[vcf-midatlantic] Old Video Game Advertisements - musing on 80 column TV

[Dean Notarnicola]

I’m guessing the direct luma-only video connection with no multiplexed
sound. Probably would have worked with an A8 and C64 as well.

On Mon, Aug 8, 2022 at 4:47 PM Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 8/8/2022 4:09 PM, Ethan O'Toole via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> >>  Can you imagine how differently the industry would've evolved if
> >> common, standard TVs had the bandwidth to handle 80-column text
> readably?
> >>          -Dave
> >
> > I think it might have given the TV-as-a-monitor a little bit more life,
> > but once people started going GUI they would have still switched to
> > higher resolution displays.
> My early computer use would have been dramatically changed from 1983 to
> 1986-ish when I first had 80 columns on an Amiga.
> 40 columns stunted my work for sure!
> (Let alone 1981 with 20 column VIC 20! Ouch)
> But us poor 8 bitter guys persevered.
> The 1977 computers that started depended on TVs, if they
> had be able to do 80 columns, probably would have changed a lot
> with respect to adoption by the public as more viable spreadsheet and
> word processing application runners. And hobby software people would
> have been able to compose proper lines of code and comments. Might have
> sped up the pace of advancement of their work.
> I guess that 64 and 80 column text on CP/M helped those systems
> excel at dawn of the microcomputer. Even the tiny monitor on the Osborne
> 1 had 80 column with clever pan-scan feature.
> TRS-80 I & III even started 64 columns which was probably an advantage
> for them.  Wonder how they wangled the bandwidth for clear 64 char text
> on their alleged TV monitor?
>
> >
> > I guess here in modern times it feels like all TVs are just computer
> > monitors.
>
> Yes they pretty much are!
>
> >
> >              - Ethan
> >
>