the Black Monarch wrote:if we didn't have ntsc, we wouldnt fucken be editing right now, because there WOULD BE NO TV
Umm... I'm sorry, but what law of physics requires TV to use NTSC? In an infinite number of alternate universes out there, TVs all operate at 24 progressive frames per second and no one has ever heard of interlacing or NTSC. These universes are inhabited by people smarter than us.
The law that requires NTSC to still be supported in the U.S. is the law of the rule of the majority. All televisions, DVD players, VCRs, game consoles, and so forth in the U.S. either accept NTSC input or output NTSC-compliant video streams. Most of them will ONLY do NTSC I/O.
HDTV is on the way, and more and more devices are supporting various HDTV standards. (The XBox, for example, can go up to 1080i; I'm sure other game consoles can do that too, though I don't know which ones in particular.) But, honestly, I hope that it doesn't overtake NTSC for a while: every single corporation involved with HDTV is orgasming not over the fact that HDTV can look better, but because it grants them the ability to do all sorts of Draconian lock-downs on the signal.
Different topic: why 24fps at all? 24fps is rather jerky motion, and if you accept that as full-motion video, you're dumb. The only reason why it looks smooth on film is because of motion blur.
Why don't we use 60fps, which is what 3D graphics aims for as full-motion?
Hell, why 60? Why stop there?
