I've gone back and read through some of the committee reports when they were deliberating about this and... all I can say is, the more I understand about how composite color video really works - the more amazed I am that it works at all.
And to be fair. It's not like they didn't know there were better ways. There were lots of proposals to do YUV, RGB and other kinds of encoding but backward compatibility with B&W TVs and staying within a 6 Mhz channel were political mandates from on high.
Yeah, it's one of those very clever things that fit the bill for exactly what they needed right then and there. How could they have ever expected HD, 4K, progressive, internet streaming, or any of the things that their very clever hack would wreck future havoc on forevermore?
I've gone back and read through some of the committee reports when they were deliberating about this and... all I can say is, the more I understand about how composite color video really works - the more amazed I am that it works at all.
And to be fair. It's not like they didn't know there were better ways. There were lots of proposals to do YUV, RGB and other kinds of encoding but backward compatibility with B&W TVs and staying within a 6 Mhz channel were political mandates from on high.