1963 ad for wealthy people

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

OK, but that's the opposite direction of conversion from the original question (NTSC to PAL, not PAL to NTSC).

Wouldn't such a converter need to be bidirectional for a VCR so it can both record and play back?

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Wouldn't such a converter need to be bidirectional for a VCR so it can both record and play back?

Oops - you are right, of course. I got stuck thinking of pre-recorded material.

[Telecolor 3007]

I wonder if any of those wealthy people kept the color tv later on and try to get a decoder for it.
I have an N.T.S.C. - P.A.L. M + N converter and it's works fine on my nickanme (trhough 'Telecolor' 3007 is B/G, D/K). I've tryed image only, because for the ouput of the LaserDisc player I used the R.C.A. audio output.
Anyway, why did Brazil choose such different colour tv standard?

[Captain Video]

The government decided that the NTSC system was flawed and under guidance of German scientists, chose the PAL system.

It was really a government imposed decision. One must remember that from 1964 to 1985 Brazil lived under a military dictatorship. By 1971 the TV stations, and I think also TV set makers, told the government that they were not yet ready for color TV, as it was too huge an investment, they told the government, If I remember correctly, that maybe they could be ready for color in 1974 or even by the early 1980's only! The Minister of Communications angrily told them that they better be ready for 1972 or there "would be consequences"... so it started in 1972 as the dictatorship really wanted color TV to show how good they were at "modernizing" the country. The color sets were so expensive that those of higher prices cost the same as a brand new car. It would take many years for the number of color TVs to surpass the number of B&W sets.

The first color transmission was the "Grape Fest" on the state of Rio Grande do Sul, on March, 31, 1972 ( anniversary of the military coup of 1964 ) and apparently they chose the "Grape Fest" because the daughter of the Minister of Communications was one of the Princesses of the Fest...

[Telecolor 3007]

Well, but why the P.A.L.-M is quite different from Europeanen P.A.L. Probably 525 lines @ 30 frames was the standard for black and white television in Brazil, but if wikipedia isn't wrong, the chroma signal is different between P.A.L. M and the rest of P.A.L.

[ppppenguin]

Brazil did indeed use 525 line 30 field for monochrome. I think with standard US channel spacings. So the obvious route to colour would have been NTSC but they decided, for reasons I don't know, to use PAL. At the time PAL gave freedom from various colour errors and was seen as superior to NTSC. PAL-M is a properly engineered 525 line PAL system. In practice all studios worked in NTSC, with transcoding to PAL-M for transmission.

The situation in Argentina was different. They had 625/50 monochrome but with US channel spacings. Can't use normal PAL or SECAM as a result. So they used PAL-N, a special version of PAL with a lower subcarrier frequency. Studios all worked in PAL-B and the output was transcoded for transmission.

[old_tv_nut]

Yes, the lower channel bandwidth required lower chroma subcarrier frequency.

[Electronic M]

Odds are PAL was selected since there was a large escaped Nazi presence running things back then that were thinking 'we want a German system not something designed by those filthy Americans'.

[Telecolor 3007]

I wondered who used P.A.L.-N, but I was lazy too look for it. Now I found out.
Anyway, that thing with chanell spacing makes me now understand some things.
Because of Ceauşescu we had colour television in Romania only in 1983. At least we got P.A.L., not S.E.C.A.M.
I wonder how early Brazilian color sets looked like and if they where solid state or hybird or both.
Since I Romanian and Romanian and Portugese have roots in common, I can understand most of the add from the 1st post.

[Captain Video]

Our first color sets were hybrid - as far as I can tell. I have two in my collection ( a Sylvania and a Philco ):

[Telecolor 3007]

The one from the top of the right image I guess it's an black and white one.

[Captain Video]

Yes, it is a B&W from 1957.