Color Television Sets Research Articles

Influence of television on photosensitive epileptics.

We examined 32 epileptics (20 female; 12 male; aged 6-73 years) who had displayed photoconvulsive reactions to flickering light in the EEG; they were examined with regard to their risks of getting epileptic seizures upon watching television (TV) under certain conditions. On a colour TV set each patient was shown a 3-min videofilm with slow- and fast-moving parts under 16 different conditions. The conditions had the following variables: (1) colour - monochrome; (2) dark room - light room, and (3) four different distances from the screen. In addition, each patient was subjected for 3 min to manipulated image interferences, including the vertical rolling of the picture. The results of this TV stimulation were always negative, i.e. in no patient did TV provoke a reproducible paroxysmal discharge in the EEG, nor was there any epileptic seizure. Our findings are discussed in connection with the corresponding literature.

Measurement of the Effective Dose Equivalent Due to Low Energy X Rays Emitted from Video Display Terminals and Colour Television Sets

For the measurement of low energy X rays emitted by CRT devices at dose rate levels of 1 nSv.h-1, two different techniques have been used: a phoswich detector inside a steel-shielded room, and a large-area xenon proportional counter for in situ surveys in the workplace. Using a detector-to-screen distance of 5 cm, the area dose rate has been converted into effective dose equivalent. A survey program of 44 VDTs and 65 colour TV sets resulted in annual dose values of 12 nSv for VDT operators and 3.3 nSv for TVs, which is nearly five order of magnitude below the exposure due to natural radiation background.

Consumer electronics [developments in 1985

In reviewing developments in 1985, it is pointed out that few years in the recent past lacked an attempt by manufacturers to open up at least one new product category-8 mm videocassettes, compact disk audio, stereo television broadcasting, laser disk video-attempts that were more or less successful. But in 1985 manufacturers introduced nothing radically `new'. Instead, they came up with novel ways to exploit or alter the existing technologies. They discovered that a 2-hour 8-mm videocassette could double as a 24-hour high-fidelity audio tape. And compact disks, introduced to audiophiles several years ago, turned out to be an excellent medium for computer data storage. Conventional color television sets were made in different shapes and larger sizes, and CD players were made smaller.

Microprocessor-Based Television Games, Exercises, and Evaluation Procedures for the Physically and Mentally Handicapped

We describe here techniques designed to aid both the physically and mentally handicapped. T.V. games and exercises for the handicapped have been designed and tested with patients. The system initially consisted of a central game box with a microprocessor, interchangeable memory cards, and body joint angle transducers which operate with a standard color television set. Associated software and additional transducers have been developed. The transducers used to date include lightpens, potentiometers, joysticks, the computer mouse and pressure sensors. All games and exercises developed have varying degrees of therapeutic, diagnostic, entertainment and educational value, although the emphasis has been on the therapeutic and diagnostic applications.

Survivors of industry shake‐outs: The case of the U.S. color television set industry

AbstractIn this article survivors and non‐survivors of the ‘shake‐out’ in the U.S. color television set industry are compared to determine how and along what dimensions these two classes of businesses differ. Two types of strategy variables are used in 18 hypotheses to probe similarities and differences at both the ‘corporate level’ and ‘business level’ of strategy. Significant differences are found, particularly at the business level. The findings are consistent with those of previous strategy research, but suggest that traditional wisdom regarding size, low costs and market share did not necessarily hold in this industry.

Design considerations of NAPLPS, the data syntax for VIDEOTEX and TELETEXT in North America

Two new information services, VIDEOTEX and TELETEXT, are now being introduced in the United States and Canada. Both are aimed at displaying frames of information retrieved from a database on a color TV set augmented by logic and memory. The frames are mixtures of characters and graphics. Both services have a very friendly user interface. Distinctions between the two lie in the transmission medium used and the extent of and degree of interaction with the database. TELETEXT uses broadcast TV channels and permits retrieval from a small database. VIDEOTEX uses telephone or other data communication lines and allows extensive interaction with a conceptually unlimited database. This paper focuses on design considerations and features for the recently adopted standard, North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax (NAPLPS). This new standard specifies the data syntax for the encoding of textual and pictorial information in both VIDEOTEX and TELETEXT services in North America. These services were originally introduced in Europe using alphamosaic formats. Characteristics of the American and Canadian environment that have motivated the new standard to include both alphamosaic and alphageometric formats are examined. The paper concludes with a look at possible additions to NAPLPS.

Kinelaryngoscopy for documentation of laryngeal pathophysiology.

Viewing the larynx has been revolutionized by the advent of the flexible fiberoptic nasopharyngolaryngoscope. For the first time a subject may inspire, expire, cough, swallow, phonate sounds, words, sentences, passages, and sing in full voice as examination and photodocumentation procede. Combining the flexible fiberoptic nasopharyngolaryngoscope with a home video camera, a standard fiberoptic light source, a standard videotape recorder, and a standard color TV set, the author details a method for the production of color and sound videotapes of the larynx in action. The video images are of excellent quality, and may be made in straightforward and economical manner. In fact, the entire array of instrumentation, including the flexible fiberoptic nasopharyngolaryngoscope, light source, video camera, lens, adapter, camera mount, videotape recorder, and TV set may be purchased for significantly less than the cost of the camera that most physicians use for endoscopic photography. The concept of flexible fiberoptic examination of the larynx and videophotodocumentation of the larynx in respiratory, sphincteric, and phonatory action shall be referred to as "kinelaryngoscopy."

Monolithic Filter and its Application to TV MPX Sound Decoder IC

In addition to giving the best possible picture and sound quality, today's color TV set is also required to absorb all of the reception expansions, such as sound multiplex, teletext, be able to be interfaced with video recorders and videotex, etc. The color TV is expected to do all this without a great increase in cost, and, of course, at a low failure level. The fundamental parts of the color TV system need to be standardized. If the signal processing parts were standardized, dimensions and power consumption decreased, these parts could be used in all sets, even pocket-sized televisions, and the number of engineers working on these fundamental systems could be reduced.

On some beneficial implications of videotex for society

The idea behind videotex is to create (by combining colour TV sets with some further electronics) computer terminals for everyone which (by using existing phone lines) permit omnipresent access to a network of computers, providing informational, communicational, transactional and computational services of a wide variety. In many countries videotex tends to be pushed mainly by the PTT's (to increase usage of telephone lines and related items), by TV manufacturers (to get sluggish sales of colour TVs moving again), by electronic and computer companies (to sell further equipment), by advertising agencies (to exploit a new market), by stores (to find new ways of attracting customers), by banks (to increase their shares in electronic fund transfers), and so on. Thus it is not suprising to sometimes hear cynics claim that videotex is not at all a feature desired by consumers (or even desirable) but a new gadget forced on the citizen, like it or not. Indeed, it is sometimes stated that videotex is just one step further in the direction of an over-electronisized society, a further development assuring that people, more and more, become inactive, passive consumers of electronic entertainment, living a ‘second-hand life’ (rather than having first-hand experiences), turning into ‘vegetables rooted to their TV chairs’. That such views overlook the dramatic positive aspects of videotex has been explained in a number of other places. In this paper we focus attention on three such areas whose importance has not been recognized to the extent we believe is necessary.

The Relative Suitability of Four Dot--Matrix Sizes for Text Presentation on Color Television Screens

Characters with four dot--matrix sizes (5 x 7, 7 x 9, 9 x 13, and 11 x 15) were tested as to their suitability for the presentation of characters on standard home color television sets. Subjects performed five different tasks and rated the various character sizes. Their qualitative performance for all tasks was the same with each of the different character sizes; the amount of time necessary to complete the tasks, however, varied up to more than 20%. In all tasks, the worst performance was obtained with the smallest character size. Since the 9- x -13 character size was rated significantly better than the smaller character sizes, we recommend that this size be used for text display on color television screens.

New Color TV Receiver With Composite SAW IF Filter Separating the Sound and Picture Signals

Numerous researches and developments of Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) TV IF filter have been performed for cost reduction and improvement of reliability of TV circuit. Under these circumstances we reported in 1978 that we had established the design and the fabrication techniques of the SAW IF filter-low noise amplifier system in massproduction size, and put it into the market. This year we have completed a high performance TV IF circuit for sound multiplexing broadcasting, which consists of a more advanced SAW filter. The signal detections are individually performed by the interearrier signal in IF without any external signal. This paper describes the design techniques of newly developed composite SAW IF filter, which is the key device to realize the new circuit and the sound-picture-color crossbeat interferences to picture and sound quality in color TV sets.

Videotex and the disabled

The potential of videotex for use by the disabled, and problems in the use of videotex by the disabled are summarized and discussed. Videotex is a system which allows users to access a powerful central computer over the telephone lines using a keypad or keyboard for input and a colour television set for output. In the home, office or hospital, the disabled will have access to information retrieval, electronic mail, teleshopping, games and computer aided instruction, as well as environmental monitoring and control using widely available, low cost equipment. The special problems of input and output of videotex by blind, deaf and motor impaired individuals are discussed. Various hardware (i.e. equipment) and software (i.e. programming) techniques to overcome these problems are described.

Office Information Systems research and development projects in Europe (Invited)

In Europe most research projects in the area of Office Information Systems are concentrated around public communication services and transmission networks. Very few projects exist in what we call the Automated Office of the Future. In the first category, known as TELEMATIQUE, we find the videotex services, which consist of data banks connected to public networks and offering access to residential users through their color TV sets. A second service, called TELETEX, will start soon in different European countries to replace the present telex service with some kind of communicating word processors. All these projects are sponsored by the PTT and operate according to a set of standards elaborated by the CCITT. On the other hand, true Office Information Systems projects, which are tailored to the private users and organizations needs, are very rare. Some manufacturers are working on new word processors combining data processing and text processing, with voice input for command, and voice output for signalling. Local networks have been built in different research centers and have been produced by local manufacturers and distributed on national basis (e.g., Cambridge Ring in England, Danube in France, and Cobus in Switzerland). While manufacturers as ICL, Thomson, Siemens, Olivetti are announcing products with many components imported from the U.S., the research community has been very active in exploring new approaches for O.I.S. Under the sponsorship of the CEC, a group of researchers from France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, U.K., are working on the interconnection of Heterogeneous message systems, where the most difficult problems reside in the naming strategy to adopt, the conversion between message format, the high level protocols to implement. Two research centers in Switzerland and in France, have been building workstations for the office. The first one has produced a portable personnel computer with text editor (Smaky - Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne), and the second has built a sophisticated workstation with many integrated services (Burovlseur of the Kayak project - INRIA, France). In addition, a complete prototype of O.I.S. is under development in this project. Other work is undertaken by different research centers on issues related to O.I.S. (Queen Mary College - London; GMC, HMI and the University of Hamburg - Germany; INRIA, IMAG, SUPELEC, UPS - France .... ). In this presentation, we will give a summary of the work that has been accomplished and the future of some of the projects.

External Search: The Role of Consumer Beliefs

A survey of 164 recent purchasers of color television sets shows that consumer beliefs about the marketplace and about their capabilities as consumers accounted for 50% of the variance in extent of external search. Also, the type of brand (domestic, foreign, or private) and the type of store (national, regional, or local) considered by a consumer are found to be significantly related to the beliefs held.

Graphics and Animation by Personal Computer

The use of digital computers in the visual arts began in the early 1960s. Now this is a common field for their application. A substantial number of articles describing such artworks have appeared in Leonardo, and some are reprinted in Ref. 1. I have written three articles myself on the subject, which were published in German (2-4). Generally, such work is done on large computers to which a small number of artists have access. More recently, however, small, rather inexpensive digital computers, called personal computers or home computers, have become available. They are widely used in account keeping, text editing, game playing, learning and control- ling the operation of electrical and of mechanical devices. They can also be applied in the production both of music and of artistic graphics and will undoubtedly be widely used by artists in the future. Thanks to today's technology of micro-electronics, their tiny integrated circuits or chips give them a computing power approaching that of very large expensive machines. The personal computers are not much larger than a typewriter. They consist of a keyboard of letters and numbers and combined units of electronic parts, such as a microprocessor, a memory device and input-output circuits; sometimes a monitor or CRT screen is added to the computer housing. The monitor can be used to display letters, words, text and numbers hand-typed on the keyboard. It serves also as the output for showing the results of computations, which may be in the form of text, numbers or graphics (points, lines and areas). A commercial home color television set may be used as the monitor for some types of personal computer.

The case for the fusion hybrid

The use of nuclear fusion to produce fuel for nuclear fission power stations is discussed in the context of a crucial need for future energy options. The fusion hybrid is first considered as an element in the future of nuclear fission power to provide long term assurance of adequate fuel supplies for both breeder and convertor reactors. Generic differences in neutronic characteristics lead to a fuel production potential of fusion-fission hybrid systems which is significantly greater than that obtainable with fission systems alone. Furthermore, cost benefit studies show a variety of scenarios in which the hybrid offers sufficient potential to justify development costs ranging in the tens of billions of dollars. The hybrid is then considered as an element in the ultimate development of fusion electric power. The hybrid offers a near term application of fusion where experience with the requisite technologies can be derived as a vital step in mapping a credible route to eventual commercial feasibility of “pure” fusion systems. Finally, the criteria for assessment of future energy options are discussed with prime emphasis on the need for rational comparison of alternatives. This approach is contrasted with the dual standard too often used in judging the risks and benefits of nuclear power where, for example, rather minor radiological effects are highlighted while much larger exposures to radiation from medical x-rays, airplane travel, color television sets, etc., are ignored. It is concluded that the fusion hybrid deserves a prominent place among new energy resources but that early attention to insure an adequately informed public is a vital ingredient in assuring reasonable prospects of success.

Automatic Production System for Circuit Boards With Universal HybridIntegrated Circuits

In the 1970′s, much development occurred in monolithic IC′s and automatic insertion machines, which brought about extensive changes among mass producers of electronic consumer products and greatly influenced the improvement of quality and the saving of labor in production. The challenges of the next era are the achievement of the following four objectives in addition to the quality improvement and labor saving objectives involved in the recent decade. 1) The efficient use of material resources to eliminate waste, 2) elevation of reliability, 3) striving for uniform specifications for components on a worldwide basis to achieve more rational and efficient operations, and 4) the creation of unique products through new mounting and assembly techniques. Towards these objectives, a unique technology has been developed which has been named ‘universal hybrid integrated circuits’ (UHIC), for which the automatic production system has been put into practical use. The various components used in assembling through this system are cylindrical in shape and entirely new in concept. They are called ‘metal electrode facebonding’ (MELF) type components. The new production system has the capacity of mounting 600 components simultaneously and can handle circuit boards up to a size of 330 millimeters per side. This means that a stereo unit or a color television set can easily be assembled on one circuit board, which could be called “all‐in‐one UHIC”.

A Bayesian Test of the Product Life Cycle Hypothesis as Applied to the U.S. Demand for Color-TV Sets

A Bayesian Test of the Product Life Cycle Hypothesis as Applied to the U.S. Demand for Color-TV Sets

Teletext and Viewdata Costs as Applied to the U.S. Market

The prime aim of the Teletext and Viewdata systems in the UK has been to create a significant new market in the home for digital systems based around the domestic colour tv set. To achieve a major penetration of the market, particular attention was taken in formulating the systems specification to achieve simplicity for user operation and minimum decoder costs. At the same time, considerable degrees of freedom have been retained for future evolution without making existing decoders obsolete.

Real-time transmission of 3-D images formed by parallax panoramagrams

Theoretical and experimental investigations on the real-time transmission of 3-D images formed by parallax panoramagrams are described. At the image-taking station, a 3-D image is optically decomposed into line images, which can be directly handled by a high resolution TV set. By registering a lenticular sheet to the reproduced line images on a monitor screen, the reconstructed 3-D image is seen by the naked eye. By using an ordinary color TV set with a 350-line resolution and a cylindrical lens array with a 3-mm pitch, 3-D color images composed of thirty-five elements in the horizontal direction and seen from four directions are successfully transmitted and reconstructed with clear parallax.