Comment by GeorgeTirebiter
2 years ago
"analog" used high-power horizontal and vertical sync pulses. These were hard for the receiver to lose / mess up, if there was any signal at all. Put another way, the receiver would receive the sync pulses (aka 'blacker than black) before even a shred of the video could be decoded. Another way to say this: The sync pulses had such good SNR compared with the picture content, so when the picture content was even barely visible, it was solidly in sync.
There's a lot about the old analog video signal that was just fun to me like that. The fact the color signal could be received by a b&w was cool, except for now with hindsight being 20/20 we now have to deal with the ramifications of that cool. Part of it lingered into HD, but we're finally getting rid of most of that baggage with 4K.
Things like the color burst, 1 volt peak-to-peak, whiter than white, how the video signal that was too hot could interfere with the audio that was multiplexed into the RF signal, how a signal could cause the picture to distort when not within spec. Just all sorts of things that were fun to mess with