Exchange of Spatial and Temporal Resolution in Television Coding

We describe in this paper a television system in which only a fraction of the picture elements is sampled. A movement detecting circuit examines the frame-to-frame difference signals and divides the picture into “moving” and “stationary” areas. In stationary areas the unsampled elements retain their value from the previous frame; in moving areas the unsampled elements take interpolated values from the current frame. When one-half of the elements is sampled, the resulting pictures are difficult to distinguish from the original, fully sampled, picture. When the fraction is only one quarter, the degradation is visible and disturbing. We mention several possible improvements.