High-definition television in medicine

Excerpt

We live in a society programmed to expect constant innovation, yet valuable technology platforms can be surprisingly stable and long-lasting, becoming an accepted and barely visible part of the framework of our lives. Broadcast television is one such technology. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as color television emerged, broadcasters standardized on two formats that allowed color images to be transmitted. These still are in use today as NTSC in the United States, Canada, and Japan, and as PAL in Europe and most of the rest of the world. The local infrastructure investment necessary for the transmission of television has helped to ensure the dominance of NTSC and PAL for the past half century, influencing all video products, from televisions to video recorders, DVD players, and video camcorders. All of these rely on the PAL or NTSC transmission format, depending on where you are in the world, to provide easy compatibility. …