Westinghouse K840CK15 Restoration

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by etype2

There is some truth to that. Being there in the day, folks did not know what good color looked like. They tended to over saturate the color control. In department stores, customers would adjust the controls on the floor models and you would see green faces on one set, over saturated color on another, ETC., hence NTSC.

There was also the unfortunate inefficiency of the red phosphor, which prompted the set makers to settle on a cyan white balance to avoid overdriving the red gun too much (9300+27 MPCD, which, if you look at it on a chromaticity chart, just means "turn down the red").

This meant that visual adaptation to the white point depended on room lighting, viewing distance, etc. It's no wonder that people couldn't decide on the correct saturation for good skin tones - it probably changed from hour to hour for the same viewer.

The white point adjustment specs for the CT-100 and Westinghouse were for daylight white, avoiding the visual adaptation problems of somewhat later sets, but putting a huge strain on the red gun.