>> You can't watch UHF, video cassettes, cable or satellite TV at all on
>> a 1956 TV set (assuming you could find one that still worked), and in
>> most cases you would get less than satisfactory performance from VHF
>> broadcast TV as well.
>
>All you need is a VCR with channel 3 output to act as an RF modulator, and you can watch
>everything you have mentioned above.
Have you tried it?
A 1956 TV set (or even most sets made through the 1960s) was not
designed to be able to reliably synchronise with the output of most
modern video sources, including broadcast TV.
In those days all it had to synchronise with was a simple, stable CIRR
broadcast signal. The CIRR specification did not contain any ITS
(Vertical Interval Test Signals), Teletex, colour burst or other
"interval" information any of which may easily upset the sync
discriminator circuits used on older monochrome sets. The unstable
timebase of tapes replayed from a domestic helical scan VCR is also
beyond the lock in range of many "flywheel" sync circuits from that
period.
As I said previously, the theoretical basis may be the same, but the
actual implementation practice of "television" has been expanded
significantly over time to the point where TV sets built on principals
which were quite adequate to satisfy the simple theoretical basis are
no longer viable.
To bring this back to the point.... the interoperability of TV
standards over the years was being used to justify a particular stance
regarding web site design interoperability. The fact is that TV
Standards are not particularly interoperable over long periods of time
as implementation practice develops. So it was a poor example to use
to illustrate any point about long term interoperability of
technology.
Cheers,
Bill
Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia