WE lose 6 lines in the analog-to-digital conversion

Old analog programs from 1990 and earlier use 486 visible scanlines.

fadeToblack...

last time I checked basic and expanded basic cable feed is less
than 300 lines.

The DVD and digital tv standards only support 480 scanlines.

hancock4...

Are you sure about the scan lines for each mode?

In any event, I'm not sure that's an accurate measure of analog to
digital conversion. There are other many factors as well, such as the
quality of the original source, the quality of the transfer process,
the quality of the resultant media, and the quality of the TV set used
at home.

All I know is that playing a DVD, even one of an old movie, through my
TV set, results in a much sharper picture than I've seen so far.

Anim8rFSK...

As usual, troy is wrong. The extra 6 lines contain stuff like closed
captioning. They were never visible for broadcast.

As a result 6 scanlines* are lost when old analog programs are
converted to digital format. I suppose those extra 6 scanlines are not

fadeToblack...

all I know is my cheep $100 Cyberhome dvd recorder in HQ mode
will blow the doors off any of my many vcr's in SP mode
when rec from a vcr useing the same 18" 'straightwire' cables.

terribly important, but it's a shame they couldn't come up with a way
to preserve that information, rather than just throw it away.

telenovels...

Oh well. I guess no one cares?

.

* (The first & last scanline is actually only 1/2 a scaline. So in
reality only 2.5 * 2 = 5 full scanlines are lost.)