Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey then, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, senior writer for
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, and today we're going to
Speaker 1: continue our series on the history of TV technology. Now.
Speaker 1: In our last episode where we last left off, if
Speaker 1: you prefer or last week on tech Stuff, we covered
Speaker 1: the contentious birth of the electronic television, talked about how
Speaker 1: a couple of different inventors and companies were laying claim
Speaker 1: to being the inventor of TV. And we also talked
Speaker 1: all the way up to the the invention of color
Speaker 1: TV and how CBS had tried to define color television,
Speaker 1: but our c A eventually was able to undermine that
Speaker 1: and create their own version, their own standard for color
Speaker 1: t V that ended up becoming the standard. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try and pack a lot in with this particular episode
Speaker 1: to talk about the significant developments that happened once color
Speaker 1: television started making an impact in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: although I'm gonna have to backtrack some to cover some
Speaker 1: of these topics, because, as it turns out, history is
Speaker 1: not a very simple timeline of dates. Right. If you
Speaker 1: want to explain how something works, sometimes you have to
Speaker 1: follow that trail down a few years before you backtrack
Speaker 1: and go back to an earlier point to go to
Speaker 1: the next logical section of your explanation. I wish time
Speaker 1: didn't work that way, because it would make organizing podcasts
Speaker 1: way easier. Now, for the most part, I've stayed away
Speaker 1: from talking about actual programming on television. In other words,
Speaker 1: I haven't really talked about the types of stuff you'd
Speaker 1: watch on TV, just the technology of television itself. But
Speaker 1: television has really transformed our world in many ways, and
Speaker 1: it also cemented several notions when it comes to business practices,
Speaker 1: things like sponsorships and advertising. TV was able to establish
Speaker 1: some basic rules that ended up being applied to other industries,
Speaker 1: including the online world. And we've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: growing pains because of that, because we've seen how the
Speaker 1: online world is very different from the broadcast TV world,
Speaker 1: and yet for a long time it was being treated
Speaker 1: as if it were the same thing from a marketing
Speaker 1: and advertising point of view. Uh And to this day,
Speaker 1: we're still struggling with that that decision. But let's get
Speaker 1: back to the technology section. So while our c A
Speaker 1: and CBS, we're duking out which company would define the
Speaker 1: color TV standard. Other eggheads were working on different ways
Speaker 1: to transform the TV viewing experience. So as early as
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, A T and T began to experiment
Speaker 1: with coaxial cables to carry television transmissions to homes that
Speaker 1: couldn't receive over the air signals. And this was a
Speaker 1: problem not just in remote areas that were really far
Speaker 1: away from transmitters, but also in big cities where buildings
Speaker 1: could block signals. So I've covered cable TV and other
Speaker 1: episodes of tech stuff. I'm not really going to dive
Speaker 1: into it here because it would just be repeating stuff
Speaker 1: I've talked about in previous episodes. But I'll just say
Speaker 1: that it was the rise of cable, particularly in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, that transformed television again and gave audiences far
Speaker 1: more options than just a few local channels. It's also
Speaker 1: what gave rise to superstations that could cover an entire region,
Speaker 1: an entire country. The United States is big. For a
Speaker 1: long time, everyone just had access to their local affiliate stations,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have access to things that were playing
Speaker 1: in other other regions, other markets. Here in Atlanta, you
Speaker 1: could pick up Chicago stations occasionally and you can see
Speaker 1: the Chicago version of the same stuff that you would
Speaker 1: get with in Atlanta based version. But after the the
Speaker 1: widespread use of cable, we started seeing these nationwide networks
Speaker 1: that were the same across the entire United States. That
Speaker 1: was only made possible through cable TV. But I again,
Speaker 1: I covered that in a previous episode, so we're not
Speaker 1: really going to focus on that today. Now, in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties, going back pretty far, Dr Fritz Fisher
Speaker 1: of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology dreamed up a
Speaker 1: way to project television images on a much larger screen.
Speaker 1: So instead of just having a little twelve inch screen
Speaker 1: that you stare at, this would be a projector that
Speaker 1: could take TV signals and projected across a much wider
Speaker 1: viewing area. And in fact, the first working projection TV
Speaker 1: got its start in Europe in the nineteen thirties. Now,
Speaker 1: before I explain more, I should say that Dr Fisher
Speaker 1: wasn't the only person working on this goal. Lots of
Speaker 1: people were trying to create projection televisions, including ones who
Speaker 1: had been working on something before Dr Fisher got started.
Speaker 1: Some even had a few working models, but most of
Speaker 1: them were producing very dim pictures, so you couldn't see
Speaker 1: them easily projected on a screen. So while I say
Speaker 1: Dr Fisher invented the projection television, that's really an oversimplification.
Speaker 1: Lots of people invented similar devices, and that seems to
Speaker 1: be the case with technology as a whole. Whenever we
Speaker 1: say so and so invented something, there almost always needs
Speaker 1: to be an asterisk after that statement so that you
Speaker 1: can clarify other people were working on this too. It's
Speaker 1: just one incarnation ended up being superior to the others. Now,
Speaker 1: this particular invention's goal was to project an image large
Speaker 1: enough for a theater sized viewing space, and several movie
Speaker 1: studios were interested in this technology because it could provide
Speaker 1: another source of revenue. If you didn't have a television,
Speaker 1: you could just hop down to your local movie house
Speaker 1: and check out television broadcasts there. But first someone had
Speaker 1: to make a gadget that could project a televised broadcast
Speaker 1: onto a screen. Now, Fritzie he unveiled a working prototype
Speaker 1: back in n teen forty four, and he received the
Speaker 1: US patent for his invention in ninet and he called
Speaker 1: it the IDA four television system. Now IDA four is
Speaker 1: spelled E I D O P h O R, and technically,
Speaker 1: if you're being kind of generous, it means image bearer
Speaker 1: roughly speaking. And here's how it worked. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: a little easy on this because the technical details get
Speaker 1: pretty complicated, so we're gonna kind of take a bird's
Speaker 1: eye view of this. First. Dr Fisher knew this system
Speaker 1: would need to be very bright to illuminate a theater screen,
Speaker 1: which was a problem. The other systems were running into
Speaker 1: much much brighter than a normal television set. So for
Speaker 1: that reason, he decided to use a powerful arc light
Speaker 1: to provide the initial illumination, which was essentially a booster
Speaker 1: for the image, to make sure you got that bright
Speaker 1: enough so that when it projected on the screen it
Speaker 1: was visible. Then he had to find a way to
Speaker 1: modulate that light, in other words, to manipulate the light
Speaker 1: to actually make the moving images you would see on
Speaker 1: the screen. And his solution was to create an electron
Speaker 1: gun system that we used a very thin layer of
Speaker 1: oil the heat called IDA four liquid. So this is
Speaker 1: not wildly different from cathode ray tube television screens. Remember
Speaker 1: a cathode ray tube generated a stream of electrons, and
Speaker 1: you would use that to paint the backside of a
Speaker 1: television screen which had a phosphorus coating on it. So
Speaker 1: as the electrons made contact with the phosphors, they would luminess,
Speaker 1: they would light up. This is kind of a similar idea,
Speaker 1: except that you didn't have that phosphorus layer on a screen. Instead,
Speaker 1: the arc light would shine through a window and sometimes
Speaker 1: also a color wheel, a mechanical color wheel to add
Speaker 1: color to the image. That's the same style of color
Speaker 1: wheel that CBS was pioneering in their color television UH
Speaker 1: standard that they were pushing. Then that light, after it's
Speaker 1: gone through the color wheel, would go through what is
Speaker 1: called a condenser lenn. Now, when light passes through a
Speaker 1: condenser lens, it aligns in parallel or collineated ways, so
Speaker 1: or collimated I should say not collineated collimated ways. You
Speaker 1: have these parallel rays of light after they pass through.
Speaker 1: So this is useful if you've got say a source
Speaker 1: of light that is diverging, it's spreading as it extends
Speaker 1: outward from the source. If it goes through a condenser lens,
Speaker 1: then it concentrates into more of a beam. So you
Speaker 1: can think of those flashlights that have the really narrow
Speaker 1: beam that come out the end. Chances are they're using
Speaker 1: a condenser lens to create that beam. Uh. So it
Speaker 1: keeps the beam nice and tight, and those parallel rays
Speaker 1: of light would then encounter a mirrored bar system I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean physical bars. Think of like iron bars on
Speaker 1: a window, except instead of them being ironed, they're actually mirrors.
Speaker 1: And it's angled in such a way that the light
Speaker 1: coming from the arc lamp gets reflected uh ninety degrees
Speaker 1: downward or to the lefter to the right, doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: but generally we diagram this as being downward. That light
Speaker 1: would then hit a spherical mirror that would have a
Speaker 1: very thin coating of this oil on it this ida
Speaker 1: forore liquid on it, and pointed at this spherical mirror
Speaker 1: was the electron gun. Now, the electron gun would fire
Speaker 1: electrons just as a CRT tube would inside a television. Uh.
Speaker 1: By the way, CRT tube, I'm being redundant. It's like
Speaker 1: a t M machine or pin number. But a CRT
Speaker 1: would fire electrons at the screen. In this case, the
Speaker 1: electron gun is firing electrons at that oil. The electron
Speaker 1: collisions would cause electrostatic charges to form on the surface
Speaker 1: of the oil, which would then make the oil create
Speaker 1: these wave like corrugations, and the high of the waves
Speaker 1: was proportional to the strength of the video signal or
Speaker 1: how bright it needed to be. This wave like action
Speaker 1: on the oil is what actually modulated that light. So
Speaker 1: you had the light coming in, reflecting down off those
Speaker 1: mirrored bars, hitting this spherical mirror, and then being modulated
Speaker 1: by this undulating oil. And by undulating, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: atomic size changes in what was going on on the
Speaker 1: surface layer of the this oil. That would then be
Speaker 1: reflected back up through the bars of this mirrored bar
Speaker 1: system up toward a projection lens, which was then directed
Speaker 1: at another mirror that would reflect the projection onto the
Speaker 1: theatrical screen. So some of the light goes through those bars,
Speaker 1: continues upward and hits that projection lens. Now, but this
Speaker 1: is where that ninety degree turn is really important, because
Speaker 1: without that ninety degree turn, the arc light would just
Speaker 1: be shining lights straight through a projection lens, and all
Speaker 1: you would get is a blank screen, just just project
Speaker 1: just light projected on a screen. No image would be there.
Speaker 1: By having this mirror there that would let some light
Speaker 1: go through. You could angle that light downward and have
Speaker 1: the projection lens above the mirrored bars, so only the
Speaker 1: reflected light is what ends up being put back onto
Speaker 1: the screen. The light directly from the arc lamp would
Speaker 1: not hit the screen, so you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about the image bleeding out or just being a blank screen.
Speaker 1: It's actually a really interesting system, and again it gets
Speaker 1: way more technical than what I'm describing right here, but
Speaker 1: without the use of visuals it becomes increasingly difficult to
Speaker 1: explain how this works, and light modulation, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: gets into some pretty heavy physics. And we've got to
Speaker 1: be completely honest here, I think I'd do a really
Speaker 1: lousy job at describing the whole process without a lot
Speaker 1: more work on my end to really get grips with
Speaker 1: the science of it. So part of this is because
Speaker 1: it's difficult to explain without visuals, but the other part
Speaker 1: is just that when you get down to the physics
Speaker 1: of light, I have a basic understanding and would need
Speaker 1: to study a lot more to get a deeper understanding
Speaker 1: in order to express exactly how this machine worked in
Speaker 1: a more meaningful way. So please cut me some slack.
Speaker 1: I'm not an optic scientist. The point is this contraption,
Speaker 1: which weighed nearly two thousand pounds, allowed a projectionist to
Speaker 1: send a televised signal to a large movie screen. And
Speaker 1: the reason it weighed so much was because it required
Speaker 1: a lot of power. So you had a lot of
Speaker 1: power elements inside this thing. Uh. The electron gun and
Speaker 1: the IDA four liquid also had to be kept inside
Speaker 1: a vacuum, so you needed to have vacuum pumps to
Speaker 1: make sure that you maintain that vacuum inside the chamber
Speaker 1: with the IDA four liquid, otherwise you wouldn't get the
Speaker 1: results that you needed. Also, temperature changes could affect the
Speaker 1: performance of the oil itself, so you had try and
Speaker 1: keep the temperature of the whole device fairly constant, which
Speaker 1: meant that you had to include fans to blast out
Speaker 1: extras extra excess heat. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different components that went together to make up this thing,
Speaker 1: which meant that it was enormous and heavy as a result. Uh.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty two, television had found its way to
Speaker 1: the Great White North a k a. Canada, and uh,
Speaker 1: here's a shout out to all my viewers in Canada.
Speaker 1: You guys are awesome. You guys might have been a
Speaker 1: little late to the TV game, but you've also produced
Speaker 1: some of the greatest writers and television performers in history
Speaker 1: from SCTV, two Kids in the Hall and hundreds more.
Speaker 1: But then you also gave a Seline Dion, So don't
Speaker 1: get full of yourselves. You need to think about what
Speaker 1: you did. In nineteen fifty six, we get another interesting invention,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites, Zenith revealed the Zenith Space Command.
Speaker 1: So Zenith Space Command, uh, in case you're curious, was
Speaker 1: not a computer game. It was a remote control. It
Speaker 1: was the remote control, the first wireless remote control that
Speaker 1: was successful in the consumer market place. It was not
Speaker 1: the very first wireless remote control, but was the first
Speaker 1: one to really be viable enough to make it to market.
Speaker 1: And it was invented by a guy named Robert Adler.
Speaker 1: And I probably should do a full episode on Robert Adler.
Speaker 1: He was born in Austria, but he left Austria during
Speaker 1: the rise of the Nazi Party in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: and he moved around Europe a bit, went to the UK,
Speaker 1: and eventually immigrated to the United States. Then he took
Speaker 1: a job at Zenith Electronics in the R and D division. UH. Now,
Speaker 1: before Adler's invention, remote controls hadn't seen much success beyond
Speaker 1: the laboratory. Early versions were actually tethered. In other words,
Speaker 1: they had a cable that would connect back to the TV,
Speaker 1: so really the remote control was was tied to the television.
Speaker 1: You couldn't go anywhere with it. Uh It limited their usefulness,
Speaker 1: so they never saw widespread adoption. And an earlier wireless
Speaker 1: system used visible light and light sensing photo cells on
Speaker 1: the television itself, so it's almost like a little flashlight
Speaker 1: and if you pressed a button, it would flash a
Speaker 1: certain sequence to send a command to the television, which
Speaker 1: would then detect it through photo cells. But there's a
Speaker 1: problem there. It was depending upon visible light, and it
Speaker 1: turns out we use a lot of different sources of
Speaker 1: visible light because we do not see so well in
Speaker 1: the dark. So if your television set was exposed to
Speaker 1: other sources of visible light, like the sun, it could
Speaker 1: mistakenly interpret those light sources as being commands and the
Speaker 1: next thing you know, you can't hear anything because the
Speaker 1: sun keeps lowering the volume on your television set, so
Speaker 1: that was a bit of a problem. Adler had a
Speaker 1: different solution um, and it was different from the ones
Speaker 1: that we have today. Today's remote controls mostly rely on
Speaker 1: some other four of electromagnetic radiation, whether it's infrared or
Speaker 1: some form of WiFi radio signal. That's what most modern
Speaker 1: remote controls rely upon today. But back in the day,
Speaker 1: it was all about ultrasonic frequencies. Old television remotes used
Speaker 1: sound to control TVs, and inside these remotes were actual
Speaker 1: small metal bars, typically made out of aluminum. So you
Speaker 1: had physical little metal bars inside this remote control box,
Speaker 1: and if you pressed the button, it would cause a
Speaker 1: little lever to make those bars vibrate, and that vibration
Speaker 1: would give off an ultrasonic frequency, and a receiver on
Speaker 1: the television would quote unquote here this frequency and then
Speaker 1: transfer that into some form of control. So it might
Speaker 1: be volume up or volume down, it might turn the
Speaker 1: TV off or on, it might change a channel. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, your basic remote control functions. And these sounds
Speaker 1: are ultrasonic, so they're beyond the range of Hugh been hearing.
Speaker 1: Remember human hearing goes from about twenty hurts to twenty
Speaker 1: killer hurts. Uh. Typically that's that's average. Your results may
Speaker 1: vary depending upon the human of choice. My hearing is
Speaker 1: probably I'm at an age where it's probably not nearly
Speaker 1: as high as twenty. Killer hurts for me because as
Speaker 1: you get older, you start to lose the ability to
Speaker 1: detect those higher frequencies. This is why you would hear
Speaker 1: stories about certain convenience stores employing sound systems that could
Speaker 1: play a pitch that was above what the typical adult
Speaker 1: could hear, but within the hearing of say, gnarly teenagers
Speaker 1: who are always clogging up the store. You just crank
Speaker 1: up this irritating pitch that only the teenagers can hear,
Speaker 1: and next thing you know, there aren't bothering you anymore.
Speaker 1: It's a brilliant technology. In my mind, it saves me
Speaker 1: from yelling at kids to get off my lawn. But
Speaker 1: going back to the TV, this was supposed to be
Speaker 1: at signals that not even teenagers can hear, even if
Speaker 1: you ask them. Now, because the remote control and receiver
Speaker 1: we're using these ultrasonic frequencies, you could cause your old
Speaker 1: television to freak out with stuff like loose change or slinky. Really,
Speaker 1: any metal or metallic device that could vibrate at a
Speaker 1: at a frequency that would generate ultrasonic sound. You could
Speaker 1: end up affecting a television this way. So this explains
Speaker 1: how back when I would sit down to watch Saturday
Speaker 1: morning cartoons, which, by the way, we're a thing that
Speaker 1: used to happen. Now you don't really see them anymore,
Speaker 1: but back in the day, that's when you would watch
Speaker 1: cartoons Saturday mornings. You can get up seven or eight
Speaker 1: am and just start watching on various television stations. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when I would sit there and watch and then just
Speaker 1: idly fidget with a slinky, I could magically make my
Speaker 1: TV do stuff like turn the volume down over and
Speaker 1: over again until I had to track down the actual
Speaker 1: remote control and turn the volume back up because I
Speaker 1: couldn't do I couldn't control the TV. I could make
Speaker 1: it do things, but I couldn't make it do what
Speaker 1: I wanted it to. It just would do whatever the
Speaker 1: ultrasonic frequencies were telling the television to do, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't have that kind of fine control over my slinky
Speaker 1: manipulation skills to make it do what I wanted it
Speaker 1: to do. But still kind of cool. Uh. The later
Speaker 1: systems that used infrared and WiFi won't respond to ultrasonic frequencies.
Speaker 1: But I maintained it's still fun to tell kids about
Speaker 1: how a slinky used to be able to control a
Speaker 1: television and then don't tell them that it doesn't work anymore,
Speaker 1: because they could provide hours of entertainment for all involved. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I just like tricking kids. I guess that seems like
Speaker 1: a good segue. Let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor, So let's skip ahead to nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: That's when broadcasting companies from the United States, the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: and France collaborate on the design of the world's first
Speaker 1: active communication satellite called tell Star one. Companies like Bell
Speaker 1: Labs and A T and T took part in this,
Speaker 1: as did NASA and the British Post Office and the
Speaker 1: French Post as well. This satellite would allow a broadcast
Speaker 1: station in Europe to send signals over to the United
Speaker 1: States and vice versa. It also allowed for satellite uplink
Speaker 1: on phone calls and faxes, so you could have transatlantic
Speaker 1: communication via satellite. You didn't have to worry about laying
Speaker 1: a cable down between Europe and the United States, for example,
Speaker 1: so very useful now. The satellite entered low Earth orbit
Speaker 1: on July tenth, two and it used for teen whole
Speaker 1: lots of power. Chances are your laptop uses more than that,
Speaker 1: but fourteen wats of power for this little satellite, and
Speaker 1: it generated electricity using thousands of solar panels on its
Speaker 1: outer hull. And it was spherically shaped, So if you
Speaker 1: look at a picture of the tell Star one and
Speaker 1: you don't have anything next to it to give you
Speaker 1: any sense of scale, you might think it's the product
Speaker 1: of a marriage between a disco ball and the Death Star,
Speaker 1: which I maintain would be an awesome technology. But then again,
Speaker 1: I also happened to own the Star Wars and Other
Speaker 1: Galactic Funk vinyl album by Miko. Anyone out there who
Speaker 1: knows what I'm saying man rock On as an awesome, awesome,
Speaker 1: cheesy album, and I really do own it on vinyl.
Speaker 1: The tell Star one satellite allowed for near instantaneous transmission
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic with very little delay. It was possible
Speaker 1: to watch real time live TV broadcast from across the
Speaker 1: and but you could only do it for about twenty
Speaker 1: minutes because the satellite was in low Earth orbit. That's
Speaker 1: a problem because at low eth orbit it is actually
Speaker 1: circling the Earth multiple times every day. It took about
Speaker 1: two and a half hours for it to orbit the planet,
Speaker 1: which meant that you had about twenty minutes of time
Speaker 1: where the satellite was ideally positioned to transmit signals from
Speaker 1: Europe to the United States or vice versa. Later on
Speaker 1: we would launch communication satellites much much further out from
Speaker 1: Earth had very high orbits into what is called geosynchronous orbits,
Speaker 1: and a geosynchronous orbit allows the satellite to move in
Speaker 1: a pattern over the same general area above the Earth,
Speaker 1: so as the Earth turns, the satellites orbiting at the
Speaker 1: same speed as the rotation of the Earth same relative speed,
Speaker 1: not the exact same speed, because obviously you have to
Speaker 1: move faster the further out you are, but it would
Speaker 1: be able to maintain a general position above a certain
Speaker 1: region of the Earth, and it tends to move in
Speaker 1: a pattern, often a figure eight style pattern. There is
Speaker 1: a subset of geosynchronous orbit called geo stationary orbit, in
Speaker 1: which a satellite appears to be directly above a single
Speaker 1: point on Earth along the equator. You have to be
Speaker 1: along the equator in order for this to work. But
Speaker 1: that is a subset of geosynchronous. So geosynchronous and geo
Speaker 1: stationary are not exactly the same. Geo stationary as a
Speaker 1: subset of geosynchronous orbits. Just something for you to think
Speaker 1: of next time you're doing pub trivia and this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff pops up. I don't know about your pub trivia,
Speaker 1: but it pops up all the time for mine. By
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, broadcast networks in the United States began
Speaker 1: to transmit color television programming on a regular basis. You
Speaker 1: remember we talked about color TV in the last episode.
Speaker 1: It would still be a few years before color television
Speaker 1: sales outpaced black and white TVs. Uh, really, you're talking
Speaker 1: about nineteen seventy And by nineteen seventy two you finally
Speaker 1: got to a point where color televisions made up about
Speaker 1: fifty of all TVs in the United States. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, the world watched as footage from the
Speaker 1: moon landing reached TVs across the globe, and the astronauts
Speaker 1: on that moon landing had a special camera, and the
Speaker 1: camera had its own mechanical color wheel inside of it,
Speaker 1: which was the same thing I talked about way back
Speaker 1: in the first episode with mechanical televisions, I also mentioned
Speaker 1: them in electronic TVs. The mechanical color wheel in the
Speaker 1: camera cut down on the need for expensive and bulky components,
Speaker 1: and it also meant the astronauts didn't have to send
Speaker 1: as much data at a single time down to Earth
Speaker 1: within a transmission, so it cut down on the bandwidth
Speaker 1: necessary to send images back down to Earth. Synchronized color
Speaker 1: wheels on the planet, we're able to reinsert color into
Speaker 1: images before transmitting them to televisions, and I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. The technology that dates all the way back
Speaker 1: to the mechanical TVs of the past found its way
Speaker 1: to the Moon. It's pretty nifty. Also, in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: scientists developed three technologies that would eventually displace CRT televisions.
Speaker 1: That would be light emitting diodes or l e d S,
Speaker 1: liquid crystal displays or l c d S, and plasma
Speaker 1: display panels or p DPS. L c D televisions wouldn't
Speaker 1: take off for a few years, but they would come
Speaker 1: first out of those three. It would take a couple
Speaker 1: of decades for plasma to become a viable technology for
Speaker 1: television's although they started being used for smaller displays earlier,
Speaker 1: and LED televisions are even more relatively recent. Although the
Speaker 1: development of the l E ED dates back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, we didn't see LED televisions until fairly recent uh,
Speaker 1: But a lot of people were experimenting with these all
Speaker 1: the way through the nineteen seventies, trying to get the
Speaker 1: next technology for CRT S or to replace c r
Speaker 1: T S. I should say, now, let's start with nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four in the invention of the plasma display panel.
Speaker 1: So yeah, plasma di lays date back to nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: It was co invented by Donald Bitzer, H Gene Slotto,
Speaker 1: and Robert Wilson. Now they were working on developing a
Speaker 1: computer display, not really a television, but the basic principle
Speaker 1: is the same. The display consists of two panes of
Speaker 1: glass that are pretty close together, but there's enough space
Speaker 1: in between them to insert and inert mixture of gases,
Speaker 1: which are typically neon and xenon. Those gases can turn
Speaker 1: into a plasma, which is an electrically conductive gas has
Speaker 1: some free electrons which allow it to conduct electricity. This is,
Speaker 1: by the way, the most plentiful type of matter in
Speaker 1: the universe. It's the stuff that stars are made out of.
Speaker 1: Although they are much hotter than a plasma TV, You're
Speaker 1: not gonna melt your house down with a at least
Speaker 1: a properly functioning plasma TV. The plasma, once it's carrying electricity,
Speaker 1: then excites phosphors, very similar to the way a cr
Speaker 1: T television would use electrons to excite phosphors. And when
Speaker 1: you do that, you increase the energy levels in the
Speaker 1: electrons in those phosphor out atoms, and then they immediately
Speaker 1: come back down. And when they come back down their
Speaker 1: energy levels they have to release that excess energy in
Speaker 1: the form of light, So the phosphers end up glowing.
Speaker 1: They give off light, So the plasma takes that place
Speaker 1: of the electron beam. And the first plasma display panel
Speaker 1: could only display a single color. Uh they made some
Speaker 1: in orange, green, and yellow. Those were your basic colors
Speaker 1: that you would get for your computer monitors back in
Speaker 1: the day. Now, the plasma display didn't take off in
Speaker 1: the market or replace the CRT right away, largely due
Speaker 1: to economics. It had nothing to do with the science
Speaker 1: or the technology itself. It had to do with how
Speaker 1: expensive it was to produce versus c RT technology. Semiconductor
Speaker 1: memory was plummeting in price. This was something Gordon More
Speaker 1: predicted in his obser vation that has since been called
Speaker 1: Moore's law. Moore's law is not really about advancing technology,
Speaker 1: so that's twice as powerful each year, or each eighteen
Speaker 1: months or twenty four months, or however you wanted to
Speaker 1: find the time period. It's really about how much less
Speaker 1: expensive it is to manufacture those components and make it
Speaker 1: UH viable as a marketplace product. So every time that advances,
Speaker 1: it gives companies the incentive to develop even more powerful semiconductors.
Speaker 1: That also means the price starts to come down, and
Speaker 1: that's what was happening at this time. So CRT technology
Speaker 1: became super cheap. So there was really no incentive to
Speaker 1: pursue plasma display technology at that time, not for televisions anyway.
Speaker 1: So it was only that point where the PDPs performance
Speaker 1: were so above and beyond what CRT s could do
Speaker 1: that it started to counterbalance this this UH disparity in price,
Speaker 1: and once that happened, then we started seeing plasma displays
Speaker 1: adopted more widely. It also allowed for much slimmer form
Speaker 1: factors than your CRT sets. I mean a CRT is
Speaker 1: essentially a vacuum tube. It's a vacuum tube that generates
Speaker 1: a stream of electrons, which means you need to have
Speaker 1: space in your television set to hold an electron tube.
Speaker 1: Plasma displays don't need that. They have these two panes
Speaker 1: of glass and then this gas that's in between them,
Speaker 1: and then you just have to electrically excite the gas
Speaker 1: the proper way to make the phosphors glow, so they
Speaker 1: could be much much thinner than CRT screens. But again,
Speaker 1: that wasn't really a concern until much later than the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, so it would be a long time before
Speaker 1: we would see the rise of the flat screen television.
Speaker 1: But PDPs had an advantage over the other early CRT
Speaker 1: replacement technology of l c d s. That was the
Speaker 1: other big one. Plasma displays are not constantly back lit,
Speaker 1: but l c d s are. Will get more into
Speaker 1: that in just a second. That means you could get
Speaker 1: a much better contrast ratio between the brightest and darkest
Speaker 1: colors on display, so you can get those what they
Speaker 1: call true blacks on a on a plasma display. Because
Speaker 1: there's no light coming from behind shining through a layer,
Speaker 1: whereas l c D s did have that light constantly
Speaker 1: there as long as the television set was on at
Speaker 1: any rate. Also, plasma displays had better viewing angles than
Speaker 1: earlier l c D displays dead and better response time
Speaker 1: and better color representation than early l c D s,
Speaker 1: So eventually l c D would eliminate those advantages. They
Speaker 1: would catch up to plasma displays. But this is the
Speaker 1: reason why home theater enthusiasts back in the day, and
Speaker 1: by back in the day, I really mean the ninety
Speaker 1: nineties would swear by plasma over l c D technology
Speaker 1: because of this color representation, contrast ratio, better viewing angles,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Eventually, LED tech would push
Speaker 1: both of those aside. But more on that in a second.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about l c D s. That stands
Speaker 1: for liquid crystal displays, and liquid crystals are sort of
Speaker 1: a weird molecule. They kind of act like a solid
Speaker 1: and they kind of act like a liquid. So solids,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you recall, you guys, remember your elementary science.
Speaker 1: They have all their atoms locked together, either in a
Speaker 1: crystalline structure or not. But they are locked so that
Speaker 1: they can't move around right, they're stuck in place. Otherwise
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be, you know, solid, But liquids have molecules
Speaker 1: that hang together, so the molecules don't break apart, but
Speaker 1: they can't move around more freely than in a solid,
Speaker 1: and they can change their orientation with relation to each other, uh,
Speaker 1: without any problems. So liquid crystals are sort of a
Speaker 1: hybrid between these two, and the l c D s
Speaker 1: and television are affected by electric current. In their natural state,
Speaker 1: these crystals have a twisted formation because of the way
Speaker 1: are attached at either end inside a television display. More
Speaker 1: on that in a second. But when you apply a
Speaker 1: current to them, they untwist, and it's through this twisting
Speaker 1: and untwisting that you're able to manipulate light and have
Speaker 1: it go through to a screen and create the moving
Speaker 1: images you would see on an l c D television screen. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's the simple explanation, but let's dive into it a
Speaker 1: little bit further. So we're gonna explain this in one
Speaker 1: of my favorite ways to describe technology as a sandwich,
Speaker 1: because lunch was a long time ago, y'all, So our
Speaker 1: bottom bun in this sandwich is a light source, uh,
Speaker 1: such as a fluorescent tube. That's your typical light source
Speaker 1: in your early L C D s now. On top
Speaker 1: of that first layer, that bottom bun, we have a
Speaker 1: tasty piece of polarizing film. So polarizing film can align light,
Speaker 1: polarize it in a certain way. Next, on top of
Speaker 1: that we put a glass filter which is aligned the
Speaker 1: same way as the polar rising film. Then we put
Speaker 1: a negative electrode on top of that glass filter. That's
Speaker 1: the electrode that says mean things about other electrodes. Not sorry,
Speaker 1: that's just in my notes. This is actually the electrode
Speaker 1: that puts out electrons. It generates electrons, sends those through.
Speaker 1: It's the where the electrons come from. Now, on top
Speaker 1: of the negative filter are are liquid crystals that we
Speaker 1: arrange in a layer on that. On the other side
Speaker 1: of the liquid crystals comes a positive electrode. This is
Speaker 1: where the electrons quote unquote want to go to. Remember,
Speaker 1: electrons are negative themselves and like repels like, so they
Speaker 1: want to get away from the negative side and go
Speaker 1: toward the positive side. Uh. So, on top of the
Speaker 1: positive electrode is another glass filter, and on top of
Speaker 1: that is another sheet of polarizing film, and that is
Speaker 1: in a orientation that is ninety degrees off from the
Speaker 1: first polarizing filter. So in other words, it's that a
Speaker 1: right angle to the first layer. Then you've got the
Speaker 1: glass cover or screen, and that acts as the top bun.
Speaker 1: So here's what's going on. Light comes from the fluorescent tube,
Speaker 1: it hits that first filter I talked about, which then
Speaker 1: polarizes the light that puts the light in a certain alignment.
Speaker 1: Let's say that light, now realigned, goes through the series
Speaker 1: of liquid crystals which are manipulated by electric fields to
Speaker 1: twist or untwist in certain ways. That actually changes the
Speaker 1: lights plane of vibration as it's guided through this this
Speaker 1: layer of liquid crystals until it passes through and it
Speaker 1: hits that second polarized filter. Now, any light that matches
Speaker 1: the polarization of that second filter can pass through. Any
Speaker 1: light that doesn't match that polarization is stopped. So you
Speaker 1: can only pass through if you're aligned with that same polarization.
Speaker 1: And think of it like a bunch of vertical slits
Speaker 1: that are next to each other. And if you have
Speaker 1: a ray of light that isn't vertically oriented, it cannot
Speaker 1: fit through that vertical slit. Or if you prefer think
Speaker 1: of round pegs and square holes, you can't get the
Speaker 1: round peg through the square hole because the shape doesn't
Speaker 1: fit correctly. It's the same general concept we're talking with polarization.
Speaker 1: So some of the light is angled the proper way
Speaker 1: and it passes through, and that's the light you see
Speaker 1: on the screen. Other light gets blocked by this second
Speaker 1: polarization filter and doesn't make it to the screen. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that is your basic l c D television screen. Now,
Speaker 1: in a color display, which is typically what we see
Speaker 1: with l c D television's, each pixel has three cells.
Speaker 1: These are sometimes called sub pixels, and these are red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue, and the combination of these make up all
Speaker 1: the possible colors. We talked a little bit about color
Speaker 1: television in our last episode, so the same principle applies here,
Speaker 1: except we're talking about light being passed through l c
Speaker 1: D s as opposed to an electron gun painting phosphors.
Speaker 1: Each subpixel can be independently controlled to make lots of
Speaker 1: different colors when you combine these over the course of
Speaker 1: multiple scans within a second, and some companies enhance this
Speaker 1: with other additional subpixels, like sharp they have a yellow subpixel,
Speaker 1: and they claim that this leads to more accurate color representation.
Speaker 1: But this method also means that you always have a
Speaker 1: light source behind all those liquid crystals and polarization filters,
Speaker 1: and while it can prevent light from coming through, there's
Speaker 1: still usually a distinct glow coming from the screen because
Speaker 1: the forests and lights are just lit behind the whole time.
Speaker 1: Does that means? Sel c D screens, particularly the older ones,
Speaker 1: had trouble displaying darker colors without light bleeding through the screen.
Speaker 1: So if you had a perfectly ark room and you
Speaker 1: were watching a movie on an old l c D
Speaker 1: television and the screen goes to black, you would actually
Speaker 1: see almost like a charcoal gray screen. You would still
Speaker 1: be able to pick the screen out from the rest
Speaker 1: of the room because it's not able to present a
Speaker 1: true black because you always have that backlight on. Uh.
Speaker 1: But then again, you know, while while plasma screens could
Speaker 1: present a true black, they also had another problem called burning,
Speaker 1: which is when you have an image that's on display
Speaker 1: for too long on a screen and it burns into
Speaker 1: the screen itself. So, for example, if you had a
Speaker 1: just a waiting screen showing like maybe it was a
Speaker 1: paused movie or television show or something along those lines,
Speaker 1: and it was on the plasma display for a really
Speaker 1: long time. This happened a lot with demo displays that
Speaker 1: would show a logo for a really long time that
Speaker 1: would burn into the screen, so you could always see
Speaker 1: a ghostly image of that on on older alasthma displays.
Speaker 1: Just like l c D technology eventually evolved to the
Speaker 1: point where the differences between l c D and plasma
Speaker 1: became less noticeable. Plasma technology also advanced to a point
Speaker 1: where burning became less of a problem, but those early
Speaker 1: screens definitely suffered from that problem. Now LED televisions might
Speaker 1: as well fell finish the trifecta here. LED televisions use
Speaker 1: light emitting diodes as the light source instead of fluorescent tubes,
Speaker 1: but they still use liquid crystals a layer of liquid
Speaker 1: crystals to determine which light gets through to those polarization filters.
Speaker 1: So really you could think of l e D television's
Speaker 1: as a subset of l c D t vs. But
Speaker 1: with l e D s there's much better power efficiency
Speaker 1: uh than those fluorescent based sets because l E D
Speaker 1: s are are just extremely efficient. Also, you could allow
Speaker 1: televisions to become even more thin than before. L e
Speaker 1: D s take up very little space, and because you're
Speaker 1: using an array of l e d s instead of
Speaker 1: a couple of fluorescent lights, you have way more control
Speaker 1: over which l e d s are lit up at
Speaker 1: which time, so you could produce better contrast ratio with
Speaker 1: an LED television set than with a traditional l c
Speaker 1: D set. And I've done a lot of episodes about
Speaker 1: l e d s in the past, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to divide into it more here except to say
Speaker 1: they're pretty boss. Then there's no lead sets, but I'm
Speaker 1: not really going to go into that at all because
Speaker 1: it would require a full episode on its own. But
Speaker 1: those are organic light emitting diodes. That's what allows you
Speaker 1: the truly super thin screens. And they can also be flexible.
Speaker 1: You can get those curved screens, you can get screens
Speaker 1: that can change shape. You might remember there were a
Speaker 1: couple of television sets that were promoted as being able
Speaker 1: to change from flat to curved. I think most companies
Speaker 1: have abandoned that now because there just wasn't widespread adoption.
Speaker 1: It was almost as a curiosity but oh lad technology
Speaker 1: allows that to happen. Now, in the early nineties seventies,
Speaker 1: now that we've described the technologies that would eventually supplant
Speaker 1: CRT s, we started seeing the first of giant screen televisions,
Speaker 1: and the earliest were CRT televisions that were projection TVs.
Speaker 1: That meant that they used cathode ray tubes just like
Speaker 1: traditional televisions did, or at least they also used CRT s.
Speaker 1: It was actually a little different from the way traditional
Speaker 1: TVs used them. It also made the sets really heavy
Speaker 1: and they gave off a lot of heat. If you've
Speaker 1: ever used an old front or rear projection television that
Speaker 1: use CRT s, you know how big and clunky and
Speaker 1: bulky and hot they got. They also worked a little
Speaker 1: bit differently, as I said, from standard CRT s. But
Speaker 1: the the early early models were front projection televisions. That
Speaker 1: meant that you had a component that actually sat in
Speaker 1: front of the TV and projected onto the screen, sort
Speaker 1: of like a movie projector does to a movie screen, except,
Speaker 1: of course, we're talking about television images here, not not
Speaker 1: a light shining through moving film. Now, the projectors in
Speaker 1: front of the television consisted of three light guns. So
Speaker 1: each of these light guns had a CRT inside them.
Speaker 1: There was one that was red, one that was blue,
Speaker 1: and one that was green. Big surprise there right the
Speaker 1: colors that we would use to create all the other
Speaker 1: colors that could be represented on a television. So all
Speaker 1: three of those colors would combine. The series of images
Speaker 1: would combine in different intensities to create the moving images
Speaker 1: you would see in front of you as you're watching
Speaker 1: this television. Uh, and the intensity of the light through
Speaker 1: each light gun is what would determine the final color
Speaker 1: as it was painting this picture. So the projection screen
Speaker 1: was was painted and pretty much the same way the
Speaker 1: CRT TV sets painted the back of the screen with electrons.
Speaker 1: These televisions were generally lower resolution than what you would
Speaker 1: get with a typical CRT screen, So while you could
Speaker 1: get a bigger television at it wasn't at the level
Speaker 1: of quality that you would expect with an old CRT
Speaker 1: TV set. And then there were rear projection CRT t
Speaker 1: vs where you would have all those components, but they
Speaker 1: would be inside the television itself and projecting on the
Speaker 1: back of the TV TV screen, but still a projection
Speaker 1: it wasn't painting phosphors the way a CRT TV set would.
Speaker 1: These were huge. I should know. I had one once
Speaker 1: upon a time. I bought one just as CRT rear
Speaker 1: projection televisions were going off the market, so it was
Speaker 1: super cheap. It's also huge, took up an enormous space
Speaker 1: in my living room, and now it's in storage. True story,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's skip ahead of it. Television continued
Speaker 1: to proliferate around the world, with color television's eventually becoming
Speaker 1: the standard and replacing black and white TVs. Meanwhile, over
Speaker 1: in Japan, researchers were hard at work developing the next
Speaker 1: generation of television technologies, and a team of scientists at
Speaker 1: NHK we're able to demonstrate an h d TV format
Speaker 1: with one thousand onive lines of resolution, so HDTV stands
Speaker 1: for high definition TV, and those lines of resolution um
Speaker 1: were more. It was a huge amount, Like five twenty
Speaker 1: five was the standard here in the United States. It's
Speaker 1: different than other parts of the world, but here in
Speaker 1: the US you had five hundred twenty five full lines
Speaker 1: of resolutions. So one thousand, one and twenty five was
Speaker 1: a big jump up. And remember uh, more lines of
Speaker 1: resolution means sharper pictures. This happened all the way back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eight one, So the first h d TV
Speaker 1: standard proposed came in eighty one, which blows my mind
Speaker 1: because it wasn't until the mid nineties that I really
Speaker 1: started seeing HDTV take off. Two years later three this
Speaker 1: team from NHK actually demonstrated this technology at a conference
Speaker 1: in Montrue, Switzerland. Uh and I hear they were rewarded
Speaker 1: with many, many chocolates. It's good work for them. However,
Speaker 1: in nineteen six they met with resistance from agencies in
Speaker 1: Europe and the United States. The agency's declined to acquiesce
Speaker 1: to Japan's request that this version of HDTV become the
Speaker 1: global standard. So Japan went ahead and started broadcasting in
Speaker 1: HDTV in Japan. Uh and they did that despite the
Speaker 1: fact that everyone else said, no, that's not going to
Speaker 1: be the standards. So they started doing that in nine
Speaker 1: they actually became the first country to regularly broadcast in HDTV. However,
Speaker 1: the rest of the world would resist adopting their standard
Speaker 1: and instead try to develop their own, so you had
Speaker 1: various components all doing this at the same time. The
Speaker 1: United States had the FCC creating a special committee to
Speaker 1: determine what the new digital standard in the United States
Speaker 1: should be, just the digital standard, not even the HDTV standard.
Speaker 1: Over in Europe you had companies introduced the D two
Speaker 1: Multiplexed Analog Components standard to lay the groundwork for analog
Speaker 1: HDTV over on the continent, in a multinational committee of
Speaker 1: engineers decided that the Moving Pictures Experts Group Format IMPEG
Speaker 1: two would be the global standard for broadcasting digital television pictures.
Speaker 1: But they did not standardize a method of encoding the
Speaker 1: sound or a method for actual broadcast of that standard.
Speaker 1: So they said, this is going to be the standard
Speaker 1: to carry the information, but they didn't standardize the way
Speaker 1: to deliver it or how to encode sound with it,
Speaker 1: which meant every country developed its own standard which are
Speaker 1: incompatible with other countries, thus creating all these compatibility issues
Speaker 1: between different regions. That was fun. Now I've got a
Speaker 1: lot more to talk about in this third section about
Speaker 1: the history of televisions, but wore I jump into that.
Speaker 1: Let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Let's
Speaker 1: pick up in that's when direct TV launched. I guess
Speaker 1: literally anyway, I should do a full episode just about
Speaker 1: satellite television, because I don't think I have. I've covered
Speaker 1: cable television pretty extensively in past episodes, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I've covered satellite TV that much. I might have
Speaker 1: talked about a little bit back when Chris Palette was
Speaker 1: my co host, because he used to work tangentially anyway
Speaker 1: with a satellite television company, and he would always recuse
Speaker 1: himself at the beginning of those discussions. So maybe I
Speaker 1: will do a full episode about satellite television sometime in
Speaker 1: the future. In the FCC would approve a new standard
Speaker 1: called Advanced TV in the United States that included both
Speaker 1: multi channel standard digital television also known as s DTV,
Speaker 1: as well as high definition television. By more than twenty
Speaker 1: stations in the US across the top ten markets in
Speaker 1: the country began to broadcast in digital formats rather than
Speaker 1: an analog. Now more current televisions are equipped for this,
Speaker 1: but older sets would actually need a converter in order
Speaker 1: to accept a digital signal and then converted into an
Speaker 1: analog signal that the television could then display. By the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's, we reached the time in the US
Speaker 1: when all broadcasts were to switch to digital only that
Speaker 1: actually ended up getting delayed to the late two thousand's,
Speaker 1: UM that first decade, in the late two thousand's, I
Speaker 1: should say, because we're still pretty early on People from
Speaker 1: the Future. This episode was recorded in seventeen, so I
Speaker 1: don't mean like two thousand, nine hundred, So coolier jets. Also,
Speaker 1: thanks for tuning in. But anyway, this, this conversion from
Speaker 1: digital or from analog to digital, I should say, caused
Speaker 1: some confusion in the marketplace, more than a little confusion,
Speaker 1: partly because the messaging was muddled. It was hard to
Speaker 1: understand what was actually being communicated. Consumers were not really
Speaker 1: sure if their televisions would continue to work after the
Speaker 1: switchover date, and I suspect a lot of people bought
Speaker 1: unnecessary converters from analog or digital to analog, thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I need this so that my TV can
Speaker 1: display it, not knowing that their television was already accepting
Speaker 1: digital signals because all the recent television sets that have
Speaker 1: been sold over the past decade really were equipped for
Speaker 1: digital broadcasts, not for analog, but not everyone knew that UM,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of people ended up thinking they
Speaker 1: needed a converter if they didn't really and they didn't
Speaker 1: really need one. So the the problem was that anyone
Speaker 1: who was using an analog television set would be left
Speaker 1: behind because their television would no longer be able to
Speaker 1: take over the air broadcast. And this only affected over
Speaker 1: the air as well. If you were cable you were fine,
Speaker 1: your cable box was doing everything for you. Um, but
Speaker 1: if you were doing over the air, like you were
Speaker 1: using an antenna to get your programming, then you needed
Speaker 1: to have an adapter if you had an old analog
Speaker 1: television set. But this, all of this information was communicated
Speaker 1: really haphazard and ineffective way. Uh. The cynical among us
Speaker 1: might say, well, that's the government for you, but really
Speaker 1: it just was a It was a really chaotic and
Speaker 1: confusing time for a lot of consumers. One of the
Speaker 1: earliest episodes of tech Stuff I ever recorded was about
Speaker 1: this switch. I recorded it with my original co host,
Speaker 1: Chris Palette, and if you want to listen to that
Speaker 1: now completely irrelevant episode, it is called do I really
Speaker 1: need a digital converter box for my TV? I published
Speaker 1: on July four, two thousand eight, Bastille Day. The answer,
Speaker 1: by the way, to that question is no, you do
Speaker 1: not need a digital converter for your TV, unless you've
Speaker 1: been wondering since two thousand eight why you're perfectly serviceable
Speaker 1: analog television is no longer picking up more than mindy reruns,
Speaker 1: in which case the answer it might be, yeah, you
Speaker 1: do need a digital converter for your TV, and you
Speaker 1: have needed it for like a decade, But the better
Speaker 1: answer is probably just buy a new television anyway. Since
Speaker 1: that time, we've seen the emergence of ultra high definition television.
Speaker 1: This includes four K and eight K televisions, which up
Speaker 1: the anti on resolution and honestly, at least in my opinion,
Speaker 1: this is my opinion, unless your television is truly gargangeline,
Speaker 1: you really don't need to worry about four K and
Speaker 1: eight K television too much. If you sit close to
Speaker 1: a really big TV, you'll notice the difference. But if
Speaker 1: you're at the proper distance, which most of us are
Speaker 1: sitting too close to our television's already. But if you're
Speaker 1: at what is considered the proper viewing distance and your
Speaker 1: television isn't at seventy inches or larger, I doubt you'll
Speaker 1: really be able to see a huge distinction between HD
Speaker 1: at ultra HD. Now some of you might, but my
Speaker 1: old eyes have trouble telling the difference. If you put
Speaker 1: an ultra HD set and an HD set of comparable
Speaker 1: size at the proper viewing distance away from me, I
Speaker 1: bet you it would be really hard for me to
Speaker 1: tell the difference, assuming that they both were calibrated to
Speaker 1: perform at peak performance. Because there are ways of making
Speaker 1: TVs look better or worse, people in electronics stores know
Speaker 1: this trick. You can. You can calibrate one television to
Speaker 1: look really good on the display floor and another one
Speaker 1: to look less good because the really good one costs more,
Speaker 1: and you can push people to buy the more expensive
Speaker 1: television set. But if you truly calibrate both of them properly,
Speaker 1: you might see less of a difference. That's not to
Speaker 1: say that all TVs are created equal. They aren't, but
Speaker 1: sometimes these differences are exaggerated in order to make a sale. Also,
Speaker 1: you've got to remember that anything that was calibrated for
Speaker 1: the show floor is probably lousy in your living room.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to have it recalibrated so that you
Speaker 1: get the effect you what in your home theater based
Speaker 1: upon the light levels and other elements in your home.
Speaker 1: But that's a whole episode all by itself. Anyways, you
Speaker 1: might suspect these ultra high definition televisions cram way more
Speaker 1: pixels onto the screen than either HD or certainly more
Speaker 1: than standard definition television sets. And that's what resolution is really,
Speaker 1: It's the number of pixels that you can fit within
Speaker 1: the frame of a picture. More pixels generally means you
Speaker 1: can represent finer details and make it less blocky. So
Speaker 1: you might remember in a previous episode in the series,
Speaker 1: I gave an analogy in which I talked about trying
Speaker 1: to make a picture of the Eiffel Tower using solid
Speaker 1: colored bricks. So the small are and more numerous the
Speaker 1: blocks I'm given, the more accurately I can represent that image.
Speaker 1: And that's the case with televisions. As pixels get smaller
Speaker 1: and more numerous, the images they produce can have details
Speaker 1: so fine that the human I really can't detect it
Speaker 1: unless you're right up on that son of a gun,
Speaker 1: and I mean inches away. Heck, when I first saw
Speaker 1: eight K television sets at c e S, the representatives
Speaker 1: there would actually hand out magnifying glasses so that you
Speaker 1: could get just inches away from the screen, hold up
Speaker 1: the magnifying glass and see the pixels, and that was
Speaker 1: the only way you could even pick them out. And
Speaker 1: at that point you might think, well, we've kind of
Speaker 1: reached a level where it's indiscernible from the human eye
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between this layer of resolution and
Speaker 1: this layer of resolution again without the added benefits of
Speaker 1: ideal calibration. Now, the NHK guys over in Japan, the
Speaker 1: ones who were working on that HDTV standard back in
Speaker 1: Night one were the ones who helped define the four
Speaker 1: K and eight K standards. Now they managed to win out.
Speaker 1: In this case, HDTV got kind of tossed the side,
Speaker 1: but four K and eight K one the day. But
Speaker 1: right now there's a scarcity of content at those resolutions.
Speaker 1: We're starting to see that change over time. You're starting
Speaker 1: to see some set top boxes that can generate and
Speaker 1: ultra high definition stream of data. There's some online sources
Speaker 1: that are offering this ultra high definition level of resolution.
Speaker 1: Things like YouTube and Netflix are offering that as well
Speaker 1: as other streaming services. You're starting to see some of
Speaker 1: the other companies kind of dip their toe in this,
Speaker 1: but it's still very early days for ultra high definition.
Speaker 1: So you could buy one of these sets and not
Speaker 1: really see the benefit from it unless you also subscribe
Speaker 1: to one of these services where you're getting the actual
Speaker 1: four K or eight K content. Otherwise you're just watching
Speaker 1: high definition or even standard definition content on an ultra
Speaker 1: high definition screen. Uh. And that's you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: not great. It's not like it's magically a whole lot
Speaker 1: better than watching it on a native standard definition or
Speaker 1: high definition screen. Japan is actually trying over the air
Speaker 1: broadcasts in uh D. I will likely see other countries
Speaker 1: follow suit. Ah. Now, one last thing I want to
Speaker 1: cover before I wrap up is something called high dynamic
Speaker 1: range or HDR. And this is something that started popping
Speaker 1: up at consumer electronics shows over the last few years
Speaker 1: me five or six years. Really, Uh, this technology isn't
Speaker 1: so much about the resolution of images, which is what
Speaker 1: four K and a K are all about. It's more
Speaker 1: about accurately representing the levels of light and color on
Speaker 1: television screens. So, in other words, a TV with HDR
Speaker 1: should start producing images that look so lifelike that seems
Speaker 1: as if you're looking through a window rather than looking
Speaker 1: at a television screen. Now there's a bit of confusion
Speaker 1: about the types of HDR, because there's photo HDR, which
Speaker 1: at a very high level essentially is talking about taking
Speaker 1: a series of images at a different level of exposure
Speaker 1: and then kind of using an algorithm to combine those
Speaker 1: into an ideal image to present a photograph that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be better than any of the components that went
Speaker 1: together to create that photograph. Some people hate that effect.
Speaker 1: That's not the same thing as television HDR. That's just
Speaker 1: for photographs. T V HDR uses a slightly different approach.
Speaker 1: The secrets TV HDR all has to do with how
Speaker 1: much light is being shown on the screen, or at
Speaker 1: least that's mostly what it has to do with as
Speaker 1: far as television technology goes. A TV with hd R
Speaker 1: should be able to produce more light in one part
Speaker 1: of an image than in other parts, even pixel by pixel,
Speaker 1: so it can create very subtle gradations of light and shade,
Speaker 1: which is what makes images appear more lifelike and can
Speaker 1: also aid in color representation. Although there are related technologies
Speaker 1: to HDR that help with that, and this is what
Speaker 1: makes his lifelike images, and we see the same representations
Speaker 1: of light that we would see out in the real world,
Speaker 1: so it's not just it's not just a replication, but
Speaker 1: a true representation of what was captured on the production side. However,
Speaker 1: it does not happen all on its own. To display
Speaker 1: an image so that it looks real enough to reach
Speaker 1: out and touch, you have to actually produce it in HDR. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, using a regular camera to capture images
Speaker 1: and send it to an HDR television, is it magically
Speaker 1: going to create those incredibly vibrant, subtle gradations, right? You
Speaker 1: have to have the HDR technology built into the post
Speaker 1: production process to create the colors in the first place
Speaker 1: for HDR to rep locate, So there's an extra step,
Speaker 1: in other words, in the production process. So you probably
Speaker 1: know that if you watch a standard definition program on
Speaker 1: an HD TV, you're not magically watching high definition. You're
Speaker 1: watching standard definition that's typically upscaled two approximate high definition television.
Speaker 1: Upscaling essentially means that you are adding in extra pixels,
Speaker 1: like neighboring pixels. Think of think of standard definition and
Speaker 1: has a certain number of pixels, and let's argue for
Speaker 1: the you know, just for the sake of simplicity, that
Speaker 1: HD is twice as many pixels. So every odd pixel
Speaker 1: in HD would correspond to a single pixel and an
Speaker 1: s D, So you have pixels one and three an
Speaker 1: HD which would represent pixels one and two in standard definition.
Speaker 1: So what does the HD pixel to show? Well, upscaling
Speaker 1: algorithms take a guess. They say, well, based upon what
Speaker 1: these two colors are, we would think that the pixel
Speaker 1: in between should be this color. So it it generates
Speaker 1: a pixel that was not created in the initial process
Speaker 1: of capturing that standard definition content. It's inventing information based
Speaker 1: on a best guess, and the algorithms are completely what
Speaker 1: generate those guesses, and they're generally pretty good. But upscaled
Speaker 1: standard definition doesn't look as good as true high definition.
Speaker 1: Same thing with high dynamic range. You need to have
Speaker 1: that HDR source to enjoy the benefit of an HDR
Speaker 1: television set. Without that source, it's just a technology that
Speaker 1: really can't kick into gear. So you have to depend
Speaker 1: upon the creators to generate the content, whether it's with
Speaker 1: a Blu ray or whether it's through broadcast technology. Uh.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you just have this cool tech that you really
Speaker 1: can't do anything with. Probably an easier analogy to imagine
Speaker 1: is three D Television's if you're watching something that wasn't
Speaker 1: shot in three D. It doesn't matter if you have
Speaker 1: a three D television unless it's doing that really awful
Speaker 1: simulated three D, which I do not recommend. But if
Speaker 1: it's taking just a regular image, then three D T
Speaker 1: three D is just a feature that isn't used on
Speaker 1: that content stream. So it does require that post production work.
Speaker 1: But assuming that you get that, then you get this
Speaker 1: incredible picture quality. And I've seen sets that have really
Speaker 1: good hd R on them and it is gorgeous, Like
Speaker 1: the color representation is breathtaking. It to me, it is
Speaker 1: more effective than these dramatic improvements and resolution because, like
Speaker 1: I said, once you get to a certain level, unless
Speaker 1: you have a ludicrously enormous TV, and I'm talking like
Speaker 1: a hundred inch television or bigger, then you don't really
Speaker 1: notice the difference in the jump in resolution. Just because
Speaker 1: our our eyes aren't that advanced. We can't tell the
Speaker 1: difference unless we're really close to the screen, in which
Speaker 1: case you can't really see everything anyway, because your fill
Speaker 1: of view is completely covered by part of the screen
Speaker 1: you're looking at. Uh HDR to me makes more of
Speaker 1: a difference. One person has said, it's not about more pixels.
Speaker 1: It's about better pixels, which is a rough way of
Speaker 1: of equating HDR versus high ultra high resolution. I'm being said,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that a lot of people can tell the
Speaker 1: difference between high definition and ultra high definition. I'm not
Speaker 1: really one of those people. I can tell a little
Speaker 1: bit of a difference, but not enough. It's not as
Speaker 1: dramatic as the change from standard definition to high definition.
Speaker 1: Not for me anyway. Frame rates are another thing. I
Speaker 1: could talk about frame rates and how television manufacturers have
Speaker 1: created super fast refresh rates for their TVs, where the
Speaker 1: screen is refreshing many more times per second than your
Speaker 1: standard definition television's were. This works great for stuff that's
Speaker 1: moving really fast on your screen, typically stuff like sports.
Speaker 1: If you're watching sports on television and you have a
Speaker 1: really fast frame rate, it may it reduces blur, so
Speaker 1: you can see all the action very clearly, and it's
Speaker 1: really impressive. If you're watching anything else, it's really disorienting.
Speaker 1: That's where you start getting that that what people call
Speaker 1: the soap opera effect, where everything starts looking like it
Speaker 1: was shot on a soap opera set. Um. Yeah, Dylan's
Speaker 1: giving the old thumbs down. Uh, This is where I
Speaker 1: could go into a full rant about the Hobbit films,
Speaker 1: and I have done it on other podcasts. Anyone who's
Speaker 1: listened to those other podcasts knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Don't get me started. I don't like high frame rates
Speaker 1: or high refresh rates for that matter, for content that's
Speaker 1: not sports related anyway, and I'm not a big sports fan.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, I just don't watch a lot of
Speaker 1: it anyway. If I wanted to dive into ultra high
Speaker 1: definition frame rates or refresh rates or HDR to any
Speaker 1: real extent, it would require a full episode dedicated to
Speaker 1: just that topic. And I really don't want to extend
Speaker 1: this series further at this time, so I'll probably revisit
Speaker 1: these topics further down the road. Let's get like a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen episodes of other stuff before I tackled
Speaker 1: TVs again. But I did have fun tracing the history
Speaker 1: of the evolution of televisions, particularly the early days, because
Speaker 1: it was such a dramatic story. Uh, for now, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna wrap up this series, and even now I had
Speaker 1: to gloss over a ton of stuff. I apologize for that,
Speaker 1: but honestly, I don't want to sit here and record
Speaker 1: for four hours, and Dylan definitely he doesn't want that,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna leave it for now. If you guys
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, please let
Speaker 1: me know. You can get in touch with me by
Speaker 1: sending an email to the address text stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at both of
Speaker 1: those locations is tech Stuff H s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
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