Why is video inverted for transmission?

[Michael A. Terrell]

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

...


This was a friend's boat and I trusted him. It turned out not to be
equipped with RDF (not unusual in the late 40s), compass, bailing pump
or even bucket, to say nothing of ship-to-shore radio. I nearly lost my
life, and I actually lost my naiveté. Since then, I check a boat's
equipment before I accept a joyride.

It only takes one serious problem to cost you your life.

The pilot had a broken leg. My friend improvised a windbreak from the
broken-off wing, and made fire by soaking clothes from his suitcase in
fuel. I don't know how he made his interrupter. His 300 or so pounds --
mostly blubber -- probably insulated him. It may also have contributed
to the plane's breakup on touching down.

I went through the US Army cold weather survival training in '73 at
Ft. Greely. We dug out enough snow to build a shelter, built from a
tent half, a few pieces of rope and covered with snow for insulation.
We were issued two matches each, and a folding shovel. We used what
wood we could find on the ground, but when it ran out we started
snapping saplings off by kicking them with the bottoms of our boots. It
worked up to about 4" trees. The food we were issued was WWII vintage C
rations. They were so old and dry that a lot was dust when you opened
the can. It had to be below -20 F before the training started, and
quickly got colder. We would have a roaring fire, taller than the
trees, yet you could stand three feet from the fire and barley feel the
heat.


Also, while working there, I built a replacement TV tuner for our RCA
'Demod" used to monitor our transmitted signal. The original was built
by Sarkes-Tarzan and there were no spares because of the age. It was a
cheap tuner, built with switch wafers that soon wore out. It had taken
over a year to go through channels, to RCA then to Sarkes-Tarzan, and
back down to the station that there was no replacement, but we could
ship them the tuner, and they would "TRY" to fix it, for a flat $500
fee, and it could take another 18 months to send it through channels,
and back.

I caught a Motorola portable TV on its way to the base landfill.
Luckily, it was chassis mounted with the extra long shafts. The bad one
was parallel filaments, but the salvaged tuner was series string. I
converted the wiring, without disturbing the tuned circuits. (Not easy,
when the only soldering tool available was a 100 W weller soldering
gun.) Then I sawed of the shafts to the proper lengths, and carefully
filed the slots and flats to fit the original knobs. As a final touch,
I removed the RCA part number label, and put it on the customized tuner.



--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Allen]

Gene E. Bloch wrote:

...


A spell checker ought to be an OS service. That way, any additions such
as frequently encountered names become universal.

Jerry

I really have to disagree, Jerry. I think that operating systems should
be as universal as possible. By putting a spell check in at that level
would mean, for instance, a US operating system couldn't be used in
England. Now a stand-alone checker that any application could access
would be quite desirable. I wish that we could come up with a checker
that is context-sensitive, but I'm afraid that would be asking too much.
Allen

 

[Terry Given]

Gene E. Bloch wrote:

...



A spell checker ought to be an OS service. That way, any additions such
as frequently encountered names become universal.

Jerry

IMHO, hell no! the amount of times I have struggled trying to get my
effing computer to NOT use American english is beyond belief. despite
setting the OS, and the relevant programs, to Australian english
(closest I can get to Kiwi, and the spelling is identical), it still
doesnt work properly. so I dont bother doing any spell checks, but instead:

- try not to make any mistakes
- read anything important once I've finished writing it

but I am at an advantage, given that I am good at spelling.

Cheers
Terry

 

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

G wrote:

I really thought it was a diode of some sort.

We used glass tubing plugged with bits of cork and sealing wax. A small
cartridge fuse would have worked, but it was a hassle to get the end
caps off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherer

-- glen

 

[Jerry Avins]

Jerry Avins wrote:
...

I really have to disagree, Jerry. I think that operating systems should
be as universal as possible. By putting a spell check in at that level
would mean, for instance, a US operating system couldn't be used in
England. Now a stand-alone checker that any application could access
would be quite desirable. I wish that we could come up with a checker
that is context-sensitive, but I'm afraid that would be asking too much.

I don't mean a spell checker built into the operating system, but rather
the hooks (in the form of system calls? -- to access the user's
registered program. Without the OS as an intermediary, each application
would need to be customized (at installation time?) to access the common
program.

Jerry

 

[Jerry Avins]

IMHO, hell no! the amount of times I have struggled trying to get my
effing computer to NOT use American english is beyond belief. despite
setting the OS, and the relevant programs, to Australian english
(closest I can get to Kiwi, and the spelling is identical), it still
doesnt work properly. so I dont bother doing any spell checks, but instead:

- try not to make any mistakes
- read anything important once I've finished writing it

but I am at an advantage, given that I am good at spelling.

I can easily set the English-language version of Thunderbird's checker
to accept "colour" and flag "color" as an error. I can't speak for the
versatility of other versions. In any case, the operating system should
provide access to the user's chosen spell checker whenever a program
needs that service. If the system worked that way, you might find it
worth using (given a decent Australian-English spell checker).

Jerry

 

[Randy Yates]

I don't mean a spell checker built into the operating system, but
rather the hooks (in the form of system calls? -- to access the user's
registered program. Without the OS as an intermediary, each
application would need to be customized (at installation time?) to
access the common program.

Your paradigm is so completely different than mine. I simply use one
text editor [1] for EVERYTHING. The spell checker is a tool available within
that text editor.

--RY

[1] XEmacs
--
% Randy Yates % "Maybe one day I'll feel her cold embrace,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % and kiss her interface,
%%% 919-577-9882 % til then, I'll leave her alone."
%%%% <[email protected]> % 'Yours Truly, 2095', *Time*, ELO
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

 

[Don Pearce]

I can easily set the English-language version of Thunderbird's checker
to accept "colour" and flag "color" as an error. I can't speak for the
versatility of other versions. In any case, the operating system should
provide access to the user's chosen spell checker whenever a program
needs that service. If the system worked that way, you might find it
worth using (given a decent Australian-English spell checker).

Jerry

But the one thing they can't do is check themselves, particularly when
the offending word is clearly wrong, but is actually a different, but
otherwise correctly spelled word.

A spell checker is something that Harry Potter might find useful; what
I need is a spelling checker.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, heh?

d

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

You are a mouthy POS. Why not put a cork in it?

Perhaps he likes the quality for watching DVDs, not that it's anyone's
business.

Standard DVDs are NOT he res either, idiot.

How much you want to bet the retard is too cheap to have either HD
format yet? Hell, I'd even bet that he doesn't even have an upscaling
DVD player for std DVDs for it either.

I'll bet this is the first he'll have even heard of it, and they are
sub-$100 products.

You're almost as big a fucking idiot as he is.

And yes, here in Usenet, the bullshit he spews is anyone's business,
dumbfuck.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

Sure it ain't. But what happens if that station goes digital?

Oh well, we bought an "All in the Family" DVD at Long's so if the teevee
goes dark in 2009 we'll have that ;-)

You really don't understand how it works. The fact that you see 3 or 4
Archie Bunkers means that in a digital system, the entire datagram can
easily be extracted in it's entirety.

 

[Terry Given]

But the one thing they can't do is check themselves, particularly when
the offending word is clearly wrong, but is actually a different, but
otherwise correctly spelled word.

A spell checker is something that Harry Potter might find useful; what
I need is a spelling checker.



Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, heh?

d

linus torvalds, apparently.

Cheers
Terry

 

[Eric R Snow]

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

...


This was a friend's boat and I trusted him. It turned out not to be
equipped with RDF (not unusual in the late 40s), compass, bailing pump
or even bucket, to say nothing of ship-to-shore radio. I nearly lost my
life, and I actually lost my naiveté. Since then, I check a boat's
equipment before I accept a joyride.


The pilot had a broken leg. My friend improvised a windbreak from the
broken-off wing, and made fire by soaking clothes from his suitcase in
fuel. I don't know how he made his interrupter. His 300 or so pounds --
mostly blubber -- probably insulated him. It may also have contributed
to the plane's breakup on touching down.

Jerry

Years ago a friend of mine had an ignition problem on his old wooden
boat. The ballast resistor vaporised or something like that. The
sparkplug wires were arcing to the engine block when the ballast
resistor was bypassed with a wire so my friend wired in a light bulb
which got him home OK. After that incident he made sure he had a
complete ignition system replacement kit. Plugs, wires, points,
resistor, condenser, rotor, and cap.
ERS

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

My comments were in reference to your proposed use of a 32" Sony HDTV
as a computer monitor. Most (not all) have limited dot resolution.

You're 2 years behind the times. Most have HDMI inputs and accept vid
card DVI out no problem, and now, they are even 1080p NOT 720p, so the
are no longer 1366x768 at the native level, and mine is that, and the
picture fills the screen. So you must have been pumping the one you saw
with a shit video card.

I've had a few bad experiences with customers attempting to use such
large HDTV displays for computer monitors. Most of the time, they
find that the 1366x768 screen appears as a relatively small picture,
surrounded by a large black border.

Bullshit. Most 32" HDTV monitors of the past 3 years were that res
native, and being pumped by that res FILLED the screen entirely.

In order to make the display
useful, I've had to install VGA to video converters.

Total bullshit on an HDMI display. Hell, my HDMI display also has a
VGA input, and it doesn't do it via that connection either.

Kevin Martin, FCC Chair has been issuing anual press releases
indicating his support for ala carte cable programming.

That, I would go for. I should only have to pay for what I view anyway,
and that payment should be small.

Here's the
lastest:
<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2174261,00.asp>
Even AT&T has at time expressed their "support":
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-11-30-at&t-ala-carte_x.htm>
Of course, nothing ever really happens.
Bullshit.

The big problem is that the
FCC has also forced the cable companies to carry local broadcast
channels. In addition, the highest cost channels to the CATV carrier
are the sports channels, which are only affordable because literally
everyone pays for them.

They used to be virtually free (feeds to the cable companies), when
those channels were eager for exposure.

If users were allowed to select their own
channel lineup, local advertisers will lose their free ride, and the
sports channels will become very expensive.

Not if they fear losing said exposure... what comes around goes
around.

You can still get ala carte programming via 4DTV, but as the feeds
switch to digital, it will probably be dead in a few years. However,
the picture quality if noticeably better than DBS or cable with
excessive compression:
<http://www.skyvision.com/pages/information_center/4dtvguide.html>
<http://www.motorola.com/content.jsp?globalObjectId=5050-8100>
<http://www.faqs.org/faqs/Satellite-TV/4dtv/>
<http://www.4dtvforum.com>

Programming is mostly ala carte:
<http://skyvision.com/programming/alacarte.html>>
If all you want is the Science Channel, you can get that for $42year.
The catch is that you have to subscribe to a minimum of 10 channels to
get that price. Assuming you go for a mix of cheapo channels, that's
about $500/year, which isn't much of a bargain. However, it is ala
carte and is probably a good predictor of what will happen when ala
carte arrives on DBS or CATV.

The next gen 120Hz displays are going to be all the rave. LCD
backlights... No more 3:2 pull down (5x24=120). The world is getting
better every day.

 

[Joerg]

You really don't understand how it works. The fact that you see 3 or 4
Archie Bunkers means that in a digital system, the entire datagram can
easily be extracted in it's entirety.

Except that here the strength of the individual Archies varies. So in a
digital datastream bits would stampede right over each other. Which ones
wipe out which others depends on clouds rolling in, Fedex freighters
turning onto final approach and so on. At some point any FEC scheme will
just throw in the towel.

Anyway, let's see how it plays out. From what others who have tried
digital TV told me things aren't looking up too much.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

Except that here the strength of the individual Archies varies. So in a
digital datastream bits would stampede right over each other. Which ones
wipe out which others depends on clouds rolling in, Fedex freighters
turning onto final approach and so on. At some point any FEC scheme will
just throw in the towel.

You ain't real bright. The FEC will get it right all the way up to over
10% bit-error-rate in current designs.

Anyway, let's see how it plays out. From what others who have tried
digital TV told me things aren't looking up too much.

You guys must have a shit system. Your network operators should have
bought the General Instrument gear. Hell, they were even able to afford
it in South America!

 

[Joerg]

You ain't real bright. The FEC will get it right all the way up to over
10% bit-error-rate in current designs.

Let's test your brightness: I wrote that the reflections are sometimes
stronger than the direct path, sometimes not. When aircraft are coming
through that changes in rapid flutter. What would be the bit error rate
under this scenario?

You guys must have a shit system. Your network operators should have
bought the General Instrument gear. Hell, they were even able to afford
it in South America!

Again, I don't know how it'll perform. We'll see when the converter
units are on the shelves. Which I think they should have been since more
than a year.

 

[Jerry Avins]

Randy Yates wrote:

...

Your paradigm is so completely different than mine. I simply use one
text editor [1] for EVERYTHING. The spell checker is a tool available within
that text editor.

You use XEmacs for email? How about filling out HTML forms in the internet?

Jerry

 

[Jerry Avins]

But the one thing they can't do is check themselves, particularly when
the offending word is clearly wrong, but is actually a different, but
otherwise correctly spelled word.

A spell checker is something that Harry Potter might find useful; what
I need is a spelling checker.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, heh?

Their are many examples that prove yew wright.

Jerry

 

[Randy Yates]

Randy Yates wrote:

...

Your paradigm is so completely different than mine. I simply use one
text editor [1] for EVERYTHING. The spell checker is a tool available within
that text editor.

You use XEmacs for email?

Yes, and for usenet.

How about filling out HTML forms in the internet?

I could if I set it up correctly.
--
% Randy Yates % "...the answer lies within your soul
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % 'cause no one knows which side
%%% 919-577-9882 % the coin will fall."
%%%% <[email protected]> % 'Big Wheels', *Out of the Blue*, ELO
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

 

[Terry Given]

Their are many examples that prove yew wright.

Jerry

I forget the name of the teacher/comedian, but I saw a youtube video of
this guy giving a 5 minute speech on this topic. ROTFLMAO!

Cheers
Terry