What has Trudeau to do with the choice of the Canadian colour standard? The CBC began NTSC colour more than two years before Trudeau became PM.

"...his close ties with Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) intellectuals (including F. R. Scott, Eugene Forsey, Michael Kelway Oliver and Charles Taylor) led to his support of and membership in that federal democratic socialist party throughout the 1950s."

"His decision to join the Liberal Party of Canada rather than the CCF's successor, the New Democratic Party (NDP) was partly based on his belief that the federal NDP could not achieve power. He also doubted the feasibility of the centralizing policies of the party."

He was in government in the late 60's and his propensity to intervene across portfolios in government was legendary. He later waged a personal campaign for example against what he figured was the Americanizing of Canadian media... the story of CKLW was a perfect example. Given the chance and if technology existed, he would have had no issue closing off Canadians' access to US media. What we have now through regulation of the CRTC (and previously via the CBC) was a direct result of his mandate.

Well Brazil had a PAL 525/60 system, so maybe Canada should have had a SECAM 525/60 system to keep things equal, but common sense prevailed & they chose NTSC. England tried experiments with NTSC, SECAM & PAL on both 405/50 & 625/50 in the 1950's/60's. A few experts wanted wanted to go for NTSC, but eventually they went for PAL, we could have been the only NTSC 625/50 country in the world, wonder how that would have panned out?

Hi All
R.C.A sold CTC11 / 15 / 16,s which had been converted by them to UK system I 625/50 4.43Mhz NTSC 240v 50Hz power in the early 1960s and some still exist.
I have ctc11 / 15/ 16 TVs the 15 and 16 are working well with good pictures.
If you go to :- https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...ighlight=ctc16 you can see the ctc16 coming back to life.
Keith

Hi to all,

On the topic of NTSC experimentation outside the US, Switzerland had a go at testing it also in 1957 with a modified RCA set; see the info on the ETF site :

http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_21ct55_swiss.html

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

PAL-M was chosen to allow in part for Brazil to develop it's own domestic industrial base.

Read somewhere that 405 NTSC looked superb, presume this was under lab conditions though. What it would have been like on sets out in the wild with interference, ghosting, low signal level that many 405 line viewers used to put up with can only be speculated on. I'm wondering if it would have coped fairly well with it having a lower definition/bandwidth?

There is a rule in video media: "Content is king." People were happy to watch terrible-quality bootleg VHS copies of Star Wars. That is not to say that improved quality has no value, but it is ancillary to the programs. So, if 625 lines was never a thing, people would have watched 405 color contentedly, I think; but having 625 available at the same time as color definitely pushed things in that direction.

There's a lot of info here on the BBC R&D site, just put NTSC in as a search term.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/search?query=NTSC&submit=

Thanks for posting that. I didn't know they studied the effects on multiple existing B&W receivers. You may know that the U.S. NTSC did similar studies before adopting the standard, although there was more emphasis on the theoretical problems. Those resulted in the infamous change from 60.00 Hz scanning to (60)(1000/1001) Hz.

There were similar studies of the ATSC digital TV system effects on existing analog receivers during the transition period, mainly focussed on adjacent channel interference effects. These resulted in requiring precision offset frequencies between NTSC stations and lower adjacent ATSC stations.

There's a lot of interesting information on that site.
Think it was somewhere in there I read about tests that were done after the relatively low earth orbit Telstar satellite was launched to check the doppler shift caused by the satellite's motion relative to the ground stations didn't vary the NTSC colour subcarrier frequency much, it ended up being 10-12 Hz from memory which was acceptable.

I was always amused by this depiction of British TVs in a Monty Python episode. The truck outside unloading more TV's elicited some uproarious laughter from friends and family who used to think that I was the only old TV collector. LOFL

This outrageous humor is not for everyone but if you fast forward to 11:14 you'll see alot of them.https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6gf7qi

MPFC also did a "Department Store" sketch. They show a directory of what is on each floor and where it says "Roof", the listing is "TV Aerials"...

They were all those little UHF yagis after VHF was gone then, I was in UK before sky/cable and saw them everywhere. LOL.

There still are lots for the UK Freeview channels

https://www.freeview.co.uk/corporate...-professionals

Yes just about every house round here has a UHF yagi or log periodic on the roof. (except my house, I have a UHF yagi in the loft) In October I went on a cruise to Rotterdam in Netherlands & Cork in Ireland: In Rotterdam I didn't see a single TV antenna at all so presume they're all on cable. In Cork I saw a few UHF antennas like in England & also Satellite dish's.

Mind you the loft antenna doesn't seem to be working after a lightning strike a few weeks ago that tripped the main circuit breaker, blew the internet modem/wi-fi box, blew two landline phones, broke a paving slab in two & melted & burnt an out door string of lights. We also have cable TV & that wasn't affected. Can get glitchy terrestrial digital reception by putting a piece of wire in TV antenna socket so know the TV is OK. Will have to buy/scrounge some co-ax & rewire my antenna, when I can be bothered that is...

A lot of antennas here are 300 ohm balanced and use a balun to convert to 75 ohm unbalanced coax. Those baluns use very fine wire and are usually the weak link in a lightning strike...If you have a balun that would be the first thing I would replace unless the coax is visibly damaged.

It's just co-ax connected directly to the antenna, no balun. The co-ax is very old as I found it in father-in-laws garage about 20 years ago & don't know how long it'd been there for, I'll go & have a look in the loft to see if anything has come adrift.... I don't think I've ever seen a balun used over here, everyone just connects the co-ax to the antenna terminals, my FM antenna on the side of the house doesn't have a balun & works OK, the lightning didn't affect that...

As an aside - from watching old BBC programing, IIRC, they used EMI 2001s a lot. from this clip above, and Fawlty Towers, those cameras seemed to be bad at comet tailing in the red channel. Were they really any worse than other cameras of the era, or is just me?

[QUOTE=

Mind you the loft antenna doesn't seem to be working after a lightning strike a few weeks ago that tripped the main circuit breaker, blew the internet modem/wi-fi box, blew two landline phones, broke a paving slab in two & melted & burnt an out door string of lights. We also have cable TV & that wasn't affected. Can get glitchy terrestrial digital reception by putting a piece of wire in TV antenna socket so know the TV is OK. Will have to buy/scrounge some co-ax & rewire my antenna, when I can be bothered that is...[/QUOTE]

They say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, well it has - sort of. The other night while in bed there was flashing & thunder & then a bright flash & almost instant bang, it didn't trip the circuit breaker this time. The wind was howling so got up to have a mug of co-co & noticed the modem was flashing red & cable TV didn't work. Phoned Virgin Media & it turns out the lightning had fried some gubbins inside their street cabinet down the road, they fixed it by 3 PM & all was then well. Can't find any other lightning damage so got away lightly this time. I'm dreading the next time we have a thunderstorm, lol...