What if the Apple ][ had run on Field-Sequential? | Hacker News Reader

What if the Apple ][ had run on Field-Sequential?

nicole.express

99 pointszdw21 comments

I had a camera with a field-sequential electronic viewfinder. Because it relies on persistence of vision to mix RGB colors, it could be pretty distracting if I moved my eye quickly, breaking the illusion, and I think it would be similarly annoying on a TV or computer display.

Tektronix built a lot of test equipment based on color-shutter CRTs in the 1990s. It was simultaneously nifty and awful. They could render rich, well-defined color waveforms, but as soon as you moved your eyes, the illusion would break apart into rainbow-colored fragments. It was like watching a movie on a DLP projector, only much worse.

Meanwhile, HP OEM'ed a bunch of Trinitron monitors from Sony and called it a day.

Right. Field sequential display means heavy flicker. Do not want.

Hypothetical question:

Let's say that back in 1930s when they were assigning frequencies for the broadcast television channels, they allocated enough extra bandwidth for a future color (chroma) signal, apart from the existing monochrome (luma) signal.

If the bandwidth was available, would it have been possible to include separate chroma and luma components in the broadcast signal without the two interfering with each other, thereby producing a much cleaner color image while maintaining backward compatibility with the original B&W TV sets?

Isn't that essentially what happened? In the 1930s, the channels were allocated at 6 MHz spacing, but only needed about 3 MHz of bandwidth for the luma channel. There might have been some foresight involved, but the gaps between channels also allowed for cheaper, less precise tuners. Then in the 1950s they added a 1 MHz chroma signal on a 3.58 MHz upper sideband, expanding the channel bandwidth to just under 6 MHz.

6 MHz was there from the start. If it wasn't, the CBS field-sequential might have won. Both government (FCC) and industry (RCA) were pushing for a backward compatible system and there was enough bandwidth to pull it off. OP asks what would've happened had chroma been given its own separate, non-overlapping band. That was not possible while maintaining compatibility.

You could argue that if extra bandwidth were available it might be better allocated elsewhere for improved picture quality. But yes. It would've reduced lots of engineering complexity and probably would've looked very much like PALplus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PALplus

I think in this alternate universe the Apple-II analog would be the first cheap computer that could run a spreadsheet. That really takes a 40 column display. So I think it would have waited for the 2mhz 6502 to handle the doubled line frequency.

Does anyone know why they call it artifact colors? It creates a valid colorburst signal, so the colors are exactly as expected. It's high-resolution black-and-white imagery that's more of an artifact.

Guessing not knowledge but I expect it was called that from the accidental occurence of color on broadcast TV wben the image includes something with black-and-white stripes at the right spacing. So the name predates the intentional usage by the comphter system.

Because they're square waves and not proper modulated signals.

It's a specific technique where you deliberately modulate the signal so as to interfere with the color subcarrier. This can be used to produce colors that are otherwise not available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors

The CBS field-sequential color system did have one application after the 1950's: it was the system used for color transmissions from the Apollo moon landings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_TV_camera#Westinghouse_...

If you watch footage of the Apollo 17 LEM liftoff from the moon, you can see color artifacts in the burst of fragments off the platform. Their motion is too fast to stay in the same color band.

But would it have run Shufflepuck Cafe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47128631

> But we are saving the lives of ~3 million people so who’s to say what is bad

Korea’s GDP per capita in 1950 was similar to that of Bangladesh around the same time: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/GDP-.... In the alternate timeline where there isn’t a capitalist south korea, the Korean peninsula has 100 million+ people living in poverty and squalor, like Bangladesh today. The cost of that is tens of millions of lost lives resulting from higher infant and child mortality rates.

The simplest way to have no Korean war is if Kim Il-Sung decides that an invasion is too risky and concentrates on internal matters.

Interesting that your takeaway is "capitalist South Korea doesn't exist" when I also said the 38th parallel held?

Also I guess now we're discussing the Repugnant Conclusion, which is a bit out of scope

See also the arguments that more Koreans would be alive and well today if MacArthur's plans to nuke the Norks had been greenlighted by Truman.

In the altnerate timeline where there isn’t a Nazi Germany, the US might not have been such a powerhouse post-WWII on the account of so many other nations not being a pile of rubble. Really the South Koreans should thank Nazi Germany for saving it from Communism.

The U.S. was already a powerhouse before World War II. It had the highest per-capita GDP in the world (excluding some blips during the gold rush in Australia) by the late 1880s. The gap in per capita GDP between the U.S. and western europe shrunk between then and the late 20th century.

Take it at face valu I guess.

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