Low band TV in Britain.

[ppppenguin]

SECAM was a nightmare in the studio. You can't fade or mix it without severe compromises. I once worked for Michael Cox Electronics who made genuine SECAM vision mixers. Hideous things, with no possibility for them to be any better. It's no surprise that France was in the vanguard of component (YCbCr) colour studio techniques. In some SECAM countries they took a pragmatic approach and ran the studios in PAL, transcoding to SECAM for transmission.

[Electronic M]

They wouldn't be the first studios to hate the chosen broadcast format and transcode the studio's chosen format to it....Here in the states when CBS's field sequential system lost the format war officially (writing was on the wall long before), CBS took their existing field sequential broadcast studio ran it through a transcoder, and were the first post NTSC approval station broadcasting NTSC!...They continued with that kludge for years until the field sequential gear broke or they had got over their loss enough to stomach buying proper NTSC color cameras.

[David Roper]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

CBS's field sequential system lost the format war...CBS took their existing field sequential broadcast studio ran it through a transcoder, and were the first post NTSC approval station broadcasting NTSC!...They continued with that kludge for years until the field sequential gear broke or they had got over their loss enough to stomach buying proper NTSC color cameras.

You're thinking of the Chromacoder, a Rube Goldberg use of sequential color field cameras to broadcast NTSC. I am quite sure network use of the Chromacorder didn't last much beyond 1954. In fact, CBS in Hollywood was equipped with TK-41s by the fall of that year. I'm not sure if any definitive evidence exists as to exactly how long that technique was used, but probably not outside the very early, still experimental period following the approval of NTSC color. It required a ton more light and (surprise, surprise), gave an inferior result compared to an all-electronic color camera.

[Colly0410]

BBC1 on low band reached over 99% of the UK population by the 60's, it also reached large parts of the Irish Republic, Northern France, Western Belgium & Western Netherlands. They made TV's that'd work on 405, 625 & 819 lines for use in Northern France & Belgium, they must have been very expensive...

[benman94]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

They wouldn't be the first studios to hate the chosen broadcast format and transcode the studio's chosen format to it....Here in the states when CBS's field sequential system lost the format war officially (writing was on the wall long before), CBS took their existing field sequential broadcast studio ran it through a transcoder, and were the first post NTSC approval station broadcasting NTSC!...They continued with that kludge for years until the field sequential gear broke or they had got over their loss enough to stomach buying proper NTSC color cameras.

The Chromacoder cameras used the field sequential method, but that was about it. Chromacoder =/= CBS field sequential. They scanned 525 lines at 180 fields per second, 60 of them red, 60 of them blue, 60 of them green. The raster was rotated 90 degrees so the scan lines would run vertically so as to reduce the moire patters when converting the result to NTSC. The output from the camera was then fed in a round robin fashion to one of three special CRTs operating at 27ish kV with a specially formulated P1 phosphor, one tube for red, one for green, and one for blue. Each CRT had a camera tube aimed at it, and the output of the three camera tubes was used, along with a storage tube, to develop an NTSC signal.

[Colly0410]

Heard that the advantage of SECAM was that the viewer couldn't mess it up - on NTSC they could get the hue & saturation wrong, on PAL in the UK the saturation was often to high, but on SECAM the broadcaster was in charge & the viewer got what they got & that was that. That's on TV's without a colour/saturation control that IIRC original SECAM sets didn't have, the later PAL/SECAM sets did have a colour/saturation control so the viewer could mess it up. I had a PAL/SECAM/NTSC TV & that had a hue & saturation control...

[Colly0410]

Britain had no plans to broadcast any VHF TV after the 405 lines VHF system closed down. Most British 625 lines TV's didn't have a VHF tuner, although a few did as they were meant for the Irish market where they used VHF & UHF for 625 until around 2012 AFAIK. Later on from the late 90's there were multi standard sets that'd work on all 625 systems in PAL & SECAM, VHF/UHF, I had one of these but it only ever worked on PAL I system at UHF. High band is now used to broadcast digital radio, don't think low band is used for anything anymore..

[Telecolor 3007]

There where dual 405-625 line sets too. Includig color ones!
But when in the U.K. color tvs becamed cheaper? (let's say 4.000-6.000 British Pounds in today's money).

[Colly0410]

1960's British colour TV's had to be dual standard 405/625 sets if you wanted to receive BBC1 & ITV as they only transmitted on 405 VHF till November 1969 when they fired up on 625 UHF as well. Both colour & black/white dual standard TV's were clunking great monsters. My parents rented a dual standard TV till 71/72 when they bought a Sony colour set & a free Elizabethan T12 B/W portable TV that I still have, so we became a 625 only family overnight. BTW you could tell who had a 625 lines TV by the UHF TV antenna on the the roof, most folks had an H or X shaped antenna for VHF TV reception. Most of the H & X shaped antenna's have corroded away or fell down by now...

[KentTeffeteller]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

There where dual 405-625 line sets too. Includig color ones!
But when in the U.K. color tvs becamed cheaper? (let's say 4.000-6.000 British Pounds in today's money).

For many years, many Britons also hired (rented) their TV sets and even some of their appliances. From companies like Thorn, Rediffusion, and others.

[Colly0410]

Originally Posted by KentTeffeteller

For many years, many Britons also hired (rented) their TV sets and even some of their appliances. From companies like Thorn, Rediffusion, and others.

Many who rented had a coin meter on the back of the TV, you'd put 10 or 50 pence coins in it, think you got 2 hours for 10 pence & 10 hours 50 pence. (or something like that)Iif there was more money in the meter than the rental cost they got the surplus back as a rebate. When I went to Canary Islands 11 years ago you had to put a 1 euro coin in a meter for 1 hour of TV, when I went last month it was free...

Yes a lot of people used to rent washing machines, fridges, stoves etc & often paid via the TV coin meter. Heard of washing machines with slot meters but never actually seen one so not sure if true or I was being had...

[Dave A]

The BBC did try color on 405 but mostly experimental. Sets were produced for demonstration but not sold to the public.

A great collector, David Boynes in England, restored what I think from the notes is a Pye 405 color set (mostly RCA tube imports and Pye designs from there) and from that modified a B&K generator to produce 405 color. I can only find his notes on the ETF site and they mostly document the B&K mods...not the set.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/pye_c...storation.html

More from David (FERNSEH)

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...t=68780&page=2

And a BBC doc that shows color at the very end. Not a kine but a film shot on set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K37...ature=youtu.be

The notes have an interesting entry of finding a Mullard (Holland) version of the 21CYP22. Perhaps there were other 21's made under license by Mullard or others and can be searched in Europe. Jerome H...any help on this thought?

Mods...if this is drifting too far afield please restart as you wish with a new topic.

[ppppenguin]

In the 1950s the BBC produced experimental colour transmissions on both 405 and 625 lines. All using NTSC adapted to suit the different systems. Several manufacturers made experimental colour sets using American CRTs and largely American technology. Marconi built cameras, nicknamed coffin cameras on account of their size and shape, using 3x image orthicon tubes.

Apparently it all worked pretty well and a lot of experience was gained. I think the decision not to start a colour service was largely financial and political rather than technical.

By 1967 when the UK colour service started there were plumbicon cameras and a well developed set of European valves and components, largely due to work by Philips.

Early sets were expensive, several thousand pounds in todays values. Roughly equivalent to the cost of 42" plasma flat screens when they first were sold.

[nasadowsk]

Originally Posted by Dave A

The notes have an interesting entry of finding a Mullard (Holland) version of the 21CYP22. Perhaps there were other 21's made under license by Mullard or others and can be searched in Europe. Jerome H...any help on this thought?

This is interesting:
1) That anyone outside of RCA had the resources at the time to build the CY.

And:

2) That there was enough demand to actually bother, given color was barely selling in the US, and PAL was still over the horizon.

In the US, wasn't Zenith the second one to build color tubes?

(Ok, this starting to become serious drift, I guess...)

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by nasadowsk

This is interesting:
1) That anyone outside of RCA had the resources at the time to build the CY.

And:

2) That there was enough demand to actually bother, given color was barely selling in the US, and PAL was still over the horizon.

In the US, wasn't Zenith the second one to build color tubes?

(Ok, this starting to become serious drift, I guess...)

When you say maker of color CRTs you fail to differentiate whether the CRT was prototype or production...RCA, Zenith, Dumont, CBS, and Philco (I'm probably forgetting others) all had prototypes that were revolutionary in some way or another but when color was standardized LATE in 1953 only 2 OEMs actually made CRTs for production TV as far as I know. They were RCA and CBS.
CBS developed and sold the 15HP22 (basically a 15GP22 with phosphor directly deposited onto the inside of the envelope instead of using a separate phosphor dot plate (RCA later bought the patent from CBS). They also made a 19" version of the 15HP22 for a few months before the 21AXP22 from RCA obsoleted it.
In 1958 when nearly every maker except Motorola had given up on making color sets and simply rebadged RCAs Westinghouse briefly made and recalled a 23" rectangular color with a CBS CRT. That CRT had both purity and convergence design flaws that led to the recall (2 examples are known to survive).

Zenith did not make a consumer market color TV until 1961 and though they had color CRT prototypes in 1954 they didn't gear up to make consumer CRTs until after they entered the consumer market....I have owned early Zenith branded 21FJP22s with an EIA code that indicated that they had been manufactured by RCA.

It would be interesting to know which OEMs produced color CRTs besides RCA in the years 1954-1964... If that data exists and is compiled it would tell you who started when and if any of the original OEMs took a break in the leanest years of color sales.

It is known that Japan had adopted NTSC color by 1960 and made roundy color TV for both their domestic market and export. I wonder if RCA exported enough to supply them or if they made their own plant.

Long before PAL Brittan and parts of europe were experimenting with color after NTSC came into existence. I could see a large tube and set OEM like philips making their own color CRTs on an experimental basis. Philips actually produced a roundy color for both Canada NTSC and european PAL markets, but I believe it used a 21FJP22....It would be interesting to know if they made their own CRT or bought American.