A newcomer to NBTV may be pardoned if they assume that NBTV is synonymous with mechanical television, which brings up the question as to why anybody would elect to use a computer to display NBTV images. Well, first, although all mechanical TV systems are narrow bandwidth, you don't have to use mechanical technology to generate or display pictures. Even if your eventual goal is to build a mechanical televisor or camera system, there are plenty of reasons why you should start with a basic NBTV computer image display.

Here is a screen capture image from Gary Millard's NBTVView program, a very popular option for computer display of NBTV images. One of the biggest plusses here is the ease of use. There is nothing to build or buy, just fire up the program, connect an audio cable between the soundcard and your NBTV source and you are watching! An equally important factor is the image quality. It is far easier to optimize a computer display than any type of mechanical or CRT NBTV display. This makes the computerized display an ideal standard against which to evaluate the performance of cameras and image generators or the fidelity of your mechanical or other display system.
 

For example, let us assume you are going to use a source such as one of the NBTVA CDs to set up a mechanical televisor. First, you need to know the quality of the CD images, independent of what they look like on your televisor. You can assume the computer system will produce an optimum or near optimum display of a specific image, so you know what to expect when aligning your mechanical system. No matter what your ultimate goals, a computer display can provide an indispensable reference against which to compare any other system for image generation or display. Is that cheating? I doubt it! If Baird had possessed a laptop with NBTVView installed, there is no doubt he would have used it!

One final advantage of computer display is worthy of note. If you look at an NBTV image with any type of mechanical or CRT televisor, you will notice a profound flicker effect as a result of the relatively slow frame rate (12.5 fps for the NBTVA standard). Computer displays typically refresh at many times this rate, so even though the NBTV image is being updated at relatively low rates, you will never see any flicker!