Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television/Broadcast engineering and technology task force

Language and Naming Conventions
I suggest that we use American English names and descriptions for technical aspects of television, with the explicit exception of colour or analogue when referring to technologies that are based almost entirely outside of North America (examples include PAL, SECAM, and SCART). --tonsofpcs (Talk) 03:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC), edited before any replies: tonsofpcs (Talk) 03:47, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, American English. However focus should be more on improving quality, not just converting articles to American English. —IncidentFlux [ TalkBack 10:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * This suggestion wasn't meant to be explicitly more important than any other, but it needed to be said, lest we would have issues later on. Any problem is a problem, no matter how small, and I hope that this taskforce can relieve many of them.  -tonsofpcs (Talk) 01:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Analog television systems and color encoding schemes.
I suggest that we use the following conventions:
 * NTSC to reference the current NTSC system (2 fields per frame, 30*1000/1001 frames per second, 525 lines) and current NTSC standard color encoding used together
 * NTSC color to reference the NTSC standard color encoding either alone or used with another system
 * NTSC system to reference the current NTSC system
 * NTSC black and white system, black and white NTSC, or original NTSC to reference the original NTSC system (2 fields per frame, 30 frames per second, 525 lines)
 * PAL to reference the PAL colour system
 * SECAM to reference the SECAM (colour) system
 * B/D/G/I/K to reference the system commonly used with PAL (2 fields per frame, 25 frames per second, 625 lines)
 * The individual system letters to reference individual systems. NOT using M for the NTSC system
 * NTSC-J to reference the 0-IRE based Japanese NTSC variant, including both color and system information
 * more naming conventions are needed, but this is the basis, please comment on this.
 * --tonsofpcs (Talk) 04:05, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I dont know how much I could really help
I am more familiar with distribution than the actual platforms... but, I do enjoy templating so if you would like I can throw together a couple of templates for ya. for example, here is a userbox you could use if you want

if you want I can add that as a sub page for the task force. I can also create one for talk pages to explain when an article is within the scope of your task force.

Other than that I may could help you with a few articles about distribution if you want. I am not as familiar with NTSC and PAL and have nothing really to add those those subjects but let me know, I have this page watched so I will see it if you reply here. %% -SYKKO- %% (talk to me) 20:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I am withdrawing from all projects that I have joined so I will be withdrawing from this one as well. I wish you the best of luck with your editing %% -SYKKO- %% (talk to me) 20:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Resolutions, comparisons, and non-square pixels
The community should come to a consensus on how to handle issues of analog resolution, pixel resolution, comparisons thereof, and how to handle non-square pixels and comparison thereof. Please leave suggestions and discuss these issues. --tonsofpcs (Talk) 18:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I am not sure where it applies, and am unfamiliar with the subject either way... can you show me examples of where a decision could benifit an article? That may help me to understand what it is that we intend to decide on and will give me a chance to do more research on the subject. %% -SYKKO- %% (talk to me) 18:53, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Can you explain what you mean? It seems to me that digital display resolution, with rectangular pixels, can best be described by its size in pixels, including the aspect ratio of the pixels themselves, I suppose. For analog resolution, MTF is the most complete description. One could list the spatial frequency at which the MTF drops below 50%, for example. I haven't seen any good discussion of how to compare the two. There is Kell factor, but that page doesn't define the term well and I haven't found any descriptions that do the concept justice. In the end, it seems that digital displays have the interesting property that they can display sharp edges exactly, so long as those lines are pixel-aligned. —Ben FrantzDale (talk) 00:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The main issue doesn't seem to be in describing them as we can all agree that DV supports video that is 720 pixels wide x 480 pixels high with a pixel aspect 0f 0.9 (leading to a 4:3 display) and that VGA is 640x480 with pixel aspect 1 (still 4:3), but how do we compare these three? If you look at various articles and various 'resolution comparison' images over time, they each handle this different ways, almost all of which I believe can be considered wrong from many points of view; there is a need for a standard so that we are consistent.  Honestly, I think we should never compare analog and digital resolutions directly (and numerically) but in articles that need this distinction, discuss the differences and the merits for each, but we do need to come to a consensus as to what to do with varying pixel aspects for digital formats.  --tonsofpcs (Talk) 19:44, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be nice not to need to compare analog and digital devices, but as signals often go between the two, it is hard to escape. Otherwise, if you want one number for a non-square pixel, the geometric mean should be about right. That is, the square root of the area of a pixel. Gah4 (talk) 04:12, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Semi-active
I have marked this task force as semi-active because I am here and because I have invited others to join. We'll see what happens. ~Kvng (talk) 20:37, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

I need help re "lines of resolution" vs "scan lines"
Editor keeps asserting that the S-VHS (talk) article is wrong in its resolution claims.

Rocklaw keeps changing e.g. the "330" figure for NTSC's lines of horizontal resolution per picture height to 480, stating ~"NTSC had [sic] 525 scan lines and about 480 visible!" Well, it does, but...

To her/his credit, Rocklaw did start a section at talk:S-VHS. But then s/he ignored my explanation there and continued to edit the article per the mistaken belief that the claim of "330 lines" was talking about the horizontal scan lines.

Please see history at S-VHS and the talk page discussion.

If a few technically knowledgeable people can back me up (and help keep the article correct, because I'm close to 3RR today) that'd be great. Jeh (talk) 22:53, 25 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, that has now been resolved, but now is adding to the page with confusion about how "lines" are counted.  Jeh (talk) 02:31, 26 May 2018 (UTC)


 * OK, not disagreeing on the 330, but why do you think it is 330? Seems to me that with vidicon type sources, and CRT displays, that the spot size could easily be big enough to only claim 330. But with high resolution CCD or CMOS sensors, and LCD displays, you should be able to get close to 480. If you take a higher resolution digital image, and properly (I don't know that anyone does it) low-pass filter it, you should be able to get darn close. (The math for sharp digital filters is well known, but it is a lot of computation.) Gah4 (talk) 04:07, 26 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Also, the number of scan lines would give vertical resolution. Gah4 (talk) 04:14, 26 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I've replied at the subject thread. Jeh (talk) 19:20, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

SMPTE M
Per, "M" designations have been removed from standards names. Do we want to rename a bunch of articles and links? I'm happy to do the work but want to raise it here before doing all that and having it reverted for some unforeseen reason. Contents of SMPTE standards will give you an idea of the extent of the changes. ~Kvng (talk) 16:43, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Inactive?
has changed project status from semi-active to inactive. Don't turn the lights out, I'm still here. Is anyone else? ~Kvng (talk) 14:39, 16 November 2022 (UTC)