When I was at college the books were by G. N. Patchett - in fact I've got two here with me now, and certainly no mention of 'pixels'

You mean the last Thorn sets to be made in the UK?, plenty of other sets have been made (and designed) here since then!.

If he designed the TX100 he doesn't impress me greatly then! - not a bad set, but it was old before it was released. I went on a training course on the TX100, I was astonished to find Ferguson raving about their new set with the latest design - I pointed out that it used all old chips, used by other manufacturers for 4 or 5 years, most of which had now moved on to more modern designs.

Design wise I've always greatly admired the Decca sets, and the Tatung's which followed them (as Tatung bought Decca), good 'proper' TV's.

Ferguson wise I was always fond of the 3000 and 9000 series, but we dropped Ferguson during the TX100 era, because we could see the way they were going - and their imminent demise was obvious!.

It was a pity though, Ferguson/Thorn were world leaders in so much, first all transistor colour TV (they never made a valve one), first domestic use of a switch-mode PSU, first music centre, 'Cyclops' circuit in the 9000, first to change to single board colour TV's - the list goes on!.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

 

A very informative paper on the history of the term 'pixel' (Richard F. Lyon, A Brief History of 'Pixel') can be found here in PDF for those interested.

http://www.foveon.com/article.php?a=74

 

Thanks for that link tech now i know i wasnt imagining things

 

Yes and no , the term pixel used to describe the phospher dots on a tube does not make the person who uses that description wrong , like flip flop as opposed to flop flip a link on here places origin of pixel as the mid sixties to describe the tube dots , also when bbc 2 went colour in the mid sixties they would broadcast trade test transmissions during the day one show showed the basics of colour tv and used the term pixel

 

Yes the last thorn set in uk before tomson of france bought them over scrapped the tx100 and introduced the pathetic ICC5 a poor replacement .
As for the 100 being out of date before it was released well lets have a look at that , the set was designed with radio rentals in mind as rr was part of the thorn group , the criteria for the set was fast and easy service in the field in fact about the only job you wouldnt do in the field on these was tube change .as for the chips being old well the power supply was based around the german tda4200 which i believe thorn was first set maker to use this i.c ,self osillilating psu i.c that required very few external components and was very stable , they used the bu508a and bu508d transister for the power chopper and line transistor these and variants are still widely used to this day in many new sets as is a few with the tda4200, the video /line driver/ and vertical output i.c again where all tda and relatively new to tv at the time , as for out of date the tx100 had retrofit sockets all over the place for such things as source stereo /svhs and comp video input / socket for the remote circuits which was totally upgradeable also on board support for multiband tuning for export models (phillips hit back with their system 4 sets by having a retro socket for multi system trancoders ) the 100 had a few faults like any set but most where run of the mill stockers these sets where dogs **** for second hand sales as well due to very little comebacks after a good overhaul , the last of the tx100 was the 100b which was actually a 100a even boasted a F.S.T tube a new development at the time all in all a great set , then came thomson !One thing i dont understand is if you worked for sharp uk how did you do a course with thorn on the tx100 , thorn only gave familiarity courses to radio rental group engineers at that time , i worked for r and r then and the only other support thorn gave was hard copy fault flow charts to outside firms who bought their sets

Design wise I've always greatly admired the Decca sets, and the Tatung's

 

Hey, you have missed my point.

I'm not arguing whether they should be called pixels but rather on the question if they are individually addressable.

__________________
L.Chung

 

You believe wrong! - and the chip was the TDA4600 (not the TDA4200), it had been in use for years by many other manufacturers, many of whom had discontinued using it by the time the TX100 was released.

But not a bad PSU chip, biggest problem was failure of the 'collector current simulation' resistor blowing the chopper - but by the time the TX100 came along we had got TDA4600 PSU faults well sorted out!

The other 'innovative features' you list were also 'old hat', copying years old features from other manufacturers.

I presume you also attended the TX100 training course?, where they sprouted all this rubbish! - I attended at Sandiacre, near junction 26 of the M1. What was the guys name?, Graham 'something' wasn't it?, he went to Pace afterwards - who were actually ex-Ferguson people.

I can remember talking to someone high up at Thorn, because they ran seperate production lines for UK and non-UK sets, and asking why they didn't make the sets multi-standard?. The reply was that it's totally impossible, it can't be done,so I asked how about all the multi-standard sets that are for sale everywhere you look - he insisted we were imagining them, even when we showed them to him. I think that was the biggest problem with Thorn?, they didn't have the common sense to see what other people were producing, they just lived in a little bubble of their own, artificially sustained by their own rental operations!.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

 

no they are not individualy addressed on colour crts they are more serialy addressed

 

Isn't it true one can turn ON/OFF any individual pixel to build a picture?

That's individually addressable, to my understanding. Have you confused it with random access addressability?

__________________
L.Chung

 

I was talking about vacum crt's as in analog tv , the beam is never truly off as it s intensity can go from black level to peak white as it traverses the screen it strikes the phosphor dots in front of the slot or shadow mask or phospher emulsion if its a monochrome tube .i suppose someone could delevope a tube to do this but that would result in some very strange v/h waveforms indeed.

 

I used the term pixel for a lack of a better term. When I look at the screen on my 20 inch tv, I see well defined rectangles in red,green,blue order.
Those rectangles are made of 3 different types of phosphorus,to get the 3 colours. I call these rectangles pixels. But I know computer programing,
and what pixels are. Most computer screens use a 32 bit number to represent
each pixel on the screen.
The term pulses was also used for lack of a better explanation. I understand that the 3 guns are always energized and only the intensity of the beam is altered to give you the different brightness of each colour.
But as that beam changes in intensity won't it simulate pulses at certain frequency?
I guess the best way to answer my question is to send an image from my computer to the tv screen and place a frequency meter near the screen.

 

Which won't read anything!.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

 

With just a lighted screen of any colour including white, a single scanning line on the CRT of a TV is flickering pulses at 50Hz or 60Hz and at 15.8KHz or 16kHz. The duty-cycle is very low because the CRT is drawing all the other scanning lines and its beams are turned off during each retrace line. A light detector used to measure the frequencies might not function with the low duty-cycle and/or the high frequencies. Computer monitors use higher scanning frequencies.

If the screen is modulated vertically then another flicker frequency is added that is a multiple of the lower frequency if the image doesn't move, or any low frequency higher than 50Hz or 60Hz if the image moves.

If the screen is modulated horizontally then another flicker frequency is added that is a multiple of the higher frequency if the image doesn't move, or any high frequency higher than 15.8kHz or 16kHz if the image moves.

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Uncle $crooge