We’ve been getting nearly a generation of years worth of talk about digital image creation. It seems like forever that this word has been thrown around as the new thing, or fad. You weren’t up to date without it. What’s it mean?
Well, unless your talking about anatomy, digital has to do with numbers. It started off with video cameras. Scientists and electronic apparatus makers created a way to change images into exact representations of themselves,using numbers. They created a pad of cells that sees the image and translates into to pulses. Its kind of like a card section in a stadium backwards. Instead of a group of people showing cards over an area of seats to put together an image, or message, the cell pads see the image or message. Then each part of the pad is given an address, so that the electronics knows where their part came from. “this is the right top corner, so their signal goes there. This is lower left, third from the end, three rows from bottom, so this is where there picture goes.” Since every pixel in a picture has an address, its called digital, because the electronics knows exactly what is at any point in a screen.
So, TV cameras were making signals that held together a lot better in the editing and copying process. Of course, editing, copying, and software had to be developed that worked with this scheme. It did, and eventually did so in an ever cheaper fashion. High quality video now comes out of units that cost under $10K! This goes for cameras and editors.
Well, it wasn’t long before the technology made its way into still cameras, first for pros and then, consumers. This means that the SLR’s were the first to experiment with this, and then it drip ground its way into point and shoots.
But back to TV for a minute. After ALL THIS TIME, the TV industry STILL has not come up with a single way to do anything. In video, there’s shooting, storing and editing and transmitting, as things that get done with a TV signal. It takes a little bit of history to appreciate why.
Waaay back in the late forties, black and white TV was created. A system was adopted for making an electronic TV signal. NBC’s General David Sarnoff had a system, and CBS had one, too. The Federal Communications Commission, the government agency created to manage all transmitted signals, period, had to choose a standard means of creating a signal, transmitting, receiving and showing it on your home TV set. They formed a body called the National Television Systems Committee, or NTSC, for short. Well, NTSC picked NBC’s TV system over CBS’s, which created a firestorm of protest, all to no avail. The general’s system was THE system. This selection and timing was especially important, as they immediately went to creating a system that had color which would work in with the black and white system. Color came in 1952.
But because there was SO MUCH heat generated over this choice, the FCC has had a hard time settling in on ANYTHING for a standard since then. Its why they have had a hard time creating the ATSC, Advanced Television Systems Committee, and the digital Hi def signals we are slowly adopting now as a broadcast standard. The FCC caught so much flak, that anytime they want to establish a standard, they had to spend years looking at every idea out in the marketplace, test it, and then market test it for acceptance among equipment makers as the way it should all go, whether it was a video or an audio signal. Bet you never heard of AM stereo. It was a non-event, really, but the FCC had to walk this dog around for years, only to have it die, because of the sheer superiority of an FM signal for quality. The equipment makers did market research, and eventually decided, “why bother?” Nobody was going to buy enough units to pay for all that had to be done to create receivers anyway.
The first NTSC TV signal was analogous to the picture it was seeing, meaning it was a fairly good representation of the event. But the signal that came out of a camera was still an analog, not an exact representation, like digital. You can copy analog, but you lose some of it with every step. Not so with digital. But it would be 30 more years before the technology for a digital signal would be created. And then 20 more, before we saw it all over the shelves in the appliance stores.
The digital, high definition standard America is switching to is the result of some standards that the ATSC WAS able to agree on, and set standards for. The new signal is much wider, and has more pixels than standard TV has. Standard TV has a ratio of 4 units wide, and 3 units high. The units coud be inches, centimeters, etc. The ATSC went with 16 units across by 9 units up, or 5.3 to 3. And they did come up with a way to transmit and receive it. The fuss in the industry is that that standard is one of many still being considered among equipment manufacturers. It has no effect on the transmitted signal, but it sure keeps the producers waiting to see what production equipment to buy. Holy pixels, Batman!
