[opendtv] Re: Analysis: Should Apple Buy Hollywood?

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:22:49 -0600

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

>> Actually in the 1980s. Maybe early 1980s. They were featured in
>> tiny hand-held TV sets, perhaps 2" screens or so. More of a
>> curiosity than anything else, but it did make me long for the days
>> when TVs would become LCDs. I first saw them, I think it was, at
>> The Sharper Image stores. Really cool stuff, but only because of
>> what they promised for the future. 
>
> Agree that the promise for the future was exciting,

So, in spite of all the words, you agree that the first application was in fact 
TV, even before PCs got LCD displays? Good. That was my point.

> I don't think that this tells you anything useful. I had an S-VHS
> recorder, and it did a decent job with original S-VHS source. But
> hardly ANY movies were release in the S-VHS format. And the format
> still suffered from the use of color under recording of the
> limited NTSC subcarrier information. The result was not even close
> to the quality of Digital Component DVD.

S-VHS and their Y/C interface were used primarily for large rear-projection 
home theater of the time, however they did not create the HDTV market. Many 
regular TVs eventually also got the Y/C interface, but not for quite a long 
time after S-VHS was introduced (1987 S-VHS intro, late 1990s the Y/C interface 
became commonplace in regular sets).

>> Similarly, S-VHS did a whole lot better than analog OTA NTSC.

> Yup.

So, do you need 4:4:4 to do a lot better than NTSC, or is 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 also a 
lot better?

Not to stray from the point here, but you don't need as much chrominance 
bandwidth as luminance bandwidth. That's why S-VHS looked so good. And yet, it 
didn't create the HDTV market, nor did DVDs. DVDs merely exploited the 
existence of HDTVs, by introducing, after the fact, after HDTVs had been around 
for some years, component analog interfaces. Early DVD players did not have 
component outputs.

> OK. We can agree on this, although NONE of these TVS had ATSC
> tuners in them.

Never claimed they did. The tuner mandate didn't cover all TVs and recorders 
until 1 March 2007, and without that, the CE companies selling to the US market 
were only too happy to do the bidding of the MVPDs. For whatever reasons.

Bert

 
 
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