WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.089 --> 00:00:03.690 In this video, I’d like to revisit a concept from my television series. 00:00:03.690 --> 00:00:07.720 I created this thumbnail for my video explaining analog color TV, 00:00:07.720 --> 00:00:10.230 and it’s been causing debate ever since. 00:00:10.230 --> 00:00:14.120 Though I had hoped my video on Trinitron would help illustrate my point and put the debate 00:00:14.120 --> 00:00:18.039 to rest, there was and is still much debate in the comments. 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:23.289 It seems this debate comes mostly from semantics, and I’ll admit I see a gap in my explanation. 00:00:23.289 --> 00:00:24.410 So let’s try again. 00:00:24.410 --> 00:00:26.180 This is the TV in my kitchen. 00:00:26.180 --> 00:00:29.949 Like any TV on sale today, it produces an image by manipulating the brightness of many 00:00:29.949 --> 00:00:35.300 thousands (and these days millions) of individual picture elements called pixels, which is actually 00:00:35.300 --> 00:00:37.480 just short for picture element. 00:00:37.480 --> 00:00:41.130 There are a few different technologies in use these days, but at their core their job 00:00:41.130 --> 00:00:46.620 is to produce a set brightness value for the red, green, and blue components of each pixel. 00:00:46.620 --> 00:00:51.680 These are called subpixels, and in many LCD panels each subpixel is actually further divided 00:00:51.680 --> 00:00:53.820 into sub-sub pixels. 00:00:53.820 --> 00:00:58.210 This probably increases the total number of discrete brightnesses each color can make, 00:00:58.210 --> 00:01:03.379 and thus allows for more precise control over the panel and a larger number of possible colors. 00:01:03.379 --> 00:01:06.179 Someone please correct me if that’s not what the subdivisions do. 00:01:06.180 --> 00:01:10.320 The combination of red, green, and blue can create what appears to our eyes to be any color, 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:13.860 because the way we perceive color (for those of us with normal trichromatic color 00:01:13.869 --> 00:01:18.240 vision, anyway) is through the ratio of stimulation between the three different cone cells in 00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:19.549 our eyes. 00:01:19.549 --> 00:01:23.900 Their primary sensitivities are red, green, and blue, so by using just these three colors, 00:01:23.900 --> 00:01:29.090 we can activate the cone cells in any given ratio and thus produce any apparent color. 00:01:29.090 --> 00:01:33.679 This biology hack is the result of the overlapping sensitivities of each cone cell. 00:01:33.679 --> 00:01:37.450 For example, yellow light stimulates both the red and green cone cells in your eyes 00:01:37.450 --> 00:01:42.109 roughly equally, as both of these cells can detect this wavelength of light. 00:01:42.109 --> 00:01:45.720 This means that to recreate what we see as yellow light, we don’t need to actually 00:01:45.720 --> 00:01:47.869 reproduce the same wavelength of light. 00:01:47.869 --> 00:01:52.229 Instead, we can artificially stimulate the red and green cone cells with just red and 00:01:52.229 --> 00:01:56.549 green light, and so long as the red and green cells receive the same relative stimulation 00:01:56.549 --> 00:02:00.200 as they did with honest-to-goodness yellow light, the brain can’t tell the difference 00:02:00.200 --> 00:02:02.020 and thinks it’s yellow. 00:02:02.020 --> 00:02:06.140 Simply outputting red, green, and blue light can produce any color to our eyes because 00:02:06.140 --> 00:02:10.310 when combined, it can produce the same ratios of stimulation between the three cone cells 00:02:10.310 --> 00:02:11.739 that any real color would. 00:02:11.739 --> 00:02:17.069 Anyway, the microprocessors inside this television are working together to make it all...happen, 00:02:17.069 --> 00:02:21.060 and the main image processor can tell the panel exactly what to do. 00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:25.700 The image on screen is coming from a Chromecast, and through the HDMI port on the television, 00:02:25.700 --> 00:02:31.019 the Chromecast can tell it exactly what each pixel needs to do to make this image, and 00:02:31.019 --> 00:02:33.599 the drivers inside the TV will make that happen. 00:02:33.599 --> 00:02:37.719 We can define the resolution of this display by counting how many pixels there are along 00:02:37.719 --> 00:02:38.719 each edge. 00:02:38.719 --> 00:02:42.480 I’d rather not actually do that, so I’ll just recite the specs here and tell you that 00:02:42.480 --> 00:02:49.049 there are 1,366 pixels along the bottom and 768 pixels along the sides, yes I know that’s 00:02:49.049 --> 00:02:54.750 not 720P but that’s the panel that’s in here, and that means that there are 1,049,088 00:02:54.750 --> 00:02:56.180 pixels on this screen. 00:02:56.180 --> 00:03:00.709 Generally, resolution is defined as X by Y, so we’d say this panel has a resolution 00:03:00.709 --> 00:03:03.319 of 1366 by 768. 00:03:03.319 --> 00:03:06.079 Now take a look at an old school CRT television. 00:03:06.079 --> 00:03:08.709 Get nice and close to it and you’ll find what appear to be pixels. 00:03:08.709 --> 00:03:11.249 There’s a neat division between red, green, and blue. 00:03:11.249 --> 00:03:14.189 The borders are defined, and it’s forming a grid, almost. 00:03:14.189 --> 00:03:18.400 But, you would be running a fool’s errand if you attempted to count the number of these 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:21.540 “pixels” along the edges to determine this TV’s resolution. 00:03:21.540 --> 00:03:26.040 That’s because these aren’t pixels, and they don’t define its absolute resolution. 00:03:26.040 --> 00:03:28.950 To understand why, you need to look at a black and white television. 00:03:28.950 --> 00:03:31.700 Oh how convenient, a black a white television. 00:03:31.700 --> 00:03:35.719 Now with the set turned off, you can’t see any structure to this screen. 00:03:35.719 --> 00:03:40.180 Going back to the LCD TV, even when it’s off, that grid of pixels is still there. 00:03:40.180 --> 00:03:44.349 You need to shine a bright light onto it to see them, but the pixels are there as physical 00:03:44.349 --> 00:03:45.939 parts of the screen. 00:03:45.939 --> 00:03:48.550 But on this little CRT, there’s no grid to be seen. 00:03:48.550 --> 00:03:49.889 Let’s switch it on. 00:03:49.889 --> 00:03:53.430 With an image now on screen, you should be able to see a series of lines. 00:03:53.430 --> 00:03:55.900 In analog video, this is how the image is drawn. 00:03:55.900 --> 00:03:59.709 See, the CRT only has one “pixel” to deal with. 00:03:59.709 --> 00:04:03.269 At the rear of the picture tube is an electron gun which is projecting a single point of 00:04:03.269 --> 00:04:04.560 light at the screen. 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:09.040 Then, electromagnets in the deflection yoke move this point around the screen very rapidly 00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:10.819 in a pattern called a raster. 00:04:10.819 --> 00:04:14.889 By varying the brightness of the point of light as it moves around the screen, an image 00:04:14.889 --> 00:04:15.969 can be made. 00:04:15.969 --> 00:04:18.949 The image is drawn as a series of stacked horizontal lines. 00:04:18.949 --> 00:04:23.870 In the US, roughly 480 lines are visible on the screen at once, drawn as two fields of 00:04:23.870 --> 00:04:28.060 240 lines 60 times per second as interlaced video. 00:04:28.060 --> 00:04:31.780 This is why standard definition is defined as 480i here in the States. 00:04:31.780 --> 00:04:35.669 I’ve made a video explaining how analog television works in greater detail, which 00:04:35.669 --> 00:04:37.770 can you find up above now or down below later. 00:04:37.770 --> 00:04:40.870 Now, this TV has no idea what it’s doing. 00:04:40.870 --> 00:04:42.340 It doesn’t have a microprocessor. 00:04:42.340 --> 00:04:43.669 It doesn’t have an HDMI port. 00:04:43.669 --> 00:04:47.300 It doesn’t have any digital circuitry of any kind. 00:04:47.300 --> 00:04:51.050 All it’s doing is looking for two pulses in the video signal, the horizontal blanking 00:04:51.050 --> 00:04:54.550 interval and the vertical blanking interval, in order to draw the image in the same place 00:04:54.550 --> 00:04:58.009 on the screen and not have it roll around like this. 00:04:58.009 --> 00:05:02.919 The nature of this signal is analog, and really all the signal does is tell the TV how bright 00:05:02.919 --> 00:05:03.919 to make the image. 00:05:03.919 --> 00:05:07.990 It’s just timed really really well so that each individual part of the screen is drawn 00:05:07.990 --> 00:05:11.590 with the correct brightness, as the position of the point of light is determined by the 00:05:11.590 --> 00:05:14.960 length of time that has elapsed from the start of the frame. 00:05:14.960 --> 00:05:18.669 And to be clear, we’re dealing with tiny fractions of a second since the beam moves 00:05:18.669 --> 00:05:20.000 incredibly quickly. 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:21.669 So then, here’s the challenge. 00:05:21.669 --> 00:05:22.960 Where are the pixels? 00:05:22.960 --> 00:05:24.280 Well, there aren’t any! 00:05:24.280 --> 00:05:28.130 If I change the channel and we take a look at snow, you’ll see that there is no regularity 00:05:28.130 --> 00:05:30.139 whatsoever in this noise. 00:05:30.139 --> 00:05:34.590 If this image was defined by a grid of discrete picture elements, the borders between white 00:05:34.590 --> 00:05:38.830 and black sections should form columns of some sort, or at the very least there should 00:05:38.830 --> 00:05:41.069 be some clear vertical structure visible. 00:05:41.069 --> 00:05:42.069 But there isn’t. 00:05:42.069 --> 00:05:44.580 They appear completely randomly within the line. 00:05:44.580 --> 00:05:48.280 I can tell you exactly where the line is, but I can’t define any separation within 00:05:48.280 --> 00:05:49.539 the line itself. 00:05:49.539 --> 00:05:51.480 That’s completely arbitrary. 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:54.260 Now here’s where the color CRT comes into play. 00:05:54.260 --> 00:05:56.060 Specifically one like this. 00:05:56.060 --> 00:05:59.470 This is a GE television, using a slot-mask CRT. 00:05:59.470 --> 00:06:03.970 Up close, it appears to have a similar grid structure to the LCD TV in my kitchen. 00:06:03.970 --> 00:06:05.920 So then, why aren’t these pixels? 00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:07.680 They’re what make up the image, right? 00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:09.669 Well, no, they aren’t. 00:06:09.669 --> 00:06:11.690 These are actually called phosphor dots. 00:06:11.690 --> 00:06:16.690 What they do is create specific targets for the red, green, and blue electron beams to hit. 00:06:16.690 --> 00:06:20.560 See to make a color image, we need to make a red, green, and blue image, and they need 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:23.780 to be merged together somehow to appear as one. 00:06:23.780 --> 00:06:28.070 In the early days of color TV, there were all sorts of ideas being explored on how to 00:06:28.070 --> 00:06:29.500 produce an RGB image. 00:06:29.500 --> 00:06:33.110 I’ll throw another card up on my playlist on Television, because if this is the sort 00:06:33.110 --> 00:06:35.530 of thing that interests you you can take quite the nerdy deep dive. 00:06:35.530 --> 00:06:40.360 A color CRT is functionally identical to a black and white CRT, but it draws three separate 00:06:40.360 --> 00:06:42.009 images at once. 00:06:42.009 --> 00:06:46.310 Think of it like three picture tubes, one red, one green, and one blue, combined into 00:06:46.310 --> 00:06:48.110 a single picture tube. 00:06:48.110 --> 00:06:52.289 This combined tube has an electron gun for each color, but of course we also need a way 00:06:52.289 --> 00:06:55.560 to separate the colors in order to drive each one on its own. 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:58.200 That’s what the phosphor dots do. 00:06:58.200 --> 00:07:02.639 They separate the face of the tube into a mosaic of red, green, and blue dots. 00:07:02.639 --> 00:07:06.660 The earliest color TVs used a pattern of phosphor dots that looked like this. 00:07:06.660 --> 00:07:09.800 These dots line up with a simple metal sheet just behind them. 00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:10.990 Let me show you what it does. 00:07:10.990 --> 00:07:12.849 Here I have a green flashlight. 00:07:12.849 --> 00:07:16.650 If I shine it at this poster board, it creates a flood of green light. 00:07:16.650 --> 00:07:20.860 But if I place a mask in front of it with a single hole, now the light can only make 00:07:20.860 --> 00:07:25.099 it through in a straight line between the flashlight and the hole, which produces just 00:07:25.099 --> 00:07:26.610 a dot on the poster board. 00:07:26.610 --> 00:07:28.939 Now, here’s a red flashlight. 00:07:28.939 --> 00:07:32.280 Watch what happens when I put it next to the green flashlight. 00:07:32.280 --> 00:07:35.789 Because the red flashlight is in a slightly different position from the green one, the 00:07:35.789 --> 00:07:38.669 light it makes can’t take the same path as the green light. 00:07:38.669 --> 00:07:43.310 It will go through the hole at a different angle, so the dot it produces appears next 00:07:43.310 --> 00:07:44.719 to the green one. 00:07:44.719 --> 00:07:48.720 Now if I add a third, blue flashlight and put it in between the red and the green just 00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:52.960 above them, a blue dot appears below the red and green dots. 00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:56.280 If I take the mask away, it creates just a wash of white light. 00:07:56.280 --> 00:08:00.150 But with the mask in place, it produces three small dots of light in the same arrangement 00:08:00.150 --> 00:08:03.580 as the flashlights themselves, though it’s mirrored and upside down. 00:08:03.580 --> 00:08:07.330 If I add a second hole the to mask, the same pattern appears right next to the first set 00:08:07.330 --> 00:08:08.430 of dots. 00:08:08.430 --> 00:08:12.370 If I keep going and make a bunch of small holes in this offset pattern, what we get 00:08:12.370 --> 00:08:15.490 is a mosaic pattern of red, green, and blue dots. 00:08:15.490 --> 00:08:19.539 This is happening because the flashlights are arranged in a triangle, and at every hole 00:08:19.539 --> 00:08:25.090 in the mask the beams converge and cross over to project the opposite image on the screen. 00:08:25.090 --> 00:08:28.169 Notice how similar this pattern is to this color CRT. 00:08:28.169 --> 00:08:32.220 See, if I aim these three flashlights together at the poster board, their beams just blend 00:08:32.220 --> 00:08:34.470 together and make what appears to be white. 00:08:34.470 --> 00:08:38.220 This is what would happen if we used a color CRT without a mask. 00:08:38.220 --> 00:08:41.600 But if I place the mask in front of it, which is just a piece of aluminum foil with some 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:45.890 holes punched in it, suddenly a pattern just like the phosphor dots appears. 00:08:45.890 --> 00:08:51.020 Now, the red beam can only hit specific parts of the screen, and the blue and green beams 00:08:51.020 --> 00:08:52.970 can’t hit those points. 00:08:52.970 --> 00:08:57.110 Because the light sources are physically separated, they can only make their way through the holes 00:08:57.110 --> 00:08:58.960 at specific angles. 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:03.440 The mask puts the red targets in the shadow of the blue and green beams. 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:06.350 The mask casts a shadow on the targets. 00:09:06.350 --> 00:09:07.400 Wait a minute, 00:09:07.400 --> 00:09:08.740 shadow mask! 00:09:08.740 --> 00:09:11.780 What’s important to realize here is that the mask is what’s creating the pattern 00:09:11.780 --> 00:09:12.780 of dots. 00:09:12.780 --> 00:09:16.970 The flashlights are firing indiscriminately at the mask, but the mask will always force 00:09:16.970 --> 00:09:20.200 each beam into the correct location on the other side. 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:24.800 This means that no matter what sort of pattern of light the beams or flashlights are creating, 00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:28.230 it will always appear as a series of dots on the other side. 00:09:28.230 --> 00:09:32.090 So if we go back to our picture tube, what you see as a viewer are the phosphor dots 00:09:32.090 --> 00:09:36.030 which are the targets for each individual color electron beam. 00:09:36.030 --> 00:09:39.670 Inside the tube, directly behind them, is the metal sheet with holes in it, which always 00:09:39.670 --> 00:09:43.900 ensures the color components stay separated and project onto the phosphor dots in the 00:09:43.900 --> 00:09:45.440 correct orientation. 00:09:45.440 --> 00:09:49.260 But the key here is that they do not change how the image is drawn. 00:09:49.260 --> 00:09:53.680 Just like the black and white television, this TV is stacking horizontal lines. 00:09:53.680 --> 00:09:57.330 In fact, these two televisions are receiving the same exact signal. 00:09:57.330 --> 00:10:00.860 The difference is that the color TV can recover the color information that’s superimposed 00:10:00.860 --> 00:10:04.080 in the signal through quadrature amplitude modulation-- 00:10:04.080 --> 00:10:06.800 Don’t worry too much about the specifics of that-- 00:10:06.920 --> 00:10:10.920 and it can then adjust the relative intensities of the three color components. 00:10:10.920 --> 00:10:15.030 But since that means it’s effectively drawing drawing three different sets of lines at once, 00:10:15.030 --> 00:10:17.730 it needs a way to keep the colors from crossing over. 00:10:17.730 --> 00:10:19.840 That’s what the shadow mask does. 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:24.210 Remember, even though the flashlights were just blasting away at the mask, the mask made 00:10:24.210 --> 00:10:28.260 sure each part was separated into little dots on the other side. 00:10:28.260 --> 00:10:32.800 From this side of the picture tube, it’s just like taking a black and white CRT, then 00:10:32.800 --> 00:10:37.640 drawing a grid on top of it, and then coloring each little cell in with red green or blue. 00:10:37.640 --> 00:10:42.150 The only functional difference between a true color CRT and a black and white CRT with lines 00:10:42.150 --> 00:10:46.720 and colors drawn on top is that the mask behind the phosphor dots of the color picture tube 00:10:46.720 --> 00:10:51.630 ensures the colors stay separated, and thus allows for individual control of each color. 00:10:51.630 --> 00:10:56.100 Now, this style of shadow mask makes it hard to even define what could be a pixel. 00:10:56.100 --> 00:11:01.400 Assuming each pixel contains one red, one blue, and one green dot, well first of all 00:11:01.400 --> 00:11:05.970 they’re triangular, but then each one changes orientation as you move on and really it’s 00:11:05.970 --> 00:11:10.380 just a mess but this style of CRT, which uses a slot-mask display, does make a pattern that 00:11:10.380 --> 00:11:12.900 really looks like there are pixels. 00:11:12.900 --> 00:11:17.020 These CRTs arrange the electron guns in a line, and rather than use a mask with round 00:11:17.020 --> 00:11:19.230 holes they use a mask with small slots. 00:11:19.230 --> 00:11:24.300 This allows more of the beam energy to pass through the mask and makes a brighter image. 00:11:24.300 --> 00:11:26.070 And here’s where the semantics comes in. 00:11:26.070 --> 00:11:30.910 I’ll grant you that the picture is “made up of” these groupings of phosphors. 00:11:30.910 --> 00:11:34.720 You could say that they are elements of the picture, and thus are pixels. 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:39.580 But this ignores the fact that they are only there as a side-effect of the need for color 00:11:39.580 --> 00:11:40.580 separation. 00:11:40.580 --> 00:11:44.320 They are in front of what makes the image, and are not the actual building blocks of 00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:45.320 the image. 00:11:45.320 --> 00:11:47.410 To put it another way, here’s a window screen. 00:11:47.410 --> 00:11:51.310 If I put it in front of this album cover, does that become a pixel? 00:11:51.310 --> 00:11:54.580 Have I pixellated the image by placing a grid in front of it? 00:11:54.580 --> 00:11:58.890 Or have I simply compartmentalized parts of the image into little square cells? 00:11:58.890 --> 00:12:01.620 And here’s the part that I think is hardest to understand. 00:12:01.620 --> 00:12:06.510 The phosphor dots do not in any way define the maximum amount of detail that can be displayed 00:12:06.510 --> 00:12:08.010 on the screen. 00:12:08.010 --> 00:12:10.050 That may sound silly, but hear me out. 00:12:10.050 --> 00:12:14.310 All they really do is define the maximum color resolution of the display. 00:12:14.310 --> 00:12:16.090 Let’s go back to this CRT. 00:12:16.090 --> 00:12:20.470 I’ve only shown it in close-up because this is a laughable little 5 inch color TV boombox 00:12:20.470 --> 00:12:22.460 from some point in the 1980’s. 00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:27.320 The dot pitch, that’s the fineness of the dots, is very poor on this TV. 00:12:27.320 --> 00:12:30.100 I mean, you can’t really blame it, as it’s only got 5 inches to work with. 00:12:30.100 --> 00:12:34.620 This means it can’t display much color detail, but it can display as much brightness detail 00:12:34.620 --> 00:12:36.320 as any television. 00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:37.520 Let me boot up Kingdom Hearts. 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:39.020 [PS2 Game Start noise] 00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:42.760 OK, so take a look at the menu in the bottom left corner. 00:12:42.770 --> 00:12:46.920 If we look at the black and white TV, we can see that there are about 10 or 12 lines defining 00:12:46.920 --> 00:12:49.590 the height of the letter M in Magic. 00:12:49.590 --> 00:12:54.470 If we count the number of dots along the height of the M, we also get about 10, maybe 11. 00:12:54.470 --> 00:12:58.950 But, each cluster of three color dots spans the height of two lines. 00:12:58.950 --> 00:13:04.170 We appear to have only half the color resolution as we do brightness resolution in this CRT. 00:13:04.170 --> 00:13:07.070 Look at how infrequently a red dot appears among blue and green. 00:13:07.070 --> 00:13:11.550 That’s they key here, we’re not getting a lot of complete RGB clusters among the word 00:13:11.550 --> 00:13:15.390 Magic, but we can still clearly see the shape of the word Magic. 00:13:15.390 --> 00:13:19.440 You can even see the how the center of the A is darker than the rest, but only this one 00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:21.740 red dot is actually darker. 00:13:21.740 --> 00:13:25.200 But the thing is, from a normal viewing distance, you can’t really tell how poor the color 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:26.200 resolution is. 00:13:26.200 --> 00:13:30.520 Once you’re far enough away that you can’t discern the individual phosphor dots, the 00:13:30.520 --> 00:13:32.320 image appears more or less normally. 00:13:32.320 --> 00:13:36.890 This is in contrast to a digital LCD panel, where the pixels themselves define the shape 00:13:36.890 --> 00:13:38.070 of an image. 00:13:38.070 --> 00:13:42.920 If I want to draw a letter M using a grid of 10 X 10 pixels, well I can say how bright 00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:44.680 I want each pixel to be. 00:13:44.680 --> 00:13:49.480 Then I can tell the display what to do with each of these 100 pixels to make an M. But 00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:52.960 in the case of a CRT, it’s drawing the M like this, in Lines. 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:57.120 That shape is then forced into the grid of phosphor dots, and wherever it lands will 00:13:57.120 --> 00:13:59.300 tell you which dots get lit up. 00:13:59.300 --> 00:14:00.500 And that’s the key difference. 00:14:00.500 --> 00:14:04.690 In digital video, the pixels define the shape of the image, logically. 00:14:04.690 --> 00:14:09.330 In analog video, the shape of the image defines which phosphor dots are lit. 00:14:09.330 --> 00:14:11.410 You can see this effect with the small TV. 00:14:11.410 --> 00:14:15.560 This screen really suffers where very small, colored elements appear. 00:14:15.560 --> 00:14:20.170 If I open the pause menu and look at these stats, some of it is very hard to read. 00:14:20.170 --> 00:14:23.820 That’s because this text is colored green, so the blue and red guns pretty much 00:14:23.820 --> 00:14:26.300 don’t fire when drawing it. 00:14:26.310 --> 00:14:30.890 Since the green dots are so far apart and this text is so small, if the text to be drawn 00:14:30.890 --> 00:14:34.060 lies between the green dots, it just won’t get drawn. 00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:37.950 It’s not like the gun isn’t firing, it’s just that for the entire section here, the 00:14:37.950 --> 00:14:42.760 text is in the shadow of the green gun, so none of its energy is able to light up the screen. 00:14:42.760 --> 00:14:46.620 And that’s the point I’m trying to make when I say “these are not pixels”. 00:14:46.620 --> 00:14:52.080 These two TVs are displaying the same image and they both have 480 lines of resolution. 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:57.250 But this little CRT has fewer phosphor dots, so it can’t recreate color as precisely 00:14:57.250 --> 00:14:59.030 as the larger TV. 00:14:59.030 --> 00:15:03.030 But that doesn’t mean it’s not conveying the same 480 lines of resolution. 00:15:03.030 --> 00:15:05.730 It is, just in brightness only. 00:15:05.730 --> 00:15:09.660 It loses detail in the color department, and as a side-effect it can’t reproduce some 00:15:09.660 --> 00:15:11.030 fine color details. 00:15:11.030 --> 00:15:16.250 A CRT television has no control over how the three electron beams interact with the mask. 00:15:16.250 --> 00:15:20.570 The combined beam can land and will land wherever it wants, and it’s then up to the mask to 00:15:20.570 --> 00:15:22.590 separate the color components. 00:15:22.590 --> 00:15:26.030 The clusters of phosphor dots are there just because they need to be. 00:15:26.030 --> 00:15:29.390 They can be a different size, a different shape, and some TV’s don’t even split 00:15:29.390 --> 00:15:30.640 them up beyond vertical stripes. 00:15:30.640 --> 00:15:31.880 Trinitron. 00:15:31.880 --> 00:15:36.200 As a final point, which I think is at the crux of the issue, in an LCD, OLED, Plasma, 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:40.680 or any sort of digital display, the grid of pixels is an active matrix. 00:15:40.680 --> 00:15:44.990 The display has an electrical connection to each one of them, and can talk to it. 00:15:44.990 --> 00:15:48.040 The shadow mask and phopshor dots are a passive component of the CRT. 00:15:48.040 --> 00:15:49.300 They don’t get addressed. 00:15:49.300 --> 00:15:51.070 They don’t have an electrical connection. 00:15:51.070 --> 00:15:52.690 They’re just there. 00:15:52.690 --> 00:15:57.360 Sure, the TV does “control” which ones get lit up, but it’s not done with logical 00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:00.120 control or any precision whatsoever. 00:16:00.120 --> 00:16:04.440 Just like the black and white CRT, wherever the beam lands is what part gets lit up. 00:16:04.440 --> 00:16:08.570 Now this isn’t to say that an analog TV can’t produce an image made of pixels. 00:16:08.570 --> 00:16:11.300 Surely it can, it's just making small squares. 00:16:11.300 --> 00:16:14.040 And in fact that’s what it's been doing throughout all of this video. 00:16:14.040 --> 00:16:19.040 A PlayStation 2, DVD player, Roku box, or any digital source with a composite output 00:16:19.040 --> 00:16:24.740 will take its logical 640X480 digital grid and convert that to the 480 horizontal lines 00:16:24.740 --> 00:16:26.340 to drive the TV. 00:16:26.340 --> 00:16:29.920 But I guarantee you those ethereal pixels in the logic circuits of the digital source 00:16:29.920 --> 00:16:33.230 won’t be lining up nicely with these phosphor dots. 00:16:33.230 --> 00:16:34.850 They simply don’t need to. 00:16:34.850 --> 00:16:36.980 Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video! 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