French color TVs 1969-1970
 

Roundup of French color TVs 1969-1970
Courtesy Jerome Halphen

14 pages of French magazine "Le Haut-Parleur,"
which published a yearly Radio/TV special issue listing all models on the market.

Dozens of models that received both 819-line monochrome and 625-line SECAM; even a two-screen set for simultaneous color and monochrome.

http://www.bretl.com/documents/1969-...chcolorTVs.pdf


And a reminder:
Many early color TV articles are on my site at
http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/tvarticles.htm

Some French TV'S of that era
had a lockable front control panel door.
The keys are visible on the EMO
model.The ultimate parental TV
control maybe?

No french provincial cabinets? lol

Some sets sold in Spain during the early 60s also had this feature, and it was very prominent in the advertising of the day. What's baffling is that there was only one channel on the air when the sets were sold, so...no idea.

What ??

https://www.flickr.com/photos/100014...posted-public/

Quite a selection of manufacturers!

Barco is really Dutch. Once worked at a station that had Barco monitors. They were 100% modular. You could change the standards just by swapping boards.

If our member from France enters this topic (threads):
1) What was the avarage income (sallary) in France around that time. But the minimal one?;
2) When around 50% comed to get a color tv?;
3) Untill when color tvs where manufactured in France with French made components?

Hi to all,

@TeleColor 3007 :

1) What was the average income (salary) in France around that time and the minimal one ?

according to this document, see tabulated data on page 2 :
https://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/pdf/ebook/ebook121.pdf?

average yearly income was 9900 Euros in 1960
minimum was 4300 Euros
(converted from French Francs to Euros)

2) When did around 50% of the population have a color TV ?
i didn't find when the 50% point was passed, but found this :
24% in 1977
30% in 1978 :
https://www.persee.fr/doc/estat_0336...num_110_1_4256

Personally, i would say that color TV growth was very rapid between 1978 and 1985. VCRs appeared in 1976 and a color TV was the first purchase before considering a VCR.

In the early years (1967+), color TV penetration was very slow for 4 reasons :
- only one color channel, state-controlled
- high cost of receivers : 33.33% Value Added Tax (luxury product)
- requirement for dual-standard (819 B&W + SECAM 625 Color)
made color TVs complex, expensive and not very reliable
- TVs had to work on 110 VAC and 220VAC ---> expensive power
transformer. The country was still in conversion from 110V to a 220V grid.

in comparison with Germany : 220VAC only, 625 PAL only & AC transformerless TVs = cheaper TVs

Commercial TV broadcasting (more color channels) only started in 1986.
Compare with the UK which had commercial ITV start in 1956 !

3) Until when were color TVs manufactured in France with French made components ?

Probably until the mid-1980s. Japanese small-screen sets started to be serious competition at the end of the 70s : Sony with its beautiful Trinitron & high-reliability solid-state chassis, then Hong-Kong/Singapore/Malaysia sets.

At the component level, the decline took a longer time, until the mid-1990s. Powerful groups such as Philips produced CRTs and semiconductors & VideoColor (Thomson Group) likewise.There was also Telefunken.

I hope to have partially answered your question...

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

Thank you for the info. I thought only in Romania we had dubios taxes on electronics, but it seems it wasn't so.
I thought France had only 220 Volts back then. But again I was wrong. In Romania we had 120 Volts a.c. in some areas from Bucharest up untill 1976 or 1977, but we managed to have some 120 - 220 Volts tv sets without a transformer. Or the buyer purchased the transformer.
Found an 1971 "Schneider" color tv on youtube :)
So, in 1969-1970 only the rich or the one who where eager to get a color television and could get some money got one. You could buy them in loans?
Thanks for the info again! I opened a discusion about the tvs on a Romanian forum and put a link to here too!

Hi to All,

Hello Telecolor 3007, you wrote :

"So, in 1969-1970 only the rich or the ones who where eager to get a color television and had some money got one ?"

True. If you look at the catalogue of French color TVs Old_TV_Nut kindly posted on his site (Thanks !), some quote prices. At the 1967/1968 introduction of color sets, the standard model was a 25"/63cm rectangular screen with a 4500 French Francs price tag. This was also the price of a popular, cheap car the Renault 4L, See it here :

https://www.google.fr/search?q=Renau...w=1173&bih=735

Interestingly enough, when the first US color TV, the RCA CT-100 came out in 1953, its price was also the US Dollar equivalent of a small car.

"You could buy them with loans ?"
Well you could always ask your bank for a loan and get a yes/no answer.
I think your question is : could you get a color TV by rental ?

In England, color TV took off thanks to rentals, weekly or monthly payment. It was very popular and immensely helped the introduction of color. In France, you could rent, LOCATEL was the main provider, but the French are very reluctant to rent forever and not own the product in the end, so rental was a very small part of the market. The general attitude was "i will do without and wait until prices come down + more channels + better reliability".

"Thanks for the info again! I opened a discusion about the tvs on a Romanian forum and put a link to here too!"

Thank You ! & you're welcome !

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

I didn't know about color tv rentals. In Romania (at least in the '60's) you could rent some electronics for events.
"Renault" 4... there where several in Romania too (seen them in Bucharest)
But I wonder, who made the picture tube for the French color tv sets. "Videcolor" as far as I found camed out only in 1971.
The Germans (West) also where intrested in exports. Never seen a French tv in Romania. Germans (East and West) yes. Plus Dutch "Philips". 'Telecolor' 3007 had sometimes "Videocolor" picture tubes (mine haves "Toshiba").
I guess since most people dind't had a color tv before 1973, French early color tvs are rare :(
Here is that "Schneider": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9MGbYrO5jI

But how come that most of those early French had such quite big screen for it's days.

Hi to all,

Hello Telecolor 3007,

You wrote :
"I didn't know about color tv rentals. In Romania (at least in the '60's) you could rent some electronics for events."

In France, rentals were mostly for industrial/training/institutional video.
3/4" U-Matic, cameras, switchers.

"But I wonder, who made the picture tubes for the French color tv sets. "Videocolor" as far as I found came out only in 1971."

You're probably right. Philips set up a color CRT factory in Dreux, first stone set in 1965 to produce the A63-11X 25" color tube for all Euro color TVs of the Philips Group. The factory operated under the RTC-Compelec name, a full Philips daughter company in France.

VideoColor came later. Thomson acquired a RCA licence, therefore US technology.
They had big industrial facilities near Lyon & Agnani (Italy).

"The West Germans were also interested in exports"
True. Telefunken produced color CRTs.

"Never seen a French tv in Romania. Germans (East and West) yes, plus Dutch by Philips. 'Telecolor' 3007 televisions sometimes had "Videocolor" picture tubes (mine have Toshiba tubes)"

It's sort of strange there were no French color TVs as the Warsaw Pact nations + USSR adopted SECAM, at least in the early years. Lousy marketing...

"I guess since most people didn't have a color tv before 1973, French early color tvs are rare. Here is that Schneider color TV :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9MGbYrO5jI

Thanks ! will watch,

"But how come that most of those early French color sets had such quite big screen for their time ?"

Color sets were extremely expensive so a large screen helped to justify price. 25 inches was still a big (luxury) screen for a B&W set.
Also with Philips producing the A63-11X in France, it became the obvious de-facto choice of CRTs for first generation color sets.

There were some (very few) manufacturers who made other choices. If you look at the Old_TV_Nut pdf, look at Pizon-Bros. They made an all-transistorized color TV with a 15"/39cm screen (RCA tube). To keep cost down, the TV was 625 SECAM only, "forgetting" 819 lines altogether. A smart idea, Pizon reasoned that the customer already owned an old B&W 819 set so it was un-necessary to offer a full dual-standard color set.
See screenshot of a restored Pizon-Bros 15" color TV.

Full restoration topic (in French) but lots of photos of the chassis & screenshots :http://retro-forum.com/viewtopic.php...hilit=TV+Pizon

Best Regards
jhalphen

I wonder about the details of who made the glass envelope parts for the tubes. In the U.S., as far as I know, no TV manufacturer made the glass. That was done by a special factory of a glass company, and the picture tube manufacturer then assembled the funnel, gun, and screen (another big factory). And then it went into the TV (another big factory).

How was this work divided in Europe?

Hi to all,

Hi Wayne, you're right of course. In France, SOVIREL made B&W bulbs (recognizable with a stylised S embossed in the glass) and (maybe) Saint-Gobain, now a World Class supplier of all glass-related products.

From my experience with the RACS brothers who inherited the company founded by their father, Corning Glass was a major bulb/faceplate/neck supplier until the very end of CRT production.

Mr Raedersdorff Senior, the RACS founder was a Corning-Europe engineer for many years before setting up his lucrative CRT-rebuild business.

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France