THE VIDEO SHELF · display technology
How a TV Works in Slow Motion - The Slow Mo Guys
The Slow Mo Guys film a TV and screens with a high-speed camera to show how displays build an image. The footage includes CRT-style scanning and how pixels light up over time.
Why HN readers recommended it
Frequently linked as visual proof of how a CRT's raster scan and phosphor decay work.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- The Slow Mo Guys
- Topic
- display technology
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 8
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2022–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
CRTs are still slightly magical to me. The image doesn't really exist. It's an illusion. If your eyes operated at electronic speeds, you would see a single incredibly bright dot-point drawing the raster pattern over and over. This YouTube video by "The Slow Mo Guys" …
retrac on Hacker News · 2025-07
In How does a screen work?That's not quite true. Only one pixel is being activated at a time but the phosphors continue to emit light for many pixels. In practice you get a handful of lines lit to varying degrees at at time. Maybe 1-2 lines quite brightly lit and …
kevincox on Hacker News · 2026-03
In JPEG Compression
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.