977 (Cinematronics Space Wars).

The video on the site is garbage...

[joocemann]

They never show it in use or any actual video being displayed on it.

Buffoons! For all I know (being the internet) its just an old TV! SHOW ME THE MONEY!

I'm gonna go play uncharted 2...

Re:The video on the site is garbage...

[NixieBunny]

And how would they do that? The TV uses a format that was stillborn. No video source exists.

Re:The video on the site is garbage...

[joocemann]

And how would they do that? The TV uses a format that was stillborn. No video source exists.

Then I guess it's not a high definition TV, is it? It's a useless device. Wow.

Let me go grab a tin can and jam a light bulb in it, call it an HDTV and never have the ability to prove it. ... i'm gonna move on. laters.

Clarification please...

[Tynin]

So 57 years ago France was already broadcasting 441 lines. I was under the impression, that in the USA, today, that 480 lines were being broadcast and sold as the low end of HD. And that we continue to use 320 line for regular cable / satellite / OTA broadcasts. I could be off a lot in my understanding and was looking for clarification. It just seems amazing that France would have been for all intents and purposes be broadcasting 57 years ago what we American's are being sold as HD TV today (considering how overly compressed current broadcasts are, 441 vs 480 seems like it should be negligible). So, since these seems pretty impossible to me, please point out my flawed understanding. Thanks!

Re:Clarification please...

[Rantastic]

Not all digital over-the-air broadcasts are HD. For example, the 480p you mention. It is digital but it is not HD.

Re:Clarification please...

[Velox_SwiftFox]

Actually the 441-line system was a Nazi-developed format, exported to occupied France.
Propaganda evidently required a better format than the crappy 180-line system they used for the 1936 Olympics.

Re:Clarification please...

[rcolbert]

in the USA, today, that 480 lines were being broadcast and sold as the low end of HD.

480 lines of resolution is the NTSC standard for what is now called standard definition TV. The marketing of it has used the term 'digital TV', but never has HD been applied to a 480 signal. And absolutely, 'digital TV' as a term goes is probably the most deceptive advertising in recent history. 'Digital TV' when rebroadcasting NTSC 480 programming in most cases is extremely compressed and looks like utter garbage. For a while, many cable operators had both analog and digital NTSC transmission, and you could always easily tell when you left analog the analog range(approx channels 2-70) and ventured into 'digital TV' (approx 70-900).

Re:Clarification please...

[rcolbert]

To my knowledge there isn't a 480p broadcast format. I believe that the choices in North America are 480i, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Again, this is broadcast. Some sets may support other resolutions for non-broadcast material.

Re:Clarification please...

[westlake]

It just seems amazing that France would have been for all intents and purposes be broadcasting 57 years ago what we American's are being sold as HD TV today

It might sound a little less amazing if you asked how many channels were available.

Re:Clarification please...

[kbdd]

This was B&W only, and used about 10 MHz of spectrum

Re:Clarification please...

[kbdd]

Actually the 441-line system was a Nazi-developed format, exported to occupied France.

Where did you get that from? I believe you are mistaken. The 819 line standard appeared a full 4 years after the end of the war. Germany never had an 819 line TV system. It was developed in France specifically to be incompatible with other systems used in Europe.

Re:Clarification please...

[Velox_SwiftFox]

http://www.earlytelevision.org/german_prewar.html

Re:Clarification please...

[kbdd]

Thank you for the link. That predates me :) I am getting old, but not that old...

This was a 441 line system, not much in common with the 819 line system developed by Barthelemy in 1949. France never had a 441 line system of its own, aside from the one operated by the Germans during the occupation, as indicated in the link.

Re:Clarification please...

[Velox_SwiftFox]

Not disputed by me. I was simply noting the origin of the 441 line system mentioned in the parent link.

Re:Clarification please...

[Glendale2x]

There's 480p. Fox tried that as their standard (they called it widscreen enhanced or something) for a while before getting a clue and going with HD like everyone else. A lot of cheaper-than-HD "enhanced definition" TV's were on the market that were 480p.

Re:Clarification please...

[OrangeCatholic]

Yes. 480p plasma TV's were quite common circa 2004-05 when a market segment opened up for flatscreens under $2500. They were garbage, resolution-wise, compared to what we have now.

Of course, back then, I think there was only about 3 HD channels, and PBS was one of them.

Re:Clarification please...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

So 57 years ago France was already broadcasting 441 lines. I was under the impression, that in the USA, today, that 480 lines were being broadcast and sold as the low end of HD.

You would be wrong. NTSC (US analog) standard definition is 525 vertical lines, of which 486 are visible (plus or minus several depending on overscan). This is usually referred to as "480i60", as in, 480 vertical lines, interlaced, 60 fields per second.

The ATSC over-the-air television standard used in the US can carry a variety of formats. It can carry "standard definition" 480i60 (mostly used for lower cost stations, older programming, digital subchannels, and the like). But ATSC can also carry 480p60 "enhanced definition" signals, though this is seldom used.

HD, in the context of television in the US, universally refers to one of two ATSC formats: 720p60 or 1080i60.

480i60 has never been considered "HD" by anyone who has a clue. 480p60 has been marketed as "enhanced definition", but it's frequently just considered SD today.

Personally, I prefer 720p60 for content originally authored for TV (LCD TVs are progressive, so 1080i60 requires deinterlacing which creates motion artifacts). For content that comes from a film source, 1080i60 performs identically to 1080p24, assuming that the telecine is properly done and the deinterlacer in the TV (or set-top-box) can detect film content properly.

Technically, ATSC supports 1080p24 (also 1080p23.976), along with a bunch of other formats. But these formats aren't used in practice, and it's unclear whether hardware even supports them.

Re:Clarification please...

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1940, the US adopted the NTSC(-1) system which had 525 lines and 30 interlaced frames per second. The digital 480 line system is NTSC-2 (basically the same, but with color) minus the lines allocated for sync pulses and other "housekeeping". That's where the other 45 lines go. And 480 is not being sold as HD (at least not by the ethical), it's merely digitized NTSC-2 (which has been the US standard since 1954). So the French 441 line system was probably closer to 400 lines of active picture elements. I'm not sure where you're coming up with a 320 line figure, unless that's horizontal resolution.

Yet another production plant?

[SmallFurryCreature]

LCD's can be used in LOTS of places, they are simple and reliable and known tech.

Your thin CRT would have a hard sell, they would be useless in laptops, be very heavy and offer what exactly as a benefit?

People want flat, setting up an entire production facility just for TV's and MAYBE computer screens that you will have to sell with "yes we know it is bloody thick and heavy but it looks much better, well, no, you probably can't see it in the brochure but trust us!".

People want flat. I don't think mosts desks could even hold anything but a thin LCD anymore.

Re:Yet another production plant?

[Khyber]

"Your thin CRT would have a hard sell, they would be useless in laptops, be very heavy and offer what exactly as a benefit?"

You barely thump most laptop LCD panels and the damned thing will break.

That extra quarter inch of glass won't break nearly as easily.

I'd prefer durability over lightweight and flimsy any day.

Re:Yet another production plant?

[OrangeCatholic]

You can put a quarter inch of glass on an LCD panel to protect it. They were going to do that, but an epidemic of angel dust hit Japan and it never happened.

The lack of glass on an LCD panel is probably the #1 product defect in the world today. Right up there with smoke in nicotine sticks, and cars that only run on liquid dinosaur.

Re:Yet another production plant?

[Khyber]

Maybe not quite the #1 defect. The lack of the ability to stab someone in the face over the internet might just be the #1 defect. :)

Re:Yet another production plant?

[OrangeCatholic]

Making an LCD panel with a quarter inch of glass would be like putting nicotine in a smokeless injector or designing an engine that doesn't feed on dinosaur sludge. How could you mess with our culture, man?

It *did* catch on

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the deployment of color, B&W TV in France was broadcast in 819 lines.
The French always had their own (superior) TV standard.
When they did deploy color TV, it was the SECAM system, which used
625 lines (like PAL), but had a much better system for color encoding
(though the TV sets were more expensive initially).

In low-def YouTube?

[Wag]

Ow...it hurts my eyes...and my brain...

Two-page spread

[tepples]

Most of the work I do is page layout, and the typical pages I work on have a vertical orientation

A two-page spread is wide. Try making two windows in your web browser, control-clicking them in the Windows taskbar so that they're both selected, and choosing one of the Tile options. Do this on a 1920x1200 pixel monitor, and it's almost like having two 1024x1280 portrait monitors.

not uncommon at all

[kbdd]

The 819 lines was the standard in France for B&W television, and only gave way when color came about. The standard for color televisions was 625 lines. I am not that old, but 819 lines is what I watched on television while I was a kid.

Easy in B/W. Harder in color.

[Animats]

It's not that hard to do high-definition monochrome TV. You just need to crank up the horizontal sweep rate and use higher-bandwidth amplifiers. Color, though, requires more holes in the shadow mask or stripes on the screen, and the alignment tolerances are tighter.

France had 819-line monochrome broadcast TV in the 1950s. But with the transition to color around 1960, Europe went to a uniform 625 lines. Kind of sad, but making special color TV tubes for France just wasn't worth the trouble.

Re:Easy in B/W. Harder in color.

[mirix]

Well, it could have been worse. They could have gone with NTSC.

Re:Easy in B/W. Harder in color.

[spaceyhackerlady]

Well, it could have been worse. They could have gone with NTSC.

They did even better: they used SECAM, outrageous accent and all!

...laura

Re:Easy in B/W. Harder in color.

[Mr. Roadkill]

They did even better: they used SECAM, outrageous accent and all!

Ah yes, the "System Engineered by a Committee of AMphibians".

Re:Easy in B/W. Harder in color.

[o'reor]

Doo yoo reeallee sink maee haksent eez ootrajuice ?

Re:Easy in B/W. Harder in color.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which caused great concern to French TV manufacturers who used to have a captive market when the requirement was dropped in the 70s. So they invented a new special attribute and standard requirement to differentiate their market from the rest of Europe : SCART connectivity, which is the analog ancestor of HDMI. Unfortunately for them, manufacturers could just add these on all European TVs, and this became a de-facto European standard.

Re:Rob Malda has a micropenis

[rdavidson3]

I think someone didn't take their meds today.

Re:Rob Malda has a micropenis

[ozmanjusri]

Careful, he'll be throwing chairs again soon!

widescreen

[1800maxim]

That's because your old 21" monitor had an aspect ratio of 4:3, and the new ones have an aspect ration of 16:10 or 16:9. Widescreen 21" monitor will always be shorter in height compared to a regular monitor.

Re:widescreen

[NaCh0]

Fuck the aspect ratio. I want higher pixels per inch.

Re:widescreen

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably a dumb question, but why is it 10:16, rather than 5:8?

Re:widescreen

[zevans]

Maybe to highlight the difference from 16:9 (widescreen broadcast TV)

Yeah, but you are getting older

[NotQuiteReal]

pretty soon you'll be cranking that 24" down to 800X600 and loving it!

Get off of my lawn!

yeah, and we could all be "rich" too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone left could be relatively rich if 90% of us would just die now. Slashdot Poll:

[] 1:10 chance of being rich vs dead.
[] 1:1 chance of leave things the way they are.

Re:yeah, and we could all be "rich" too.

[jerralb]

as long as a disproportionate amount of sanitation workers and grave diggers are still alive, your theory might work.

Re:yeah, and we could all be "rich" too.

[omnichad]

If they all didn't quit due to not technically needing to work anymore.

Praise to Flaminio Bertoni

[SpaghettiPattern]

There was me thinking the French actually delivered 3 iconic car designs, the Traction Avant, the DS and the 2CV. But I was wrong as it was an Italian that took care of these. And don't think Bugatti, which produced stunningly beautiful cars, had anything French about the design either.
That leaves the French exclusively with absolute design mingers. (That is, if design is the correct verb for the process they use to envision cars.) In itself that's an achievement.

Praise to Flaminio Bertoni.

Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[iamacat]

And you know what? Most people will still not notice any difference, especially if they have to shell out for HDMI 50.0 monster cable or put up with quantum encryption DRM. Human eye doesn't have a terribly high resolution and frankly sharpness of graphics is behind so many factors that make a movie/TV show worth watching that it will never be a deciding factor. I don't see any difference in enjoyment of watching a dated James Bond movie vs the latest action flick, except the former is usually more witty. I do avoid any media that I can not watch or rip on my laptop or iphone.

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[Luyseyal]

Yeah, I laughed when I started seeing 240hz TVs. 120hz, I understand, because 60 is on the edge of flicker with some things. But 240? Come on.

-l

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[wastedlife]

As far as i know, 120 Hz is needed for 2 reasons:

1) Least common denominator (or whatever the correct term is for this) between 30 (interlaced), 60 (progressive), and 24 (cinema projectors). This way movies can be played without the flicker you may notice on a standard TV. This has some more info if you are interested.

2) Some people do notice a flicker on 60 Hz (I notice this with CRT monitors, but do not see this on LCD monitors running at 60 Hz or even CRT TVs running at 60 Hz interlaced, this is probably because of static images on monitors, but constantly changing images on TVs at a lower resolution, and LCD displays do not do a full refresh every cycle, they only change the pixels that need to change).

I see no need for 240 Hz, I've never heard of anyone noticing flicker on anything above 75 Hz. PAL is 25 fps, which does not divide evenly into 240 Hz or 120 Hz, so to get PAL, NTSC, and cinema to all divide evenly you would need 600 Hz? Honestly, I can't imagine the "flicker" going from PAL to 120 Hz would be noticeable.

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll get off your lawn now - sorry.

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[Luyseyal]

The only time I've ever noticed 60 vs 120 was watching a fast-paced video on both. It just looks "cleaner" on the 120. I don't see how anyone could ever need 240. That's just marketing BS.

-l

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[Bat Country]

How is it your eye is incapable of discerning the difference between muddy and clear, but it's capable of watching a movie on the tiny iPhone screen?

I find the argument that the human eye doesn't have a very high resolution to be fairly ignorant given that the human eye can pick out details at a range where the highest quality digital cameras break down. We have a superior optical system in all but the most severely damaged or underdeveloped (through developmental or genetic disorder) eyes to any existing display technology. This guy does some good-old-fashioned book research and hand math to figure out that we can probably set a lower bound of 324MP on what the human eye can pick up across its central vision.

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[wastedlife]

If your source video is 60 Hz, then it would probably look the same unless it does some interlacing in the extra frames to make the transition look a little cleaner. Instead of

Frame 1p-> Frame 1p-> Frame 2p-> Frame 2p-> Frame 3p-> Frame 3p-> etc.

You would have

Frame 1p-> Frame 1i+2i-> Frame 2p-> Frame 2i+3i-> Frame 3p-> Frame 3i+4i-> etc.

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[iamacat]

How is it your eye is incapable of discerning the difference between muddy and clear, but it's capable of watching a movie on the tiny iPhone screen?

Go ahead and try watching that iPhone at a distance between your couch and TV.

This guy does some good-old-fashioned book research and hand math to figure out that we can probably set a lower bound of 324MP on what the human eye can pick up across its central vision.

Caught up in the same megapixel craze as digital cameras I see. Your optics is most probably not up to par to read slashdot on home HDTV, zoom functionality has been left out and your CPU can only handle 4-8 objects at once when compressing the video for interpretation. With this constraint, wouldn't you rather focus on image composition rather than resolution?

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[phirewind]

Then via logical progression, 240hz is useful in that it can provide 3D at 120hz, just like 120hz tv's now can be used to display 3D at 60hz.

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[Bat Country]

Actually, I DO read Slashdot on a home HDTV. Also, they don't sell image composition technology which improves somebody else's web page or video game.

I also find it particularly unlikely that watching a movie on your iPhone from a distance of 15 feet makes it any more watchable than doing so at a distance of 2-3 feet.

Re:Unnecessary then, unnecessary now

[Anonymous Coward]

The most realistic use is for shuttering 3D glasses. If you've got 120 frames per second, and divide it by two shuttered eyes you get only 60 frames per second. Not shabby on an LCD, but admittedly not great. If you double that (seems the most reasonable number to shoot for) you get that smoothness of 120hz for 3D media/games.

Anyway, I hear most of the 480hz monitors are just 120hz, and the manufacturer blatantly lies about it.

You've mist the most obvious difference...

[Chrisq]

You've mist the most obvious difference... it was monochrome.

Re:You've mist the most obvious difference...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, really "mist"?

You are one dumb motherfucker.

Did it support...

[Mr_Miagi]

HDCP? I'd be afraid to be sued in 1958 by the big studios in hollywood!

Re:Rob Malda has a micropenis

[Skizmo]

wrong site . ..dumbass.

Speak for yourself

[Viol8]

I do watch TV. However what I haven't done is fork out $$$ for a piece of jewellry for the Oooo-shiny! crowd known as a Mac Mini.

I work in IT and the last thing I want to do when I get home is arse about with a computer just to watch a friggin TV show. Pressing the TV on button followed by a channel button is as complex as I want when I'm tired.

Re:Speak for yourself

[jedidiah]

...which is perfectly achievable with a Mac Mini.

Dunno if you can do it with MacOS software though. Even if you can, your types of inputs will be somewhat limited.

Anymore, who wants to futz with a "channel button" and all the baggage that comes with it? This is the 21st century.

Re:Rob Malda has a micropenis

[4D6963]

Wow, I didn't know we could post such long posts on Slashdot. Time to code a remote filesystem that works by storing data in Slashdot posts!

Not 819 lines ... only 737 lines

[Skapare]

Only 737 lines were image information. The rest was synchronization pulse and blanking for CRT flyback time.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_high-definition_television_system

Laboratory development in France had actually exceeded the 1000 line level, until the work got cut short when Hitler was pissed that those "Frenchies" were going to get better TV than the (then) German system of a mere 441 lines.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_systems_before_1940

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television

Didn't catch on because...

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't catch on in the marketplace.

Didn't catch on because the government didn't require the old system to be shut down? If digital HDTV had actually caught on in the marketplace, we wouldn't need the government to force the old system offline.

Greedy jerk! He should have let a museum have it

[Desert Tripper]

The first thing I thought after reading the article was, What a self-centered, money-hungry idiot! To amass an amazing collection like that and then sell it at auction is unconscionable. If he didn't want to donate it to a museum outright, he could at least put it on loan. I for one would pay good money for a chance to see even a portion of a collection like that. Now, once sold at auction, these priceless items will go into the hands of other private collectors, where they will not only remain outside of public view for the most part, they will now be scattered all over the world. That said, since this was the largest PRIVATE collection of early technology in the world, does anyone know of any good public collections, preferably in museums where they are visible to the public?

It _has_ been widely in use. Just not in US/UK

[Anonymous Coward]

It did. It's called SECAM, and has been in use since then in France, USSR, etc.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECAM