Re: xkcd: CrowdStrike

On 2024-08-08 17:56:57 +0000, Paul S Person said:

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024 11:44:43 +1200, Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com>
wrote:

On 2024-08-07 15:46:58 +0000, Paul S Person said:

 

<snip>

An early review in /Consumer Reports/ when "3D" TVs first came out
talked about a system where the two images were interlaced on the same
screen. Which, of course, halves the vertical resolution. I don't
recall them mentioning glasses, and, since this reads a lot like
interlacing, perhaps not.
 The review had something to say about the glasses that came with most
of those sets -- the ones costing $150 or so 24 years or so ago,
exactly one of which came with each set. In addition to the cost and
the need to buy more if you wanted to share the experience, they noted
that the little flaps that moved up and down to control which eye
could see the screen sometimes froze, producing imperfections.
 This was /not/, apparently, what was used in theaters; there,
polarized glasses were used. But those cost a lot less than the
"flicker glasses" (my name, I don't recall what the official name was)
and would work with any "3D" TV, not just the one it came with. So
those were clearly out as far as home use was concerned.
 Add to those the red/green glasses DVD version, and we have no less
than /3/ ways to see "3D" movies -- and the only one that is the same
in the home as it is in the theater is the red/green version from the
50s [2]. This is progress?
 [1] Or not. My current TV (a digital Toshiba from 20+ years ago with
one tube: the picture tube) has a "DTV" option and the manual defines
it as "Digital TV" but says nothing else about it, so I have no idea
at all what it is supposed to connect to despite reading the manual.
 [2] Unless, of course, current "3D" TVs are using polarized glasses.
Or other changes have occurred that I am happily ignorant of.

 There were TVs that had a no-glasses 3D feature, but like all 3D, it's become a fad that has pretty much disappeared for watching and has now shifted to 3D audio instead.

 Well, they tried anyway.

There are small companies still working on 3D devices, including the Proto "holographic" box, but the big TV companies gave up on 3D a few years ago. You might still get the occasional 3D DVD / Blu-ray being released and many player boxes can play them on any regular high resolution TV set or computer screen.

It occurred to me eventually that, while doing that with a 1920x1080 signal would produce a vertical resolution of 540 [1], doing it with 4K (3840 × 2160) would produce a vertical resolution of 1080, which might be more acceptable.
 4K appears to be the new fad

4K is ancient tech.
8K is now the main fad for manufacturers with 16K TV sets now appearing, and 32K ones are in the prototyping stage. But such super high resolutions are mostly just another gimmick trying to con people into buying yet another new TV set they do not need since few networks broadcast / stream in even 4K and nobody does higher. Plus 4K resolution is more than enough unless you've got a massive TV or projector screen.

-- historically speaking, of course. I couple of nights ago I watched a "trailer" at the start of a DVD (probably a good 10 years old now) that compared a normal BD image with a 4K image to show how much better (the number of colors available was particularly stressed) the latter was. Of course, since this was on a /DVD/ the alleged 4K image was, at best, at maximal DVD
resolution/number of colors, and the so-called "normal BD" image was
simply the same image degraded. Why they would expect anyone to be
impressed by this I have no idea.
 Of course, when the the same thing was done to show the superiority of
digital scanning, /that/ could well have been real (that is, had two
different images, one scanned one way, one another) because the
difference was in how the source was scanned, not what was displaying
it. OTOH, the VHS trailers touting the superiority of DVD were just as
unimpressive as the BD/4K one referred to above.
 I do not see anything intrinsically wrong with a player being able to
handle "3D" discs (either as "3D" or as flat or either at the user's
option) or a TV being able to process "3D" input as a change in how
things are made over time. Progress is one thing; nonsense is another.
 [1] As usual, I can find info in the format desired by the author but
not by me. I am taking it for granted that, since 16:9, like 4:3,
specifies the width first and height second, that the smaller figure
is vertical (so that 1920x1080 has 1080 vertical lines).