Reams of paper have been devoted to writings by technical historians in argument as to the "inventor" of television. In truth, there was no single "inventor" of television such as recognized by seminal technical advances such as the light bulb, airplane and the telephone. Several individuals representing many generations of scientific discoveries and enabling technologies serially combined to give us the technical miracle we identify with "television." But there is one individual we can arguably identify as the "father" of the television system. That is John Logie Baird, a Scotsman who virtually single-handedly devised, built and, indeed, commercialized television in Britain. Indeed, his television developments comprised the adopted BBC television system from 1929 to 1934. Several thousand Baird "Televisors" (receivers) were built and sold, allowing British citizens to enjoy regular television programming before anybody else in the world!* The amazing aspect of the Baird system was that it utilized a mechanical scanning process that generated an image consisting of only 30 lines per frame (@ 12 ½ FPS) and was transmitted over a regular 5 KHz radio channel. (Accompanying audio was carried on a separate radio channel.) Compare that with today's HDTV, which is a 1080 line system requiring at least 16 MHz of bandwidth to drive the video system. How can that be? How can a 30 line system possibly produce anything remotely resembling a viable television image?

The answer lies in how the human brain processes images. The brain requires much less detail to perceive plausible images in motion than for static images. When the image is in motion, the brain uses small "snippets" of the signal from the eye to call-up memorized models of the image objects. Thus an image with necessary detail is "perceived." As the relative motion of the image decreases, the brain demands an increasing amount of detail. When the image is static, the brain goes into the full "study" mode, demanding maximum detail to fully and accurately comprehend the scene. Baird and his early TV program producers realized this human perception phenomenon and produced programs that were highly animated, such as dancing, and/or by using camera panning techniques. The result was the viewer perceived very plausible and entertaining motion images even at such a low definition as 30 lines.

The HD production qualities of the graphics portion of the CNBC HD+ are super. The producers take maximum advantage of the latest HD graphics equipment capabilities to more than satisfy the brain's demand for static image detail, and in a highly attractive format. The problem is that the "television" portion of the image (i.e. the live picture window) is in SD. In spite of the hyperactive on-screen talent who breathlessly treat each little financial nuance as a major disaster, the window image is virtually static. The resolution difference between the graphics detail and the live image window is too great. The total image format, comprised of about 60% high resolution graphics, forces the brain into the static mode, therefore causing the low resolution, almost static, talking heads to look like some kind of image fault. We would expect this effect when viewing small LD video windows on a computer monitor, but, please, not on a 61" HDTV display.

Legend says that John Logie Baird awarded himself with a fine cigar if he was particularly pleased with his day's work. I'm not so sure he would light-up viewing CNBC HD+. Close, but no stogie, Logie.

Ed

*John Logie Baird was also the first to: record television, transmit transoceanic television, transmit color television and transmit 3D television. He had no formal technical education. To learn more about this amazing individual, read: "Restoring Baird's Image," by Donald F. McLean (ISBN 0-85296-795-0)