Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!apple!motcsd!mcdcup!mcdchg!ddsw1!corpane!sparks
From: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: New computer?
Message-ID: <3396@corpane.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 90 13:48:20 GMT
References: <33440@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Organization: Corpane Industries Inc., Louisville, KY
Lines: 40

S36666WB%ETSUACAD.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu (Brian Wright) writes:

>As long as the lines of resolution don't go over around 500 then it is still
>in the realm of NTSC.  NTSC can supposedly handle 500 lines of resolution.

Don't confuse lines of resolution when talking about TV, with pixels of 
resolution when talking about computers. They are different measurements.

On computers when someone mentions resolution they are talking about how many
pixels are shown on the screen in horizontal and vertical directions.

But the term 'lines of resolution' on TV's came about long before there were
such things as pixels. What they are referring to is how many separate black
and white lines can be seen on a TV. Remember the old TV test patterns with all
the lines and circles (like the Indian head one)? They would use this to measure
how many lines could be seen on a screen and this became the lines of resolution

Lines of resolution are also not to be confused with Scanlines which are how
many horizontal scans are made by the electron beam on a CRT. In most cases
the scanlines determine the horizontal lines of resolution (if there are 525
scanlines, you can't have 600 lines of horizontal resolution can you? 
but you could have less than 525). Most measurements of lines of resolution are
reffering to the vertical resolution, though. Basically they are measuring how
many alternating black and white dots can be seen on the screen before they
start blurring together.


So you can use a computer that does very high resolution to drive a NTSC (or
PAL) screen, but you will lose some of the detail (small lines will blur 
together)

A rough equivilant of Pixels to NTSC would be around 640 x 512. Anything higher
would be a waste on NTSC as you would just start losing detail. Even with
640 x 512 you would be losing a lot of detail, NTSC is much blurrier than
RGB. 
-- 
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