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Colour TV is 50 today!
Richardcoulter
Posts: 30,369 Forum Member
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The Wright Stuff mentioned on this mornings show that the invention of colour TV is 50 years old today but that, sadly, Americans couldn't see the broadcasts as no equipment was on general sale!
IIRC this was also the case with digital television in this country. It sounds llogical, but I guess that broadcasters have to initially provide the service before people will buy the equipment.
This article gives more details, but I'm not sure what it means by the fact that the technology for colour TV has largely remained unchanged!!
Aren't digital signals, plasma/LCD screens etc a change?
http://www.gizmag.com/go/2784/
IIRC this was also the case with digital television in this country. It sounds llogical, but I guess that broadcasters have to initially provide the service before people will buy the equipment.
This article gives more details, but I'm not sure what it means by the fact that the technology for colour TV has largely remained unchanged!!
Aren't digital signals, plasma/LCD screens etc a change?
http://www.gizmag.com/go/2784/
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They started regular colour transmissions as opposed to trade test transmissions in PAL 625 actually beating the German originator of the system during Wimbledon fortnight if I remember rightly?
Surely the USA did it years before that using the NTSC 525 lines system ?
I think it was even earlier than that.
NTSC was decided upon in Dec 53- so presumably some testing for a couple of years before that,
As is often the case, being first doesn't mean being best. They jumped the gun a bit and spent years trying to make it work- whereas PAL was successful from the outset.
Autumn 64 saw about half American programmes in colour and autumn 65 all new American programmes in colour, so maybe today was the americans official launch day (after years of maybe having about 5% of programmes in colour as an experiment).
For UK of course 1/7/67 (BBC2) and 15/11/69 (BBC1 and ITV).
That is very true!
Well then for the UK we have to go by the BBC 2 date.
I wonder when the widescreen and HD firsts for the UK are? Im guessing that the widescreen date will be the same as digital? and the HD date 2006 some time?
Not sure, but I do know that Matthew Wright got it wrong when he said that the UK had to wait for another 16 years before receiving colour (which he said was Wimbledon coverage).
Sixteen years after 1964 would make the introduction of colour broadcasts in the UK to be 1980!!!
A couple of Irwin Allen series I can remember- Voyage to the Bottom of the sea was in b&w for series 1 (64/5) but colour from autumn 65 onwards. Lost in Space started in 65 (b&w) but colour from autumn 66 onwards) so that was their changeover period,
The first coast-to-coast colour transmission in the US was by NBC on January 1, 1954, with the Tournament of Roses Parade.
The BBC conducted colour TV tests from the early 1950s from a studio at Alexandra Palace. The transmissions usually consisted of a film and studio discussion and were broadcast after closedown. The equipment was subsequently moved to Lime Grove.
While the BBC was testing the NTSC and PAL systems, the ITA used the then ABC studios at Teddington for the French SECAM system.
ATV were making programmes in colour for the US market at Elstree in 1966.
Right as always ftv
I think the confusion may be that although BBC2 started in 1964 it didn't go into colour until July 1967, the first in Europe. BBC1 and ITV followed in November 1969.The BBC took delivery of two Pye colour OB units just in time for Wimbledon 1967.
I know France and Russia went with SECAM while most of Europe went with PAL. NTSC was mostly USA and Japan. Again please feel free to correct me as I am not 100% sue of my facts.
On 10th October 1950, the FCC approved the CBS colour system. There were a series of legal battles to stop CBS then appeals but the FCC decision was upheld.
The official premier for CBS colour broadcasting was 25th June 1951 with a one hour gala programme called Premiere. There were twelve million television sets but only a couple of dozen or could receive the CBS colour transmissions.
Anyone else have the same?
Nothing offensive- but I don't know why he couldn't have posted on this thread . Some was interesting- and some missed the point entirely.
strange- because he isn't banned- but has made thousands of posts- but none since 2008. (long before I joined DS).
You're right. PAL and Secam are very similar and to all intents and purposes only really diverge when the colour difference signals are being encoded onto the monochrome signal.
On the other hand, you could also argue that PAL and NTSC are very similar too and only differ on a few fundamental principles.
All colour tv 'systems' start off with RGB at the head end of the camera and end up with RGB on your display device at home, be it an analogue CRT or the very latest digital flat screen device.
I had the same thing on another thread from the same person it is a bit strange
How similar are SECAM and PAL, I remember someone telling me of a visit they had from some East European broadcasters. He asked over lunch why the chose SECAM and told it was because their equipment was so poor that it was easier to operate on SECAM and it would struggle to work on PAL.
Hasn't colour essentially been sent as YUV over digital and then people use whatever output from their STB that works best for their TV PAL/SECAM/NTSC over composite and S-video, RGB over Scart or separate plugs, YUV over separate plugs or HDMI.
Yes both PAL and 'digital' carry component video signals (variations of R-Y, and B-Y) within them.
The head end of every camera is analogue and responds only to RGB 'light', so does the output of every display at the viewers interface (i.e. your eyes!)
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It was not untill the 1960s that Colour TV took of in the USA, few people could afford Colour sets, TV Stations would not make Colour shows till there were more viewers, and people would not buy Colour sets till there was more Colour shows, talk about the Dog chasing its tail.
we were very lucky in the UK with a July 1st 1967 Colour TV start date, using the far better PAL system.
So Colour TV is 47 years old here on July 1st.
But they are claiming the first colour television transmissions, not when it 'took off'.
We commemorate the start of the world's first regular high definition television service in 1936 but it could not be said to 'take off' until many years later.
The important reasons why transmission is via YUV (broadly Y, R-Y, B-Y) and not RGB are firstly bandwidth. RGB would require full bandwidth on all three channels. With YUV only the Y channel ( the b/w info) is required at max bandwidth, because the human eye cannot resolve colour differences as well as it can shade ( aka the b/w component). Therefore U and V are transmitted at a lower resolution. That's how all three composite colour tx systems work, slotting in a colour info carrier into the same bandwidth used for B/w, not perfect of course, hence the cross colour effects you see on fine luminance detail. Secondly any gain discrepancy bewteen U and V results in a saturation error, far less objectionable than a hue change, that you'd get with a discrepancy between R G or B