Low-resolution TV: Subjective effects of noise added to a signal

The visibility of noise in a television presentation is related to the spatial-frequency and flicker-frequency components of the noise display. The visibility of sine wave interference, which generates a sine wave grating on a TV screen, demonstrates remarkable linearity by giving a good approximation to the visibility function measured with narrow bands of noise. A difference in visibility between moving and stationary gratings produces a difference between noise visibility in TV and photographs. This fact is important in evaluating the computer simulation of a system by calculations for a single TV frame. The variation of visibility with motion predicts increased visibility for additive noise in a television frame repeating system. Applications to predistortion and reconstruction filters for transmission of analog and digital TV signals are discussed.