dobbs%marlin@NOSC.ARPA (Lynn B. Dobbs) (10/17/86)
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I have seen a couple of postings on the net about running games on a tv.
In the USA, at least, there are several difficulties involved with running
high resolution graphics on a television. Almost all the hard places
involve stacks of money :-)
In the early days of television the technology was, by todays standards,
very poor. Because of the tremendous popularity of "GOLDEN AGE" offerings,
millions of dollars were tied up in operating equipment at both ends of
the RF path. The resolution of early TV was disgustingly poor. Upgrading
the resolution has been a very slow process.
Some of the new receivers available to day can double as a color monitor
with very good resolution, but the RF circuitry is still behind the power
curve of technology. The biggest problem to overcome in this area is
bandwidth. The RF modulators currently available (for reasonable cost)
have a bandwidth much to narrow to provide the kind of resolution required
by general purpose computers. (Some special purpose computers have been
built to provide special effects on television.)
There are ways to "fix" the bandwidth problem, but it would be MUCH
cheaper to buy a color monitor from ATARI. If you have a TV that can
accept RGB inputs (the current, generally accepted method of overcoming
narrow bandwidth problems) it may be possible to extract these signals
from the ATARI computer BEFORE the RF modulator. With proper line
buffers, thses signals can drive the video portion of the TV. However,
unless you can also get at the sync signals, it will be necesary to
drive the system through the RF monitor for sync. That means blocking
the video signals (preferably at the TV) provided by the RF path and
replacing them with the RGB signals.
Bottom Line: Today's Televison Receivers can not do justice to a general
purpose computer's capability to draw and print. Computers provide on/off
signalling to very small dots (pixels) on the screen. Television signals
don't. Computer signals don't try to "fool" the brain as much as TV! :-)
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