Why is HD 1080p? | Nostalgia Nerd

[@GreenBlueWalkthrough]

To be fair HD is 720P, FHD is 1080p, 4k is UHD and then we kinda gave up as 8k and 16k have no names that I've heard.

[@federicocatelli8785]

720p is HD ready

[@gwenlop9512]

NHK calls their 8K broadcasts “Super Hi-Vision”, which those also have 22.2 surround sound.

[@ebridgewater]

They are: 720p / HD ready 1080p / Full HD / FHD / HD ready 1080p 4K / 4K UHD / UHD-1 8K / 8K UHD / UHD-2 / Super Hi-Vision

[@cs8712]

4K = Ultra High Def, 8K = OctopiDef, 16K = Hexadefcimal

[@faenethlorhalien]

Correct

[@ratinthecat]

What I find the most fascinating is how many extra features engineers were able to cram into the analog standards. Adding in color signals, closed captions, secondary audio programs and programming data into the same bandwidth while still maintaining compatibility with older television receivers.

[@johngaynor4363]

Old school engineers were wizards. Kind of amazing to see what they pulled off with so little.

[@nowknow]

An analog signal can transmit a mind boggling exponentially larger amount of data than a digital one. The hard part is encoding, decoding, and dealing with decay/loss. We just very recently figured out how to transmit data with another band of light in fiber optics.

[@damienretro4416]

Making color signals still work on B&W TVs was genius.

[@faming1144]

And "hiding" a 16:9 picture in the existing 4:3 signal using its full resolution, for wide screen TV's (PALplus).

[@BurritoKingdom]

​@@faming1144 pal also had teletext

[@lobsterwhisperer7932]

I'm old, so going from a B&W to a colour TV in 1976 was earth shattering to a kid.

[@pstm53]

must’ve been insanely weird seeing it for the first time 😅 I’m pretty young and going from a 60Hz monitor to a 120Hz monitor felt absolutely amazing… though probably nothing like seeing a colored TV for the first time 😮

[@LYSYRGIX]

​@@pstm53god, I remember when games went from 30 to 60 fps and everyone almost lost their shiz

[@darkwinter7395]

My dad still talks about seeing Star Trek in color at a (rich) friend's house for the first time and being absolutely blown away by it...

[@allentoyokawa9068]

color*

[@LYSYRGIX]

@@allentoyokawa9068 both are proper English. Both are able to be used in this situation

[@technodromeVBlog]

I must say that resolutions like 1920 x 1200 have been used for a long time among professional monitors, now you can still find laptops with high screens and a vertical resolution of 1200 pixels.

[@DanielBull]

1920x1200 is far superior for actually doing work IMHO. 1920x1080 is way too short.

[@Balrog-tf3bg]

I have a “2k” gaming laptop and it’s actually pretty nice

[@SpeedyGwen]

I have a 1920 x 1200 secondary screen, it used to be my main screen and it was soooo nice, especially for games and productivity, u could have the task bar at the bottom and program bar at the top while the game didnt feel squished at all, also for youtube, it makes it able to not have the progress bars of videos as overlay on video, it just stays under the video screen which is amazing when taking screenshots of paused video

[@OdinReactor]

I'm also team 1200p, been so for over 20 years. 16:10 is the superior aspect ratio.

[@StarmenRock]

1200p rules, can vouch for it. 16:10 and similar are goated

[@safebox36]

I always found it weird / interesting that 1080p was chosen when 720p was the faux-standard for HD for a lot of the early standard's definition.

[@everythingpony]

Don't forget 480pPSHD

[@xxlarrytfvwxx9531]

​@@everythingponyI never heard of this.

[@bartek05303]

I've never seen a 1080p television signal. They are 480p, 720p, 1080i, 4K. 1080p seems to be only the PC/gaming standard.

[@НААТ]

​@@bartek053031080p tvs are pretty Common here in Europe. Atleast the Netherlands. My tvs always have been 1080p previously

[@chrism6880]

​@bartek05303 digital broadcast is progressive

[@okaro6595]

The fact that they did not immediately realize the need for square pixels insane. PCs got square pixels already in 1987 with the VGA. Square pixels make things so much simpler.

[@AttilaAsztalos]

I reckon working with a *generated* image instead of a *captured* image might have had something to do with it - it's hard enough figuring out where to put down the next black pixel when drawing a circle with square pixels - if they're not square, it's even worse. Of course, this was immediately subverted by things like the ZX Spectrum video memory structure, where the order was line 0, then 8 lines below, then another 8 lines below - for ONE THIRD of the screen; then continue with line 1, line 9, line 17 etc; then proceed to the second third and repeat. YOU try drawing a circle onto that...

[@devan_danger]

Standard resolution on a CRT TV for basic programming doesn't require the same pin sharp focus of reading fine text on a monitor. Generally any image looks great on a CRT when reading fine text isn't a requirement

[@cube2fox]

Yeah, if you have rectangular pixels, the software designers will often still treat them as if they are square, resulting in a stretched look. Most NES games did have that issue.

[@pjl22222]

1987? Macs had square pixels in 1984. And they were 72dpi so 1 pt in software was 1pt onscreen.

[@VanuOfMILF]

Life isn’t made of squares, so it makes sense to me that it took a digital overthrow of analog signals to force the change.

[@sterlingphoenix]

That Sony TV would've made my brain explode in 1988. I didn't even have a colour TV till like 1985!

[@blob5907]

what a dumbass

[@Name-ot3xw]

I remember when 'big' Tvs were anything much bigger than like 35", lord help your mover's backs if you went bigscreen, doubly so for that brief period of HD tube TVs.

[@RemoWilliams1227]

​@@baronvonslambertlmfao, my Dad is 78 and has hearing loss in the high range from shooting at the gun range (was a cop), and recently his battery backup for his pc needed the battery replaced, I go in his house and it's a constant squeal from this thing, he couldn't have cared less 😂.

[@gammaboost]

⁠​⁠@@baronvonslambertMost adults can't actually hear the high pitched squeal, so that's why your mother couldn't hear it. Protect your hearing!

[@eDoc2020]

@@baronvonslambert 1998? My family had a B&W TV in the kitchen until 2010. That's when we shuffled the TVs around and that B&W became a spare.

[@jeremyandrews3292]

The first Plasma TV I ever got apparently had a physical resolution of 1024x768, but it used rectangular pixels and gave the illusion of being a 720p display until you hooked up a computer to the VGA input. I looked at the physical pixels and checked, but it turned out the resolution it was feeding to the computer was absolutely right, the pixels were just physically rectangular and stretched a 4:3 ratio out to 16:9. The reason this worked at the time was because DVDs usually achieved widescreen by being anamorphic... that is, they actually delivered a "squished" 4:3 picture that, when spread out to 16:9, looked correct. So the TV was designed to accommodate this without a lot of horizontal scaling, by just having the same aspect ratio as the DVD while having a wider screen through the odd-shaped pixels. I will say, out of all the HDTVs I ever watched, I thought that one looked the best with 4:3 content stretched to fill the screen, and I never knew why for years. But once I knew how it worked, it was obvious... because it really is a native 4:3 display, they just managed to make it wider than it is tall. The ultimate test... which worked, was ripping a Blu-Ray and downscaling it to 1024x768, using the anamorphic setting usually intended for DVDs to see if it looked better on this TV. It did... looked better than anything coming in on the HDMI port, or anything from component video. It was kind of weird, because I realized the majority of people using that TV would never see the best picture it could produce, because everything was either too high a resolution and had to be scaled down using a bad scaler, or too low a resolution and had to be scaled up using a bad scaler. But if you feed it an anamorphic widescreen DVD, or better yet a customized 1024x768 signal over the VGA port that reproduces the anamorphic effect? It's perfect. In fact, I now wonder if some of the places that sold those TVs did just that, used a VGA port and a custom signal to show the TV at it's best, using content like that I created for it by hand...

[@okaro6595]

720p is a signal type, not a panel resolution. There does not need to be any direct relation between the signal and the panel resolution.

[@jamegumb7298]

I had that same Panasonic.

[@AzrethK9]

We had a Thomson Plasma with I think was 800x600 widescreen. When it broke in like 2008, I bought a 1080p Panasonic and after disabling Overscan, it was pixel perfect for my HTPC and had an insane good picture quality compared to the LCDs. It still hangs in what's now my mothers room. No one ever wants to move this heavy beast. Still have the first Plasma TV staying around. 40" Pioneer 4:3 with 640:480 from around 97. Don't know what to do with it. Needed the wall space for other things.

[@ericritchie6783]

@@okaro6595 YES THERE DOES!!!

[@ericritchie6783]

@@okaro6595 Yes there does and very frustratingly its very hard to find true 1280x720p panels. There basically always either 1366x768 or 1024x768... Really really annoying, so when you look at a native 1920x1080p media on a 1080p screen, most the reason it looks better next to a 720p tv is just because its native and your 720p screen panel is not. Very very few true 720p displays out there, only some HD CRT and TV will produce a decent quality image or else you need to use a little 4:3 vga crt screen in letterbox... So annoying no half decent ips panels out there, they could just provide an option on a 1366x768 TV to crop the image in a little to a dot to dot scale, but good luck trying to find a TV with such a simple choice of picture option.

[@ThomasOrger]

Peter, this is incredibly well made, detailed and informative. You should be very proud and this should be required watching for all interested in all things video.

[@theblah12]

1:10 Interesting seeing an article from the 1930’s talking about fixing “bugs”. Never knew the term was used prior to computers.

[@bradriley9777]

Very interesting! A brief search of online dictionaries only mentions this sense being used in "computing" not other fields. I found a blog I'm sure I can't link, which offers the below: "The word has been used in engineering since the nineteenth century. The word ‘bug’ actually is short for Bugbear. (sometimes found as Bugaboo). It’s meaning is much closer to ‘Gremlin’, where the people who worked on engineering prototypes often grew to suspect that the problems were due to malicious spooks. I sometimes even still hear it said that some software is cursed with malicious spirits. The ‘Bug’ or ‘Bogey’ part of the word is traceable back to the fifteenth century in the meaning of ‘Hobgoblin’, devil or ghost. In East Anglia particularly, the word Bugbear’, first recorded in the sixteenth century, is still used in referring to problems with machinery."

[@Kr-nv5fo]

Channel named "Our own devices" _just_ made a video about telegraphy (morse code), where he explains the term! "Bug" was a nickname for an inexperienced telegraph operator.

[@cosmic_drew]

My Dad bought a Sony HD CRT in 1999 for around $4k (I'm not exactly sure how much). He was so proud of it but within 5 years flat-screens started coming out and it made our insanely expensive and insanely heavy HD TV already look outdated. He kept it until the late 2000s though.

[@smiththers2]

and now those monsters are worth money to the right people... they're such amazing tvs and i wish i could have one. some people selling them around me but would need to reeeeeealy be ready to put it in one place and never move it again

[@SterkeYerke5555]

That HD CRT probably looked better than most plasmas or lcd's until the late 2000s as well, so I guess he made the right choice in the end.

[@samgendler]

being any ind of early adopter when it came to HD and home theater tech around the turn of the century was insanely expensive and not remotely cost effective. You'd pay huge amounts for the latest tech and then it would be surpassed by something newer long before any kind of reasonable end of life. A $4K HD TV wasn't even all that expensive back then. You could spend more than twice that on a plasma display that didn't even do 720p and which suffered horrendous burn-in if you ever left anything on the screen for a hile - including just station logos and the like. I paid about $3500 for a rear projection 720p DLP TV back when that was the best bang for your buck in HD TVs but it was basically worthless within a couple of years.

[@uponeric36]

@@SterkeYerke5555 The HD CRT still looks better than any LCD, though Plasma could give it a run depending on the content and plasma TV. Still worth more than both, most people don't remember they have a plasma TV and sell it for LCD prices.

[@SterkeYerke5555]

​@@uponeric36 I guess it's a matter of taste, but I don't think many people would be inclined to agree with you. Viewing angles and motion clarity will surely be better than any lcd, as well as resolution scaling, but when it comes to brightness, colour volume or sharpness, I don't think any crt can match modern lcd's. Input lag is bound to be better on a modern lcd than an HD crt as well (though obv not as good as earlier crt's), and decent minileds will beat the crt for contrast too (as well as most non-Kuro plasmas). Even a modern non-miniled VA panel might beat it for native contrast, though it'll be even more compromised on viewing angles. As much as I dislike lcd's in general, 40+ years of development is starting to pay off.

[@brianc5581]

Same reason as they now call everything that has nothing to do with AI, AI... Marketing..

[@IcecalGamer]

You're AI

[@nbrown5907]

OMG someone else noticed lol. I am always bitching about the fact that nothing out there is sentient yet thankfully.

[@MePeterNicholls]

@@nbrown5907AI =/= AGI. Much stuff is AI. Much is barely machine learning. Artificial general intelligence is wayyyyyyy off.

[@kilotangosierra]

i saw sunglasses once with "4k vision" lenses, yeah.... theres alot BS around indeed

[@primonda56]

Ever heard of "AI-powered deodorant"? Yeah, its that bad nowadays. Marketing are dumb asmf, and those that fall for it are even worse.

[@Nick3DvB]

FYI - Most broadcast 1080p is actually encoded at 1920 x 1088 - because of maths or something...

[@pedro.alcatra]

If you enable the DLSS console in your game. Sometimes it reported 1920 X 1088 reder resolution for some reason as well

[@JohnSmith-qt4pv]

Mod16 encoding

[@Bramboorek]

It's because 1088 is divisible by 16 and most videos are enconded in 16x16 px blocks

[@jublywubly]

Not in Australia. Our FHD broadcasts are 1920 x 1080.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

​@jublywubly Actually 1080, or reported at 1080. In America, everything will say it's 1080, even if it's actually 1088. The last 8 lines just get cut off the bottom and not displayed.

[@KickyFut]

Nothing is more "I'm pretending to be a Gamer" than at 20:00 where the game is literally playing before she is sitting down!😆😂

[@devbot99]

This is a fantastic video! I'm an engineer who works at one of the companies that makes a lot of the broadcast equipment, and I was taught all of this during my internship. You did a great job of going through the history of video in an interesting and not drawn-out manner. I will be sharing this video with my coworkers and I'm sure many others. Keep up the good work!

[@eS._Te]

love your videos for years, cheers from switzwrland

[@PrimaryTheCat]

This was a great insight and the connection to the early 80’s computers is fascinating, especially given I’ve very recently been watching your histories of Sinclair, Acorn, Dragon and Commodore and they’re amazing! I love this place!

[@MsMarco6]

Here's an interesting idea for a video. Why not look at the evolution of the picture standards in relation too colour & contrast. from rec.601, rec.709 to rec.2020 HDR. for instance why was the original colour gamut, gamma curves & 100nits of brightness decided upon? what was the point of the minor upgrades of rec.709? Why did it take so long for HDR to become a thing when LCD's have been exceeding aspects of the SDR specs since the 90's. And why did they decide on the rec.2020 colour gamut if it still can't handle all visible colours, officially it's so they don't require conversion chips to handle imaginary colours but seeing as all digital video requires computer chips anyway that explanation always baffled me.

[@Dogelition]

Minor correction: BT.2020 is UHDTV, which is an SDR standard. BT.2100 (HDR-TV) uses the same primaries though. As for how they decided on those primaries: Look up the paper "UHDTV Image Format for Better Visual Experience"

[@MsMarco6]

@@Dogelition Can't access that paper without being an institutional member or purchasing for far too much money. isn't available through any other sources either that I can find.

[@giacomovalenti8619]

Even IBM computers took a while to use square pixels, 320x200 was a common CGA/EGA/VGA resolution and wasn't letterboxed, so pixels were "tall" compared to 320x240.

[@Roxor128]

Fun fact: both of those can be integer resized to 1600*1200. Multiply by 5 horizontally and by 5 or 6 vertically.

[@unbearifiedbear1885]

I hate maths

[@Crlarl]

​@@unbearifiedbear1885 Those are some of the easiest calculations ever.

[@giacomovalenti8619]

@@mal2ksc Well... for VGA it was to overlap with MCGA 256 color modes. If a game wanted to show 256 colors, it could be programmed for VGA 320x240 (supported by all VGA cards) or 320x200 (VGA and MCGA), and yes, MCGA had less VRAM so LucasArts games have choppy scrolling even on VGA at 320x200 and games like the Lion King ran at 60fps at 320x240.

[@untr3gg3rd]

still remember the time where 1080 was new. all we could focus on were the objects around the subject, not the subject itself 😂

[@smiththers2]

i remember seeing blades of grass on a football game field. mind was def blown at that!

[@CyanRooper]

I remember being able to see the light in the beads of sweat on a WWE wrestler's body the first time I used a 1080p TV.

[@NLynchOEcake]

@@CyanRooper I remember thinking "I'm not sure I'm going to like the new era of movies where we can see the actor's pockmarks and stubble"

[@RuruFIN]

I still remember when 1080p became mainstream and it was simply just awesome.

[@MizoxNG]

talk to a broadcast engineer or video mastering expert and most of them will tell you that the active width of a 13.5 mhz 4:3 image is probably closer to either 702, 704, 709, or 716 pixels rather than the full 720, and that those additional columns are essentially just padding and overscan to account for any horizontal offsets that might happen as a result of analog/digital conversion errors. backing this up is the fact that the dvd spec allows widths of both 352 and 704 (and not 360), and that the earlier and best-supported versions of the ATSC digital broadcast standards don't even bother to support a 720-wide mode, only 704

[@gamecubeplayer]

isn't 720x480 just 704x480 with blanking interval black bars?

[@MizoxNG]

@@gamecubeplayer debatable depending on who you talk to, but kinda yeah. that said, the TOTAL length of a line, including active, blanking, and sync area comes out to 858 for ntsc or 864 for pal (when sampled at 13.5 mhz).

[@jmpoder]

Let's make a 1280x720 resolution!! ... Ok 1366x768 it is!

[@netkv]

"hd ready"

[@ErnestJay88]

Ah, good old days when 28" TV consider as "huge" while today 42" is "tiny" because most people at least have 60" TV or more

[@robertsondunn]

Great video. Couple things I wanted to add. SMPTE is general accepted as “simp-tee” for short. Save yourself a mouthful next time. One other cool note is that if you multiply the width by height by framerate from NTSC land(720x480x30) you get the same number as doing the same equation in PAL resolutions. (720x576x25). Both yield 10,368,000. Not sure why this is. Seeing as how both standards have the same bandwidth I’m guessing that’s just the most they could get out of it.

[@eDoc2020]

It's definitely not a coincidence that the line numbers multiplied by the frame rate equals the same number. Or really the same but with the total number of scanlines (525 vs 625). The resulting number is the line rate. It's (nearly) the same because the 625 line standard is based on the 525 line one.

[@Great-Documentaries]

It was NOT just the lack of RAM that held pixel counts low in the early days of PCs. Being able to move those pixels around the screen requires CPU cycles, so the more pixels you have to move, the slower your game or application will be able to draw. And listening to you refer to the IBM PC as a professional machine versus the Amiga was hilarious. First off, the PC was able to use an RF interface just like a Vic-20. Second, NO ONE bought a new Amiga 1000 to play games or to use it with a TV. It cost the equivalent of $3500! That's a steep price for a game machine!

[@bobingabout]

I remember I had a 1600x1200 screen, and my one absolute firm rule was "When I change screen, it needs to be greater or equal to the HEIGHT I already have.", which pushed me to 1920x1200 in a 16:10 screen. I actually had 3 screens of this resolution, before the market saw them vanish with 1920x1080 being the only option, at which point I pushed up to 2560x1440. Unfortunately, I wanted to keep my 24" size, but I had to choose between a 1920x1080 24" screen, or a 2560x1440 27" screen, so I went bigger. Also interestingly, I remember a few years earlier when I got my 3rd 1920x1200 screen, that I almost bought a 2560x1600 screen, still 16:10.

[@Carewolf]

Yeah the early 2000s was touch for those of us with higher end monitors.. 1080p was a downgrade, and 1440p wasn't yet available

[@SterkeYerke5555]

I remember getting a Dell 3008 in about 2017 (which was also 2560x1600) and keeping the firm rule that I wouldn't upgrade until 4K oled monitors were available. Didn't make it. The 3008 died in the summer of 2022, at which point only the very first oled monitors had hit the market. They would've been a downgrade height-wise, being a 34" 3440x1440 screen, so I had to "settle" on a 4K 144Hz IPS screen instead. Can't say I'm unhappy, but I'm still a bit bummed I didn't make it far enough with the 3008.

[@dizzywow]

You can still buy 1920x1200 monitors. It's my favorite also.

[@bobingabout]

@@dizzywow They're very rare, and I often find that they're only for sale in America, and aren't available in the UK.

[@SterkeYerke5555]

@@bobingabout They are in Europe at least. The Acer Vero B247W, Samsung F24T, Dell P2425 and the Iiyama Prolite XUB series are all fairly modern and somewhat widely available 1920x1200 monitors that don't break the bank. The Dell even goes up to 100 Hz, which nowadays I'd say isn't only preferable for gaming, but even feels better when just navigating Windows in general (or any other OS ;).

[@Asidders]

I really appreciate the subtitles. Also, great video!

[@erikt211]

8:26 is the sample used in Panda Style by LAOS, on Hospital Records. Didn’t expect that one to hit me in the face😮😅

[@ManunKanava]

In Finland we are just about to even get Antenna TV with all the channels to Full HD next year. There has been some Full HD channels already some years in there, but still most are SD. Next year SD will be gone for good luckily at least after the final day of the switch

[@Imevul]

I remember writing programs for the PC in my youth and having to choose between 320x200 with 256 colors, or 640x480 with only 16 colors. Back then, it was a point of great frustration, but now I look back on those limitations with a feeling of nostalgia. Feels like we're just wasting pixels these days, with 4K/8K resolutions, and the only relevant trade-off is the framerate/bandwidth.

[@SuperDavidEF]

Yeah, I remember creating pixel art on my computer with 16 colors, but only 4 could be used. And I don't remember the resolution I had back then, but it was definitely low.

[@Christopher-po8pt]

I love this channel feels very much like it came from the eras its so often describing. Its like the favors you taste in the wine come from the soil it was grown in.

[@TheUAoB]

In my personal computing history, for the purposes of mostly using a computer for software development, I went from 320x256->768x288->1600x1200->2x1600x1200->1920x1080->3840x2160 Started in 8bit Acorns, then 32bit Acorns, then onto PCs with dual monitors before falling back to FHD once I had to negotiate space with my wife and two large high resolution CRTs took up too much of it!

[@AcornElectron]

Hope the arcade is going well and the book is flying off the shelves. I assume that’s where you’ve been?

[@nimrodlevy]

Your explainers are sooo goood!!! Many many thanks for the work you do! Thanks a ton! 🙏

[@aterikasedi]

1080p is still sweet spot.

[@НААТ]

No it isn't lol. 4k is the golden standard now

[@Tofu3435]

​@@НААТ on pc gaming 1080p is the most popular resolution.

[@НААТ]

@@Tofu3435 for pc 1440p will be the norm pretty soon. Those monitors aren't that expensive anymore. I own a 3440x1440p one myself

[@Traveler-VII]

​​@@НААТMaybe that's how it's viewed, but I'd still argue 1080p is the sweet spot. Newer, higher-resolution stuff still looks good on it, and at the same time, it doesn't make older, lower-resolution stuff look quite as bad as 4k does. That's what _I'd_ call a gold standard.

[@p_mouse8676]

​@@НААТlol, no 4k isn't lol. The majority of content, video and gaming is still 1080p. If you only look at the numbers from Steam for example, that very clearly shows that most people still game at 1080p. The same goes for KZbin videos and things like Netflix etc. In fact, for most video stream services, you need a more expensive membership to enjoy 4k. Yes, I am aware that most televisions are being sold as 4k, doesn't mean what people are watching is 4k. If you know a little bit about the resolution of our eyes, you'll quickly see that the improvement goes down very quickly. Except for things like video post editing, there are no practical benefits anymore above 4k. I think it's even banned in some countries if I am not mistaken? It just eats power.

[@Dunkelelf3]

1280x1024 is actually a 5:4 aspect ratio and not 4:3 as said in the video. 4:3 is a relic of the early days of moving pictures and old tape movies that were 4 inches by 3 inches with 35mm film.

[@Ice_Karma]

CGA, EGA, and Hercules would like a word with you about computer monitors not being interlaced... 🤣 [Edited: My bad, I got mixed up between interlaced _memory_ and interlaced _video._ ]

[@Ice_Karma]

Also about square pixels. ♥

[@okaro6595]

Those were not interlaced at least not the MDA. Interlacing is rare on computers as it makes horizontal lines jump up and down. I did have a SVGA that could either do 800x600x56 or 1024x768x96i. The latter was awful on normal Widows content but very nice on images. They did use interleaving at the memory level but this did not show to the monitor.

[@AttilaAsztalos]

@@okaro6595 Oh, there very much WERE real interlaced modes, displayed as such. A special edition of the S3 Virge 3D video card came with LCD shutter glasses, which got their switching signal directly from the bottom two lines of the picture, as sampled by a dongle on the VGA output - the final two lines were supposed to be 1/4 white and 3/4 white respectively, each identifying which half-picture is on the screen at the time, blacking the LCD for the other eye...

[@primus711]

​@@okaro6595amigas like a word with u

[@unbearifiedbear1885]

​​@@AttilaAsztalos my friends dad had those shutter glasses, they did 3d content as well - I think he had Fallout 3 or New Vegas and a couple racing games (Need For Speed etc), sht *blew my mind* bitd 😂

[@FelanLP]

Reading the title. My thoughts: "Since when is 1080p HD?" If we have to rename it, we should be fair and accurate and say that 1080p is the new SD. It's the common standard resolution these days.

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

Wow that was fun, Story, I was working at the BBC studios in Milton Keynes UK in the late early 90's. In comes this huge Sony windscreen monitor a Sony 3830. The props guys where not happy as the resolution on this set was incredible showing the smallest defect in the scenery which was held together with gaff tape and foam.

[@channelzero2252]

Full on history lessons is what I come here for, so thank you!

[@joshreiman]

Book ordered! Thanks for everything you do :D

[@denniseldridge2936]

Reading about the early days of television, when standards for number of lines was being discussed, we find that the number went as high as 1,000 lines(!).

[@fabianswebworld]

At 02:05: "Reducing the scanning frequency to 29.970 frames per second, with the remaining bandwith used to carry the color signal" - uhm... no, not at all. I don't know where to start correcting this, as it's so wrong and such a big misconception. In short: the frame rate was reduced to 29.97 Hz in order to reduce interference between the newly introduced color carrier and the existing sound carrier frequency by shifting everything in a manner so that the color carrier and the audio carrier are different by a non-integer multiple of the line frequency. This reduction of the line frequency and this overall framerate (or, rather, field rate) has nothing, really *nothing* to do to accomodate the "higher bandwith" of a color television signal. In fact, the overall bandwith of the NTSC color signal is not at all higher than that of a black-and-white signal. The spectrum of the color sub-carrier lies well (and completely) inside the spectrum of the luminance signal. This is actually why we have things like cross-color artifacts and dotcrawl, and why S-Video (separate Y/C signals) was even invented. Sorry for the elaborate correction, but I just couldn't let this stand as such. Otherwise, as always, great video! Keep it up!

[@kurwamacjebanapizda]

16:9 with 1920:1080 resolution was never adopted by "PC". It was forced to use as cheaper alternative. Manufacturers of PC monitors just used cheaper/the same panels of "tv" screens.

[@netkv]

most tvs seem to be bgr instead of what most of monitors use, rgb, are these from the same panel?

[@gfdggdfgdgf]

Interesting feature of Amiga computers: every program running could run at a different resolution and switching between them was seamless

[@peppepop]

Funny that they changed counting the vertical (720p, 1080p) to counting horizontal (4k). Counting by the latter scheme, 1080 should be called 2k instead.

[@Roxor128]

The also went the disk-manufacturer route and started lying about the values, too. What they call "4k" is only 3.84k.

[@HenryLoenwind]

They didn't really change; they just adopted the movie resolution names and used them for the closest video resolution. A "real" 4k frame is 4 thousand pixels wide, not those 3840 computers and TVs use. Move resolutions have always been about the width. The width of a film strip is constant, but how you subdivide the infinite length of the strip is up to you. Although it makes very much sense to use multiples of the perforation and mask off areas at the top and bottom you don't need. Quite the opposite of the fixed number of lines and fuzzy horizontal resolution of TV/video signals. So when digitizing film, the only thing standardised is the horizontal resolution. The number of lines is how many you get after cutting off the black areas and can be different from movie to movie. A notable exception is IMAX, where they run a 70mm-wide film strip horizontally, so it becomes 70mm high and the width becomes the variable.

[@eDoc2020]

@@HenryLoenwind With analog video the main parameter has always been the number of scanlines. _Movie_ film was measured by width but that's totally different. And it's not just IMAX using horizontal film, standard still cameras did, too.

[@debranchelowtone]

HD; UHD1 and UHD2 are used for television. 2K, 4K and 8K are used for cinema, and they have a 17:9 aspect ratio at maximum resolution.

[@ThePreciseClimber]

18:39 Uuh...WHAT 720p screens? :P Native 720p displays were exceedingly rare. 99.9% of "HD Ready" TVs and monitors were actually 1366x768p. Which actually prevented us from seeing all the 720p games on X360 & PS3 in their true, 1:1 sharpness.

[@SterkeYerke5555]

Don't forget the Panasonic plasmas with a 1024x768 16:9 display. Just to make sure absolutely nothing looks perfect!

[@seven7000_]

Xbox 360 supported 1366x768 resolution though

[@Ice_Karma]

0:00 Awww, what a gorgeous kitty! 😻

[@debranchelowtone]

René Barthélémy invented HD in 1941, which later became analog HD standard in France in 1948 known as « 819 lignes ». It was black and white, used 12 MHz bandwidth and Acamedy aspect ratio. It was adpoted by neighbourgh French speaking countries. The last one to use this system was Monaco who discontinued this system in 1985.

[@chrisgreen521]

I had a bunch of CRT TV's I'm glad I moved to 4K QD OLED'S thank God for new technology 💯

[@TheColinputer]

You know i wonder if in some alternate timeline/reality where Baird's system won. We are all playing PS5 on a 32 line mechanical TV

[@debranchelowtone]

Mechanical Baird system was 30 line; but when he competed against Marconi he had a system of 240 line that used CRT for diplay.

[@michelleparker9516]

I think it is funny that you mostly refer to the visible lines of these systems, when back then the vertical and horizontal blanking was just as important as what you could see, since these systems required the extra lines for sync. For example, the Sony Hi vision system was never known as a 1035 line system. it was know as 1125. And even the Italian broadcasters that come to New York and moved into the Ed Sullivan theater (whare Colbert broadcast his show from now) and become the second company in the US to offer HD, they called themselves "1125" (look up the history of the Ed Sullivan theater). Also the infinitely Eashar segment at 15:52 of this video of the square tiles mothing into birds (after Sean Lennon had walked on those tiles, not included in this segment) was baby sited by a friend of mine as they were being committed to tape. This was being dun at the first company in US to have Hi Definition, Rebo HD. At the time the formant was Analog tape and was a 5:3 aspect (not quite 16:9 yet). He says it took about 2 weeks of frame by frame edits overnight to get all the animations to tape, But it was monthly handled by the machines and it was well worth the time.

[@IndyAdvant]

I literally ask myself this all the time and am so happy to have had this video come up in my feed. Amazingly explained. Insta sub!

[@DAngelProductions]

I remember my first 720p 32in TV back in 2007. Booting up my PS3 left me speechless. All my friends still had CRTs or Plasmas.

[@jamesisaac7684]

They were smarter. They knew CRT has zero lag.

[@mechadeka]

@@jamesisaac7684 You lost because you were bad at the game.

[@ConsumerDV]

PAL has no lines, it is a color system. You meant 625/50 scanning, which has different variations like B, G, D and K.

[@NotOrdinaryInGames]

I hate to be That Guy, but I AM That Guy. So I hate myself as I write this. Interlaced SD video, as you said, was 25 or 30 fps cut into 2, to display on PAL and NTSC 50/60hz screens. BUT NOT ALL THE TIME. Sometimes NTSC and PAL were treated by the camera more like 60p and 50p, with each frame missing half the data (to squeeze into the tiny bandwidth of the day). So it not really 30/25 frames with each frame cut into 2 pieces. Sometimes it really was 60p and 50p with each frame missing half the pixels. And the screen would then fudge it. No, I am not wrong. 4K is fine as a good resolution endgoal, 8K is Peak Consumerism (no one actually needs it), and 16K is pure undiluted human madness.

[@ebridgewater]

19:26 That chart is way off. Instead of Desktop, it should perhaps say Desktop / Laptop as cheap laptops are absolutely affecting those results (e.g 1366 x 768 - not many on a Desktop PC uses a monitor of that resolution). And I find third place '1536x864' as bizarre. In 2023? Really?

[@Pasi123]

Did anything ever even use 1536x864? As far as I know the 4:3 version 1152x864 exists only because on budget CRT monitors you could get 75Hz at that resolution, being between 1024x768@85Hz and 1280x960@60Hz

[@ebridgewater]

​@@Pasi123 I am not familiar with the resolution. iPhone maybe? Though the chart is labelled "Desktop screen resolutions", so I am unsure.

[@Redhotsmasher]

And now that I think about it, what even happened to 1440p? Surely there were more 1440p screens than fucking 1366x768 screens in 2023?

[@jhgvvetyjj6589]

1536×864 is due to incorrectly measuring resolutions. 1920×1080 with 120dpi (125%) is a common configuration, but browsers divide the width and height by 1.25 and report it as 1536×864 so that scalable content adapts to that size.

[@netkv]

i've used 1366 x 768 until few years ago, now it remains as my secondary monitor

[@dhpbear2]

9:23 - This image of the glasses looks stretched horizontally! (?)

[@jordan-mn6yy]

think of how long computers had 1080p before they were even able to use super resolution to max out the quality beyond the screen specs. So imagine how much longer until 4K displays are being run comfortably with 8K internal resolution

[@BenFenner]

12:00 - Your generalizing of course. Because strictly speaking there were HD analog VHS recordings and standards, which rivaled DVD for picture quality.

[@Shorty_Lickens]

there is no official standard of 720i. Though with decent software you can make a video of any resolution you like and choose either progressive or interlaced.

[@MotoCat91]

I can't believe in 2024 that some things are still interlaced.. given just how long it's been Not just live broadcasts either, AMC shows have been notorious for this.. streaming out Walking Dead episodes that were originally 1080i but seemingly re-encoded as 1080p. Add onto that all the film grain and you get >5GB per episode, some of the highest bitrate 1080p streams available and the picture quality is literally worse than if it was native 540p as you can't de-interlace it properly anymore or even "AI upscale" your way out of the jaggies BBC streams of Staged are interlaced to all hell, as are ABC iView (Australia) streams of Utopia.. it needs to end

[@debranchelowtone]

Henri de France wondered if the solution to interlacing problem would be the end of interlacing and coming back to progressive… in 1948.

[@LeicaM11]

We have had 576 for SD, so 720 could not have been HD. I always cried, when recognizing the big backward step from 576 into 480. VHS used 320x200 often, horrible. When 1080p started, we finally got a doubled number of lines.

[@gamecubeplayer]

3 things: 1. 576i50 is the same 15khz sd as 480i60 2. vhs used the full 576 line (or 480 line) vertical resolution but only about a 240 line horizontal resolution 3. pal region hdmi devices are usually 720p60 instead of 720p50

[@j7ndominica051]

PC also had non square pixels occasioanlly. Old games used to have 320*200 and 640*400 resolution. With monitor controls you could stretch the picture to 4:3. And if you displayed 1280*1024 on to a monitor, it would be slightly squished. The correct resoltuon to use was 1280*960. VESA was good. Games didn't need any drivers to use high resolution modes. Flat television monitors still usually resampled the input signal. You sometimes couldn't coax them to display a sharp pixel from a computer.

[@theodanielwollff]

I believe 720P is the starting resolution of "HD". But really it's anything that has progress lines and not interlanced.

[@thelastshadowftaghn]

Just found your wonderful channel

[@RonnieRockafella]

I remember buying my 1st 1080p 42" Vizio tv and playing Avatar on Blu-ray on my PS3 and being blown away 😮 🖥

[@brandonakey6616]

720p is HD

[@mikeuk666]

The FCC includes 1080p in its definition of high-definition (HD) quality video. 1080p is the most widely used HDTV format now, eclipsing 720p.

[@mikeuk666]

18:50

[@NeoAF10]

Fantastic work! A nerdy and very enjoyable video!

[@greg1030]

Cinephiles who enjoy vintage movies and TV shows-more than you might think, and including pro photographers and movie DPs-tried for years but failed to persuade get the TV brands to issue 32" and larger 1080p LEDs and OLEDs in the 4:3 aspect ratio. I'm hoping that when I finally buy my 55" Sony OLED this year with its ultra thin bezel for my usually low lit living room those accursed vertical bars will be barely noticeable.

[@pawer_themaw]

Watching this on a 1080p monitor hits hard

[@__christopher__]

Actually, I had long wondered why they chose 720x576 instead of 768x576 for (PAL) DV video (the latter would have resulted in square pixels for 4:3 aspect ratio). Now it makes sense. Thank you.

[@StringerNews1]

So much that's just factually wrong. Skip it.

[@jpt3640]

Could you please find out why TVs to this day do overscan, ie drop a significant amount of the picture by default? Which does not make any sense in the digital world. And why to disable overscan you do not go to the picture menu but have to do a thorough search through all of the TV's settings?

[@boilerhousegarage]

Are the resolutions of VHS, Betamax, Laserdisc, CDi/VCD, DVD, Bluray measured differently? If you had this 1080p Sony TV in 1988, what exactly could you do with it, as none of the home media could display it? I'm totally lost on most of this and even my Japanese Panasonic 3DO console has a switch on the back to display 360p or 480i (I think, the p and i could be the other way around) and I've absolutely no idea what it does.

[@lucasrem]

You forgot that we already did laserdisc HD, Satellite TV too. Should i make aa video about early HD myself ? Digital TV cards, large Computer monitors did the job, some Philips and Sony TV could do HDTV too, using computer standard connections over BNC

[@wiiztec]

12:01 why does nobody ever color correct before doing comparisons like this?

[@Patrick_AUBRY]

14:00 Now a days at least, its call HD thin raster in the digital domain. It was used by the HDCAM format, the non SR one witch is full resolution.

[@paolozago6123]

I remember than on the A1200 dblpal modes you could set a full overscan resolution of 768x576, which on a decent monitor could give you 1:1 pixel aspect ratio in 4:3, that was great for productivity work, so close to the 800x600 that was common on PC at the time.

[@shalpp]

Holy fuck I love these videos so much

[@robcat2075]

2:08 I've never heard any claim that the frame rate was reduced to 29.97 for the purpose of freeing up bandwidth to carry the color signal. That 1/10th of a percent change would be insignificant for such a purpose.

[@gamecubeplayer]

the audio carrier frequency needed to be an integer multiple of the line rate (15khz) in order to avoid color interference so the frame rate (line rate) was reduced by 0.1% to make it match

[@robcat2075]

@@gamecubeplayer variations of that... I've heard a million times before. However, that is completely different from the claim that it was done to free up bandwidth. BTW, no one ever demonstrated that the alleged color interference problem would really happen. It was speculated, not observed.

[@randymarsh3432]

rule of thumb for movie makers should be maximum possible resolution for mastering- even if its too much today, it could be too little tomorrow. given how its easy to downscale but upscaling just turns things mushy- wish a few movies did that from the outset as yt vids showing faked 4k upscale is telling.

[@iganas88]

Where did you get that Šilelis from @3.00 ?

[@Derpy1969]

Did I miss the part where you described how 16:9 was selected as the aspect ratio for, well… everything?

[@eDoc2020]

Yes you did. It was briefly touched on in this video but more thoroughly discussed in the previous one. Short version: some guy made a chart of existing formats and decided 16:9 was a decent compromise.

[@wilsonj4705]

19:41 I figured 1920x1080 would be closer to 80% by now

[@BasVoet]

Nice, informative video! Thanks.

[@xoomayose]

What is the name of the DOS program that appears in 7:04 ?

[@h8GW]

It still feels weird to me that any region of a modern game console in can work with any modern TV anywhere in the world.

[@RotcodFox]

1280x1024 is effectively the same quality as 1920x1080, except that it's 4:3. Their quality would be impossible for the human eye to tell any difference at all

[@voxelHD]

kinda, 1600x1200 has similar quality to 1920x1080 (in terms of total pixels)

[@svr5423]

yeah, FHD was only wider. That's why "HD Ready" panels look really cheap, coming from a standard 1280x1024 CRT.

[@tutacat]

Good to know every monitor is now nostalgia.

[@steevjobs6608]

I love the term 4k (4K?), covers all manner resolutions, the minimum resolution for 4k (4K) is 1440p because you can fit 4 720p images on a 1440p screen, okay that's the 4 sorted, just slap a k (K) after it and sell it for twice the price. I always thought the k stood for 1000, 1024 maybe (that's kilo and kibi) but what do i know, and when did they start using the horizontal pixel count instead of the vertical. I'm so glad my 27" screen is only 24.5" wide.

[@jwillisbarrie]

Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf

[@Gunbudder]

i remember the first 720p/1080i LED TV i got! i was so excited that the xbox 360 could output 1080i, i didn't care it was interlaced lol. for the most part, 1080p is still more than enough resolution for most uses. there is a nifty formula for viewing distance vs resolution and almost all houses don't have a room big enough or a wall big enough to warrant a screen more than 1080p

[@KaitouKaiju]

The main reason for 4k over 1080p is finer contrast, which is especially apparent in an HDR or OLED display You get much smoother shading and gradients

[@NiceLittleLeprechaun]

Oh, Delta Force

[@Manata1983]

Good Stuff! 👍 I Just Love KZbin for Things Like this .... Thank you 😘

[@Oystein87]

In 16:9 format then it is: HD = 1280x720, Full HD (2K) 1920x1080, Quad HD (QHD/2,5K) = 2560x1440 and UHD 4K = 3840x2160 and so on.

[@kitty.miracle]

To get an idea what damned place I grew up in, until 2012 I only had a 3:4 crt tv and my pc monitor was a 16:10 1680x1050 until late 2016.

[@ZEZlMA]

Wtf you had 1680x1050 on a crt...?

[@Tom2112Tom]

God bless VESA! If you lived through the pre-VESA video resolution standards era, you understand why it was so significant to computing and gaming. The industry was, frankly, a complete mess. VESA made all of that go away.

[@thygrrr]

I think this took a lot of time to make, so I'm doubly sorry to say it's a video that should not have passed quality control. There are several illiustrations that are just wrong, for example visualizing columns instead of lines,and vice versa in several stages. Most of the footage feel like unrelated stock-like material of something that vaguely *resembles* the concept being discussed, but not the actual concept. For example, showing a stylized Trinitron mask when discussing the general topic of dot pitch.