root42 wrote: Also it would have meant that the CRT would have needed some kind of framebuffer or at the very least a linebuffer.
This would have even more increased the unit cost.
Interestingly, the SECAM television system relied on some sort of framebuffer technique, too.
From what I remember. the Atari 2600 console suffered the most from it. Only 8 colours remained because of it.
Nintendo with the NES circumvented this issue by using a PAL to RGB converter chip and including an EURO SCART cable.
SirNickity wrote:Yeah, if you look at it, every bit of history was a minor innovation over the previous tech -- all the way from black and white broadcast TV through VGA. Early computer monitors were just TVs. Then TVs with special inputs.
Then dedicated monitors (but still using established connectivity interfaces for compatibility.)
Yup. 😁 In the early days there had been other experimental systems, like the Nipkow disk, but gratefuly the world settled for a common standard,
like it did with AM and FM radio (more or less). At least for B/W TV, which all TV sets are backwards compatible to
(their had been a few different line modes, though).
Speaking of black/white, old camera tubes were based on the monochrome part of Composite Video (Luma).
So in some way or another, this means that B/W systems can natively handle VBS or Composite internally.
A TV set without a VHF/UHF modulators/demodulator is basically a classic Video Monitor (like a Commodore 170x, but of lower quality).
Depending on how we look at it, a plain old video monitor is/was the basis of analogue televison. 😉
An RGB camera is basically a three channel B/W camera (three tubes) with colour filters.
SirNickity wrote:
DVI was a pretty big departure from the status quo, and even THAT still (optionally) carried analog VGA on the side pins just in case.
In practice it was for sure. In old laptops with LCDs, there had been another digital interface that was used for connecting the VGA card to the LCD panel. Not sure what it was called, though.
Anoher thing that comes to mind: Digital is not the same as binary. I'm speaking under correction, but I believe
Digital comes from Latin "Digitus", finger. So Digital can be understood as "fingered", in the sense of a comb.
So any signal with defined characteristics can be "digital", even though it is not binary per se. 😉
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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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