Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (14573)	12/1/1997 5:52:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Respond to of 24154

>>>Very briefly, 12 lines of text. That, at full screen And yet, as I have said before, it doesn't need to be like that. I have worked on systems that interfaced to TV's for a long time now, and you can do nearly a full page with the right technology. 480 visible vertical scan lines equals 48 lines of text at ten vertical pixels each. Since TV has about a million colors (effectively, not theoretically), you can antialias that text for even better apparent resolution than the 10 pixels per character vertical. You need to control the colors to reduce interlace flicker, especially on older/cheaper TV sets, but it can be done. I have a 1985 Targa board in a drawer here that could do that trick. Plus, of course, have a decent GUI for the TV paint program and so on. It's whole GUI with text and little icons runs on the TV screen, just fine. They can do better, with just a little effort. Don't write that off. This is old technology. In fact in the late 70's and early 80's a number of companies made dual use monitor/tv tubes. The early overhead video projectors used in seminars to display computer screens often were actually NTSC tv, with the higher res (800x600) windows screens antialiased in RGB and resuced in size to 486x720 so effectively that it was hard to tell the difference on a good set. The problem with resolution that I see is that of comfortable viewing distance. This will be a problem even with HDTV. The distance you would watch a movie at is not the distance you would write a letter at, at any resolution, unless you have a 40 inch screen. Which is what real flexible dual use probably requires. Living room furniture not usually having wheels and typing tables and so forth. Web TV and its relatives may have problems, but pixels for text does not have to be one of them. Unless they use all newbie programmers who started post-1987 and haven't seen all these old tricks. But I would bet on them getting it right eventually. Question is just: How many people want to type on their TV set? Chaz