Milestone-Proposal talk:Digital TV Standards Convertor

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
2. Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful?
8. Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement?
9. Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
10. Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written?
11. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
12. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
13. Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation?
14. Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations
15. Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title?
16. Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore.

Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering the questions above, the History Committee asks that reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log

Submitted date:
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Comments to Proposers_1 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 22:58, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers.

I have read the proposal as of June 1, 2024.

For the reader's understanding, I will comment on this below.

（1） The Proposal states that the Television Standard is the subject of processing, but there is no mention of it. What is the TV standard? Could you please describe it.

（2） In relation to (1) above, readers don’t understand if this is about the processing of composite signals or component signals. Could you please describe it.

（3） The Proposal states that it is the all digital system, but there is no description of digital specifications. Could you please describe the minimum required digital specifications.

（4） The Proposal states comment about HDTV and 4K. Could you please state the evidences for this.

（5） The Proposer states the superiority of your method from the comparison with the glass delay line. Could you please describe specifications of the glass delay line, especially MTF?

（6） Could you please show photos of this device.

（7） Could you please show the entire block diagram of this device.

（8） Standard evaluation methods for video quality were already well established in the 1970s. Could you please the evaluation results of this device.

（9） Standard TV conversion cannot be achieved by Line or Field conversion alone. For example, could you please describe overview of Encoder and Decoder.

（10） Standard TV conversion introduces between video and audio delays. Could you please descreibe its delay compensation.

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow.

Comments to Proposers_2 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 23:25, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers.

I have read the proposal as of June 1, 2024.

For the reader's understanding easily, could you please describe carefully the following three questions that the Proposal format asks.

The historical significance, obstacles to be overcome, and features set this work apart from similar achievements.

All three of the above are poor in content that impact from it cannot be read.

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow.

Comments to Proposers_3 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 01:42, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers.

I'd like to comment on the proposal as of June 1, 2024.

The proposal states that it is the all digital system.

Thinking back to the 1970s, I think that real-time video processing could be achieved with only hardware.

However, this proposal does not describe the hardware.

For the reader's understanding, could you please describe the hardware in detail.

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow

Comments to Proposers_4 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 23:47, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers.

I've read the proposal as of June 1, 2024.

For the reader's understanding, I will comment on this below.

(i) There is a description of "high resolution TV standards" and "minimized resolution degradation" in the Citation of the Proposal.

Could you please describe it in detail and provide it's evidences.

(ii) There is a description of "improved transmitted picture quality" in the Citation of the Proposal.

Could you please describe it in detail and provide it's evidences.

(iii) There is a description of "stabilized for easy operation" in the Citation of the Proposal.

(iv) As for how to use the technical terms "image" and "picture", we habitually use "video" mainly for moving images, and "image" and "picture" for still images. I think "video" is better because the TV standards converter deals with moving images. In addition, signals with Chroma Sub-Carriers, such as TV Standards, usually use the technical term "video" or "TV signal".

(v) It is written in citation that “By making prompt use of semiconductor memory, the equipment has been downsized”. Considering pre- and post- LPFs, the DIP packages of the ADC, DAC, and many memories for field/frame, clock generatior, S. H. circuits and so on, it would have been difficult to make it smaller than the glass delay line with the technology of the 1970s. If they have done it so, could you please provide evidences.

(vi) It is described as "commercialized here", but did they mass-produce, commercialize, and sell it externally? The reason for this question is that if they make a few devices and use them in-house, we generally don't say "commercialize”.

(vii) You mention that they used Adaptive Image Processing. Let us know what you mean by "Adaptive"?

Could you please describe it in detail and provide it's evidences respectively.

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow.

Comments to Proposers_5 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 03:43, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers.

I've read the proposal for June 1, 2024.

With the "obstacles to overcome" section of the proposal in mind, I dare to make the following comment.

I understood that the main point of appeal was the scanning line transformation and field interpolation method.

It is easy to understand if you have a knowledge the three-dimensional analysis of TV signals that was developed during the 1980s at the time of IDTV, EDTV and MUSE.

(a) The problem of Y signal processing in this method are certainly small.

However, the difference between horizontal and vertical specifications, and also time axis too, is serious from the viewpoint of resolution when converting methods.

You should describe honestly in your proposal that video quality degradation due to the scaling process is unavoidable.

(b) C signal processing in this method requires a rather difficult ingenuity.

Could you please describe the details of C signal processing by this method.

(c) The YC signals separation filter and luminance LPF have effects on video quality. Could you please describe the design specifications of each.

(d) If you want to convert between PAL and NTSC, it is important to convert the color format. The same is true for SECAM. For example, could you please describe color conversion between YUV in PAL and YIQ in NTSC.

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow.

Comments to Proposers_6 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 04:25, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers.

I've read the proposal for June 1, 2024.

With the "obstacles to overcome" section of the proposal in mind, I dare to make the following comment.

(a) It is extremely rare for Television (TV) to be E-E Communication, now and in 1970s.

Considering that it was in 1970s, a C-type VCR for professional or broadcast studio use might be common.

The skew/jitter at head switching point near V-sync of this VCR is several uSp-p, several % of a H scan line time, at a field rate of 60 Hz.

In addition, considering the all digital TV conversion, the jitter/flutter of the clock of 30-40 ppm, several sample points error per every field, cannot be ignored with the technology in 1977.

(b) Even if in E-E communication, the frequency and phase of the clock signal, which is the reference for digital processing for video signals, are important.

In particular, I think it's important to know which signals it is made from and which signals it depends on.

Does this clock signal occur in H-sync or in chroma burst?

I think there are advantages and disadvantages to both, so could you please describe the ingenuity.

(c) In relation to (a) and (b) above, could you please describe about the TBC and frame buffer, relation to Figure 2, of this converter.

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow.

Comments to Proposers_7 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 03:00, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers.

I've read the proposal for June 1, 2024.

There is some confusion in the terminology in your proposal, so I will comment on it below.

Thinking back to the 1970s, display method of on CRT of TV set was on a lnterlace basis.

As you know, the NTSC, one of TV standards, has a interlace scan, it has 60 fields at 30 frames.

In the description part of Figure 1 in the proposal, the term of the "frame" is inappropriate.

For example, the title of Figure 1 would be also "field".

Descriptions of these paragraphs are not inappropriate.

Similarly, the term "intra-frame interpolation" found in the Reference, original authers of paper said, is not appropriate.

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow.

Comments to Proposers_8 -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 11:00, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Dear Proposers

I've read the proposal for June 1, 2024.

(1) Thinking back to the 1970s, as far as we know, there were no analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for video use with 8-bit and sampling clocks higher than 10 MHz.

In the early 1980s, Sony and Analog Devices introduced ADCs for video use.

Could you please describe what kind of ADC was used in this proposed system.

(2) In the 1970s, I think the use of semiconductor memory was very difficult in the following aspects.

（a）Memory Capacity and Pricing:

Probably about $100 for 4kbit DRAM memory. The price per bit is more than 10,000 times the current price.

（b）Write and read times:

Probably, Read time for 200-500 nS, Write time for 300-600 nS with needing refresh. Currently, it is about 10-15 nS for both.

From the above, it must have been quite difficult to create Frame Memory for Field interpolation.

Could you please describe overcome to obstacles above.

(3) There are two reference lists.

Please summarize the three references in Section named "Its importance to regional/national/international development Its benefits to humanity" at the back.

(4) Section named “Why was the achievement successful and impactful?" is blank.

This is an important section, so please fill it in.

(5) In Figure 1, the processing of the 50 Hz frame (field) line, second from the right, is distributed among the three 60 Hz lines. Is this correct?

Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow.