The holiday season became sales pitch for color
 

The one thing that was for sure back in the early days. NBC and occasionally other networks used the holiday season as a way to show their Christmas specials and other extravagances in living color! Even though programming was sparse early on, I'm sure tv manufacturers got a bit of a bump in sales during that time.

Oh, yeah..Never got to watch any of 'em, until I was grown, because my Church ALWAYS had a whole bunch of "Christmas Stuff" going on, & good Presbyterians that we were, we HAD to be there.. That was about the time they showed you how to SPELL "Presbyterian"... (grin)

Enjoyed watching that! I'm curious a bit about the technology behind that recording. Color quality and picture resolution appear to exceed what NTSC can deliver. In particular, the color resolution is much higher than NTSC. Frame rate and lack of jitter seem to suggest this was a video recording, as do the picture edge artifacts that are consistent with this being displayed on a CRT. Did they have some kind of high quality videotape system used in the studio, or is this a heavily processed film recording?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQlf...kCTsgX3QBFyVIC

The Shirley temple show late 50's to early 60's on NBC

Tom,

By 1965 color video tape was well advanced. What you see is what was broadcast on NBC. Bob Hope certainly pitched color tv in his monologue. I didn't realize he waited so long to do his show in color.

-Steve D.

Are you sure? The color resolution of NTSC is much lower than the luminance resolution (which I'm sure you understand well). I expect to see the color of fine details to be washed out (or even shifted a little with respect to the luminance). I suspect this was displayed on some kind of studio monitor that got a better signal than plain old NTSC. Or am I mistaken?

A 2" hi-band video tape displayed on a properly set up consumer color receiver
in 1965 would produce the quality picture you viewed on the Bob Hope Christmas special. I can only relate my own experience working at that time in broadcast television.

-Steve D.

Nothing special about the "Bob Hope special". That's how NTSC would have looked in 1965. Most likely RCA TK41'a in Burbank recorded to HighBand Quad 2"tape. Could be Ampex or RCA Quad. Most likely RCA tape. The edge issues with the camera registration would not have been noticed on most viewers TVs at the time due to over scan. NTSC can look very good on the master tapes.

It does indeed look good when optimally shown from the master tape -- that's a little better than I was accustomed to seeing over a few decades of NTSC viewing of over-the-air signals. Not that it was bad, but it has its resolution limits, particularly for color fidelity of fine details. The human eye can't see this easily from normal viewing distance, but it is most definitely there.

Looks about right to me. I started watching color tv on a regular basis in my home beginning late Summer 1966.

In fact, iirc, color shows looked better then this You Tube video. (Bob Hope) The video looks approiate after generational loss.

Larry, thanks for posting the videos.

I'm 48 years old, and remember tv in the early 1970s. The shows and specials were much better then today. I think having fewer channels was better, as there was more competition among the networks at the time. Also, the shows and specials were more family oriented. Tv viewing was a more intimate thing; most families only had one color tv, so families spent more time together.

I'm 49 and I hear ya. I remember when color TV was a big deal and we only had a 1959 Philco B&W set with no UHF tuner until we got our first color TV in 1971. It was a Zenith Chromacolor. I remember when we went over to my aunt's, she had an RCA roundie, I think it was a CTC-14 or 16, it said "Vistacolor" on the front with a UHF tuner. I think I've seen it in old family pictures dated 1962 so they must have bought it around that time. They watched it until 1995 or so. I called her "the aunt with the color TV." ;)

IIRC, there was a "Wonder Years Episode" where the Arnold Family thought they were going to get a color TV for Christmas and they showed a clip of Frosty The Snowman on a roundie.

Getting back to my story, I remember in 1971, the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series and I remember watching it in color.

All about tv December 1962