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Old 08-21-2004, 02:21 AM
Joel Cairo's Avatar
Joel Cairo Joel Cairo is offline
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There were, in fact, color kinescopes made in the 1950s by NBC, using a lenticular film process, in which the chroma info was preserved (and decoded on playback) as follows:

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From http://www.showcaseproductions.com/tech.htm

"Once the technical problem of making a Technicolor kinescope negative was solved, a new problem arose -- it took too long for the laboratory to make Technicolor prints. However, in theory, there was a way to shorten the time considerably, through use of another color process, "Lenticular Color." The process, developed in France around the turn of the century, involved embossing tiny lenses on the back of the negative stock; on projection, the image could be separated by the lenses into the three primary colors, which in turn would be projected onto a screen to yield a full-color picture. The advantage was that considerable time was saved in the printing process, making it theoretically possible to move color prints to the other time zones quickly enough to have each program seen in the same general time slot.

NBC worked with Eastman Kodak; the French process was successfully adopted for the U.S. Although with the passage of time much technical knowledge regarding the lenticular process has been lost, we believe that there is sufficient expertise available to make it possible to reproduce color materials if it
turns out that some of the "black and white" materials held by NBC, Showcase, and archives, are actually lenticular.

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Evidently, lenticular color prints look a lot like B&W prints, at first glance. The few people I know who have actually seen them projected say the color is wonderful, but the process is a real light hog. For the record, Jerry Lewis evidently had a lot of his 1950s NBC show preserved on lenticular prints.

Late-60s color kinnies, using the more standard processes, are generally awful, though, owing to the difficulties of photographing an image projected with a shadow mask. When viewed, image moire is a common occurence. As to why these would be made, there was still some small demand at the affiliate level, and AFRTV also used them for the troops overseas.

-Kevin
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