On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 23:02:09 +0000, Paul Johnson
wrote:

Richard Clark wrote:

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:02:17 +0000, Paul Johnson
wrote:

(If I was poor enough, my idiot government would buy this stuff for me,
but instead, I believe I will be taxed to buy it for someone else.)

Show me where I can sign up for a free TV from the government...

Newsflash (it took less than a week to come true):
"Under a deal negotiated by Republicans in the House and Senate,
up to $1.5 billion would be available to help some people buy
converter boxes to keep their old, analog-signal televisions
working when the transition [to digital TV] is finished."

Welcome to the GOP welfare state.

There's a big difference between a cheap part from Radio Shack and a
television...

On a pro-rata basis, it is 30,000,000 cheap parts. As Rummie tells
our troops, you gotta work with whatcha got!

If you want a TV, contribute to the DeLay defense fund (but you are
still kissing your tax money good-bye).

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:02:17 +0000, Paul Johnson
wrote:

Wes Stewart wrote:

Furthermore, my wife and rarely watch anything live (except for local
news), but use two DVRs for time shifting and commercial elimination.
So with my system, if I can get a picture at all, I would need three
STBs (set top boxes) that are programmable or a couple of new digital
recorders and a new TV set.

Odds are you'll need the STB for each PVR, not TV. PVR's are basically a
VCR with a computer instead of a video slot, same limitations apply with
the signal you feed it. The video coming out of the PVR isn't going to
change magically overnight, though.

(If I was poor enough, my idiot government would buy this stuff for me,
but instead, I believe I will be taxed to buy it for someone else.)

Show me where I can sign up for a free TV from the government...

Actually, I think that you already know that the gummit is talking
about furnishing STBs to poor folk and you're just being
argumentative.

From this source:

http://www.todaysengineer.org/2005/Dec/spectrum.asp

"The Senate DTV bill, passed on 3 November, calls for a 7 April 2009
analog shutoff, and would use up to $3 billion of the $10 billion
expected from the analog spectrum auction to subsidize most of the
cost for converter boxes"

After the governmental "handling charge" the $3B will eat up $6B of
the "windfall."

And after a natural disaster cable TV systems will be working about as
well as cell phones have. While the old analog TV and radio will keep
chugging along.

http://www.nab.org/Newsroom/PressRel.../WSJ101504.asp

4:3 aspect was a technical limitation that really should have died long
before my birth, much less now. Good riddance.

What "technical limitation"? Aspect ratios are arbitrary. Most were
set based on film sizes, not some CCD. Some of the finest images ever
produced are on 4 x 5 or 8 x 10 film negatives, often displayed with
vertical orientation, as are many of the masters' paintings; so much
for 16:9 horizonatal.

Wes,

You got that right. Perhaps you are even too kind to cable service.

After Hurricane Charley hit us head on last year we saw the following
outages.

Ordinary phone: 4 days (mostly underground)

Electric power: 7 days (extensive pole replacement and rewiring)

Cell phones: about 2 weeks (temporary towers brought in)

Cable service: one month (cable runs on same poles as electric service)

There was no flooding from Charley, but the winds were quite a bit
stronger than Katrina and Rita.

As soon as we got a temporary generator running we were able to watch
regular over-the-air analog TV.

73,
Gene
W4SZ

Wes Stewart wrote:

[big snip]

And after a natural disaster cable TV systems will be working about as
well as cell phones have. While the old analog TV and radio will keep
chugging along.

"Wes Stewart" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:02:17 +0000, Paul Johnson
wrote:
And after a natural disaster cable TV systems will be working about as
well as cell phones have.

Only as long as the emergency broadcast system is kept alive. There's no
particular reason the funding for it couldn't be shut off/expanded to include
cable/switch only to cable/whatever. In fact, one could argue that during a
natural disaster cable TV could actually be more reliable in that its
infrastructure is somewhat more protected than a huge antenna ever could be.
(I seem to recall from Hurricane Katrina that some of the first phone calls
getting out -- barring folks with satellite phones -- were VOIP calls over
wired Internet connections.)

4:3 aspect was a technical limitation that really should have died long
before my birth, much less now. Good riddance.

What "technical limitation"? Aspect ratios are arbitrary.

Not true. In the 'early days' of TV, the glass for CRTs couldn't be blown
into such arbitrary aspect ratios; hence 4:3 was chosen as a reasonably
compromise between producibility and "well, at least it's not square...!" :-)
Presumably 16:9 is a closer match to human vision than 4:3, and for viewing a
movie it would seem to make sense to try to match that since you're trying to
encompass the viewer.

---Joel

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:12:55 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
wrote:

4:3 aspect was a technical limitation that really should have died long
before my birth, much less now. Good riddance.

What "technical limitation"? Aspect ratios are arbitrary.

Not true. In the 'early days' of TV, the glass for CRTs couldn't be blown
into such arbitrary aspect ratios; hence 4:3 was chosen as a reasonably
compromise between producibility and "well, at least it's not square...!" :-)
Presumably 16:9 is a closer match to human vision than 4:3, and for viewing a
movie it would seem to make sense to try to match that since you're trying to
encompass the viewer.

Hi Joel,

In the early days? I've worked on some of the oldest sets known
(albeit post WWII) that had Round tubes pointing up into a mirror for
viewing - early rear projection ;-)

I also worked on a lot of round tubes that were masked rectangular.
The mask matched the transmitted signal which was, of necessity and
technical law, rectangular. If glass blowing technology dominated the
aspect ratio, we would still be groaning about having to watch through
portholes.

The aspect ratio is called the "Academy Ratio" and it matched the
Hollywood product (hence the Academy as in Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences, the moniker for the Academy awards -AKA Oscar-
organization). When TV began to dominate the market, Hollywood
ventured into other aspect ratios (which made no more sense than the
first, and cost a gazillion times more to fabricate lenses).

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 08:06:58 -0700, Wes Stewart
wrote:

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 23:28:15 GMT, Owen Duffy wrote:



Don't you have digital television? Best thing since sliced bread.

I don't know if you can receive analog television beyond the digital
coverage ranges, but you probably wouldn't want to watch it.

Digital TV makes weak signals most watchable, DVD quality at weak
signals.

I use it and I am only 4km from the transmitter, but that is another
situation where it works a treat, ghost free pictures close to the
tranmitter in the presence of local reflections (hills, water towers
etc).

I suppose you have the Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (COFDM) standard there.

Yes.

I saw STBs in the supermarket this morning for A$69 or about US$55.

Owen
--

The aspect ratio is called the "Academy Ratio" and it matched the
Hollywood product (hence the Academy as in Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences,.........................................

Lately, I've been using my puter to watch TV more than my actual
TV. Better pix, and I can putz around on the puter while I watch
all the talking heads, etc... :/
I'm using a ATI 9800 AIW card that has a phillips tuner in it.
It will shift the view for many aspect ratios. The usual 4:3,
but also 16:9, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 in letterbox or widescreen.
Which do I usually use? The standard 4:3... :/ I generally prefer
it, and if a movie comes on in letterbox, it will show that way
even if I stay 4:3. I run my desktop at 1600x1200 res on a 21
inch monitor. The TV is much smoother than any regular TV
as you don't really see the pixels too much if you are up close.
A regular TV will look like a maze of dots if you hover up close.
This thing, you can hardly notice the pixels at all . If you sit back,
with it full screen, it's like a baby movie screen. With the 1600
desktop, if I window the TV as "large", it still only covers slightly
less than 1/4 of the screen. :/ At that setting, it's nearly like a
moving photograph. Kinda like psuedo HDTV...Not quite the
same, but it's semi close as far as perceived quality.
This TV/vid card is nifty cuz it also lets me record video.
So my puter is like a digi VCR. If I see something , say like
that sea plane blowing up and crashing into the water, , I can reach
over and record it...Yep. I did manage to record that actual crash
video.. You can see the explosion, and the fireball definitely
following the detached wing as it fell to the water. The rest
of the plane just zipped on down to the water.. It all happened
so fast, there was no chance for them to try anything.
Kinda looked like the prop sheared off into the wing..??
I guess they will know after they look at it.
MK

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:12:55 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
wrote:

"Wes Stewart" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:02:17 +0000, Paul Johnson
wrote:
And after a natural disaster cable TV systems will be working about as
well as cell phones have.

Only as long as the emergency broadcast system is kept alive.

EBS is -not- necessary for local stations to stay on the air using
emergency power with small crews providing emergency information to
local residents

http://www.tvtechnology.com/features..._katrina.shtml


There's no
particular reason the funding for it couldn't be shut off/expanded to include
cable/switch only to cable/whatever. In fact, one could argue that during a
natural disaster cable TV could actually be more reliable in that its
infrastructure is somewhat more protected than a huge antenna ever could be.
(I seem to recall from Hurricane Katrina that some of the first phone calls
getting out -- barring folks with satellite phones -- were VOIP calls over
wired Internet connections.)

4:3 aspect was a technical limitation that really should have died long
before my birth, much less now. Good riddance.

What "technical limitation"? Aspect ratios are arbitrary.

Not true. In the 'early days' of TV, the glass for CRTs couldn't be blown
into such arbitrary aspect ratios; hence 4:3 was chosen as a reasonably
compromise between producibility and "well, at least it's not square...!" :-)
Presumably 16:9 is a closer match to human vision than 4:3, and for viewing a
movie it would seem to make sense to try to match that since you're trying to
encompass the viewer.

Richard Clark has answered this very nicely.

However, I restate my case, aspect ratios are arbitrary. Once again a
(compromise) "standard" is being set by what Hollywood is using. See:

http://www.dvdaust.com/aspect.htm

On 21 Dec 2005 02:32:42 -0800, wrote:

Lately, I've been using my puter to watch TV more than my actual
TV. Better pix, and I can putz around on the puter while I watch
all the talking heads, etc... :/

Hi Mark,

I'm a movie buff (one of my degrees) and I use a DLP projector to get
a 72" 4:3 display. Last night I watched Ralph Meeker portray Mike
Hammer in "Kiss Me Deadly" in glorious Black and White. The
performance of Texas Instruments' digital mirror array is summed up by
one of the characters, Nick, in that movie with
"Va Va Voom - POW!!!!"

2000:1 contrast ratio (my LCD monitor here only runs 800:1) and 2000
Lumens. - Oh, and cheap too compared to the field for that size (I
could make it bigger, but there's only so much wall).

Got two of them. One is for presentations on the road - it cremates
the dim LCD projectors others use.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:26:08 -0800, Richard Clark
wrote:

When TV began to dominate the market, Hollywood
ventured into other aspect ratios (which made no more sense than the
first, and cost a gazillion times more to fabricate lenses).

Hi All,

To further illustrate the migration through the various aspect ratios,
the Academy ratio was simply that of the standard 35mm film exposure.
When the film is held vertically, you can see a succession of exposed
images in the correct (normal to viewing) way. The image diagonal is
roughly 50mm, and this is considered a "normal" lens size (by which
multiples are called either telephoto 2X, 3X, or wide 0.7X, or very
wide angle 0.56X). There was also the 70mm Hollywood product which
was simply a double sized strip of film (first offered in the 1930
production of King Vidor's "Billy the Kid"). It was still in the
standard Academy ratio.

The Academy ratio of 4:3 is usually normalized to 1.33:1 for
comparison to other ratios.

When the wider (but not taller) formats were offered, things got
really weird. Cinerama needed three cameras (and three projectors) to
lace together the complete image of roughly 2.6:1. Super Panavision
requires only one projector for this ratio.

Cinemascope replaced Cinerama with a 2.66:1 ratio, but only lasted to
1967. It accomplished this on the standard 35mm film by squeezing the
image to fit the wide the of the film (this required Anamorphic lenses
for exposing and projection).

With all the processes out there, I've forgotten the one that twisted
the image 90 degrees to fit it on to the film strip in its wide
format.

Panavision had a blighted start and wandered the field from 2.75:1 to
2.2:1. In fact when we come to the digital formats, Panavision only
offered one as recently as 1999 - and, of course, the lens prices went
through the stratosphere.

When you think of it, the Academy ratio still rules the digital
photography marketplace. How many 2.66:1 Kodaks have you seen? Anyone
find a 2.75:1 Nikon? Maybe.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC, and projectionist