Actually the tweaks to NTSC are relatively minor. PAL was derived from NTSC once the problems with NTSC were seen. The basic signal is not that different and apart from frame rate (see below) the monochrome signals are compatible.
The reason there are more lines is because the frame rate is lower (because, as you say, the frame rate was linked to the mains frequencies - 60 interlace frames per second in North America and 50 virtually everywhere else) and there's longer time to display the lines. Essentially the same amount of information is handled in a second on both systems.
On PAL they've reversed the phase of alternate colour lines compared with NTSC although the lines are produced in the same way. This means that systematic phase shifts, caused by same atmospheric effects, are cancelled out removing the need for the Hue knob.
Finally the bandwidth comes from NTSC originally being broadcast on VHF and PAL on UHF. The higher frequencies allowing a greater bandwidth.
Okay, now I understand. I wonder how Spotlight affects that? Or smart folders? May be now you can do what you want to do using the distinct applications. Not that I'm saying change because I always feel you should use the best tool for the job and if Entourage suits you then great.
I didn't like having to keep 3 apps open at the same time.
Out of interest why?
One of the things I hated when I had to use Windows (in business) was that unlike the OS I loved (RISC OS which doesn't have the concept of the MDI and everything is opened in its own window) it had big monolithic apps rather than lots of little ones that worked together.
One of the things I like about OS-X (and the earlier MacOSes) is that they have relatively small apps that do work together.
Isn't the point of the GUI to be able to have several apps open at the same time? So as I've said above out of interest why do you prefer one monolithic app?
I third that emotion. I sync my phone regularly with it so I always have the next couple of weeks information to hand.
Also I live in a shared house and we have a webdav server on the house LAN which we all publish our calendars to. There's also an events and birthdays calendars maintained. Is that terribly nerdy?
My bedroom TV is a 21" Mitsubishi that I bought in the late eighties (the precursor to the diamondtron screen model). I use a set top antenna on it. I now have a fifty quid ($80) set top box plugged in to it and I now have better pictures on the channels broadcast on analogue plus a load more. All free.
Okay I work in the industry so have to be an early adopter but we bought one each for our parents and set them up for them and apart from having an extra box their viewing experience is no different except for all the extra channels.
Rather than forcing through the change, the FCC should ensure there is a free programming there to encourage users to convert.
Actually from 9.30 am on Channel 4 its quite good at the moment. The add UK History, ITV 3 and Men and Motors (TT week - double plus good) and there's some okay watching for a poorly person.
I only said the other side of the pond. That could mean Canada or even Mexico I suppose. But when someone talks of public television I tend to think of PBS.
Apart from being the longest running TV science fiction series I wouldn't know.
It shows us that British actors can only employ ironic humor.
I'm surprised that, from that side of the pond, you know what irony is. I always thought you lot thought it was like silvery but harder.
Everyone likes things and dislikes things. So you dislike Dr Who. That's your prerogative. But good public television has to suit all tastes. I am currently off of work due to a bad chest infection and I am spending most of my time in bed. Yesterday I watched a program on how Bernard Herman, the film composer, changed the face of classical composing; poets talking about other poets work; Drake's defeat of the Spanish Armada; Turner Landscapes at the National Gallery; and The Professionals which is enjoyable seventies secret agent bunkum all courtesy of free broadcasting (none of which were on the BBC).
Put on the shows to draw in the public and then the advertising sold can pay for the 'culture'.
But why would I want Linux on that machine, it's a Mac, and actually Tiger, which is 64 bit on G5s does support flash as does my SGI machine running IRIX.
The reason you can't have it on 64 bit linux is because of the naff Intel 64 bit architecture. You have to have all or nothing. I.e. you cannot have 32 bit code with 64 bit code. That is an Intel problem not a 64 bit problem.
Finally the reason why I am nitpicky is because the post to which I replied was essentially incorrect. Yes I know what he was trying to say but this is computing we're talking about it. You have to be accurate otherwise the information is worthless.
Finally 'software freedom' is a political aim. My aim is to have flexibility. At the moment I have machines running Linux, Windows XP and OS-X all of them have both Java and Flash. I didn't have to pay for either. When demand requires it there will be flash on 64 bit on Intel.
If you want to write your own flash player then fine but 99.99% of the computing public couldn't give a monkeys about it so don't think it's some great political aim. Personally I think Stallman's a raving nutter who is still trying to live the sixties ideal. If he wants 'freedom' firstly he needs to find somewhere else to live.
So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia
Err...
glamdring:~ melanie$ uname -a Darwin glamdring.local 8.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.1.0: Tue May 10 18:16:08 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.1.5.obj~4/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
And my browser plug-ins page reads...
Shockwave Flash 7.0 r24 -- from file "Flash Player.plugin".
I can't be arsed to start up my SGI and see what that says. But I don't think Macromedia will say what you're saying. Also if someone wants to pay for it I'm sure they'll quite happily develop a plug-in for anything you want.
But that's the rub. PAL is better quality than NTSC standard definition. I think it will be harder to sell HD over here because although it is better the difference is not so great.
And who said how good a movie is is directly related to the amount you spend on it?
Also what constitutes an American movie? For example Star Wars (the original) was predominantly filmed in Britain with about half the cast as British. The director is American, and the money is so I would say it was. But what about Alien? Again filmed in Britain, with a British director and crew and two Brits on the cast?
Film making is now international with international companies.
It's just another way of viewing TV. Rather like their radio service.
Tivo never really took off over here (UK) because the sort of people who would buy one are the sort of people who would have satelite or cable and something like a third of the population now receive digital television so all the EPG services and the like they already get. And the quality of an HQ VCR is good enough when compared to the loss in quality because you have to convert digital to analogue back to digital (when recording) and back to analogue (when playing back that recording).
Those who are interested in harddisk recorders have bought one of the PVRs/DVRs available here like the Sky+ box.
Why would I want to convert digitally received signals to analogue only to digitise them again, before undigitising them to view them? It makes more sense to record the data straight from the transport stream.
I'm waiting for the DVD recorder with the freeview tuner built in.
OS-X seems to handle dragging images from any app to any other app as I would expect it to. Since the Mac was the queen (well excluding RISC OS) of drag and drop for years.
You've got cable. Cable never really took off, except for a few small areas, in the UK until relatively recently. When we did start adopting cable it was straight in to fully digital cable. The problem was that it meant the cable Cos investing in an awful lot of infrastructure. Just how easy is it to add cable to millenia old cities? So it's basically been slowly and steadily and expensively.
Anyone living out side of the cities isn't going to get cable anyway. It's not worth the cable Cos to pay for the infrastructure. We do have big cities but most of our cities are small compared to US ones so generally you don't get competition as the cable Cos have neatly divided the country up between them. So you'll either get Telewest or you'll get NTL but not both in your area. A lot of the population doesn't live in cities anyway. You'll find a lot of small satelite towns and villages around cities here none of which will probably get cable again because of the costs.
Take my parents for example, they live ten miles from a city. There are two villages between them and the city. Total population around 3000 for all three locations (where my parents live and the two villages). Is a cable Co really going to spend money for a maximum of 3000 subscribers.
So the alternatives are popular. If you want digital television there's both subscriber satelite (Sky) and digital terrestrial which is free. And for broadband, it's ADSL either directly or indirectly via BT.
Personally, I get my television via Sky (~300 channels) and my broadband indirectly from BT (2Mb). Broadband for me was relatively simple. I used an online form to check my line. Phoned the ISP and they arranged the connection. Upgrading to 2Mb actually took about an hour from the phone call to the increased bandwidth.
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Actually the tweaks to NTSC are relatively minor. PAL was derived from NTSC once the problems with NTSC were seen. The basic signal is not that different and apart from frame rate (see below) the monochrome signals are compatible.
The reason there are more lines is because the frame rate is lower (because, as you say, the frame rate was linked to the mains frequencies - 60 interlace frames per second in North America and 50 virtually everywhere else) and there's longer time to display the lines. Essentially the same amount of information is handled in a second on both systems.
On PAL they've reversed the phase of alternate colour lines compared with NTSC although the lines are produced in the same way. This means that systematic phase shifts, caused by same atmospheric effects, are cancelled out removing the need for the Hue knob.
Finally the bandwidth comes from NTSC originally being broadcast on VHF and PAL on UHF. The higher frequencies allowing a greater bandwidth.
Okay, now I understand. I wonder how Spotlight affects that? Or smart folders? May be now you can do what you want to do using the distinct applications. Not that I'm saying change because I always feel you should use the best tool for the job and if Entourage suits you then great.
I didn't like having to keep 3 apps open at the same time.
Out of interest why?
One of the things I hated when I had to use Windows (in business) was that unlike the OS I loved (RISC OS which doesn't have the concept of the MDI and everything is opened in its own window) it had big monolithic apps rather than lots of little ones that worked together.
One of the things I like about OS-X (and the earlier MacOSes) is that they have relatively small apps that do work together.
Isn't the point of the GUI to be able to have several apps open at the same time? So as I've said above out of interest why do you prefer one monolithic app?
I second that emotion.
I third that emotion. I sync my phone regularly with it so I always have the next couple of weeks information to hand.
Also I live in a shared house and we have a webdav server on the house LAN which we all publish our calendars to. There's also an events and birthdays calendars maintained. Is that terribly nerdy?
My bedroom TV is a 21" Mitsubishi that I bought in the late eighties (the precursor to the diamondtron screen model). I use a set top antenna on it. I now have a fifty quid ($80) set top box plugged in to it and I now have better pictures on the channels broadcast on analogue plus a load more. All free.
Okay I work in the industry so have to be an early adopter but we bought one each for our parents and set them up for them and apart from having an extra box their viewing experience is no different except for all the extra channels.
Rather than forcing through the change, the FCC should ensure there is a free programming there to encourage users to convert.
But that's not one program is it. It would be like saying that SG-1 and Atlantis is one program.
If you want to play the same game, what about the two (three?) Dr Who movies and the radio series.
Actually from 9.30 am on Channel 4 its quite good at the moment. The add UK History, ITV 3 and Men and Motors (TT week - double plus good) and there's some okay watching for a poorly person.
I only said the other side of the pond. That could mean Canada or even Mexico I suppose. But when someone talks of public television I tend to think of PBS.
How has Dr. Who changed the face of television?
Apart from being the longest running TV science fiction series I wouldn't know.
It shows us that British actors can only employ ironic humor.
I'm surprised that, from that side of the pond, you know what irony is. I always thought you lot thought it was like silvery but harder.
Everyone likes things and dislikes things. So you dislike Dr Who. That's your prerogative. But good public television has to suit all tastes. I am currently off of work due to a bad chest infection and I am spending most of my time in bed. Yesterday I watched a program on how Bernard Herman, the film composer, changed the face of classical composing; poets talking about other poets work; Drake's defeat of the Spanish Armada; Turner Landscapes at the National Gallery; and The Professionals which is enjoyable seventies secret agent bunkum all courtesy of free broadcasting (none of which were on the BBC).
Put on the shows to draw in the public and then the advertising sold can pay for the 'culture'.
I remember when rolling your own was the only way to have a distribution on some of the processors.
But why would I want Linux on that machine, it's a Mac, and actually Tiger, which is 64 bit on G5s does support flash as does my SGI machine running IRIX.
The reason you can't have it on 64 bit linux is because of the naff Intel 64 bit architecture. You have to have all or nothing. I.e. you cannot have 32 bit code with 64 bit code. That is an Intel problem not a 64 bit problem.
Finally the reason why I am nitpicky is because the post to which I replied was essentially incorrect. Yes I know what he was trying to say but this is computing we're talking about it. You have to be accurate otherwise the information is worthless.
Finally 'software freedom' is a political aim. My aim is to have flexibility. At the moment I have machines running Linux, Windows XP and OS-X all of them have both Java and Flash. I didn't have to pay for either. When demand requires it there will be flash on 64 bit on Intel.
If you want to write your own flash player then fine but 99.99% of the computing public couldn't give a monkeys about it so don't think it's some great political aim. Personally I think Stallman's a raving nutter who is still trying to live the sixties ideal. If he wants 'freedom' firstly he needs to find somewhere else to live.
If you have a 64-bit system, you can't use Flash.
So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia
Err...
glamdring:~ melanie$ uname -a
Darwin glamdring.local 8.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.1.0: Tue May 10 18:16:08 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.1.5.obj~4/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
And my browser plug-ins page reads...
Shockwave Flash 7.0 r24 -- from file "Flash Player.plugin".
I can't be arsed to start up my SGI and see what that says. But I don't think Macromedia will say what you're saying. Also if someone wants to pay for it I'm sure they'll quite happily develop a plug-in for anything you want.
But that's the rub. PAL is better quality than NTSC standard definition. I think it will be harder to sell HD over here because although it is better the difference is not so great.
Avoiding the London fog: Priceless
;-)
Believing a hundred year old stereotype. Priceless!
I'd like to see my make copy in M$ Windows Media Audio format.
And who said how good a movie is is directly related to the amount you spend on it?
Also what constitutes an American movie? For example Star Wars (the original) was predominantly filmed in Britain with about half the cast as British. The director is American, and the money is so I would say it was. But what about Alien? Again filmed in Britain, with a British director and crew and two Brits on the cast?
Film making is now international with international companies.
It's just another way of viewing TV. Rather like their radio service.
Tivo never really took off over here (UK) because the sort of people who would buy one are the sort of people who would have satelite or cable and something like a third of the population now receive digital television so all the EPG services and the like they already get. And the quality of an HQ VCR is good enough when compared to the loss in quality because you have to convert digital to analogue back to digital (when recording) and back to analogue (when playing back that recording).
Those who are interested in harddisk recorders have bought one of the PVRs/DVRs available here like the Sky+ box.
Actually it's not a step up from Sky+.
Why would I want to convert digitally received signals to analogue only to digitise them again, before undigitising them to view them? It makes more sense to record the data straight from the transport stream.
I'm waiting for the DVD recorder with the freeview tuner built in.
If you can't drink until you're 21 university must be *so* boring.
I'd enjoy the practical...
"Here's your bottle of Stolly for next weeks practical. Don't forget to ensure it's been in the freezer the entire week..."
I just can't imagine many 15 year olds out there buying 20 dollar bottles of wine to get drunk on.
Nah! For me it was Tennents Export. Tastes awful but cheap and easy to buy when your mate is the cashier at the local supermarket.
But they make great wine! You can't beat a good Australian Chardoney.
Despite what some might thing, US regulations do not affect anywhere out side of the US. Who knows, may be Australian iPods are different.
OS-X seems to handle dragging images from any app to any other app as I would expect it to. Since the Mac was the queen (well excluding RISC OS) of drag and drop for years.
You've got cable. Cable never really took off, except for a few small areas, in the UK until relatively recently. When we did start adopting cable it was straight in to fully digital cable. The problem was that it meant the cable Cos investing in an awful lot of infrastructure. Just how easy is it to add cable to millenia old cities? So it's basically been slowly and steadily and expensively.
Anyone living out side of the cities isn't going to get cable anyway. It's not worth the cable Cos to pay for the infrastructure. We do have big cities but most of our cities are small compared to US ones so generally you don't get competition as the cable Cos have neatly divided the country up between them. So you'll either get Telewest or you'll get NTL but not both in your area. A lot of the population doesn't live in cities anyway. You'll find a lot of small satelite towns and villages around cities here none of which will probably get cable again because of the costs.
Take my parents for example, they live ten miles from a city. There are two villages between them and the city. Total population around 3000 for all three locations (where my parents live and the two villages). Is a cable Co really going to spend money for a maximum of 3000 subscribers.
So the alternatives are popular. If you want digital television there's both subscriber satelite (Sky) and digital terrestrial which is free. And for broadband, it's ADSL either directly or indirectly via BT.
Personally, I get my television via Sky (~300 channels) and my broadband indirectly from BT (2Mb). Broadband for me was relatively simple. I used an online form to check my line. Phoned the ISP and they arranged the connection. Upgrading to 2Mb actually took about an hour from the phone call to the increased bandwidth.