1945 TV Console Showed Two Programs at Once

43 pointsposted 7 months ago
by pseudolus
(spectrum.ieee.org)

16 Comments

kazinator

7 months ago

That was completely stupid; I can't think of a single advantage that has over just buying two TVs.

- reliablity: one TV breaks, you have a defective unit, instead of one good unit and one bad unit.

- reliability: if there are any shared components (like power transformer, rectifier), you have zero TVs when they blow.

- space: two TVs are easier to fit into a room than one combined behemoth.

- weight: easier to transport two.

- placement: multiple people wanting to watch a different program don't necessarily want to hear the audio of the other program or have it in their field of vision.

- choice: choose any two TVs on the market, versus one of a handful of specialized two-in-one units. Maybe you want one larger one and one smaller one, etc.

- price, quality: strongly related to choice.

jauntywundrkind

7 months ago

- reliability: there's only one TV that needs repairing ever. Having two of everything means something is going to break faster & more things will need to be repaired.

- space: one very large is smaller than two large tvs. (TV's were quite big.)

- weight: given all the wood and accessories, a big multi TV is far lighter than both combined

- placement: the room doesn't have to be setup to have two different viewing spots. Folks can look in the same direction.

- placement: "Separate audio could be played with or without earpieces," so sound can work fine even for multiple viewers

- choice: of this caught on & was optimized, there would have been lots of choices about which polarized tv you wanted to buy.

- quality: also strongly related to adoption.

Being completely negative is oh so often being completely stupid.

I absolutely can see a desire and want for a multi- iew screen like this, then, and now.

kazinator

7 months ago

If two units are combined into one, and have some shared components, both are out if there is a fault in the shared components. Even if the fault affects only one unit, both have to be powered down for the repair and are unavailable. If the repair requires the unit being hauled away, you lose use of both over the entire time (maybe they can supply a loaner).

Some TVs were big, but small TVs existed also. E.g search for 1948 Sentinel 7" TV. Actually, it took a while for wide fan-out CRT's to be developed for the really large CRT screens. Early CRT's were long and narrow, like the tubes in oscilloscopes.

If we combine two TV boxes into one, how much weight do we save? A rectangular box has 6 faces. We lose only one face from each box to combine them together, and two legs (though the combination might need slightly bigger legs). If there are some shared power supply components that cuts weight; perhaps the power transformer and whatnot do not have to be 2X heavier.

Say the result is 1.8 times as heavy as two individual units with the same picture tube size. That's still a 1.8x heavier lift you cannot split into two lifts and two trips when moving. There is a reason why moving boxes are only so and so large.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

adrianmonk

7 months ago

> With the DuMont Duoscopic, two different channels were broadcast on a single screen. To the naked eye, the images appeared superimposed on one another. But a viewer who wore polarized glasses or looked at the screen through a polarized panel saw just one of the images.

So it would have been possible for two TV stations to team up and do a 3-D simulcast!

And it was built in 1954, the same year that Hitchcock's 3-D movie "Dial M for Murder" came out!

I highly doubt such a thing ever happened, but it would have been cool if it did.

qingcharles

7 months ago

Eventually "re-invented" by Sony for 2-player action:

https://www.co-optimus.com/article/6221/e3-2011-eyes-on-the-...

mxfh

7 months ago

That was not just Sony SimulView, the whole late stage of the 100/120 Hz 3D-TV hype lived on that promise before everything went back to 60hz for another 5 years.

Had an LG that even came with those light passive polarizers tech Dual Play glasses that were never used.

Ultimately that novelty came probably too early to mature to acceptable results on 1080p sources and edge-lit LED 1080p panels of that era, if it was ever meant to be.

Might be wortwhile to reintroduce them on 4k with sunlight challenging mini-LEDs as a differentiator vs less brighter OLEDs for more than acceptable results at 3840x1080 and consoles being able to push out that kind of resolution.

Currently console support for splitscreen multiplayer seems to be a dying art over the last decade. But you could still multiplex 2 sources into the same screen though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzn9g3eMydo

Then again there is no replacement for Kinect-like tech either either in current consumer market offerings, I would still take that over most VR experiences in terms of setup/social friction and local/couch coop.

jmkni

7 months ago

There is something fascinating about people from history who had an idea to do something which is now just normal, but the technology just wasn't there (and people probably thought they were mad).

I guess that's why I enjoy reading Hacker News comments

fracus

7 months ago

He basically just glued two TVs together. You would get more usability if you just bought two separate TVs.

bryanlarsen

7 months ago

The prototype was two TV's together. The final product was much more interesting.

arlia

7 months ago

This seems to be from the '50s, not the '40s.

pseudolus

7 months ago

The photo shown at the top of the story is of a 1945 prototype.

hn_throwaway_99

7 months ago

You're both right. The initial prototype with essentially 2 separate side-by-side TVs was from 1945. But the more interesting (IMO) approach was the 1954 "Duoscopic" version that showed 2 programs on the same screen, and each viewer looked through a polarized panel (and had their own headphones) to view their particular program: https://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/dumont_duoscopic_brochur...

SoftTalker

7 months ago

It could probably have shown 3D programs as well, using glasses with differently polarized right and left lenses.

seeknotfind

7 months ago

Occasionally I put on multiple programs. Movies in one room, an audio book in another, music in another, etc. Your mind drifts to what is interesting. Lights strobing. Working on 5 different home projects in parallel. It's a vibe.