View Single Post
  #7  
Old 03-06-2017, 11:06 PM
old_tv_nut's Avatar
old_tv_nut old_tv_nut is offline
See yourself on Color TV!
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
Posts: 7,184
Quote:
Originally Posted by damien191 View Post
how many tv's showrooms were like electronics stores today with all of the tv's on? also how regular was it to have a tv or two on in the window of a store, wouldn't the sun wash the screen out at different times of day
The big chains did the "wall of TVs" all turned on, for a long time. Don't know about the smaller independents, would guess that it was less common to have everything running the smaller the store was. It was a tired joke that the wall of TVs would have every set showing a different color rendition.

An operating TV in the window was more of an early TV thing I think, into the 1950s, and mainly involving monochrome sets. There are press pictures of various momentous occasions drawing crowds to windows with TV sets.

By the time color came out, most people were familiar with TV (in monochrome) so a window display wouldn't be such a big draw, plus stores didn't want to degrade the color picture with stray light since a color set was a hard sell at first due to the price, and the degradation seemed much worse than in monochrome. Not only were the color sets dimmer, but I think people were less accepting of washed-out color than washed out contrast on a monochrome set. Another thing to note is that monochrome cameras were operated with the image orthicon exposed above the knee, giving only an approximate gray scale rendition of the scene, with edges enhanced but large areas often washed out compared to a photograph or movie. Color cameras had to be operated in the linear region and have contrast corrected precisely with a gamma correction circuit in order for the color not to shift wildly with scene content. This resulted in tonally correct but usually darker images than those from monochrome practice, making color programs more susceptible to washing out from ambient light on the receiver face.
__________________
www.bretl.com
Old TV literature, New York World's Fair, and other miscellany
Reply With Quote