Early color TV in Italy
 

I found some interesting publish rare pictures relating to the advent of color TV in Italy. As you can see, up from 1968, Rai was able to send color broadcasts and begin testing, including comparative between the various systems NTSC, PAL and SECAM. using RCA equipment (TK 41). On the Rome area radiates the first experimental signals to NTSC color. Then everything was frozen due to economic crisis in Italy and the obtuseness of political leaders.
The tests resumed later in 1975 with equipment Philips (LDK 3). In practice Rai for years had the color TV programs and broadcast them in black and white and color broadcasts coming from abroad, such as football matches. Typical Italian paradoxes. Not to mention the waste of money in studies to equip color broadcasts in 1968 and then not use them for years.

Italy was not the only country to have politicians play games with colour television.

Australia did not get colour TV until 1975 despite pressure from the broadcasters, primarily because the government did not want to spend money to upgrade the national broadcaster, the ABC (which is modelled on the BBC).

Colour tests began in the late 50s and continued throughout the 60s with 625 line variants of NTSC and both SECAM and PAL. Australia ultimately adopted PAL G in line with much of Europe.

Actually, the 1972 olympic games were broadcast in color, but color sets were still quite rare back then, most were owned by bars, venues, clubs, political parties or other institutions,

color sets began to sell in serious numbers in about 1975 as prices went down enough to be affordable for middle class people.

What's fun is that Autovox, Phonola and many other Italian manufacturers were making color sets in the late 60s and sold them on foreign markets (mostly Germany and the UK)

That's what I've NEVER understood- Why wasn't the population in every country that DIDN'T have color TV raising hell about it ? It wasn't like it was some big American state secret that we wouldn't share w/anyone...And England, Italy, Australia aren't exactly backwards 3rd world shitholes, either... And Australia sent at least ONE program to America in the 60s-early '70s-"Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo"-that was most assuredly in color...I remember seeing it when I was a kid. So they HAD the equipment then, they just weren't willing to use it. Politicians....they could screw up a 2-car funeral...

probably because most European countries had state owned TV networks and they were reluctant to spend money on color equipment (that's not just cameras and studio equipment, but also the nationwide distribution network, $$$$$)

Most other European countries got official color TV broacasts in 1967 or 68, but since we're Italians, we had to wait another decade, until 1977 when official PAL color programming began in Italy, before that, politicians were fighting over PAL and SECAM color standards and as a result many PAL sets were sold with optional SECAM decoders.

Skippy
 

Maybe Skippy was produced using film techniques, so no colo(u)r video
equipment was involved. I don't believe this series was ever rebroadcast
in Canada after 1976, as we didn't get a color TV until 1977 (in my
household, I mean) and I never saw it in color. Just my two cents' worth.

P.S.: a look at Wikipedia confirms that it was produced on 16-mm color film.

The problem was government and bureaucracy ...the cost and indecision on the system ..PAL vs SECAM... and then licensing issues (PAL had to be licensed)... but the main factor was that the government didn't want to spend money on upgrading the national broadcaster.

Political interference has not ended... digital tv in Australia has been hamstrung but absurd rules to protect friends of the government ... but that is nothing new!

But getting back to colour stuff... programs made in Australia for sale overseas were often filmed in colour ...so overseas veiwers often saw material in colour made here well before we did.

As for me ..to be honest 625 NTSC would have been fine and we could have done it in 1956!!!

In 1965 the Italian Parliament had decided to postpone to 1970 the introduction of
Color broadcasts, although since 1962 the transmitter of Mount Mario, in
to Rome, radiates the first experimental television signals color
with the American system N.T.S.C. (National Television System Committee) and
were subsequently equipped production studios for broadcast in color.
In 1966 in Rome were organized as part of office received from
European Broadcasting, a series of demonstrations with comparative systems
N.T.S.C. American in 1953, SE.C.A.M. (Sequential coleur a Memoire)
and the 1959 French P.A.L. (Phase alternation line) German (Patented by
TELEFUNKEN) in 1965.
Note that in the course of 1969 almost all European nations
had introduced the color in their broadcasts. The R.A.I., although
already equipped to do so, he was hampered by Parliament for reasons of rigor
economic, and even the automobile idustry that the new
Consumer durable (the color TV) constituted a dangerous alternative to purchase
the second car.
To satisfy the parties is ended up taking a typical italian decision: it was decided to broadcast with both systems (PAL and SECAM) the Olympic Games
Monaco, 1972.
Finally reached on 11 August 1975
day on which the Head of State issued the Presidential Decree No. 452 which
official selection for the German system and gave time for one year to start
transmissions. In the spring of 1976 was exceptionally decided to groadcast in color
Montreal Olympics which took place in July of that year. Only
from 1 February 1977 R.A.I. officially began broadcasting color television , exiting a tunnel of uncertainty and controversy lasted well 12 years.

I don't know the facts of why Europe was so behind the times in adopting color tv, but if adopting color tv is anything like the highly protectionist attitudes that govern socialist dominated Europe today, with respect to many other technologies that were invented elsewhere, Then I suspect that the..... "if we didn't invent it and perfect it, then we won't use it" attitude may have been at the root cause of why it took so long to get color in Europe. NTSC could have been adopted right from the start, but that would have given an opening to American tv manufacturers to sell sets into the European market.

A good old American powerhouse corporation RCA invented color tv and the European governments figured if they used a non-ntsc system, then they could shut out US tv manufacturers and foster a tv industry based in Euroland. It was all based on the ecconomics of creating barriers to the importation of goods from other countrys, and creating an environment for products to be made in Europe.

The delay of color tv to Europe was totally political, based on a protectionist mentality to try and foster an industry for the manufacturer of color tv within Europe and the jobs that a European based color tv industry would create. Unfortunately while the Europeans argued, and nit picked about how to achieve the end goal, the rest of the world leap froged Europe and left it's citizens with yesterdays black and white technology. As always in these situations, the brunt of these bad political decissions, were born by the average citizens who went without color tv long after the rest of the world had passed them by.

A prime example of a similar situation today, is the adoption of 3G wireless, Code Division Mutliple Access (CDMA) in Europe.

Qualcomm, a US technological giant, invented CDMA, and it has been available in the USA and other advanced countries like Korea and India since before 2000. But Because it wasn't invented by Europeans, the EU stonewalled CDMA2000, and REFUSED to use it, and continued to use inferior GSM, a boogered up version of TDMA, until the Europeans could booger up CDMA2000 into a wideband version called WCDMA, and rename it UMTS, just so the Europeans could save face and say they invented it. In fact, if it haden't been for the fact that Qualcomm engineers, solved the WCDMA handoff problem for the European engineers, it is probable that the European engineers would still be scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to get WCDMA to work today, and Europe would probably still be without 3G cellular if Qualcomm haden't fixed it for them.

Well guess what? The Europeans are paying a royalty on every WCDMA phone sold, everywhere in the world to guess who?? that's right, Qualcomm, a US corporation who invented the core technology that WCDMA is based on. Draging their feet on 3G didn't save the Europeans a dime. All it did was delay the adoption of a more advanced technology by about 5 years, after the rest of the world already had it in the form of CDMA2000.

Even the Chineese are playing stupid games like this with a version they call TDSCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access)

I Hope I didn't step on anyones toes, but that is how I see the the wireless wars, which are just a repeat of the old color tv wars. I have been watching the progress of wireless since the beginning of 2G TDMA (the core of GSM), which BTW was also invented in the USA by Motorola, the company that invented the concept of "cellular wireless phone technology"

Unfortunately RCA, the company that invented color tv, became a victum of America's free trade policies, in a world where artificial barriers to the importation of foreign goods, as practiced by other nations, was, and still is, the rule. The importation of cheap goods into the U.S. from the orient with no protection from the U.S. government for RCA, is what killed this once powerful icon of U.S. industry.

America is a world leader in the developement of advanced technologies in many fields of reasearch. Placing barriers to the adoption of superior American technologies, for political reasons is both ludicrous and arrogant.

I was formerly a free market proponent, but if the rest of the world isn't going to play by the same rules, then you need to fight fire with fire.

Our US auto industry is in a difficult situation right now. It's due to grossly unaffordable union contracts that Ford, Gm and Chrystler made with the labor union thugs many years ago, and also due to an attitude of our government that refuses to protect our vital US industries, from foreign competition. America needs to place huge tarifs on the importation of autos and other foreign goods, just like other countries do to U.S. goods. Maybe when we turn the tables around and close our boarders to the importation of foreign goods, other countries will see that they need to trade fairly with the U.S. and buy as much form the U.S. as we buy from them.

I think we may be about to see just such a protectionist trend start when the new president takes office. The Democrats are very protective of American Labor Unions, and now that they have a Democrat for president, they will have the power to place import tarrifs against goods that threaten vital American industries, and the jobs that are created by them. Americans are mad as hell and we're not going to take the ecconomic abuses we have suffered, at the hands of other countries, any longer.

The rest of the world has had a protectionist attitude for decades, it's time the U.S. started treating the rest of the world the way it has been treating us.

Sorry if I got off on a tangent, but the issue of late adoption of color tv in Europe was not a technological issue, it was a protectionist ecconomic and governmental issue, and as such, is directly related to current, worldwide, ecconmic and trade policys.

What you say is partly true. But do not forget that the American industry first went to build their products in Asia - China, putting on the road hundreds of thousands of workers. Then is not so true that we Europeans do protectionism, indeed. An example is the system of consumer VCRs. In Europe was developed by Grundig, the "Video 2000" already widely best to JVC's VHS and Sony's Betamax. Result: it was decided to adopt the VHS, killing the Video2000 and Betamax. On the failure Adoption of NTSC in Europe, assume not only political problems, but technical, the NTSC goes to 525 lines and 60HZ, European standards at 50HZ 405 GB, 819 50HZ France and the rest at 626 50HZ. then were very blatant defects of instability color NTSC (Never twice the same color) and the unreal purplish color of the skin. We Europeans have fixed the flaws and shortcomings of the American system first with then with PAL SECAM. (even in Italy was developed a color system, the ISA, identification in alternate suppression), which remained at trial.

While I believe the argument can be made that SECAM was a mostly politically motivated effort, I don't think the same can be said of PAL. Experiments with NTSC had been going on in the UK and Europe since the late 1950's. England was well on the way to finalizing an NTSC based 405 system (they had also done tests using SECAM) when PAL came along. The one advantage PAL offers over NTSC is the ability to provide accurate colors without a user control (tint or hue). This is accomplished by averaging out transmission phase errors by averaging successive lines of opposite color information. With this system, under all but the most severe transmission problems, colors in the PAL system will always be accurate without the user twiddling a knob. However this comes at the cost of less color saturation on phase errors, and half the vertical color resolution of NTSC. This can certainly be viewed as a worthwhile improvement and a reason they adopted the PAL standard.

I also don't believe they would have been worried about the US flooding their markets with color televisions if they had adopted NTSC. American companies never produced a monochrome 405 line set for the UK, or an 819 line set for France, or a 625 line set for Europe (pre-PAL). These sets were produce by UK and European companies, so it is safe in saying these companies would have produced the color sets regardless of the color system used. Philips and Telefunken were quite capable of producing these sets, as much of their pre-war television technology was superior to ours. Also, the remaining experimental NTSC sets from the 1950's are not just RCA sets modified for the particular line standard like 405. They are sets produced by the local company like Pye, of course using an RCA CRT as they had a lock on the shadow mask CRT.

"The delay of color tv to Europe was totally political, based on a protectionist mentality to try and foster an industry for the manufacturer of color tv within Europe and the jobs that a European based color tv industry would create."

I HAVE to say that the European politicians were not exactly wrong on thinking that way. The use of protectionism was the tool that almost every nation that was able to develop it's own industries used to really be able to foster it's industrial development.

Japan did this. Europe did this. Here in South America, we, Brazilians, were only able to start our own Industrial Revolution AFTER 1930, when we began placing barriers to products made in the USA and in Europe. Argentina also did the same thing, and it's no coincidence that Brazil and Argentina are the two most industrialized countries in Latin America. Our never-ending social crisis only got worse after 1990, when our government started a free-trade policy that opened our borders to widespread imports of foreign goods; that broke some REALLY BIG and traditional Brazilian factories, leaving THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of Brazilian workers unemployed, and to this day is still flooding our shops with products that are REAL GARBAGE, when before 1990 we at least had Brazilian-good quality versions of those same products.

In reality, I strongly suspect that the no-protectionism attitude of the American governments in the last 50 years had to do with the needs of foreign policy: they NEEDED a strong Japan, and a strong South Koreia, and a strong Taiwan, and a strong West Germany, to be really able to counter the Soviet threat in Asia and in Europe; that's why America never really placed barriers to the vast imports that came from those countries, because, if they didn't sell to the USA, in reality there were no one else they could sell to. America was the only country that was rich enough to buy goods in the amount that was necessary to maintain social peace in those countries.And, if they were not able to export, a social crisis might have erupted in those countries, and then... the communists could have taken over.

I suspect that now that the communist threat is over, and that America is in economic crisis, but not only America, but also Europe and Asia are in economic crisis as well, the world might return to a pre-World War One state, in which the coutries were very protectionist of their own industrial assets and were all very competitive against each other.

I can only hope that communism and nazism will NOT be reborn as a result of all this.

I just want to remind friends of the forum which will deal with topics here essentially technical and electronic devices, the high political and leave out or you will upset the purposes of this interesting site. thanks

Trade barriers and field rate issues aside, don't ignore another very obvious reason European nations only adopted color TV later than the Americans did. Economics.

When NTSC color was introduced, Europe had not yet fully recovered from the immense tragedy of World War II, which left many of it's factories and research labs in ruin.

It would take some time before the economies of Western Europe would grow again. While the Americans were putting out millions of new overhead-valve cars, the European industrial economy was being driven by motorcycle production. Even the rise of the automotive mass-production age in Europe, circa 1958, was with subcompact cars, often featuring two-stroke engines with less than one-fifth the horsepower of the V-8 Chevys in America. Not until the 1970's would the purchasing power of the average European be compared to that of people in the USA or Canada.

One could also argue that Europe was not really as far behind as the introductory dates would suggest. Sure, NTSC color transmissions began in 1953, but color TV in the USA would be hampered the "chicken and egg" problem (people not buying color TV because most shows were monochrome, TV stations/networks not investing in color because very few people had color TV sets). Sales of color TV sets in USA actually -fell- between 1956 and 1960! The jam would not break until late 1965. Compare this with the UK. When BBC1 and ITN flipped the switch (15 November 1969), the market was ready-made, colour tellies - and colour programmes, were the usual quite quickly. Thus the real lag period (color America and monochrome Europe), only lasted about 5 years.

Two other things to add:
Field rate issues did not doom NTSC in Europe - there were forms of NTSC designed to work with a 50Hz field rate and a wider channel for overseas markets (much as Brazil uses PAL-M, a version of PAL for a 6MHz channel and 60Hz field rate)

I would be very interested to know how the proposed Italian "ISA-identification in alternate suppression" system worked.

Rob

In reality the issues was combination of cost and belief that NTSC could be improved ...primarily to overcome the problem of phase errors and in Europe the decision to bring colour to the 625/50 standard when it was introduced as both France and UK had different monochrome standards in place.

Politics played a part with the competition between SECAM and PAL and it took sometime for the technical issues for both to be resolved.

Early PAL and SECAM versions both had serious issues.

In reality NTSC on 625/50 (or even 405/50 UK standard) would have worked fine ..but it is all history now... the analogue era is ending everywhere.

But we have been through the same debate with digital broadcasting ATSC vs DVB etc.

The ISA system was developed by Seimart and Indesit, two (now defunct) Italian TV manufacturers, but i can't find any thechnical description on the web.

An interesting fatc: in the early years of Italian (b/w) television, from the mid 50s to the early 60s, some American manufacturers (Emerson, Philco, Admiral, Dumont, Raytheon, RCA) had TV manufacturing plants in Italy, their Italian sets were an interesting mix of Italian and American parts, styling and technologies.

For eample, 50s Admiral Italian-made sets were 100% identical to the US-built ones (the ones with the knobs in the top corners of the safety glass) but had Italian capacitors and tubes on their chassis

Philco used a 100% American made chassis but the CRT, the speaker and the cabinet were Italian (some even had push through bezels)

Raytheon sets were 100% Italian, Raytheon also set off a small diplomatic crisis between the US and Italy on alleged violations of the Treaty of Friendship when they decided to shut their Italian plant in Palermo in the late 60s and the mayor of Palermo tried to confiscate it

"An interesting fatc: in the early years of Italian (b/w) television, from the mid 50s to the early 60s, some American manufacturers (Emerson, Philco, Admiral, Dumont, Raytheon, RCA) had TV manufacturing plants in Italy, their Italian sets were an interesting mix of Italian and American parts, styling and technologies."

The same thing happened here as well: Admiral, Philco, GE and other American companies had plants here. All gone now, except the Philco plant, that ended in the hands of a Brazilian group. But that one is ALSO in financial trouble today.

Emerson was the last manufacturer to shut its Italian plant in the late 70s (they were building solid state color sets based on a Formenti chassis by then) most other US manufacturers packed up in the mid-late 60s

Anyway, this is an Italian Admiral set that was on Ebay a while ago.

From what i remember reading about the ISA system, it was a PAL variant with improved gain control... details escape me but improvements were marginal over the PAL standard which is why it was abandoned?

I do not think we protectionist is a problem because the market for radio receivers, and various household appliances was also open to American equipment. Here in Europe evaluated the NTSC system that had many flaws and imperfections decided to improve it, opening a technological war between France and Germany. In fact, the PAL and SECAM systems are derived directly from NTSC but not identical because of patents. In Italy in the'70s Indesit ISA developed the system significantly improved at all another, but out of time and impossible to enforce.

sure you are right, but even Dumont, Crosley, Philco, Zenith

Crosley sets were made by Philco, which later became "Philco-Ford" before it was finally sold to Imperial Electronics in the early 70s, the Philco brand survived well into the mid 90s until Imperial finally shut down in about 1996

Zenith sold very few sets in Italy, most if not all were modified PAL Chromacolor hybrid sets, they're very rare now.

in florence were assembled zenith color

You speak of NTSC's many flaws and imperfections. We had already been discussing the phase issues of NTSC and that being one of the primary reasons for the rise of SECAM and PAL. I'm curious about what were the other flaws and imperfections that you are referring to.

David

Sure, apart from the annoying phase change of images, the icon NTSC if you use red or yellow saturated colors can "colarer" on your TV, mingle with other colors or tremolite even if your TV is fully functional.

In Romania we had color television only in 1983 because of Ceauşescu (the first color experiments took place in 1964, in N.T.S.C. and SECAM, but when the Party heard how much SECAM color television costs they order the experimental equypment to be dismentle); they sayed in a book around 1969 or 1975 that in Romania will soon be color tv.

Going to mobile (cellular) telephony, C.D.M.A 2000 is used in Romania, but, belive or not, the signal around here haves lower qualty than G.S.M.

The bastard politicians signed the Geneva Agreement on frequencyes allocation.
So no more F.M. broadcasting on 65-73 M.Hz.

NTSC is not capable of producing a true RGB signal ...because of the weighting of the I and Q signals but both PAL and SECAM contain the full RGB components BUT of course an NTSC style system for 625/25 could be set up to provide true RGB ....but the phase issue was seen as a major problem...

In fact NTSC has superior transmission characteristics for long distance cable/microwave transmission than either SECAM or PAL.

SECAM has problems with studio production ...switching sources etc.

I know the UK had a long investigation into the systems .....the BBC tested 405 line NTSC etc.

Australia was similar with tests of 625 line NTSC before finally settling with PAL.

Of course it is all irrelevant now....digital broadcasting is with us. :(

I had to look up a translation for "colarer" = I think it means "smear" in English; and tremolite" means "flicker"?

If this translation is correct, I must point out that these possible defects are present in all analog color TV systems alike, not only in NTSC, and come from various common causes such as the limited bandwidth of the chroma signals and crosstalk between chroma and luma.

I don't understand this statement at all. I and Q have nothing to do with the correctness of the RGB components. In fact, PAL and SECAM use exactly the same electrical matrix as NTSC - they just modulate the chroma on equal-bandwidth (R-Y) and (B-Y) wothout going to the intermediate non-equal bandwidth I and Q. However, in PAL and SECAM cameras, BEFORE the chroma components are matrixed, modern cameras do have a matrix to form the correct RGB values for the modern phosphors in current picture tubes. NTSC cameras hypothetically have a different matrix to match the original NTSC phosphors, while NTSC receivers are often designed with an (approximate) matrix for modern phosphors that works on the chroma signal only. In practice, modern cameras for NTSC have a matrix that is modified to get pleasing pictures on current studio monitors. This confused situation of some correction at the studio and some in the receiver has never been completely corrected for NTSC, but has been correcterd for high-definition TV.

None of the above has anything at all to do with I/Q modulation.

That's an interesting statement. In what way is NTSC superior for long distance cable and microwave? I would think PAL to be superior due to the phase distortions that could accumulate in multiple-stage video links.

I sort of had to figure out your definitions there. Unfortunately, I have to disagree, any television system can develop these faults because they're frequently due to limitations in the broadcast chain or problems within the receiving set itself. NTSC does not inherently have any more difficulty than any other system with saturation problems.

NTSC has no problems decoding to RGB. There has been over the years some disagreement on implementations of color decoding in NTSC. 3 different revisions if memory serves. The latest one was in the 80's and dealt with modern phosphors on TV sets. Current NTSC broadcast chains should decode correctly for modern TV's.

It might be a true statement, although I haven't read anything that would confirm or deny it. NTSC does tend to be easier to impliment in closed circuit situations. The signaling is simpler, and some of the timings less critical. Since long distance cables, either copper or fiber optic, use FM modulation to transport the signal its feasible that NTSC might be easier to deal with. And using the FM modulation scheme means there are no phase issues, which is the real reason why PAL was developed to begin with. Still I haven't read anything definitive on if that's true or not.

David

I read your interesting discussions about the topic. I want to clarify that my comments were referring to the systems at the beginning, and no subsequent improvements. performed over time.

There's a lot of false information floating around. And there's always this undercurrent of television standard nationalism that sort of gets in the way of these discussions. Its always good to remember that these television standards were the best B&W standards the 1930's could provide. And that when color was added, they became the best the 1950's could provide.

PAL & SECAM were developed by learning the lessons that NTSC provided. They tackle similar problems in different ways.

The problem is that over the years so much ground has been covered with the improvement of the various systems, that its hard to really look back and see what the original problems were.

For example, you mentioned saturation problems. The question is, were they really problems with the NTSC standard, or were they problems with the vacuum tube (valve) technology of the time? If so, did those problems supposedly corrected by PAL & SECAM suddenly disappear once the technology shifted to solid state? If so, then it wasn't a problem in the standard, but in the implementation.

I'd be curious though to read more about the problems you describe. I know that especially in the early days no one had a good idea how to correctly setup color systems. ABC TV here in the states didn't even use vectorscopes for color setup. All of the color setup and testing procedures were developed over a long period of time, and often through experimentation.

David

Going back on topic to the color variations in NTSC. I think I might have found at least a source that may answer some of our questions about early NTSC. The BBC launched a trial of NTSC on their 405line system. Although I haven't had a chance to read all the way through, they are likely to give the good and the bad about NTSC in their report. I post it here for all to consider:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/archive...nograph_18.pdf

As I said. I don't know if the answer is there, I haven't read it all the way through yet (its pretty technical). But, it should be a good read for this subject.

David

the news that I reported here are from technical reports on the comparison between different systems. not personal opinions.

I have no doubts about that. Unfortunately, I'm not able to find the particular problem we've been discussing. I finally slogged through the BBC report above, and it didn't mention the kind of problems you were describing. It's definitely worth a look, even if its just to see the BBC's version of the Triniscope television.

David

Thanks! i have not seen a copy before - now to read. read, read...

Zenith
 

Zenith also made tv specifically made for Pal B/G 625 lines. This is my Zenith hybrid tv. Not modified nor "assembled in Italy". Just a Zenith Pal tv.
In my opinion Secam tends to develop a kind of bluish smear on some color areas and this is noticeable with my old hybrid french tvs as with the newest ones. I once had the chance to watch a football match broadcasted in NTSC M with a RCA solid state 19" tv and the colors were simply superb! I never saw anything similar on any Pal tv. I don't think matter of color accuracy is so important. I think is what please the most the viewer's eyes is what really counts! Color perception varies from one subject to another. I met people who thought they had perfect pictures on their tvs which were instead quite far from color perfection (reddish or bluish or greenish whites, colored blacks etc...). Isn't pleasing watching an old english film and see red telephone cabins displayed in vivid red? Not very similar to reality but undoubtedly nice...
My two cents...

yes, but remember that this was not to compare the various systems after the changes made over time. I was referring to the systems compared to their first debut on the market, ntsc was especially infamous for the instability of the stage, the SECAM is famous for the color red tomato, the pal had no major problems as was the synthesis of earlier systems with the elimination of these defects first.

NTSC had mostly phase problems, I haven't been able to find references to problems with color intensity, purity, or RGB recovery. In fact the BBC report above listed those factors as being excellent in the NTSC system they were testing and that by and large the system was stable. They did have registration problems, but mostly they attributed that to the equipment in use.

So I've not yet found the exact problems you describe.

David

One thing I notice after 39 years of watching NTSC color:

When my parents got our RCA CTC-38 (1969), the color was usually good at one "right" hue (phase) setting, yet it was not very uncommon (especially on videotaped network programming) for the phase to be far off the mark (green or purple faces, blue grass). Sometimes the local station would super a notice "technical difficulties" at the bottom. I understand this was because the NTSC reference signal ("back porch", "color burst") could not be transmitted with the picture on the microwave links then in use by networks (please, someone, tell me WHY this was so, if they can send a chartreuse dress image on the link, they can send the burst, can't they ?).
By about 1980, these "off-phase" events became very rare, so an NTSC-country TV viewer can set the "TINT" function just once and leave it alone. (this is now usually an item on the on-screen-display, like the "BRIGHT" or "CONTRAST" functions I assume are on the OSD menus of PAL and SECAM sets as well as NTSC)
I can only think of three reasons I adjust the hue. (1) one of my VCRs has it's own phase, red shows a little orange if I do not adjust it back to red. (2) one low-power station, on a near-zero budget (same as the old VCR). (3) My daughter is quite amused when I change Bob the Tomato into a giant grape!