End of an era...

Analog TV (in the US, at least) ends tomorrow (June 12th).

While missing "Mork and Mindy" might be a tragedy for some, I'm going to morn it because of what is being lost in the microcontroller world.

Yup. Analog TV and microcontrollers.

As these little processors have been getting more powerful and faster, they have ventured into the realm of generating TV signals.

Check out PIC-PONG and PIC-TETRIS at Rickard Gunee's website.

Or maybe you'd like an oscilloscope (ok, that's PAL, a european TV standard, not the NTSC of US TV. But it would not be hard to make a NTSC version)?

And check out Jen's page.

This was even taught at universities.

You can still do microcontroller video with a LCD screen, but that takes more hardware (and, important to a hobbyist, more money). Output to a TV was cheap, easy, and everyone had access to one...