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I remember the analog era. That lasted quite a while and it worked well (bad signal just meant a slightly more snow in a picture). Then on digital era I have al

by bungle 6y ago

I remember the analog era. That lasted quite a while and it worked well (bad signal just meant a slightly more snow in a picture). Then on digital era I have already transitioned from DVB-T to DVB-T2. When changing a channel in those 70ies or 80ies televisions, it happened instantly. Now we have huge amounts of computing power, but every press on remote feels like the command is queued somewhere for a second or two. I hate using today's televisions and tuners. While the picture and sound is considerably better, the usability is horror. Also Teletext worked always fast and was instant. Today, if you try to open simple program guide, it feels like it is compiling a kernel on a background.

rasz 6y ago
This is covered somewhere in the ~middle of the article: >Because a block of 12 pictures are jointly interpolated and coded this method is also called Block Coding. A block takes roughly 0,5s, which is then also the minimal lock time of a receiver. TLDR: you need to wait for the intra-frame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types#Intra-coded_(I)_frames/slices_(key_frames) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_type... >Intra refresh periods of a half-second are common on such applications as digital television broadcast Cable TV providers are totally screwing the pooch here. Most modern Cable Boxes employ reverse channel to spy^^^report telemetry and offer additional features. This means all the hardware and software infrastructure is already in place to request dynamically generated Inter frame from the backend on the fly and skip this up to 12 frames wait time. Of course the other part is "modern" stupid software stacks, with TVs running Android, and probably rendering UI using web technologies.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
I have the same feelings when it comes to the analog VGA connections, especially on projectors. You could have a mangled connector with poor quality cabling and in the worst case, the image would degrade, have ghosting and maybe miss a color channel or two, but you could still get your message on screen since the analog receiver will try to lock on to any signal it gets regardless of how poor the quality is, while with digital, it either works or it doesn't, there's no middle ground, and with connectors that have seen much usage it tends to not work more often than it does. If the protocol handshake or something else fails from the start it's game over. Analog degrades much more gracefully.
the-dude 6y ago
It is not limited to TV : telephones were much nicer too. edit: heck, I can go on : I have inherited a cast iron 'tillet'? ( frying pan ). It makes better steakes, and it shows no signs of wearing.
- yummypaint 6y ago
  Yeah it's crazy how much worse call quality has become relative to landlines. It's so bad that it's a borderline accessibility issue at this point. Would be interesting to know what public input there is when it comes to bandwidth optimization. There also isn't a good quantitative metric for measuring call quality in a way that could spur competition between carriers. It seems to mostly be a race to the bottom.
grishka 6y ago
Digital video compression uses several frame types. Most frequent ones are inter-frames, and those encode the difference from the previous frame — so if you don't have those previous frames, you can't decode a usable picture. You have to wait for the next intra-frame to be transmitted, which contains a complete picture by itself. Analog video doesn't have that restriction, every single frame is self-sufficient. > Also Teletext worked always fast and was instant. That's not at all how I remember it. I remember it taking anywhere from instant to 15 seconds to load a page.
- the-dude 6y ago
  > That's not at all how I remember it. I remember it taking anywhere from instant to 15 seconds to load a page. That is consistent with 'the protocol', however there might have been 'smart' TVs which cached or prefetched pages.
hilbert42 6y ago
"...but every press on remote feels like the command is queued somewhere for a second or two. I hate using today's televisions and tuners. I agree completely, I find this delay more than annoying—in fact, it's infuriating! I consider this delay not just an ergonomic limitation but also a definite design fault (i.e.: the DVB standard allows the delay to occur). The fact that regulators authorized DVB/TV digital services with this fault speaks more to me about the commercial pressure brought to bear on the regulators (to accept the limitation) than it does about any proper consultative/evaluation process (user ergonomics evaluation) having been properly undertaken before these services were introduced. (…But then, I suppose we can't have expected much better from DVB standards given that in the 1980s many governments around the world essentially nuked their spectrum management departments and outsourced much of the work to commercial organizations that had vested interests—thus, effectively they were committed to lower standards. [This is a long sad story which, unfortunately, is much too involved to discuss here.])

by bungle 6y ago

rasz 6y ago

This is covered somewhere in the ~middle of the article: >Because a block of 12 pictures are jointly interpolated and coded this method is also called Block Coding. A block takes roughly 0,5s, which is then also the minimal lock time of a receiver. TLDR: you need to wait for the intra-frame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types#Intra-coded_(I)_frames/slices_(key_frames) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_type... >Intra refresh periods of a half-second are common on such applications as digital television broadcast Cable TV providers are totally screwing the pooch here. Most modern Cable Boxes employ reverse channel to spy^^^report telemetry and offer additional features. This means all the hardware and software infrastructure is already in place to request dynamically generated Inter frame from the backend on the fly and skip this up to 12 frames wait time. Of course the other part is "modern" stupid software stacks, with TVs running Android, and probably rendering UI using web technologies.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

I have the same feelings when it comes to the analog VGA connections, especially on projectors. You could have a mangled connector with poor quality cabling and in the worst case, the image would degrade, have ghosting and maybe miss a color channel or two, but you could still get your message on screen since the analog receiver will try to lock on to any signal it gets regardless of how poor the quality is, while with digital, it either works or it doesn't, there's no middle ground, and with connectors that have seen much usage it tends to not work more often than it does. If the protocol handshake or something else fails from the start it's game over. Analog degrades much more gracefully.

the-dude 6y ago

It is not limited to TV : telephones were much nicer too. edit: heck, I can go on : I have inherited a cast iron 'tillet'? ( frying pan ). It makes better steakes, and it shows no signs of wearing.

yummypaint 6y ago
Yeah it's crazy how much worse call quality has become relative to landlines. It's so bad that it's a borderline accessibility issue at this point. Would be interesting to know what public input there is when it comes to bandwidth optimization. There also isn't a good quantitative metric for measuring call quality in a way that could spur competition between carriers. It seems to mostly be a race to the bottom.

grishka 6y ago

Digital video compression uses several frame types. Most frequent ones are inter-frames, and those encode the difference from the previous frame — so if you don't have those previous frames, you can't decode a usable picture. You have to wait for the next intra-frame to be transmitted, which contains a complete picture by itself. Analog video doesn't have that restriction, every single frame is self-sufficient. > Also Teletext worked always fast and was instant. That's not at all how I remember it. I remember it taking anywhere from instant to 15 seconds to load a page.

the-dude 6y ago
> That's not at all how I remember it. I remember it taking anywhere from instant to 15 seconds to load a page. That is consistent with 'the protocol', however there might have been 'smart' TVs which cached or prefetched pages.

hilbert42 6y ago

"...but every press on remote feels like the command is queued somewhere for a second or two. I hate using today's televisions and tuners. I agree completely, I find this delay more than annoying—in fact, it's infuriating! I consider this delay not just an ergonomic limitation but also a definite design fault (i.e.: the DVB standard allows the delay to occur). The fact that regulators authorized DVB/TV digital services with this fault speaks more to me about the commercial pressure brought to bear on the regulators (to accept the limitation) than it does about any proper consultative/evaluation process (user ergonomics evaluation) having been properly undertaken before these services were introduced. (…But then, I suppose we can't have expected much better from DVB standards given that in the 1980s many governments around the world essentially nuked their spectrum management departments and outsourced much of the work to commercial organizations that had vested interests—thus, effectively they were committed to lower standards. [This is a long sad story which, unfortunately, is much too involved to discuss here.])