When I was a kid, I remember shutting off the B&W and seeing that bright white spot in the middle of the screen. As a kid, I thought that was cool! It was kind of like the whole picture would collapse into that spot.
Knowing what I know about the electronics involved, that spot was the result of the horizontal and vertical outputs shutting down, while the CRT was still getting a surge of high voltage from capacitor discharge.
But with modern HDTV sets and no CRT that spot is gone forever. I wish the tv makers would include the option to enable a spot on the screen when the set is shut off. I'm sure it could be done, but no one seems to care. That spot was part of the entire history of TV, and now it's lost forever. VERY SAD INDEED!
And it's because people like you wanted that spot to remain that tv never changed.
The basic design was from the 1930s. It reflected the available technology. Even when color and stereo was added, it didn't create a new standard, just retrofitted onto the existing standard. There was a limit on what could be done, but nobody wanted to be drastic.
The only way to get better was to kill the past. But for a long time, nobody wanted to do that, too expensive to switch at the transmitter end, too expensive to switch at the receiver end.
So there we were in the year 2000 using technology from at least 60 years before. We'd lived through all the stories of 3D tv and other advances, but they couldn't be made with the existing system.
But finally they decided to throw out the old. They made the switch, made it easier for the person at home to switch (at least in the USA) and set a deadline. I remember that night in 2009 when the "local" stations turned off (Vermont and upper New York all agreed to go with the original deadline), some were a bit slow, one actually put some graphics on where the picture slowly devolved into snow, and then the signal disappeared. It was a night to remember.
70 years of old tv is long enough. It had to be tossed in order to go forward, so there's little sense in "keeping the past".
Remember when telephones had cords on them and rotary dials, or hand cranked magnetos (they still used them in the country when I was a kid) and "party lines?" Them were the good old days.
And sometimes, the white spot would just slowly move to the side as it fades away. There is also the crackle of static as you run your hand over the tube. It is like frying your hand in electrons.
As technology progresses, there will be new ones to remember by. There is video artifacts from signal over compression; R2D2 sounding audio from corrupt data streams. These are this generation's "white dot". I consider it a new chapter in the history of TV.
Our kitchen wall phone (original installation from the early '70s) has a 25-ft cord and rotary dial... I love it! The handset has a nice heft to it that makes the lightweight modern phones feel like cheap junk. (I figure it might come in handy as a club if I ever need to defend against an intruder... and I can tie him up with the cord afterward!)
Several years ago the then-12-yr-old neighbor kid got locked out of his house, and asked to use our phone to call his Mom at work. But he had no idea how to operate a dial phone... I had to dial for him!
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At one school I went to, the phone in the headmasters office had a crank handle - the phone for students to use was more recently installed - it had press button A/press button B at various tones after you put the coins in.
It was like watching the Big Crunch, I used to think.
What I really miss is being able to turn the dial fast and instanly change from channel to channel, so fast that with 0.1 seconds on each channel you could still see what was on each channel.
It's interesting, A long time ago we had TVs that warmed up then started then we got standby to get the the picture on quicker, and now we have gone to digital we have to wait while the software decides what to do next. :-?
One reason I was a slow to get cable was because I hated the slowness of digital tuners. I still do. It's ridiculous how slow they are. Obviously unnecessary. The designers obviously don't make fast channel changes a design goal at all.
Now it is a moot point because it has to acquire. Because of the compressio n it takes time to have the full frame.
Used to be differetn though. I remember some sets changed immediately, some even did not have mutoing during that time. In fact I rememeber the Zenith cable boxes fro Northcoast, SSAVI3 decoder. and those damn things ith thei r AFC, if the modulation got turned too high and there were too many holes in the carrier (peak white) the thing would lose AFC lock and it would be b lack and white with no sound.
That's when I knew the last real Zenith engineer was dead.
Remember, the tv sets are now computers, both of mine run Linux. So they have to boot up first when you turn them on, then acquire a picture from the station.
While I agree that modern TVs are computers, where did you get the idea they use Linux? I have never heard of such a thing. From what I have seen and heard, the hardware does all the work. While the design may be computer-like, and use computer chips and other similar parts, the thing that controls the hardware is PART OF THE HARDWARE. There is no hard drive, and no software to install.
If there was any software, I'd be happy to know it's not Microsoft based, because MS would probably make us buy a new tv every 3 years or less, but at the same time, if it was linux based, no average person would be able to operate their tv, since only a complete computer nerd, (who has no life beyond their computer), can install and make Linux work, and even then their world is not compatible with the rest of the computer world as for the software and programs.
If you can prove that a TV has Linux (which I doubt), tell me where the software is installed (on what drive), and what varient of the thousands if linux types are they using?
Yea, I do hate the delays on changing channels on digital tvs. I liked the old click tuners much better, but all they did was change some capacitors and inductors via a switch, and that was instant! We'll probably have to live with this delay forever, unless they go back to the old switch-type tuners, and I doubt that will happen.
If they use it, it will be in the accompanying documentation. I think Samsung smart TVs run linux, I have a Panasonic here that runs some sort of BSD, (oe something else with a BSD licence)
how is that significant?
linux can run from a NAMD flash chip. from more advanced media like SD cards....
I have seen TVs with harddrives, but really that was for a TIVO like function, no to runs software off of. I read somewhere that if you have to replace one you format it with Linux.Unix. Not Windows. I have neveer had to change one though so who knows.
If software is in ROM itt is still software. Might callt is firmware I guess but that is still softare. At times you have to "flash" them if a cosmic rray or something hits them at the wrong time.
I lived in the city but some relatives bought a farm in the country with magneto phones. The magnetos lost their strength as the magnets got weaker and you had to really work at getting through to the operator who would forward your call. The operator was just some women making some cash on the side and got to you when she was free. Then when they placed a call you'd hear a number of short and long rings and you were supposed to listen for your own code. But of course you could always pick up and listen in to someone else on the line that did answer their own ring code.
It amazes me that any form of Unix is still used for modern computers. It's so archaic. It was used for those old mainframe computers which would fill an entire room, and still have less power than a 386 computer from the early 1990s.
Yet it seems that we really have not advanced much, if Unix is still the only OTHER system besides Windows. I'm no big fan of Microsoft, in fact I'm disgusted with their latest operating systems. I still use XP and even Win98 on another computer I cant stand anything newer, and Windows
8 is pure crap. I was bound and determined to learn Linux, I tried it several times and tried quite a few different distros. I never could get the hang of it. I'd get it installed, and when something did not work, I'd ask online, on a Linux discussion group, and was always told to go to the Linux command line. The moment I got there, I was completely lost, and the people I had asked acted as if I'm either supposed to know this stuff, or have no right using Linux. I finally just gave up on Linux entirely and will never go back.
I'll just stick woth XP and keep hoping another OS is soon developed that is not Windows, and not Unix based. But I'll probably be hoping for that till I die.
Anyhow, those Unix command line codes seem nearly impossible to learn unless a person spends their entire life learning and using it. It really seems so obsolete. I should mention that I started to use computers when DOS was the OS in use. DOS was easy to learn, adn I still remember it, and still use some DOS programs. But DOS has a hundred or so commands, while Unix must have 100,000 or more....
I know none of this will change, at least not soon, but I just find it hard to believe that Unix is still so much in use. I know Android is the top seller for smart phones, and that is a form of Unix/Linux. I'd almost think that computer hardware, as it's built, is made to only operate on Unix based systems, but Windows proved that wrong. I'd be perfectly content to just keep using the older versions of Windows, but MS makes that damn near impossible because they stop supporting the older versions. Seems they cant get it thru their heads that some of us, especially us older folks, just dont want their bloated power hungry newer crap.
But this is where I get confused. If MS could operate a computer on their simple DOS and later on with earlier versions of Windows, which were quite easy to manipulate, why does Unix/Linux still use that impossible to learn command line crap. Why have they not simplified this after all these years?
I iddn't notice the GPL license in the manual of my tv set, but when I upgraded the firmware, the uncompressed image on the USB flashdrive looked like Linux, and then I noticed the GPL.
No, it's a real computer running software that interfaces with some dedicated hardware. It's a stripped down version of Linux with some software specific to the tv set added, but it's Linux controlling the system.
Being able to upgrade the firmware means they can fix problems or if some new standard comes along, they can add that, so long as the existing hardware can handle the new.
Come on. Linux is used quite a bit in embedded controllers. It's not the same as running it on a home computer. It's no different from all those ATMs that run a stripped down version of Windows XP, people were making jokes about that after Microsoft announced it would no longer support XP. But the joke there is that the ATMs use a version intended for controller use, and unlike Joe Average's computer at home, an ATM is a very controlled situation with very specific hardware and a very small selection of software. On top of that, once a given ATM is tested, it's safe, while a computer at home has endless variables that might make it unsafe.
Look in a manual, or do a search. Both my HDTV's use Linux. My TomTom One GPS uses Linux. My Pioneer blu-ray player uses Linux, and I think the blu-ray player I got at a garage sale uses Linux.
It's cheap, it's proven, the source code is there so it's easy to adapt to new hardware. It costs a bit more in terms of resources to run it, but that sort of thing is now cheap. They need a reasonable computer in the thing to do the work anyway, so running Linux isn't a burden.
It runs in firmware. ANd as for version, they probably jsut take the pieces that make up a Linux distribution and compile it, which is the process used to put together any of the distributions. They can leave out a lot, since this isn't for general purpose computing.
The process wasn't slowed down once synthesized tuners came into being. The sluggishness is because a DTV has to capture enough data (and decompress it) to put a picture on the screen, which takes a finite time.
The only way to speed things up is better software, and more likely faster hardware, which will increase the cost. Nobody's going back to the old days.
I seem to recall that TIVO, at least in the early days, ran Linux. It probably was the first consumer device to do so, and set the stage for the tv sets and the blu-ray players and the GPS units and all that to use Linux.
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