The listed F.C.C. files for BCG-E2328A show as being from March and April 2010. The final user manual there lists both models each with a FCC ID number. The rear cover apparently lists both also (with and without cell radio)
All docs are listed as.pdfs but download with the wrong filenames and.html extensions. They open fine after changing that to.pdf. There are quite a few pics in those FCC submissions but things like chip numbers are hidden.
Video DownloadHelper was just updated with what looks like a potentially invasive new feature "SocialShare" that can be disabled in the prefs. It is on by default!
From the 4.8.2 update info page that appeared: "Video DownloadHelper Update: From version 4.8.1
Added SocialShare, a new Video DownloadHelper service to share a video page over a number of social services: Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Buzz, Digg, Del.icio.us,....The former Twitter service, which was broken since the last change in the Twitter API, has been removed from the add-on.."
It's easier to look closely at the video if it is downloaded (as with DownloadHelper add-in for Firefox)and viewed in something like VLC. About 19 seconds in, it looks the the FCC IDs are almost readable. If someone with a video editing app views the video, it might be possible to find a better spot than where VLC can stop to try and catch those numbers and hopefully allow looking them up in the F.C.C. database to see if they match a current product or not.
Since DownloadHelper doesn't seem to work with embedded youtube content on other sites, here's a direct non-full-screen link. There is a 720P version.
(when doing a copy URL from an embedded page, adding that "watch?" and removing any "&fs=1" seem to be what's needed for Download Helper to work. Flash need not be enabled, either.flv or.mp4 can be usually be downloaded)
It can be a bit surprising and sometimes funny to hear forgotten words of some famous politicians... (please don't be put off by the title the poster chose for this video)
Verizon ads attacking AT&T coverage are far more memorable than any spots they co-sponsored for the Droid. Android and iPhone offerings have evolved, ads about old products are really irrelevant now.
It'll be interesting to see how Verizon handles the added traffic. At least they've got a pretty good idea what they're facing and it's not the first they're seeing of phones that browse well enough to see heavy use.
Yes, the secret is out Windows Phone ME 7 takes swap to the cloud...
Microsoft, changing the world with Swap Memory Oxidation Gas (SMOG)
As browser-based popularity ratings will soon show, it is the smart and social phone for people that aren't, even randomly surfing for you. Coming soon: sending photos taken at random
Perhaps they could have avoided using tech useful to consumers, but there are idiots and people on drugs around that will steal just about anything, even if their gain ends up being tiny compared to the damage done. Some people rip things up just looking for scrap copper. In the U.S. I recall reports of a childrens' baseball area with no lighting because the copper was taken, apartment building where the clothes washers were taken just for the coin boxes.
In this story, I suspect even knowledge of the SIM cards, without specific locations, could have been enough. Perhaps the linked units had small visible antennas.
The current non-GPL situation is also very wasteful with the work done by the each of the handset vendors not going back out to potentially improve things for everyone. It's all take and no give.
Early in the game, some vendors might not have wanted to develop if they'd had to share, but now with Android well established it's likely most if not all would stay with the platform. Google could really improve things by going GPL with a new release, but they may not want to give up control by allowing others to help evolve the platform. That serves no one but Google.
You mean all non-Open Source code right? A lot of Android is apparently under the Apache license.
No, I mean FULL GPL. Apache is great for the vendor, they get free code to use. But how many pass along the source with their modifications? Care to list some... ANY... who do? Without a GPL license with source to what's actually on the phone made open to the user and the community, it's tough for people to actually fix what they've got. People shouldn't have to resort to building something else from scratch wondering if it is compatible and perhaps loosing features.
I really think the community should cook up fully GPL builds, and have more control over data mining and ads at the same time. Why not be open like Linux is open? The way it is now, Apple users seem to get more timely updates, better compatibility, and less developer fragmentation with closed source. The community would have the user interests at heart. Users aren't even a customer of Googles. It's silly to expect Google to be very responsive. For them it's body count viewing ads that is the motivation.
Some access to source that's at least related is better than none with all other things equal, but other things aren't equal. Apple has incentive to and does strive to satisfy customers, Android users are mostly Telco customers. How responsive are they? Why leave things in the hands of Google and the telcos?
Going full GPL makes everything fixable. Why settle for less than the best?
Amazon? Who needs one from Amazon? How about something created and run with more of a community spirit?
Build a community-based replacement version of Android, replacing ALL non-GPLed code, so the end user and community can evolve what's actually installed. Put in ad and script blocking. Why should Google be tied into everything you do?
Why not have a community moderated store, and have part of the cut it takes hel fund open-source projects? Amazon and other could sell through the store too, but they might have issues being off in a corner with anything having DRM or unfriendly licensing.
Because colour TVs don't interpret chroma dots to display colour, they use three different signals for RGB. Engineers would have had to build chroma-dot interpretation into the colour TVs.
Although a color c.r.t. is driven with separate signals, the chroma part of the broadcast signal is easily looked at as just one. The information seen in what shows as the dot side-effect (the magnitude and phase of a signal), combined with the black and white signal does indeed end up decoded to RGB.
(to any that are confused, we're talking about a fine light/dark pattern seen along each scan line, most intense in areas that would be brightly colored, not present in areas that are shades of grey. We are not talking about the small RGB dots, segments, or lines that are part of color display technology) The subtle pattern is how the chroma subcarrier presents itself when not filtered out on a full-detail black and white set.
With both PAL and NTSC, the contrast of the fine dot pattern seen conveys the AMOUNT of color difference information. (think of it as the amplitude of a vector)
The position or phase of the dots, compared to an off-screen sample, determines the hue (think of it as the angle of the vector)
Compared to NTSC, PAL inverts the reference on every other line by 180 degrees. That's so a phase error that would shift flesh colors towards green on one line, shifts towards violet on the next. Those errors average to the correct color, just slightly less intense. With older tube type technology it was tough to maintain a consistent phase reference for NTSC. Adjust the tint control on one program or commercial, and it might be off on the next. Some used the nickname Never Twice the Same Color. PAL had some immunity to that problem. Scan rates and some other parameters differ some too, slightly affecting amounts of resolution and flicker.
When people say color difference signal, they simply mean what you add or subtract from the existing luminance ("Y" or black and white) to get the color you want. Except for the first RCA sets, and later the Sony Trinitron, the combining for most sets was actually done in the c.r.t. with the black and white "Y" going to the cathodes, and R-Y, B-Y, and G-Y going into the grids. That worked, except the adjustments for matching the three color guns tended to only compensate the contrast/brightness of each guns black and white information so the total of the three looked like black and white. But if one gun had higher gain than the others, the amount of color difference signal was effectively too much. So two sets side by side of the same brand often couldn't give identical looking color pictures even if the black and white was adjusted to the same tint-free look.
It's important to realize that there aren't three separate color or color difference signals sent. A single color signal effectively carries two. If one uses two synchronous mixers, but with the second fed a reference carrier oscillator 90 degrees off from the first, it's like having two independent double-sideband signals in the same spectrum. (in principle, that's how A.M. stereo works, although a modified version is used) Beyond the existing black and white "Y", TV has I and Q. (Almost the same as R-Y and B-Y but not quite, because red and blue aren't exactly 90 degrees apart). If we slightly simplify the discussion by calling the I and Q information R-Y and B-Y, those signals combined and subtracted from the Y or black and white leave the green. (The simplification doesn't change the theory at all, just small differences in implementation)
Since it's only the relative phase that determines what color difference is there, the dot pattern seen is merely shifted to the left or right very slightly. So the entire chroma picture content is there, if the detail wasn't lost. The only thing missing is the reference burst of 8 cycles of light-dark dots sent before each line.
Maybe a math analogy would help people understand? Think of th
Seen within those diagonal bars is a darker stripe. That's the horizontal blanking pulse.
Small but significant typo. The darker stripe is the horizontal SYNC pulse... the color reference burst follows that, still on top of the wider black blanking pulse.
I am sure this is a dumb question but why doesn't it just work? If the colour subcarrier is there then why doesn't it just show in colour when displayed on a colour TV?
It's a very GOOD question. Strictly speaking, the color data IS there, but the reference part of the signal isn't. The rate of those dots changing along a scan line is the chroma subcarrier frequency, 3.579545 MHz (usually just called 3.58). To decode that, the video is fed into a couple of mixers running in quadrature (also fed the signal from a crystal oscillator and a phase shifted version of it in the television). (Those decode something resembling the amounts of red and blue to add or subtract from the "Y" or black and white to get the desired color. It's actually something slightly different called I and Q due to the actual phase demodulation angles not being quite 90 degrees, but red and blue difference signals are close enough for this discussion) That oscillator is phase locked to a brief reference burst transmitted on the "back porch" of the horizontal blanking interval, the portion just after the horizontal sync pulse. The F.C.C. specification calls for a minimum of 8 cycles of that reference to be transmitted. That part of the signal is off the left edge of the picture so it is missing from a film capture.
Similar to the squelch that mutes noise and weak signals in an old C.B. or similar communications radio, television sets have a "color killer" circuit that shuts off the color decoding during black and white programs. That prevents avoidable color noise from being added to the black and white content. So to decode color, an analog television needs that off-the-left-edge of the screen color burst to enable the color decoding circuits, and to provide the reference phase lock for the chroma oscillator. If the oscillator is the exact frequency, but wrong phase, you'll get the wrong tints. The old "tint" control knobs on analog sets varied the phase.
If one is using a black and white film recording, the chroma reference signal is missing since it is off the visible part of a scan line. Some may recall the old horizontal hold control on analog sets. With the horizontal oscillator out of lock and slightly off frequency, diagonal bars are visible with twsited picture content in between. The main body of the bar is at "black" blanking level. At the end of each scan line, the sawtooth horizontal scan waveform rapidly moves the electron beam from the right back to the left. There shouldn't be any light produced by the beam during that time, so this black "blanking" video level is sent. (sets generally add additional blanking to allow for contrast/brightness settings where the blacl level wouldn't be displayed as totally black). Seen within those diagonal bars is a darker stripe. That's the horizontal blanking pulse. Comparitor circuits extract sync pulse information from the video by recognizing the higher "blacker than black" level of the sync pulses. On an out of lock signal, a sets color circuits get confused, because the gating pulse taken from the horizontal scan circuits looks at a small bit of random color information from the wrong part of each scan line. That causes the color killer to go on and off, the phase reference (tint) to jump around. But when the color is on, you still may be able to see a strip of color in the diagonal bars just to the right of the darker blanking pulse. So you can see the reference burst the color circuits normally use, and get a feel for it's position off the left edge of the picture.
Having only the visible part of the picture to work from, one could substitute another very stable adjustable signal as the color reference for decoding, but it would take experimentation and probably frequent adjustment. A small frequency error would cause the colors to cycle through the spectrum. A phase error would just rotate the tint.
Also, a picture of the picture would have to be the correct scale. If one zoomed in or out, the effec
My mom told me once she was watching a black and white TV with her family, and someone walked on the screen with green hair.
What I wrote about is only a subtle dot interference pattern that has no directly visible color.
But I think I know what your mom saw. There was some experimentation in the mid 60's with trying to get the perception of color on a black and white television. I haven't found a description in a search yet, I forget what it was called. There was a popular tv show called Combat! that was in black and white (color came later in the final season). There was publicity beforehand about an ad that was going to run during the program with color visible on black and white sets. It was for a soda... Squirt or Bubble Up or something similar. As I recall the effect was used just on the logo on the bottle. It depended on the brain perceiving some illusion of color when things flashed at a certain rate. Some people saw the effect more than others. It was used in some other ads beyond the one that got the publicity, but never caught on. The color effect had visible flicker to it and certainly couldn't pass as a normal full-color picture. I seem to recall seeing violet, but there may have been green too. I think besides not working consistently, there was also fear of triggering seizures in some people. I think it would have been fun to use in a 60's sci-fi show. Put out a gag news items saying that there had been suspected reception of tv from a parallel universe, causing color to been seen on black and white sets... then use the effect later.
I've more recently seen other ads, and I think music videos, that were released in black in white, but with color in isolated spots, like maybe just one persons face, for shock value. That color still takes a color set to see though.
But is there a market for small handheld computers without cell phone capability? Google doesn't seem to think so...
Apple doing very well with the iPod touch proves there is a market. At first glance one would think that the competitive situation for portable phone-less versions of devices would be similar, but I see several large differences.
The iPod touch doesn't carry any AT&T-only disadvantage. The phone-less devices don't get subsidies. The phone-less devices would need retail distribution/space, probably a slower tougher task than working through the phone vendors. The iPod touch and iPad are already very well established with a robust well-integrated ecosystem for product, media, and app distribution, and the experience is well polished with aggressive development. Some devices are used without a net/data connection, not a situation where Google sells ads. There are fewer viable business models since there's no monthly access fee to profit from.
It almost is reverse engineering. The chroma subcarrier in a video signal has a center frequency picked to allow the sidebands to fall between those of the main lumanance (black and white) video. The spectrum of those extends out from the main visual carrier frequency (or up from D.C. for the baseband signal) at multiple of the horizontal scan rate. The goal was to add color broadcast information to an existing greyscale system while introducing a minimal amount of interference. Here people are figuring out what is going on from the visual interference.
The added signal amplitude represents the amount of color added/subtracted from the greyscale white, and the phase represents the hue. The phase of the signal is compared with a short burst (a minimum of eight cycles) sent just after the horizontal sync pulse prior to the start of video on each scan line. PAL, as used by the BBC, is very similar to NTSC, except the scan rates differ, the phase of the reference signal is inverted on every other line to help cancel out the effect of small phase errors on tint.
Basically, those trying to recover color from the back and white films of on-air video have to use a comb filter to pick off the frequency (precisely related to the inverse of the spacing) of the resulting dots that are there from the color signal. The position of the dots from left to right carries the phase information. Considering that the dot pattern is probably quite weak, the resulting color would be noisy. Depending on the filtering used, the bandwidth (detail) may also suffer. But it is still a good starting point to know what the colors were.
The dots aren't on/off like pixels. It's actually a sinusoidal intensity variation. I recall some older Zenith B&W sets had particularly good detail (and maybe some video peaking - enhancement) making it easy to see which programs were broadcast in color, and what parts of the picture were deeply saturated. In addition to a notch in the video response at 4.5 MHz to filter out patterns from the sound, some sets rolled-off or notched centered at 3.58 MHz (3.579545 actually) video response to reduce the interference. Better later sets (and color generally) used "comb" filters to separate the interleaved spectral components without those loss of detail seen with more primitive methods. Failure to filter color signals could cause wild colors/patterns on things like striped neck-ties when a shot zoomed in/out.
It's pleasing to see that there are still a few around that understand the old analog technology well enough to realize there were visual color cues remaining. Even those that understand the electronics well often don't associate a particular visual characteristic with the responsible signal attributes.
Although partial signal recovery is easy to envision with analog electronics, something along the lines of a GIMP/Photoshop plugin could work as well. Some might think of it as being similar to watermark detection.
They were delayed due to problems scheduling an appointment for an adjustment agent to take a look at the satellite.
No problem, it turns out that you only missed the meeting advising you of where the payment was left. There has been a check waiting in orbit at 122 degrees west for a year. Since the satellite doesn't need replacing, you'll have to pay us back with interest. The rate is a little high as we're a Delaware corporation.
With processes that can easily expose a great deal of toxic material we need adequate regulations and oversight to insure that negligence or greed don't lead to problematic behaviors. If the company has a troubled past, we should watch even more closely.
We have a need for a domestic source for this material. Hopefully it will bring us some new jobs making products that use it. With growth of demand for material used in magnets for wind driven generators and in motors for electric cars, there should be enough revenue to make proper operation viable.
Certainly there is a justified fear of having bought-off regulators and horrific practices as a result. Let's hope that if things start to go down that path there will be some media left, or something like Wikileaks, to tell us about it.
WiFi doesn't have or require F.C.C. licensing for the end users. It does have to comply with some F.C.C. rules, but any digital circuit switching at r.f. speeds does too even if not designed to radiate r.f.
There are F.C.C. rules that apply to all electronics using radio frequency energy. The goal is to limit r.f. radiation that may cause interference. Anything that has circuits switching at an r.f. rate, even power supplies, is covered by the rules. The associated testing is required whether or not a device is intended to transmit. The F.C.C. doesn't regulate visible light, but still regulates the system if the system has signals/switching at r.f. speeds (as a fast data link would).
Design, testing and certification costs are per product not per unit, so they become insignificant for anything sold in volume.
Slashdot Mirror
No, there's Safari too
The listed F.C.C. files for BCG-E2328A show as being from March and April 2010. The final user manual there lists both models each with a FCC ID number. The rear cover apparently lists both also (with and without cell radio)
https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Exhibits&RequestTimeout=500&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=751625&fcc_id='BCG-E2328A'
All docs are listed as .pdfs but download with the wrong filenames and .html extensions. They open fine after changing that to .pdf. There are quite a few pics in those FCC submissions but things like chip numbers are hidden.
Video DownloadHelper was just updated with what looks like a potentially invasive new feature "SocialShare" that can be disabled in the prefs. It is on by default!
From the 4.8.2 update info page that appeared:
"Video DownloadHelper
Update: From version 4.8.1
Added SocialShare, a new Video DownloadHelper service to share a video page over a number of social services: Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Buzz, Digg, Del.icio.us, ....The former Twitter service, which was broken since the last change in the Twitter API, has been removed from the add-on.."
It's easier to look closely at the video if it is downloaded (as with DownloadHelper add-in for Firefox)and viewed in something like VLC. About 19 seconds in, it looks the the FCC IDs are almost readable. If someone with a video editing app views the video, it might be possible to find a better spot than where VLC can stop to try and catch those numbers and hopefully allow looking them up in the F.C.C. database to see if they match a current product or not.
Since DownloadHelper doesn't seem to work with embedded youtube content on other sites, here's a direct non-full-screen link. There is a 720P version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvKEzRWzA8
(when doing a copy URL from an embedded page, adding that "watch?" and removing any "&fs=1" seem to be what's needed for Download Helper to work. Flash need not be enabled, either .flv or .mp4 can be usually be downloaded)
It also works well for political party agendas.
It can be a bit surprising and sometimes funny to hear forgotten words of some famous politicians...
(please don't be put off by the title the poster chose for this video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f0A_P9kNBc
Verizon ads attacking AT&T coverage are far more memorable than any spots they co-sponsored for the Droid. Android and iPhone offerings have evolved, ads about old products are really irrelevant now.
It'll be interesting to see how Verizon handles the added traffic. At least they've got a pretty good idea what they're facing and it's not the first they're seeing of phones that browse well enough to see heavy use.
Yes, the secret is out Windows Phone ME 7 takes swap to the cloud...
Microsoft, changing the world with Swap Memory Oxidation Gas (SMOG)
As browser-based popularity ratings will soon show, it is the smart and social phone for people that aren't, even randomly surfing for you. Coming soon: sending photos taken at random
Surely it is more generous to let your protein have a chance at sentience before you eat it
How smart should it be?
For some reason a 50's movie, The Blob, comes to mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob
Perhaps they could have avoided using tech useful to consumers, but there are idiots and people on drugs around that will steal just about anything, even if their gain ends up being tiny compared to the damage done. Some people rip things up just looking for scrap copper. In the U.S. I recall reports of a childrens' baseball area with no lighting because the copper was taken, apartment building where the clothes washers were taken just for the coin boxes.
In this story, I suspect even knowledge of the SIM cards, without specific locations, could have been enough. Perhaps the linked units had small visible antennas.
If I were you, I'd put the year-end bonus in a 6-mo CD, and get the tablet when the CD's term is up
In spite of the irony, he just might do better with Apple stock.
The current non-GPL situation is also very wasteful with the work done by the each of the handset vendors not going back out to potentially improve things for everyone. It's all take and no give.
Early in the game, some vendors might not have wanted to develop if they'd had to share, but now with Android well established it's likely most if not all would stay with the platform. Google could really improve things by going GPL with a new release, but they may not want to give up control by allowing others to help evolve the platform. That serves no one but Google.
You mean all non-Open Source code right? A lot of Android is apparently under the Apache license.
No, I mean FULL GPL.
Apache is great for the vendor, they get free code to use. But how many pass along the source with their modifications? Care to list some... ANY... who do? Without a GPL license with source to what's actually on the phone made open to the user and the community, it's tough for people to actually fix what they've got. People shouldn't have to resort to building something else from scratch wondering if it is compatible and perhaps loosing features.
I really think the community should cook up fully GPL builds, and have more control over data mining and ads at the same time. Why not be open like Linux is open? The way it is now, Apple users seem to get more timely updates, better compatibility, and less developer fragmentation with closed source.
The community would have the user interests at heart. Users aren't even a customer of Googles. It's silly to expect Google to be very responsive. For them it's body count viewing ads that is the motivation.
Some access to source that's at least related is better than none with all other things equal, but other things aren't equal. Apple has incentive to and does strive to satisfy customers, Android users are mostly Telco customers. How responsive are they? Why leave things in the hands of Google and the telcos?
Going full GPL makes everything fixable. Why settle for less than the best?
Amazon? Who needs one from Amazon? How about something created and run with more of a community spirit?
Build a community-based replacement version of Android, replacing ALL non-GPLed code, so the end user and community can evolve what's actually installed. Put in ad and script blocking. Why should Google be tied into everything you do?
Why not have a community moderated store, and have part of the cut it takes hel fund open-source projects? Amazon and other could sell through the store too, but they might have issues being off in a corner with anything having DRM or unfriendly licensing.
Because colour TVs don't interpret chroma dots to display colour, they use three different signals for RGB. Engineers would have had to build chroma-dot interpretation into the colour TVs.
Although a color c.r.t. is driven with separate signals, the chroma part of the broadcast signal is easily looked at as just one. The information seen in what shows as the dot side-effect (the magnitude and phase of a signal), combined with the black and white signal does indeed end up decoded to RGB.
(to any that are confused, we're talking about a fine light/dark pattern seen along each scan line, most intense in areas that would be brightly colored, not present in areas that are shades of grey. We are not talking about the small RGB dots, segments, or lines that are part of color display technology) The subtle pattern is how the chroma subcarrier presents itself when not filtered out on a full-detail black and white set.
With both PAL and NTSC, the contrast of the fine dot pattern seen conveys the AMOUNT of color difference information. (think of it as the amplitude of a vector)
The position or phase of the dots, compared to an off-screen sample, determines the hue (think of it as the angle of the vector)
Compared to NTSC, PAL inverts the reference on every other line by 180 degrees. That's so a phase error that would shift flesh colors towards green on one line, shifts towards violet on the next. Those errors average to the correct color, just slightly less intense. With older tube type technology it was tough to maintain a consistent phase reference for NTSC. Adjust the tint control on one program or commercial, and it might be off on the next. Some used the nickname Never Twice the Same Color. PAL had some immunity to that problem. Scan rates and some other parameters differ some too, slightly affecting amounts of resolution and flicker.
When people say color difference signal, they simply mean what you add or subtract from the existing luminance ("Y" or black and white) to get the color you want. Except for the first RCA sets, and later the Sony Trinitron, the combining for most sets was actually done in the c.r.t. with the black and white "Y" going to the cathodes, and R-Y, B-Y, and G-Y going into the grids. That worked, except the adjustments for matching the three color guns tended to only compensate the contrast/brightness of each guns black and white information so the total of the three looked like black and white. But if one gun had higher gain than the others, the amount of color difference signal was effectively too much. So two sets side by side of the same brand often couldn't give identical looking color pictures even if the black and white was adjusted to the same tint-free look.
It's important to realize that there aren't three separate color or color difference signals sent.
A single color signal effectively carries two.
If one uses two synchronous mixers, but with the second fed a reference carrier oscillator 90 degrees off from the first, it's like having two independent double-sideband signals in the same spectrum. (in principle, that's how A.M. stereo works, although a modified version is used)
Beyond the existing black and white "Y", TV has I and Q. (Almost the same as R-Y and B-Y but not quite, because red and blue aren't exactly 90 degrees apart). If we slightly simplify the discussion by calling the I and Q information R-Y and B-Y, those signals combined and subtracted from the Y or black and white leave the green. (The simplification doesn't change the theory at all, just small differences in implementation)
Since it's only the relative phase that determines what color difference is there, the dot pattern seen is merely shifted to the left or right very slightly. So the entire chroma picture content is there, if the detail wasn't lost. The only thing missing is the reference burst of 8 cycles of light-dark dots sent before each line.
Maybe a math analogy would help people understand? Think of th
Seen within those diagonal bars is a darker stripe. That's the horizontal blanking pulse.
Small but significant typo. The darker stripe is the horizontal SYNC pulse... the color reference burst follows that, still on top of the wider black blanking pulse.
I am sure this is a dumb question but why doesn't it just work? If the colour subcarrier is there then why doesn't it just show in colour when displayed on a colour TV?
It's a very GOOD question.
Strictly speaking, the color data IS there, but the reference part of the signal isn't. The rate of those dots changing along a scan line is the chroma subcarrier frequency, 3.579545 MHz (usually just called 3.58). To decode that, the video is fed into a couple of mixers running in quadrature (also fed the signal from a crystal oscillator and a phase shifted version of it in the television). (Those decode something resembling the amounts of red and blue to add or subtract from the "Y" or black and white to get the desired color. It's actually something slightly different called I and Q due to the actual phase demodulation angles not being quite 90 degrees, but red and blue difference signals are close enough for this discussion)
That oscillator is phase locked to a brief reference burst transmitted on the "back porch" of the horizontal blanking interval, the portion just after the horizontal sync pulse. The F.C.C. specification calls for a minimum of 8 cycles of that reference to be transmitted. That part of the signal is off the left edge of the picture so it is missing from a film capture.
Similar to the squelch that mutes noise and weak signals in an old C.B. or similar communications radio, television sets have a "color killer" circuit that shuts off the color decoding during black and white programs. That prevents avoidable color noise from being added to the black and white content. So to decode color, an analog television needs that off-the-left-edge of the screen color burst to enable the color decoding circuits, and to provide the reference phase lock for the chroma oscillator.
If the oscillator is the exact frequency, but wrong phase, you'll get the wrong tints. The old "tint" control knobs on analog sets varied the phase.
If one is using a black and white film recording, the chroma reference signal is missing since it is off the visible part of a scan line. Some may recall the old horizontal hold control on analog sets. With the horizontal oscillator out of lock and slightly off frequency, diagonal bars are visible with twsited picture content in between. The main body of the bar is at "black" blanking level. At the end of each scan line, the sawtooth horizontal scan waveform rapidly moves the electron beam from the right back to the left. There shouldn't be any light produced by the beam during that time, so this black "blanking" video level is sent. (sets generally add additional blanking to allow for contrast/brightness settings where the blacl level wouldn't be displayed as totally black). Seen within those diagonal bars is a darker stripe. That's the horizontal blanking pulse. Comparitor circuits extract sync pulse information from the video by recognizing the higher "blacker than black" level of the sync pulses. On an out of lock signal, a sets color circuits get confused, because the gating pulse taken from the horizontal scan circuits looks at a small bit of random color information from the wrong part of each scan line. That causes the color killer to go on and off, the phase reference (tint) to jump around. But when the color is on, you still may be able to see a strip of color in the diagonal bars just to the right of the darker blanking pulse.
So you can see the reference burst the color circuits normally use, and get a feel for it's position off the left edge of the picture.
Having only the visible part of the picture to work from, one could substitute another very stable adjustable signal as the color reference for decoding, but it would take experimentation and probably frequent adjustment. A small frequency error would cause the colors to cycle through the spectrum. A phase error would just rotate the tint.
Also, a picture of the picture would have to be the correct scale. If one zoomed in or out, the effec
My mom told me once she was watching a black and white TV with her family, and someone walked on the screen with green hair.
What I wrote about is only a subtle dot interference pattern that has no directly visible color.
But I think I know what your mom saw. There was some experimentation in the mid 60's with trying to get the perception of color on a black and white television. I haven't found a description in a search yet, I forget what it was called. There was a popular tv show called Combat! that was in black and white (color came later in the final season). There was publicity beforehand about an ad that was going to run during the program with color visible on black and white sets. It was for a soda... Squirt or Bubble Up or something similar. As I recall the effect was used just on the logo on the bottle. It depended on the brain perceiving some illusion of color when things flashed at a certain rate. Some people saw the effect more than others. It was used in some other ads beyond the one that got the publicity, but never caught on. The color effect had visible flicker to it and certainly couldn't pass as a normal full-color picture. I seem to recall seeing violet, but there may have been green too. I think besides not working consistently, there was also fear of triggering seizures in some people. I think it would have been fun to use in a 60's sci-fi show. Put out a gag news items saying that there had been suspected reception of tv from a parallel universe, causing color to been seen on black and white sets... then use the effect later.
I've more recently seen other ads, and I think music videos, that were released in black in white, but with color in isolated spots, like maybe just one persons face, for shock value. That color still takes a color set to see though.
But is there a market for small handheld computers without cell phone capability? Google doesn't seem to think so...
Apple doing very well with the iPod touch proves there is a market. At first glance one would think that the competitive situation for portable phone-less versions of devices would be similar, but I see several large differences.
The iPod touch doesn't carry any AT&T-only disadvantage.
The phone-less devices don't get subsidies.
The phone-less devices would need retail distribution/space, probably a slower tougher task than working through the phone vendors.
The iPod touch and iPad are already very well established with a robust well-integrated ecosystem for product, media, and app distribution, and the experience is well polished with aggressive development.
Some devices are used without a net/data connection, not a situation where Google sells ads.
There are fewer viable business models since there's no monthly access fee to profit from.
It almost is reverse engineering. The chroma subcarrier in a video signal has a center frequency picked to allow the sidebands to fall between those of the main lumanance (black and white) video. The spectrum of those extends out from the main visual carrier frequency (or up from D.C. for the baseband signal) at multiple of the horizontal scan rate. The goal was to add color broadcast information to an existing greyscale system while introducing a minimal amount of interference. Here people are figuring out what is going on from the visual interference.
The added signal amplitude represents the amount of color added/subtracted from the greyscale white, and the phase represents the hue. The phase of the signal is compared with a short burst (a minimum of eight cycles) sent just after the horizontal sync pulse prior to the start of video on each scan line. PAL, as used by the BBC, is very similar to NTSC, except the scan rates differ, the phase of the reference signal is inverted on every other line to help cancel out the effect of small phase errors on tint.
Basically, those trying to recover color from the back and white films of on-air video have to use a comb filter to pick off the frequency (precisely related to the inverse of the spacing) of the resulting dots that are there from the color signal. The position of the dots from left to right carries the phase information. Considering that the dot pattern is probably quite weak, the resulting color would be noisy. Depending on the filtering used, the bandwidth (detail) may also suffer. But it is still a good starting point to know what the colors were.
The dots aren't on/off like pixels. It's actually a sinusoidal intensity variation. I recall some older Zenith B&W sets had particularly good detail (and maybe some video peaking - enhancement) making it easy to see which programs were broadcast in color, and what parts of the picture were deeply saturated. In addition to a notch in the video response at 4.5 MHz to filter out patterns from the sound, some sets rolled-off or notched centered at 3.58 MHz (3.579545 actually) video response to reduce the interference. Better later sets (and color generally) used "comb" filters to separate the interleaved spectral components without those loss of detail seen with more primitive methods. Failure to filter color signals could cause wild colors/patterns on things like striped neck-ties when a shot zoomed in/out.
It's pleasing to see that there are still a few around that understand the old analog technology well enough to realize there were visual color cues remaining. Even those that understand the electronics well often don't associate a particular visual characteristic with the responsible signal attributes.
Although partial signal recovery is easy to envision with analog electronics, something along the lines of a GIMP/Photoshop plugin could work as well. Some might think of it as being similar to watermark detection.
I think there's prior art...
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushmonkey3.htm
What a great feature!
Everyone will get invited to the our next office party, but the Windows users will read that they are to come in clown costumes.
They were delayed due to problems scheduling an appointment for an adjustment agent to take a look at the satellite.
No problem, it turns out that you only missed the meeting advising you of where the payment was left. There has been a check waiting in orbit at 122 degrees west for a year. Since the satellite doesn't need replacing, you'll have to pay us back with interest. The rate is a little high as we're a Delaware corporation.
...Molycorp has a fairly fraudulent past...
citations please
With processes that can easily expose a great deal of toxic material we need adequate regulations and oversight to insure that negligence or greed don't lead to problematic behaviors. If the company has a troubled past, we should watch even more closely.
We have a need for a domestic source for this material. Hopefully it will bring us some new jobs making products that use it. With growth of demand for material used in magnets for wind driven generators and in motors for electric cars, there should be enough revenue to make proper operation viable.
Certainly there is a justified fear of having bought-off regulators and horrific practices as a result. Let's hope that if things start to go down that path there will be some media left, or something like Wikileaks, to tell us about it.
Linux really IS communist!
Already there are communal hallways and television sets.
Stop this sinister sharing before we get communal toothbrushes!
Sorry, your suspicions are wrong.
WiFi doesn't have or require F.C.C. licensing for the end users. It does have to comply with some F.C.C. rules, but any digital circuit switching at r.f. speeds does too even if not designed to radiate r.f.
There are F.C.C. rules that apply to all electronics using radio frequency energy. The goal is to limit r.f. radiation that may cause interference. Anything that has circuits switching at an r.f. rate, even power supplies, is covered by the rules. The associated testing is required whether or not a device is intended to transmit. The F.C.C. doesn't regulate visible light, but still regulates the system if the system has signals/switching at r.f. speeds (as a fast data link would).
Design, testing and certification costs are per product not per unit, so they become insignificant for anything sold in volume.
Webkit nightly here:
http://nightly.webkit.org/
Firefox nightly here:
http://nightly.mozilla.org/