THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLOR TELEVISION 1956

[Homer J Simpson]

[timb]

Heh, one of the programs they showed was named "Ding Dong School"... Hehehe...bwahahahahaha!

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Not terribly surprising for an RCA publicity film -- they leave out all the work done by others ...Run down to the store and fork over > $10,000 (inflation adjusted) for that new 1956 16" RCA TV now !! Get it home and set it up. Tune in to your local TV station and ... hmmm ... not color. No color broadcasting in 90% of the country for more than a few years ...

Bob

[Macbeth]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour) and that crappy 525 line resolution that plagued USA for decades, while at least in Europe we had PAL (or SECAM for the frenchies) with 625 line goodness.

[tooki]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour) and that crappy 525 line resolution that plagued USA for decades, while at least in Europe we had PAL (or SECAM for the frenchies) with 625 line goodness.

... at 50Hz which was maddeningly flickery unless you had a costly frame-doubling 100Hz TV set (in CRT days).

The ideal format would probably have been a 525 line, 60Hz PAL. Who knows, maybe that's in use somewhere!

[R_Gtx]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour)

That should be NTSC - Never Twice the Same Colour,

also:      SECAM - System Essentially Contrary to the American Method,
              PAL - Peace at Last.

[Macbeth]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour) and that crappy 525 line resolution that plagued USA for decades, while at least in Europe we had PAL (or SECAM for the frenchies) with 625 line goodness.

... at 50Hz which was maddeningly flickery unless you had a costly frame-doubling 100Hz TV set (in CRT days).

The ideal format would probably have been a 525 line, 60Hz PAL. Who knows, maybe that's in use somewhere!

Except it wasn't - indeed it was interlaced so only 25fps, and it was scientifically proven back then that nobody could possibly notice 25fps vs anything else! (I was taught this in college!)

I do remember the awful american NTSC shows that had been converted to PAL back in the '80s - they had this terrible quality to them, not just the poor upscaled resolution, but like they were actually running at 10 fps. However I think that may have been down to the US studios storing everything on VT which was shit even at professional levels while in the UK everything was still recorded on film...?

[R_Gtx]

at 50Hz which was maddeningly flickery unless you had a costly frame-doubling 100Hz TV set (in CRT days).

Early black and white television receivers were notoriously prone to mains hum on the vision channel. By setting frame frequency to the mains frequency this manifested as a static vertical shading gradation, which was far less disturbing than either the rolling gradation or low frequency flicker, had a higher frame rate been adopted.

The ideal format would probably have been a 525 line, 60Hz PAL. Who knows, maybe that's in use somewhere! 

PAL-M used in Brazil.

[amspire]

That was the same year we got Black and White TV here in Australia! None of that colour rubbish for us until 1975.

[Macbeth]

My favourite memory of B&W TV as a kid was my grandad (a confirmed gambling addict) watching the Grand National with Red Rum back in '77 - on a TV that not only had field collapse but inversion too - at least it had sound which was all he was interested in all the days he spent at the bookies. But the bizzare upside down elongated picture amused and intrigued me as a child. Even more hilarious is that (maybe because he lost his wager) for months afterwards when I had to be forced to visit my gran the TV would only show that god awful Coronation Street program - UPSIDE DOWN and SQUASHED!

So many great TV faults... The famous phosphor burning dot at midnight when the national anthem was played and the TV was switched off...  Grans telly had it all

[R_Gtx]

Except it wasn't - indeed it was interlaced so only 25fps, and it was scientifically proven back then that nobody could possibly notice 25fps vs anything else! (I was taught this in college!)

Each frame comprised two fields, hence screen update rate would be 50Hz.

... while in the UK everything was still recorded on film...?

The BBC first used Ampex Quadruplex video tape recorders in 1958, after abandoning their own in-house machine VERA  (Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus)

 

[uncle_bob]

The BBC first used Ampex Quadruplex video tape recorders in 1958, after abandoning their own in-house machine VERA  (Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus)

 

Hi

Wow look at those high quality video samples ... nothing lacking there at all

Bob

[amspire]

This is a great little clip from 1939 which includes Philo T Farnsworth, one of my heroes. It  is both fascinating and funny. A lot of people were involved in the invention of Television, but Philo was the most important. Philo was very unlucky as by the time the courts decided that RCA had to pay royalties to Philo, the Second World War broke out. After the War, Philo's patents had run out. His dream of having Television being known as Farnovision never happened.

In Australia, we have the huge embarrassment of naming the Australian Television awards after James Logie Baird - they guy who didn't invent television. We call the awards The Logies and we should have called them The Philos or The Taylors.

[Macbeth]

I thought it was John Logie Baird - and all my education as a child with HMGubmint promoting had him "inventing television", but every instance I saw of his genius was nothing more than some elaborate spinning disc that he chucked a doll behind and no electronics whatsoever... 

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Before you head off nodding, "but how else could it be done ..". Do a quick search on "mechanical television". You have not seen a *real* monster machine until somebody shows you a color image on a mechanical TV. (Yes, they did exist, yes I've seen on in action ..).

Bob

[CatalinaWOW]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour) and that crappy 525 line resolution that plagued USA for decades, while at least in Europe we had PAL (or SECAM for the frenchies) with 625 line goodness.

... at 50Hz which was maddeningly flickery unless you had a costly frame-doubling 100Hz TV set (in CRT days).

The ideal format would probably have been a 525 line, 60Hz PAL. Who knows, maybe that's in use somewhere!

Except it wasn't - indeed it was interlaced so only 25fps, and it was scientifically proven back then that nobody could possibly notice 25fps vs anything else! (I was taught this in college!)

I do remember the awful american NTSC shows that had been converted to PAL back in the '80s - they had this terrible quality to them, not just the poor upscaled resolution, but like they were actually running at 10 fps. However I think that may have been down to the US studios storing everything on VT which was shit even at professional levels while in the UK everything was still recorded on film...?

I remember seeing a film in high school relating to all the human factors studies that were done during the development of early television showing that resolution higher than about 500 lines was not necessary.  The relief was felt when it was determined that 6 MHz bandwidth was enough.  We won't talk about the 400+ lines that NTSC typically actually delivered.

Funny to think about now that everyone has and enjoys various HD formats including the current fad 4K.  Funny both from realizing how much benefit there actually is to the higher resolution and from how various encoding techniques have allowed that higher resolution with no where near the bandwidth that would have been required back in the 1950s.

[amspire]

I thought it was John Logie Baird - and all my education as a child with HMGubmint promoting had him "inventing television", but every instance I saw of his genius was nothing more than some elaborate spinning disc that he chucked a doll behind and no electronics whatsoever... 

He didn't even invent the camera with the rotating disks. He did refine the idea a little. Baird was historically extremely important but as an entrepreneur. He talked the BBC into transmitting his TV for free, and sold kits on the back of this. When the BBC realised that Baird was profiting handsomely from their public service broadcasts, it forced the British Government into a formal choice of TV systems. They naturally chose the EMI solution based on the RCA's Image Orthicon and a fully electronic TV over Baird's mechanical TV. Baird did not even try and use his mechanical camera - he brought a license to use Philo Fansworth's camera.

[SL4P]

Didn't see any Quadruplex heads in there...

[uncle_bob]

I remember seeing a film in high school relating to all the human factors studies that were done during the development of early television showing that resolution higher than about 500 lines was not necessary.  The relief was felt when it was determined that 6 MHz bandwidth was enough.  We won't talk about the 400+ lines that NTSC typically actually delivered.

Hi

Consider that early retail TV's rarely made it past the 12" x 12" image size. The other assumption was that this image would be viewed from 8 to 10 feet away. Their human factors were ok on the resolution stuff. They did not in any way consider people sitting two feet from the screen to be able to actually *see* something on it. (yes, I got yelled at for that ...).

Bob

[rrinker]

 That's how it was discovered that I needed glasses at age 6 or so. I would start watching TV from the couch, but by the time the program was over, I would be sitting right up in front of the screen.

[Synthetase]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour) and that crappy 525 line resolution that plagued USA for decades, while at least in Europe we had PAL (or SECAM for the frenchies) with 625 line goodness.

... at 50Hz which was maddeningly flickery unless you had a costly frame-doubling 100Hz TV set (in CRT days).

I watched a 50Hz CRT TV for years and didn't have any flicker issues. My CRT computer monitor was slightly flickery at 50Hz when set to 1024*768, so I ran that at 65Hz.

I don't know whether it's actually the case, but I got the impression that the larger pixels and lower resolution of the TV gave each pixel a bit more inertia before it faded.

[tooki]

Well it would have nothing to do with the resolution (there are no pixels in analog TV), but rather with the phosphor persistence.

Nonetheless, the fact that costly 100Hz sets even existed is evidence of the acknowledgement of flicker in 50Hz TV.

Note also that the ~25Hz limit of human vision perception is only for the center of vision -- the lower-resolution peripheral vision is much, much more sensitive to movement and flicker.

[tooki]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour) and that crappy 525 line resolution that plagued USA for decades, while at least in Europe we had PAL (or SECAM for the frenchies) with 625 line goodness.

... at 50Hz which was maddeningly flickery unless you had a costly frame-doubling 100Hz TV set (in CRT days).

The ideal format would probably have been a 525 line, 60Hz PAL. Who knows, maybe that's in use somewhere!

Except it wasn't - indeed it was interlaced so only 25fps, and it was scientifically proven back then that nobody could possibly notice 25fps vs anything else! (I was taught this in college!)

I do remember the awful american NTSC shows that had been converted to PAL back in the '80s - they had this terrible quality to them, not just the poor upscaled resolution, but like they were actually running at 10 fps. However I think that may have been down to the US studios storing everything on VT which was shit even at professional levels while in the UK everything was still recorded on film...?

Ah, good old British anti-American bias! No, US studios weren't storing everything on VT while the British used film. No professionals produced prerecorded TV on VT until the late 1980s, when VT  actually became  good enough to retain decent image quality in editing (and even then it was rare in big budget TV). Everything was on film, because only it had good quality. That's why we can watch the original Star Trek in HD now: you just re-telecine the film at higher resolution.

VT was originally used only to record live TV, which before that was either not recorded at all, or was recorded by filming a TV.

As for why converted TV sucks: 25<->29.97Hz frame rate conversation is essentially impossible to do without artifacts. The 10Hz effect you describe comes from the 4.97 dropped frames per second. It doesn't divide evenly so you get judder. (For content originally  shot at 24fps, they instead run the film at 25fps, which then has no judder but does run fast and with a slight change in audio pitch, which I can readily detect in content I'm familiar with.)

[Towger]

That's why we can watch the original Star Trek in HD now: you just re-telecine the film at higher resolution.

I you look at STNG in PAL the quality is terrible.  It was a big budget show.  I assume it was shot on film, but must have been  edited on video, so now it is too much work to re edit in HD. Thats if the origional film still exists...

[HighVoltage]

Ahhh... NTSC (Never the same colour) and that crappy 525 line resolution that plagued USA for decades, while at least in Europe we had PAL (or SECAM for the frenchies) with 625 line goodness.

Why did the USA got stuck with this 525 line resolution and NTSC for so long?
The PAL system was clearly superior.
Usually the US is fast in adopting newer and better technology.