What color TV was really like back then...

[old_tv_nut]

I was just reviewing the DVD of the Peter Pan special, comparing it on the restored '67 Magnavox I recently acquired on ebay and on the 64-inch rear projo. It now is apparent to me that they did some noise reduction in remastering, so the noise that remains seems to be more slowly changing than normal and lagging the camera moves as a kind of changing "dirty window". This tells me that the original was noisier than what I'm seeing. The motion threshold, however, is set such that moving objects do not smear. Other noticeable differences from current video: some 60-hz hum components in the video. Quad tape banding is remarkably NOT visible.

The main difference between the color rendition of the old Maggie and the new projo is the low percentage of DC restoration on the Maggie. - Makes dark scenes come up to gray, and bright scenes somewhat too saturated in the faces. The 100% DC restoration in the modern set makes the hum more visible in dark areas.

The only other vintage programs I've seen recently (Frank Sinatra and Nat "King" Cole, on PBS) had much more aggressive noise reduction resulting in pretty bad smearing of motion. How much noise comes from the image orthicon cameras and how much from the quad tape is hard to say, but if it's worse in the lowlights (as judged on a scope) it's from the camera, as the gamma correction blows up the lowlight noise.

So... haven't seen a source that could be said to fairly represent a live show of that era in all respects. Haven't seen the Howdy Doody special.