• Question: why are tv made up of pixels

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Helen Gath

      Helen Gath answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Hi!

      Hmm, tough question to try and explain but I will have a go!
      TV screens, or LED screens, are made from many dots of colour. When these dots are small enough they merge together to form an image. The more dots there are, the more defined the picture is. Few, big dots could give a blurry picture, whilst millions of small dots create a sharp picture.
      This is what we call the level of RESOLUTION. High means a sharp image, poor resolution means a blurry image.

      There is a famous artist, Seurat, who used to paint by ‘dotting’ colours onto a canvas (a technique called pointilism), not nice even strokes like most artist would. But the way these dots come together overall means you still see a proper picture, even though it’s made from dots.
      http://jandacek.com/chautauqua/henri-de-toulouse-lautrec/

      This is a very coarse scale example. More extreme would be when you print some thing from your computer. The printer creates the document with lots of little dots of colour at such a fine scale you don’t even see them – you just get your perfect print out.

      I hope that helps. I still think it’s amazing how tv’s work – but i’m happy about it as who doesn’t love a good film. I’m a sucker for watching Frozen quite a lot now!!

      Enjoy your day, ask again if you’re still unsure 🙂

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