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Are we talking about CBS color? It's not quite fair or accurate to call it a mechanical system just because the only practical way to display it in '51 was by mechanical means. There would have been tri-color CRT sets for CBS color if the system hadn't been abandoned. As for its superiority, at the time of its approval it was the only system that truly worked, RCA having laid a colored egg (to quote Variety) in demonstrations before the FCC.
Its shortcomings were incompatibility with the black and white standard, relatively poor resolution and flicker. But the simplicity of CBS color wheel sets work in the system's favor. At the 2004 ETF Convention when CBS color was on display for the first time in over 50 years, there was almost unanimous agreement that the CBS color wheel sets out performed a 15GP22 NTSC set in side-by-side comparisons.
Last edited by David Roper; 04-24-2010 at 11:55 PM.
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