Talk:Analog high-definition television

French 819 line (737i) system

It was used only in France by TF1, along with Tele Monte Carlo in Monaco. 

Did Belgium, Luxembourg and some French overseas territories not also use it ? 213.40.219.141 (talk) 10:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

RTBF in Belgium used it Luxembourg too also TV Saar in Germany Monaco was the last one and stopped in 1985 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.24.79.224 (talk) 03:08, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Why is 819 line described as 737i?

Why is the 819 line TV system repeatedly described as 737i throughout the article? 737i is a nomenclature used for digital television systems. 819 line has never been broadcast or recorded on any digital medium, thus the '737i' is wholly inappropriate. It is correct to state that 819 line used 737 'active lines' and that it was an interlaced system. But the digital tag '737i' is out of place. 86.143.181.133 (talk) 16:47, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

The "576i", "480i" parlance is not necessarily restricted to digital, even though it became fashionable with the advent of digital television. It merely describes the number of active scanlines and the scanning mode, regardless if the signal is digitised or not. Quoting "old" television systems in this style helps younger readers to relate it to modern standards, so it's a good idea. Anorak2 (talk) 17:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

But no one ever refers to UK analogue TV as 782i, so this is a nonsense. 20.133.0.13 (talk) 14:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

737i is about the French 819 line system, it has nothing to do with the UK. Anorak2 (talk) 15:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Whoosh! 20.133.0.13 (talk) 12:29, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Conspiricy theories

From the French government's point of view, the 819 line TV system had the great advantage that it prevented French citizens from being able to receive 'inappropriate' broadcasts from foreign countries.

Surely this is nonsense ? Apart from the fact that most french-speaking countries bordering France also broadcast 819 line television there would have been nothing stopping a RESIDENT (citizenship being pretty irrelevent) wanting to avail of foreign television purchacing a multistandard TV set. Language barriers and Geography (the need to live near a border without any obstructing terrain) would have been far bigger issues. 213.40.223.203 (talk) 20:36, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

This may not be so far fetched. Multi standard TV sets just didn't exist, in fact early TV sets could only be used in the area in which they were sold as they weren't even user tuneable beyond fine tuning. Bordering countries that did adopt 819-line used different frequency allocations (Belgium and Luxemborg - the latter being governed closely along French lines).

There are several other examples of the French legislating about the features of consumer goods to prevent inappropriate use. The French government legislated in the late 19th Century that French sold phonographs had to use a cylinder that was larger in diameter than the standard 'Edison' size so that foreign cylinders could not be played. When the disc gramophone was introduced to the rest of the world, they used lateral cut (side-to-side) groves. But the French government of the day legislated that gramophones sold in France had to use hill-and-dale (vertical) cut grooves to prevent French citizens from playing inappropriate (i.e. non French) music. Pathe gramophones sold in France from around the 1920's had a moveable soundbox to permit either type of record to be played.

Even in more recent years, the French government resisted allowing French citizens access to the Internet, promoting the exclusively French (and government controlled) Minitel instead. However, the technology availble to the French citizenry had changed so much that by this stage, the government were just attempting to perform the equivalent of holding back the tide. 20.133.0.13 (talk) 13:50, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

You must be kidding, right ? "the French government resisted allowing French citizens access to the Internet, promoting the exclusively French (and government controlled) Minitel instead." The public access to the internet has started around 1995, it's not what I call "recent years". And I assure you that no government would be stupid enough to promote Minitel nowadays ! Granted, the minitel was widely used in the 80 and the internet was pratically unknown in France, but it was years ago.I can't imagine any french president/gouvernement/journalist saying : "my dear compatriots, I advise you to stop using the internet in favor of our national minitel", that would the most hilarious thing ever. Anyway, that's no really the point. The question is not to know if the french gouvernement was thinking of censoring the foreign countries or not, the question is to know if they did it. As long as there's not a serious reference, this should be removed. And this is not your "far-fetched" comparition, dear 20.113.0.13, that makes this story more credible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.250.198.29 (talk) 18:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

If you read the previous comment, it stated that the French government failed to hold back the tide of the internet. It is true that they did try but I believe that even by this time they knew they were flogging a dead horse as the technology behind the Internet completely up staged what Minitel was capable of (and it wasn't much!). 86.163.87.193 (talk) 16:27, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Minitel was not exclusively French. An Irish version existed for a short time in the early 1990's and a British version Prestel for much of the 1980's. The French version was arguably the most successful comercially (despite the British early start) but was rendered obsolete by the Internet. Multi standard TV sets were available in Belgium but in any case regardless of what standards were used the overwhelming majority of French residents were never going to be able to recieve foreign terrestrial TV by virtue of being too far away to pick it up and many ot those who could would have encountered language issues. Nevertherless Monte Carlo, Luxembourg and to a lesser extent Belgian and maybe German TV (in Alscase) did have viewers in some border areas 89.242.207.251 (talk) 14:31, 9 October 2011 (UTC).

More likely, it was to prevent French citizens from buying foreign TV sets and give an advantage to French manufacturers.

90.38.26.162 (talk) 20:32, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Unlikely as it may seem to us today, the French government does have a long history of restricting what French residents can access. This may not be unconnected to French kings (and subsequent rulers such as Naplolean) being completely autocratic when European kings in general had long ago been forced to introduce parliaments in one form or another. As you note, a convenient side effect was that it also gave French television makers an advantage over foreign competition given that nearly every feature of French engineering was proprietary and (in theory at least) protected by patents. The SCART connector (also called PERITEL) for connecting a TV to a video recorder with but a single cable was another attempt to protect the French TV and video industry. Unfortunately for the French, although the actual connector design left a hell of a lot to be desired, the basic idea was good enough to be so widely adopted (though not in the Americas) that the patent owners just could not take on the rest of the world. I B Wright (talk) 14:50, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Conjuring Trick

The article claims that the 819 TV system had a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. Putting aside the fact that analogue resolution cannot be directly equated to pixels, it seems that extra vertical lines have been conjured up from somewhere. Even the rest of the article incorrectly claims a vertical resolution of 768 lines. The citation given does not claim the resolution given but merely the nearest PC resolution with a similar appearance.

Also the 819 system had a surprisingly long field blanking interval compared with all other systems of 41H (compared to ~25H for system G (625 line) systems and ~20H for system M (525 line)). This does not equate to 768 active lines but rather 737 active lines (the odd number comes about because the interval actually changes between odd and even frames on other systems but not on system E (819 line) - hence the approx signs above

Source: Report 308-2 of the XIth Pleniary Asssembly of the CCIR - Characteristics of Monochrome Television Systems (the 'bible' of TV system timings). 20.133.0.13 (talk) 14:33, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you have misinterpreted the resolution because the 1024 would be the horizontal resolution leaving 768 as the vertical resolution (equal to the number of active lines in an analogue system). However, I can confirm that the 819 line system did indeed have 41 lines per field that carried no video information. That is 82 lines in total for the two interlaced fields and 819-82 equals 737, the number of active lines and not 768. 86.145.23.83 (talk) 12:37, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I was having an off day (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). Indeed, that resolution does indeed imply 768 active lines. But there aren't. 20.133.0.13 (talk) 12:40, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

737 active lines –> 737i?

I don't know anything behind the 819-line system, but I have a question: I know that in actuality, the 625/50i system has 575 active lines (with an half line at the top and a half line at the bottom), and the reason we call it 576i is because digital system can only have full lines.
Wouldn't the 819-line system be the same? Meaning that its "digital equivalent name" should really be 738i?
Likewise, wouldn't the 405-line system be 378i?
90.38.26.162 (talk) 13:15, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

The (digital) designation is the total number of active lines in a complete TV frame (that is the number of lines that actually carry picture information). You are correct that in an interlaced system, one field starts with half a line and the next finishes with a half line. However, I think you may be getting confused between total lines and active lines. In the 625 line system there are 312 1/2 lines per field (each including a half line as noted above). On the odd fields there are 25 lines that carry no picture information (the blanking interval), but on the even fields there are only 24, thus there are 576 remaining to carry picture information. Almost every analogue TV system featured this asymmetric blanking interval between fields and because an interlaced system has to have an odd number of scanning lines, it ended up with an even number of active lines.

The 819 line system was unique in that it had the same blanking interval on both the odd and even fields (41 in each case - a surprisingly large interval). This meant that the 819 line system had 737 active lines. I B Wright (talk) 15:06, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

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819 lines to new article

The information about 819 lines became too detailed so it was moved to a new article. A short summary was left on this page, similar to the other systems mentioned. 4throck (talk) 08:02, 13 June 2022 (UTC)