early color wanna be's

[old_tv_nut]

Early Admirals I remember copied a lot from RCA, so the color should have been similar (if the picture tubes were).

Later sets without a named automatic color correction and no auto switch generally do not have an auto color circuit of the types that were touted so loudly, but will have a matrix in the demodulator to give an approximate correction for modern phosphors. As stated above, the auto color buttons generally did two things - 1) go to preset controls; and 2) distort colors so that anything near fleshtone became fleshtone. Different circuits also tended to distort other colors to a greater or lesser degree depending on their sophistication. The simplest just changed the demodulator phases so that greens and magentas were suppressed. The Magnavox was like that - "the tan cowboy on a brown horse riding through brown sagebrush into the orange and cyan sunset." The RCA was more sophisticated in that it only affected hues near flesh tone and left the pure greens, cyans, blues, and purples alone. However, it also invoked an averaging color level adjustment, so low-saturation pix got boosted and high-saturation pix got paler. This failed very visibly when the scene switched to a shot of someone in a bright red shirt or dress - all the colors got pale. Zenith used a combination of changing the demod angles and a non-linear chroma amplifier to tone down only the over-saturated areas. All of the above became less and less necessary as broadcasts became more uniform and receivers became more stable.

Now manufacturers are putting all sorts of special modes ("cinema" "sports" etc.) into expensive plasma and LCD sets. My opinion is that it's more hype creep for the unknowing buying public, but once one brand starts it the others need to follow - just give me a straight calibrated monitor setting, please!