American quality standards. (was: Re: [Ffmpeg-devel] [ bug ] converting png to dv gives solid black )

[Dieter]

> > Oh yes, anything other than RF and composite is rare in NTSC-land.
> 
> Ouch, you're kidding me!? Do American viewers not care at all about
> picture quality?

Some do.  Most don't.  Did you not notice that VHS outsold Betamax?
20 years ago the VHS picture was absolute crap.  But a VHS tape
held more hours of this crap than a Betamax tape, so VHS won
in the marketplace.  Recent VHS machines have a much improved picture,
maybe almost as good as a 20+ year old Beta machine (*).  But VHS tape
handling is still crap and always will be.  Miss a bit of dialog
and want to rewind a few seconds?  KLUNK!  KER-CHUNK!  WHAM!
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrr!  THUNK!  KER-KER-KER-CHUNK!

This digital stuff is pretty nice.  In an afternoon I whipped up a
program to do special effects and they are even faster/smoother/nicer
than Beta.  Wow!  Now if ffmpeg would just stop core-dumping...

Laserdisk never quite made it out of the videophile niche.
DVD is pretty popular, and seems to be replacing VHS.

The RF is popular since antennas need RF (duh).  And most cable is
analog and just plugs into the RF with no converter box needed.  That's
starting to change with digital cable, pay-per-view, and such.  Most
VCRs have RF and composite out, a few high-end units have s-video.
Component is pretty rare.

(*) Note: Not as good as the professional Betacam, Not as good as ED-Beta,
Not as good as even Super-Beta.  Just approaching plain-old original
(consumer) Beta.