Why did old TVs produce an awfully loud static noise and weird visual when they had no signal rather than showing nothing like newer TVs do?
In: Technology
Old TVs used analog signals. The signal they received was directly converted to audio and video. If the TV was receiving no signal, it would still pick up background noise from radio waves, atmospheric noise, or electric grid noise. The TV can’t tell the difference between that and a real signal, so it does its best to “show” you the noise.
Modern TVs receive a digital signal, effectively a constant stream of data “packets”, tiny video files in a particular format. Noise doesn’t look like a data packet, so the TV knows to ignore it.
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