3 ms·

I had forgotten why the number 1001 mattered in video (it's been too long since I worked with NTSC circuits), so I looked it up. It has to do with avoiding dot

I had forgotten why the number 1001 mattered in video (it's been too long since I worked with NTSC circuits), so I looked it up. It has to do with avoiding dot crawl in color analog video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

dylan604 6y ago
It also had to do with allowing the additional of the color information to not break compatibility with the existing B&W TVs in existence. Had the decided to not make 1 video signal that could be broadcast to both color and B&W TVs, they could have just broadcast color at 30fps (and man would my life had been so much easier).
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Indeed. NTSC is such a kludgy hack. An incredibly clever kludgy hack, but it's still kludgy.
- danbolt 6y ago
  Kludgy hacks are interesting when their value highly outweighs the lack of careful design or effort put into it. Or, I work in the video games industry and quick work can end up being charming or valuable to your audiences, even if they're a difficult thing to continue developing or maintain. The wide compatibility of NTSC likely has been very valuable to the public, but this public is also unaware of the difficult work it implies. That said, games traditionally have a point where development stops and doesn't resume (not counting from more live-ops-style games today), so the calculus of that sort of thing changes to management.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    This is especially true to the people building the ROM emulators. There are so many tricks/hacks/kludges that were at the heart of some games even being usable. Timing for interlacing that was needed for the game to work in NTSC has to be accounted for on today's faster hardware and progressive scanning. Reproducing color accurately from NTSC seems to also be another thing I've seen. I'm sure there are plenty more that have been posted here before, but they are always a fun reminder that porting code can be a nightmare.

dylan604 6y ago

It also had to do with allowing the additional of the color information to not break compatibility with the existing B&W TVs in existence. Had the decided to not make 1 video signal that could be broadcast to both color and B&W TVs, they could have just broadcast color at 30fps (and man would my life had been so much easier).

dreamcompiler 6y ago
Indeed. NTSC is such a kludgy hack. An incredibly clever kludgy hack, but it's still kludgy.
danbolt 6y ago
Kludgy hacks are interesting when their value highly outweighs the lack of careful design or effort put into it. Or, I work in the video games industry and quick work can end up being charming or valuable to your audiences, even if they're a difficult thing to continue developing or maintain. The wide compatibility of NTSC likely has been very valuable to the public, but this public is also unaware of the difficult work it implies. That said, games traditionally have a point where development stops and doesn't resume (not counting from more live-ops-style games today), so the calculus of that sort of thing changes to management.
- dylan604 6y ago
  This is especially true to the people building the ROM emulators. There are so many tricks/hacks/kludges that were at the heart of some games even being usable. Timing for interlacing that was needed for the game to work in NTSC has to be accounted for on today's faster hardware and progressive scanning. Reproducing color accurately from NTSC seems to also be another thing I've seen. I'm sure there are plenty more that have been posted here before, but they are always a fun reminder that porting code can be a nightmare.