Quote:
Originally posted by wa2ise
The first moon walk (Apollo 11) was televised in B&W. Using a rather low res TV camera. Given the bandwidth and the signal to noise ratio of getting that signal from the moon to us on earth, and power limitations, it wasn't that bad. In a "history of broadcasting" book I had, they mention that the lighting and whatnot was awful. But I doubt that the astronauts had much time in their schedule pre-flight to get taught how to do TV camera shooting. Just don't aim it at the Sun. The guys on Apollo 12 burned out their camera that way, and the lack of TV images for that mission probably killed public interest in it. 
We didn't have a color TV just yet back then.
The scan rate of that video from the moon was something like 24 frames/sec and a few hundred lines. And that NASA used one scan converter for NTSC, and another for PAL/SECAM countries. PAL and SECAM without color are the same. These converters were literally just a monitor with a camera focused on it. Then the NTSC and PAL/SECAM video signals were distributed round the world. Everyone except in China got to see it live. Someone I know now says he listened to Voice of America with headphones to hear it live. And then told nobody about it, things were really nuts there then.
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Yeah. I read it was like 10 frames/sec and the actual broadcast was a camera looking at a screen. I just figured it would fit on a roundie (or even an early rectangular) because of the time period. My parents watched it on a rectangular tube color TV when it happened. My grandparents still owned a 50s TV and they watched it. Me... I wasn't born yet
