Early color quality was not equal
 

As an ardent follower of the color technology I look back to its infantcy with the 3 major networks and remember a varying degree of color quality.

1. NBC always consistant color quality superior to the other two.

2.. CBS while using norelco cameras a trained eye could see suttle differences between the rca and norelco equipment

2 ABC trailing in 3 place was ABC in the early days I can't really remember seeing picture quality close to that of NBC


for you old timers out there what are your thoughts?

Well, ya gotta remember that those RCA cameras were designed and built with 1954 era technology. I remember when I was in school in the 1960's we went on a field trip to NBC "Color City" in Burbank in 1968 and I remember the lady telling us that they were still using mostly all 1954 equipment.

CBS on the other hand had those Norelco color cameras using 1965 technology and the result of more solid state innerds was that the color had that pastel look that either we love or hate. An easier to use more modern design but the richness of color wasn't there. Those RCA cameras really had their purple down pat!

Heck, I remember when I was working an a temp at NBC, Burbank in 1977 they STILL were using all of that old equipment from the early 1950's. I guess somewhere down the line they shit-canned it all but they kept it working for almost 25 years...The monitors in the main control room (with that giant glass panel to look through) still had their 21" roundie monitors in the 1970's as well. One was labeled "To Transmitter" and the other set was labeled "On Air". How cool was that, eh? :banana:

CBS' color shows always had a distinct "greenish" cast to them. Could have been our furshlunger cable system here, though. But NBC & ABC DIDN'T have it-if anything NBC had a "blue" hue to their stuff.-Sandy G.

I'm not an old-timer, but I am a geek about cameras when I watch old shows. In general:

CBS/Norelco - probably the best overall. CBS used proprietary stuff to enhance the hell out of the PC-60s and PC-70s they used at Television City. And boy did they use them - they weren't retired until 1984!

NBC/RCA - the TK44As used through the '70s and '80s weren't quite as sharp as the Norelcos and they were prone to fringes around objects - almost like a misconverged projection TV. Seemed to have a "filmier" look than Norelcos, especially in long shots. I liked that.

ABC - in LA they used Norelcos, and in NY they used GE cameras. ABC's Norelcos looked soft and smeary, and the GEs? Forget it.

Steve: What was NBC still using TK-41s for in the '70s?

Well, I remember seeing them in the Tonight Show studio and the one right next to it; was that the "Bob Hope Theatre"? Heck, I can't remember the names of those two studios, sorry. Also for game shows (some of them) TK-41's were still used but NOT for most of the news broadcasts. I sat in on a bunch of newscasts and they had smaller cameras in there. For the entertainment shows they still used those big ol' monsters though...I remember my shock at seeing that giant beast come out of the camera tunnel right in front of Carson when I first saw the Tonight Show live as a teen. I wanted to be the camera operator when I grew up... :)

Anyone know what kind of cameras/equipment was used on "Sanford and Son"? That show always seems to have kind of a funny kind of blurry look to the video.

Sanford & Son, like a lot of the other NBC shows from the time, used TK-44As. Pretty sure they taped at NBC in Burbank.

Yes, but the "blurry" look you speak of is caused by the broadcast tape being made from a SUBMASTER of a SUBMASTER. God knows where the original 2" tapes are; I'm sure those would look fantastic..

Maybe about 5 years ago at the museum of broadcasting in NY I saw them show a variety show (Carol Burnett?) and was amazed at how poor it looked....color bleeding everywhere, smears akimbo, camera burns from bright objects etc....looked like it was from the 60's and not the 70's. Not sure all of this could be attributed by it being an umpteenth generation copy. I don't recall seeing such poor visuals when the show was first on the air.

Anthony

Yes, a copy of a copy of a copy; the original tapes look wonderful (as you can tell if you watch that DVD infomercial)..

I recall that CBS also used the TK-41 cameras from 1954 into the 60's. I know that as a youngster the live network & local color broadcasts on NBC & KNBC (KRCA) were spectactular. As were film color broadcasts (Disney, Bonanza). CBS's live & film color broadcasts were also of very good quality. I never cared for the Norelco pastel colors. The West coast time delay tape color broadcasts were generally poor quality in the late 50's-early 60's. ABC's film color in the early 60's (Jetsons, Flinstones) was also top quality leaving the network. The problem, mostly with ABC, IMO, was when local stations lack of color experience caused poor color signals to be telecast. At local KTLA, where I worked, our TK-41 color was as good as it gets. We also had full RCA color film/slide equip. We used those cameras into the late 70's when we replaced them with Norelcos. We still had some 21" roundie monitors in the control room and remote truck into the early 80's.

-Steve D.

reply
 

Anybody else ever get the feeling that they have always been able to "tell" which of the 3 networks they were watching (pretending you didn't recognize the particular show)? Like each one had a distinctive look or feel or sound quality/tone, like, when you were watching CBS you thought "yeah, this FEELS like CBS"? Real? Imagination?
Frenchy

Always in the old days, not anymore though; everything looks the same. Back in the day though, sure.

pictures that would jump out at you
 

I remember watching Bonanza and the silver in Ben Cartwrights hair stood out and the rich blues and purples were almost jaw dropping. I dont see that same quality today even on HDTV, yes the definition is better but if I had a time machine I would go back and watch all that stuff all over again

Frenchy I could tell which network I was watching even without knowing what program I was watching, in our area everything was and still is UHF I see a little of that quality in my ctc 9 and soon when I get my ctc 5 up and running thats about as good as it gets for me, for now

by the way Steve D I have the same model as you, the wingate only the top of the cabinet is scratched up pretty, I can refinish it, but your cabinet looks pretty clean

The thing that stuck with me over the years was that TV audio went to hell in the 70's. I always assumed when TV production started in the 50's, that the sound engineers moved from radio to television and paid attention to what they were doing. As far as picture quality goes, NBC definately looked better than CBS or ABC in these parts. But then again, our ABC affiliate was strung together with Band-Aids and 9 volt batteries.

"At local KTLA, where I worked, our TK-41 color was as good as it gets. We also had full RCA color film/slide equip. We used those cameras into the late 70's when we replaced them with Norelcos. We still had some 21" roundie monitors in the control room and remote truck into the early 80's."

steve d
when i was about 6 or 7 i remember watching ktla,and on saturdays around 3pm,there was this movie show,i remember an old guy always introducing the movie and he had a 16 mm movie camera.this was the mid to late eighties.what was that show,my dad said the old guy was "popeye",and i never belived him,because to a 7 year old popeye is a cartoon and young,any help?

Like Star Trek - the old show they went out of their way to color all the props and sets and costumes (albiet NBC was trying to get people to buy more color TVs from it's parent RCA!). But the latest Trek shows look downright drab and grey compared to the old show.

Each network/station certainly had a personality. I think part of this was from the announcers & the station promos they used. It might be fun to run some sort of blind test to see if we can tell nowadays! Not real easy here as my rabbit ears only pick up 3 stations-they are each unique, for sure. Though last night my wife switched from CBS to ABC during the world news, while I was out of the room, & I did not notice until they cut to the anchor.
I really noticed the difference as a kid. WMAR was stuck-up, WBAL a little less so, and boring, WJZ real friendly, WBFF seemed old-timey, WDCA amateurish, WDVM all business...ABC in general seemed youthful, CBS a little stuffy but still "with it", in my growing up NBC seemed friendly & sort of an underdog, but that was in the early 80s, rough sledding for the network.

Charlie,

Your Dad was correct. That movie host was Tom Hatten who also hosted the Popeye cartoon show on KTLA in the 50's. An additional response to mine and the other posts: It's ashame that most people judge the quality of early color tv by viewing terrible old video tapes. The picture quality of a live color show in the 50's would knock your socks off. I agree with Frenchy, each network did have a signature look to their programs. Much like the movie studios in the 30's - 50's.


-Steve D.

Back in the early '60s there was a similar show on New York City TV that had a guy with a movie projector at one end of a table that he'd turn on as an introduction to a cartoon. I had thought that the cartoon film was in that projector, and the TV camera was turned while blanked and aimed at a projection screen with the cartoon projected on it. It wasn't until much later on I found out that there exists special camera devices that were built to view film directly. Some of these don't use regular camera tubes, but use a flying spot scanner to scan a frame of film, and that a photomultiplier tube (a tube that measures the amount of light it sees and can respond to changes quite fast) looks at the flying spot scanning the film and produces the video signal directly.

One thing I will never forget about early color broadcasting is 2in quad banding.
I have been able to watch 2in master tapes being played on a well setup quad deck they can look very good. TK41's look very good but the 4 tube replacement that RCA came up with makes everything look plastic.
Steve

>>>Your Dad was correct. That movie host was Tom Hatten who also hosted the Popeye cartoon show on KTLA in the 50's. >>>

He still works out here in L.A. doing entertainment reports for one of the news radio stations. He might even still do a little bit of stuff for KTLA once in a while, not sure. One of the real old timers from KTLA like Stan Chambers who still works for KTLA after 58 years!

Of course one thing about Star Trek and other early colour shows is they had to look ok in B/W so all sets (and costumes) were designed with a wide range of grayscales to ensure that they looked ok for the majority of viewers who watched in monochrome...as for Star Trek sets now ...mmmm yuck ...

I do recall reading somewhere that some NBC affiliates had trouble with the original Star Trek because they kept trying to get Mr Spock's flesh tone right.. not realising at first that he was supposed to have a slight gree tinge! LOL

Programs on film (like the first Startrek series) were sometimes printed on a special low contrast positive. The low dynamic range made it better for telecine pickup, with the contrast being restored by the telecine. There were many years of awful image lag in televised movies due to the lag in vidicon telecines. High quality flying spot scanners eliminated these problems. Getting good results with high-dynamic range movies (including night scenes) was still difficult, especially since most receivers had less than 100% DC restoration.

My latest video thrill was watching "The Incredibles" on DVD on a widescreen progressive scan rear projo. The night scenes on this DVD are transferred at theater level, not boosted to fill the TV dynamic range, and it is great to see the system do this correctly end-to-end. In the old days, those dark scenes would have been mostly unrecognizable mud, because the camera gamma correction could not extend down so far (partly due to noise, partly due to difficulty of setting black level so precisely). I'm guessing that the digital animation was rendered directly to TV format, so there was no optical transfer involved at all.

Your reference to night scenes reminded me of the "cheat" that filmed TV shows did all too common in the 60's.....they'd film night for day! (to quote Truffaut) Seems they used a filter of sorts on the camera lens....watch for sharp shadows that belie the fact that it was shot during the day.....it's VERY obvious once you know what to look for. They may have done this for budgetary reasons or perhaps to increase the contrast level for B&W, not sure which.

Night for day was commonly used in Technicolor movie outdoor scenes also. The main thing was to use a blue filter and underexposing somewhat to make the colors all more or less similar, thereby somewhat mimicking the human eye's loss of color vision in dim light. I have a picture in my mind of cowboys around a campfire that obviously is not producing much of the light in a scene.

Night scenes actually shot at night with enough artificial light to delineate the objects of interest look much better, even though that is also artificial.

One problem with reproducing night scenes at real night light levels is that it requires a huge dynamic range if the system must also do reasonably bright daytime scenes. No imaging system, film or electronic, can do this. An LCD display/projector with additional wide-range adjustment of the backlight intensity might be able to approach it. Besides, to be able to see the images, the lighting in the room would probably have to be modulated also; and the quick changes at scene cuts from day to night or vice versa would be quite unnaturally abrupt and temporarily blinding.

Nevertheless, as well-done movies demonstrate, a reasonable amount of modulation is not only possible, but makes those night scenes look much more realistic than "day for night". I was really pleased to see that my home setup could do this with no special adjustment beyond the initial setup when I first got it. Black level has to be just about perfect so that you avoid either cutting off the lowlights or having a "fog" over the whole image on these low-key scenes.