1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,920 This little CRT video monitor from JVC is no ordinary thing. 2 00:00:04,920 --> 00:00:09,180 While it may look like an unassuming, and quite dainty, professional video product, 3 00:00:09,180 --> 00:00:11,610 it’s actually quite remarkable. 4 00:00:11,610 --> 00:00:16,730 If you know a thing or two about color CRT televisions and monitors, you might be a little surprised 5 00:00:16,730 --> 00:00:18,940 when you get up close and personal with it. 6 00:00:18,940 --> 00:00:22,760 See, you won’t find any phosphor dots or stripes on this display. 7 00:00:22,760 --> 00:00:23,760 Nu-uh. 8 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:27,560 That’s because this monitor is actually black and white. 9 00:00:27,560 --> 00:00:28,560 Let me show you. 10 00:00:28,560 --> 00:00:33,091 If I do a little… unauthorized disassembly, you’ll find the face of the picture tube 11 00:00:33,091 --> 00:00:35,050 staring at you clear as day. 12 00:00:35,050 --> 00:00:38,380 If I pump some video into it you’ll discover the picture tube is in fact 13 00:00:38,380 --> 00:00:40,520 a black and white picture tube. 14 00:00:40,520 --> 00:00:44,440 We can see the video scan-lines created as the electron beam sweeps across the tube 15 00:00:44,440 --> 00:00:45,680 clear as day. (yes, the same expression was used twice. Deal with it.) 16 00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:50,220 And, of course, everything looks either black, white, or some sort of grey in between. 17 00:00:50,220 --> 00:00:55,400 But, just by placing this little cover in front of the CRT, it becomes a color image. 18 00:00:55,400 --> 00:00:57,180 And a pretty good one, too. 19 00:00:57,180 --> 00:00:59,040 This is some freaky stuff man! 20 00:00:59,040 --> 00:00:59,660 Color, 21 00:00:59,660 --> 00:01:00,400 black and white, 22 00:01:00,400 --> 00:01:01,000 color, 23 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:02,000 black and white! 24 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:06,630 I could do this all day… but instead let’s explain what’s going on here. 25 00:01:06,630 --> 00:01:11,620 This monitor is using a technology which JVC liked to call LCCS, for 26 00:01:11,620 --> 00:01:13,459 Liquid Crystal Color Shutter. 27 00:01:13,459 --> 00:01:16,740 See, this cover isn’t just there for style points. 28 00:01:16,740 --> 00:01:21,060 In fact, it creates the color image in conjunction with the picture tube. 29 00:01:21,060 --> 00:01:25,880 You might be familiar with the active shutter technology used in some 3D glasses. 30 00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:28,500 These glasses have liquid crystal shutters in each eye 31 00:01:28,500 --> 00:01:32,580 which alternately block your left eye and then your right from seeing what's in front of you. 32 00:01:32,580 --> 00:01:35,920 If you coordinate that with a high-refresh rate display that can switch 33 00:01:35,929 --> 00:01:40,950 back and forth in tandem with the glasses, then you’ll see a stereoscopic image. 34 00:01:40,950 --> 00:01:43,200 This shutter, though, is a little different. 35 00:01:43,200 --> 00:01:47,979 Rather than blocking all light, it can select between three color filters to tint the image 36 00:01:47,980 --> 00:01:49,980 either red, green, or blue. 37 00:01:49,980 --> 00:01:52,709 If it does that fast enough, you won’t be able to notice. 38 00:01:52,709 --> 00:01:57,649 And, so long as the color-switching is carefully coordinated with what the CRT is doing, you 39 00:01:57,649 --> 00:02:00,920 can create a color image by first drawing a red image, 40 00:02:00,920 --> 00:02:03,229 then a green one, and then a blue one. 41 00:02:03,229 --> 00:02:07,590 So long as the color shutter can match itself up with the sequential images from the CRT, 42 00:02:07,590 --> 00:02:09,810 it will appear as a full-color image. 43 00:02:09,810 --> 00:02:15,310 Now aside from just being… well nifty, this little bit of tech has some surprising similarities 44 00:02:15,310 --> 00:02:21,040 both to a modern technology and a much, much older technology pushed by CBS. 45 00:02:21,040 --> 00:02:23,360 Let’s start with the newer tech, first. 46 00:02:23,360 --> 00:02:29,180 DLP projectors (and not long ago, televisions) typically use a very similar system to create 47 00:02:29,180 --> 00:02:30,220 a color image. 48 00:02:30,220 --> 00:02:32,860 See, on its own, DLP technology 49 00:02:32,860 --> 00:02:34,940 (which stands for Digital Light Processing) 50 00:02:34,940 --> 00:02:36,480 can’t produce color. 51 00:02:36,480 --> 00:02:40,380 DLP works by shining a bright light source onto a DLP chip, 52 00:02:40,380 --> 00:02:43,720 known as a Digital Micro-mirror Device, or DMD. 53 00:02:43,720 --> 00:02:48,120 Microscopic mirrors on its surface can reflect light in either one direction or another as 54 00:02:48,129 --> 00:02:50,930 a voltage applied to them causes them to pivot. 55 00:02:50,930 --> 00:02:55,140 In practice these mirrors become pixels, and if you want the pixel to be white, you align 56 00:02:55,140 --> 00:02:58,739 the mirror so that if reflects light from the light source out through the lens and 57 00:02:58,739 --> 00:03:00,129 onto the screen. 58 00:03:00,129 --> 00:03:04,010 If you want the pixel to be black, you tilt the mirror the other way, and light is instead 59 00:03:04,010 --> 00:03:08,280 reflected onto a black surface inside the projector which absorbs that light. 60 00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:12,549 Although the mirrors have only a binary state, either on or off, you can create shades of 61 00:03:12,549 --> 00:03:16,630 grey by dithering them, or moving them back and forth really really quickly. 62 00:03:16,630 --> 00:03:20,740 But, you may have noticed, that there’s no color component here. 63 00:03:20,740 --> 00:03:26,180 Very expensive DLP projectors, like those used in cinemas, will have three DLP chips, 64 00:03:26,180 --> 00:03:31,920 one for each color component of the RGB space, but most consumer models will use one DLP chip, 65 00:03:31,920 --> 00:03:35,060 and place a color wheel in between the lens and the chip. 66 00:03:35,060 --> 00:03:39,760 The color wheel is made of sections of dichroic glass and can produce extremely pure red, 67 00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:41,709 green, and blue light. 68 00:03:41,709 --> 00:03:45,720 Sometimes there’s a white section, too, to increase overall image brightness. 69 00:03:45,720 --> 00:03:50,650 When the projector (or rear-projection television) is operating, the color wheel spins very quickly 70 00:03:50,650 --> 00:03:55,780 to color the output from the DLP chip red, green, and blue over and over again. 71 00:03:55,780 --> 00:04:01,200 And, since the DLP chip is wicked fast, you can create a full color image simply by drawing 72 00:04:01,200 --> 00:04:03,540 three monochrome images in sequence, 73 00:04:03,540 --> 00:04:07,150 so long as you do it fast enough for persistence of vision to kick in. 74 00:04:07,150 --> 00:04:11,280 This is what causes the rainbow effect you may have seen when looking at a projection 75 00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:13,299 screen or certain televisions. 76 00:04:13,299 --> 00:04:16,850 When you move your eyes quickly, you’ll see that bright objects break apart into a 77 00:04:16,850 --> 00:04:18,850 streak of red green and blue. 78 00:04:18,850 --> 00:04:22,270 This is particularly noticeable during credits sequences. 79 00:04:22,270 --> 00:04:26,561 The only way to prevent this is to use three DLP chips together, and since that’s pretty 80 00:04:26,561 --> 00:04:29,949 expensive, you’ll see the rainbow effect fairly frequently. 81 00:04:29,949 --> 00:04:34,419 And, to make the matter even more complex, some people are more sensitive to it than 82 00:04:34,419 --> 00:04:37,730 others, and in fact some people may never notice it at all. 83 00:04:37,730 --> 00:04:42,780 It may not surprise you, then, that the rainbow effect is in fact visible on this little television. 84 00:04:42,780 --> 00:04:47,410 I don’t know if I’ll be able to replicate this on camera well enough, but hopefully I can. 85 00:04:47,410 --> 00:04:51,740 What I know I can do is take a slow motion shot of this screen with my phone. 86 00:04:51,740 --> 00:04:56,550 Now, fair warning, this is extremely flickery, so if that sort of thing may cause problems 87 00:04:56,550 --> 00:04:59,860 for you, please look away until I say “persnickety” 88 00:04:59,860 --> 00:05:04,240 I don’t *yet* have a high-speed camera which can capture this at a higher frame rate, 89 00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:06,780 but you can at least tell that the entire screen 90 00:05:06,780 --> 00:05:10,000 is being colored red, green, and blue, in rapid succession. 91 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:13,060 Unfortunately, the nature of the camera’s rolling shutter, 92 00:05:13,060 --> 00:05:16,940 combined with the way CRTs are scanned, makes this kind of… 93 00:05:16,940 --> 00:05:19,610 suck but I think you get the idea. 94 00:05:19,610 --> 00:05:24,220 In fact, keen eyes may notice that the color shutter is actually in three sections so it 95 00:05:24,220 --> 00:05:28,099 can follow the path of the electron beam as it scans the tube. 96 00:05:28,100 --> 00:05:28,800 Persnickety. 97 00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:31,720 Now let’s talk about that CBS thing I mentioned before. 98 00:05:31,729 --> 00:05:35,819 I’ve covered this in some earlier videos of mine, so I’ll be brief, but in the early 99 00:05:35,819 --> 00:05:39,400 days of color television, there were two competing systems. 100 00:05:39,400 --> 00:05:43,639 CBS wanted to use conventional black and white picture tubes that would be scanned three 101 00:05:43,640 --> 00:05:48,760 times in rapid succession, and a spinning color wheel would sit in front of the tube. 102 00:05:48,760 --> 00:05:53,160 Really, it’s just a scaled-up version of the color wheel in a DLP projector. 103 00:05:53,160 --> 00:05:58,020 Their system worked really well, and was a pretty cheap way to make color television work. 104 00:05:58,020 --> 00:06:02,440 But, while building color television sets (and even cameras) like this would be very 105 00:06:02,440 --> 00:06:08,129 easy, this new color television signal would be entirely incompatible with the existing 106 00:06:08,129 --> 00:06:11,979 black-and-white signals, and thus existing black-and-white television sets. 107 00:06:11,979 --> 00:06:17,060 RCA managed to win this fight by fudging the black and white signal and merging a color 108 00:06:17,060 --> 00:06:22,820 signal into it using weird math and stuff, thereby creating what they called "compatible color". 109 00:06:22,820 --> 00:06:27,840 These televisions required entirely new picture tube technology, and the cameras were literally 110 00:06:27,840 --> 00:06:32,910 three cameras in one, but since these new color signals could still be received by black 111 00:06:32,910 --> 00:06:35,979 and white televisions, it made the transition seamless. 112 00:06:35,980 --> 00:06:41,240 So, in a weird way, this monitor is harkening back to the days of the color television wars. 113 00:06:41,240 --> 00:06:45,800 It’s using a more modern equivalent of the CBS color wheel system, but it’s the exact 114 00:06:45,800 --> 00:06:47,060 same principle. 115 00:06:47,060 --> 00:06:51,900 Now, you may have realized that in order to do this, the television has to do some interesting 116 00:06:51,910 --> 00:06:53,770 processing wizardry. 117 00:06:53,770 --> 00:06:59,870 It has to take normal NTSC or PAL analog video signals, and break them up into three distinct images, 118 00:06:59,870 --> 00:07:01,740 then draw them sequentially. 119 00:07:01,740 --> 00:07:05,160 It can’t just draw them at the same time with three separate electron beams, 120 00:07:05,160 --> 00:07:07,500 like all other televisions do. 121 00:07:07,500 --> 00:07:11,360 And that probably explains why this technology didn’t appear in televisions 122 00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:14,560 until the year 2000, when this was released. 123 00:07:14,569 --> 00:07:16,770 It was some pretty expensive stuff. 124 00:07:16,770 --> 00:07:21,020 Not the actual picture tube or even the color shutter, mind you, but the electronics required 125 00:07:21,020 --> 00:07:25,259 to turn a normal television signal into a sequentially-drawn image. 126 00:07:25,260 --> 00:07:30,200 In fact this itty-bitty monitor sold for about $1,200. 127 00:07:30,200 --> 00:07:30,860 Yikes! 128 00:07:30,860 --> 00:07:33,360 But, it did have some serious advantages. 129 00:07:33,360 --> 00:07:39,080 I’ve shown you this little television before, it uses conventional dot-mask CRT technology. 130 00:07:39,080 --> 00:07:42,729 The image on the LCCS monitor is night-and-day better. 131 00:07:42,729 --> 00:07:48,409 Small, color CRTs tend to just… not be very good, so using a black-and-white tube and 132 00:07:48,409 --> 00:07:52,259 a liquid crystal color shutter provided a significant improvement. 133 00:07:52,259 --> 00:07:56,330 But the real selling point for this tech was that the screen was much easier to see in 134 00:07:56,330 --> 00:07:57,729 bright conditions. 135 00:07:57,729 --> 00:08:02,349 The color shutter improved contrast quite a bit, so one potential use for this monitor 136 00:08:02,349 --> 00:08:06,990 would be on-location shoots for things like newscasts or even movie production. 137 00:08:06,990 --> 00:08:09,740 Bright light around the screen wouldn’t make it difficult to see, 138 00:08:09,740 --> 00:08:12,860 in fact it's claimed it could be seen in direct sunlight. 139 00:08:12,860 --> 00:08:15,560 That said, there are some disadvantages, too. 140 00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:16,980 The color is just… 141 00:08:16,980 --> 00:08:18,180 OK. 142 00:08:18,180 --> 00:08:23,090 It seemed fairly washed out to me, and I needed to turn the chroma adjustment up pretty high 143 00:08:23,090 --> 00:08:26,180 to get what I’d call “normal” colors. 144 00:08:26,180 --> 00:08:29,930 I’m guessing this is simply due to the fact that the liquid crystal color shutter can’t 145 00:08:29,930 --> 00:08:36,000 produce quite as pure of a red, green, or blue as dedicated phosphor formulations can. 146 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:40,960 Colors also shift with differing viewing angles, and uniform images reveal the structure of 147 00:08:40,960 --> 00:08:46,300 the LC shutter itself, imparting faint horizontal lines at the borders between each section. 148 00:08:46,300 --> 00:08:51,920 And perhaps most importantly, scaling this tech up into larger screens would require 149 00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:56,610 large color shutters, and who knows how practical that might have been. 150 00:08:56,610 --> 00:09:01,100 Now I’m sure some of you have been screaming this at your screens for some time now, and 151 00:09:01,100 --> 00:09:05,970 in fact some of you are probably already writing furious comments about this, so here goes. 152 00:09:05,970 --> 00:09:09,970 It was not JVC who developed this technology. 153 00:09:09,970 --> 00:09:14,770 It was the oscilloscope manufacturer Tektronix who came up with it, in fact they patented 154 00:09:14,770 --> 00:09:16,780 it in 1983. 155 00:09:16,780 --> 00:09:18,260 Giving it the name NuColor, 156 00:09:18,260 --> 00:09:22,680 their motivation behind it was pretty clear as using a dot-mask CRT would 157 00:09:22,680 --> 00:09:25,960 suuuuuuck for oscilloscope applications. 158 00:09:25,960 --> 00:09:30,140 Using a phosphor-dot free CRT would fill with glee the hearts of thee! 159 00:09:30,140 --> 00:09:32,360 said someone at Tektronix probably. 160 00:09:32,360 --> 00:09:37,340 So, they came up with the idea of using an LC shutter over a black and white CRT to provide 161 00:09:37,350 --> 00:09:40,610 coloration AFTER the image had been drawn. 162 00:09:40,610 --> 00:09:42,280 Pretty neat thinking. 163 00:09:42,280 --> 00:09:46,080 As far as why it took nearly two decades for the technology to find its way into video 164 00:09:46,080 --> 00:09:50,360 monitors, well again that’s probably due to the much greater processing power needed 165 00:09:50,360 --> 00:09:55,280 to extract and store the R, G, and B components of an analog television signal so that they 166 00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:57,480 could be re-displayed sequentially. 167 00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:01,860 Interestingly, I can’t find any reference in either the owner’s manual or on the device 168 00:10:01,860 --> 00:10:06,430 itself to any patents at all, let alone those held by Tektronix. 169 00:10:06,430 --> 00:10:11,130 Their patent didn’t expire until 2004, so presumably JVC would have needed to license 170 00:10:11,130 --> 00:10:12,880 it from Tektronix. 171 00:10:12,880 --> 00:10:17,070 Or perhaps the Tektronix patent just didn’t apply to video monitors. 172 00:10:17,070 --> 00:10:18,070 Or some other thing happened. 173 00:10:18,070 --> 00:10:22,720 But in any case, I do think it’s pretty neat that this technology made its way into 174 00:10:22,720 --> 00:10:25,730 a color television monitor at least once. 175 00:10:25,730 --> 00:10:31,300 It’s not exactly the same as the CBS color wheel system, but it gives a great approximation 176 00:10:31,300 --> 00:10:33,880 of what that world would have looked like. 177 00:10:33,880 --> 00:10:34,860 Thanks for watching! 178 00:10:34,860 --> 00:10:39,800 I told myself I was going to make a quick video and, by golly, I think I did! 179 00:10:39,800 --> 00:10:40,800 Wow! 180 00:10:41,440 --> 00:10:46,020 Many thanks are owed to patron Brendan Terrett for suggesting this topic to me. 181 00:10:46,020 --> 00:10:51,320 I had no idea these existed and it’s a perfect complement to the whole color TV saga. 182 00:10:51,320 --> 00:10:52,740 It's also just... 183 00:10:52,740 --> 00:10:53,900 really neat! 184 00:10:53,900 --> 00:10:57,900 And of course, thank you to everyone who supports this channel on Patreon, with special thanks 185 00:10:57,910 --> 00:11:00,520 going to the folks scrolling up your screen. 186 00:11:00,520 --> 00:11:03,460 If you’d like to support my work with a pledge of your own, you can find out how by 187 00:11:03,460 --> 00:11:06,520 clicking the link in the description or on the end screen. 188 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:09,240 Thanks for your consideration, and I’ll see you next time! 189 00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:13,320 ♫ cleverly smooth jazz ♫ 190 00:11:17,560 --> 00:11:18,640 Oh, [expletive]! 191 00:11:18,640 --> 00:11:19,400 Ha ha! 192 00:11:19,660 --> 00:11:22,580 I can't see... (wheezy laughs) 193 00:11:22,580 --> 00:11:25,040 I can't see the teleprompter with these on! 194 00:11:26,320 --> 00:11:26,820 (clears throat) 195 00:11:27,600 --> 00:11:30,580 You might be familiar with the active shutter... 196 00:11:30,580 --> 00:11:32,880 Active shutter? 197 00:11:32,880 --> 00:11:38,620 You might be familiar with the active shutters used in some 3D glasses... 198 00:11:38,620 --> 00:11:39,120 (exasperation sound) 199 00:11:40,300 --> 00:11:41,240 Hey there. 200 00:11:41,760 --> 00:11:43,440 Not too many bloopers today, huh? 201 00:11:44,800 --> 00:11:46,800 That's OK. The music is fun, too. 202 00:11:48,300 --> 00:11:51,060 Oh, and that thing the LC color shutter does is trippy and weird. 203 00:11:52,140 --> 00:11:55,220 Glad I realized that. Helps make up for the lack of bloopers. 204 00:11:58,240 --> 00:12:00,340 Do you know why chicken coops have two doors? 205 00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:03,040 Well, if they had four they'd be chicken sedans. 206 00:12:03,560 --> 00:12:05,920 This is not what captions are generally used for, but I don't play by the rules! 207 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:07,880 ♫ LIQUID CRYSTAL COLOR SHUTTER ♫ 208 00:12:08,100 --> 00:12:09,140 ♫ LIQUID CRYSTAL COLOR SHUTTER ♫ 209 00:12:09,340 --> 00:12:10,480 ♫ LIQUID CRYSTAL COLOR SHUTTER ♫ 210 00:12:10,640 --> 00:12:11,500 ♫ COLOR WITH A WEIRD TRICK ♫ 211 00:12:12,060 --> 00:12:13,000 SHUTTER POWER!!!