Hi to all,
Hello Telecolor 3007,
You wrote :
"I didn't know about color tv rentals. In Romania (at least in the '60's) you could rent some electronics for events."
In France, rentals were mostly for industrial/training/institutional video.
3/4" U-Matic, cameras, switchers.
"But I wonder, who made the picture tubes for the French color tv sets. "Videocolor" as far as I found came out only in 1971."
You're probably right. Philips set up a color CRT factory in Dreux, first stone set in 1965 to produce the A63-11X 25" color tube for all Euro color TVs of the Philips Group. The factory operated under the RTC-Compelec name, a full Philips daughter company in France.
VideoColor came later. Thomson acquired a RCA licence, therefore US technology.
They had big industrial facilities near Lyon & Agnani (Italy).
"The West Germans were also interested in exports"
True. Telefunken produced color CRTs.
"Never seen a French tv in Romania. Germans (East and West) yes, plus Dutch by Philips. 'Telecolor' 3007 televisions sometimes had "Videocolor" picture tubes (mine have Toshiba tubes)"
It's sort of strange there were no French color TVs as the Warsaw Pact nations + USSR adopted SECAM, at least in the early years. Lousy marketing...
"I guess since most people didn't have a color tv before 1973, French early color tvs are rare. Here is that Schneider color TV :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9MGbYrO5jI
Thanks ! will watch,
"But how come that most of those early French color sets had such quite big screen for their time ?"
Color sets were extremely expensive so a large screen helped to justify price. 25 inches was still a big (luxury) screen for a B&W set.
Also with Philips producing the A63-11X in France, it became the obvious de-facto choice of CRTs for first generation color sets.
There were some (very few) manufacturers who made other choices. If you look at the Old_TV_Nut pdf, look at Pizon-Bros. They made an all-transistorized color TV with a 15"/39cm screen (RCA tube). To keep cost down, the TV was 625 SECAM only, "forgetting" 819 lines altogether. A smart idea, Pizon reasoned that the customer already owned an old B&W 819 set so it was un-necessary to offer a full dual-standard color set.
See screenshot of a restored Pizon-Bros 15" color TV.
Full restoration topic (in French) but lots of photos of the chassis & screenshots :
http://retro-forum.com/viewtopic.php...hilit=TV+Pizon
Best Regards
jhalphen