"wizard of oz" is still the best movie to watch for color.many technicolor movies look fantastic,also shows like "bonanza" and the "virginian".i remember a company called "perfect pathe" in the screen credits,those movies always had a very nice look.when "the fugitive" went to color,it lost something.maybe the sinister,desperate feel.the nbc color shows seemed to be a little better than the rest."you dont say"was really great to watch.abc s "hollywood palace" was another."dean martin show"was the king of all.that was a beautiful,fun,show to watch.like going to a party for an hour.color tv was technical marvel in the 50s and 60s.imho,the greatest addition to television.i like hd,but the coming of color was greatest milestone.

Funny you should mention Dean Martin. During the great Chicago snowstorm of '67, I got home at exactly 9:00 pm - I know, because the Dean Martin show was just starting (my dad was watching on the 20-inch color Motorola table model I got at employee sales). Dean had a way of giving full attention to his guests that made every one give their best in return. I have the full collection of DVDs, and it is amazing how good those shows still are.

dean was king!coolest that ever lived and one of my personal heroes.the show had beautiful color and even our philco ford roundie made it look awesome.i remember a show with tony franciosa and jack soo from 1964?i watched it on an airline console my uncle had.the reds were spectacular.he kept that set in tip top shape.did many mods to get the picture even better.color tv back then was really an event.we take it for granted now,but i really miss those days

A little research helped me narrow down my first color viewing experience. It was in the early '60's, probably 1961-1963. We went over to my dad's best friends house and watched Disney's "The Wonderful World of Color".

Macon, GA had only one local TV station which was a CBS affiliate that did not have the capability of broadcasting in color. The closest stations that could broadcast in color were in Atlanta, 85 miles north, making Macon in the "deep fringe" range. Reception was spotty at best and required a rotating antenna mounted high in a tree or on a tower. WSB-TV, channel 2, had the best reception since it was at a lower frequency and had a powerful transmitter. Luckily they were an NBC affiliate, which had the most color programming. The Wonderful World of Color moved to NBC in 1961.

Color TV's were very expensive and when viewed as a percentage of family income even large LCD flat panel TV's are a bargain. My dad's best friend had a habit of spending too much money on electronic toys. He was an early stereo adopter and owned McIntosh and Bozak equipment.

I ended up working at the local TV station just after they started color broadcasting. They had an old DuMont transmitter that they converted to color. They also converted an old RCA tube quad VTR to color. They bought one Philips color camera and for over a year all local shows were with one camera!

I love HDTV. When I was a boy I never dreamed I'd someday own a home projection system that would allow me to watch a 120" image that rivals or in some ways surpasses the quality of image at the local movie theater. I paid $700 for my projector. A Westinghouse color TV cost $1295 in 1954, more than $10k in today's money.

Perfect Pathe was used by Screen Gems Television, a part of Columbia Pictures. Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie, etc.

I wish I was around in the early days of colour, would of been great to experience it and share a story, but I was born in 1981, long after colour was introduced even in Australia so the first colour program I would of seen was whatever was on when I got my first glimpse of the family TV hehehehe.

I will however share a story of my first glimpse of really early colour television footage. Back in late 1990 when the movie Ghost was playing in cinemas everywhere, The Righteous Brothers 1965 hit "Unchained Melody" became a massive hit once again and I often saw the 1965 Andy Williams Show performance of that song played on Rage on a regular basis as the song charted at No.1 here for 7 weeks. Anyways back then I thought the song and the TV performance was brand new, I had NO idea that TV clip was done way back in 1965 until about 2004 when I got a hold of a VHS bootleg copy of various Andy Williams Show artist appearances which included that clip, that was a blowout for me. It can be viewed here on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewO_g...eature=related .

I also will mention my first glimpse of even earlier colour footage was some Osmonds excerpts from The Andy Williams Show 1962-64 which I saw back in 2000 on a Donnie Osmond documentary, that totally blew me out that colour was that good back then and seeing that footage kickstarted my interest in researching and getting a hold of colour television footage from the earliest days of colour and have since accumulated a lot of colour footage from 1958 to 1965 from various sources and have been totally amazed with how good colour was in its earliest years!!!

I think it was probably one of the Christmas specials like Rudolph, my aunt had an RCA Vista-Color roundie TV. I was born in 1966 but we did not get color until 1971. I remember later that year the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series, I remember seeing that in color.

First color TV that I saw "working" was in early 1965.
Knew people that had a color TV, but they would not turn it on because it was Sooooo expensive, afraid it would break.

I was watching the wizard of OZ, they said it was in color. The movie started, I start screaming to my Dad that the TV was broken cause the movie was in B&W.
I discovered later the color portion of the movie doesn't start till Dorathy is in her dream.

Outstanding Color
 

For some reason when someone mentions what stood out as perfect color back then I always think of the KRAFT food commercials; couldn't get much better than that. This during The Perry Como Show as I remember.