
Why is TV 29.97 frames per second? - protomyth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJUM6pCpew
======
Koshkin
Analog television sets are (were, that is) amazing devices. Today, every piece
of technology more complex than a ball pen has a microcontroller inside. Even
what you might think is a somewhat complicated microchip could, in fact, be
expected to perform its functions simply by means of executing some microcode.
Even an FPGA-based device is likely to have its logic implemented as a
"programmable state machine" (PSM) which is nothing other than a simple
computer running a short program. All these digital devices are built using
many thousands, if not millions, transistors. In contrast, analog devices of
the past century - TVs, radios, turntables, etc. only had a dozen or so
transistors, or, in the case of using vacuum tubes instead of transistors,
even less than that. They were engineering marvels - especially considering
the function to complexity ratio. Today's protocol stacks and the amount of
hardware and software required for their implementation all look insane
compared to the highly sophisticated yet simple analog "protocols" such as
NTSC.

