THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLOR TELEVISION 1956

[R_Gtx]

No professionals produced prerecorded TV on VT until the late 1980s, when VT  actually became  good enough to retain decent image quality in editing (and even then it was rare in big budget TV). Everything was on film, because only it had good quality.

That is utter Bullsh*t. I worked at BBC TV Centre from 1984 and can assure you that all studio programs were then (and had been for some considerable time) recorded on video tape. At that time, the 2" quadruplex system was regarded as a legacy medium, the 1" C format was the de facto standard. In fact, by the late 1980s digital video tape recorders were being introduced (The Sony D1 4:2:2 DVTR was introduced in 1986).

That's why we can watch the original Star Trek in HD now: you just re-telecine the film at higher resolution. 

Again, you are wrong. When taking into account the optical path transfer function, film grain and gate judder of the original film camera, you will find that the effectual resolution was not much superior to the then video standards. The then chief advantage of film over video tape was ease of playback on multiple differing national TV standards. Regarding, just how easy it is (or not) to just "re-telecine" at higher resolution see, for example: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/TOS-R#Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series

[Kilrah]

Why did the USA got stuck with this 525 line resolution and NTSC for so long?
[...]
Usually the US is fast in adopting newer and better technology.

Probably because of the latter. They deisgned and put a system in place committing to it, others looked at it, noted the drawbacks and did better a couple of years later... but the US was now stuck with the original system.

New and fast isn't always better.

[Synthetase]

Well it would have nothing to do with the resolution (there are no pixels in analog TV), but rather with the phosphor persistence.

Nonetheless, the fact that costly 100Hz sets even existed is evidence of the acknowledgement of flicker in 50Hz TV.

I know there aren't pixels per se. It was a short-hand way of saying that I thought a given dot area on a CRT TV would receive more time from the electron beam per cycle than a CRT computer monitor set to a high resolution.

The existence of 100Hz sets is evidence of nothing more than someone's ability to manufacture and market them. By your logic, Sony's 'audiophile' grade SD cards is evidence there is something wrong with ordinary SD memory.

[vk6zgo]

No professionals produced prerecorded TV on VT until the late 1980s, when VT  actually became  good enough to retain decent image quality in editing (and even then it was rare in big budget TV). Everything was on film, because only it had good quality.

That is utter Bullsh*t. I worked at BBC TV Centre from 1984 and can assure you that all studio programs were then (and had been for some considerable time) recorded on video tape. At that time, the 2" quadruplex system was regarded as a legacy medium, the 1" C format was the de facto standard. In fact, by the late 1980s digital video tape recorders were being introduced (The Sony D1 4:2:2 DVTR was introduced in 1986).

That's why we can watch the original Star Trek in HD now: you just re-telecine the film at higher resolution. 

Again, you are wrong. When taking into account the optical path transfer function, film grain and gate judder of the original film camera, you will find that the effectual resolution was not much superior to the then video standards. The then chief advantage of film over video tape was ease of playback on multiple differing national TV standards. Regarding, just how easy it is (or not) to just "re-telecine" at higher resolution see, for example: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/TOS-R#Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series

Exactly!
Before Video Tape Recorders existed,the only way to record Broadcast TV Programmes for later use was with the use of "Kines".
This entailed a movie camera looking at a TV screen.

There were many problems with artifacts because of difficulty syncing the camera shutter & the displayed blanking particularly with US 30 frames /sec.
This was sorted out to some extent by using long persistence display screens,& sometimes by using the same complex multi-blanking that was used in US Telecine chains.*
The result varied between "just acceptable" to "horrific".

The films from this process were usually those produced by TV Networks.
Those produced by programme sources like Quinn Martin & the like were mastered on 35mm film,then photographically converted to 16mm for distribution.
The latter were much better than the "kine'd" ones,both in resolution & grey scale.
The 16mm films were used by TV Stations on Telecine chains,consisting of (at least in the time I first saw them) of projectors which projected an image on the face of a Vidicon camera.

*In the USA,a problem arose between the 24fps rate of projectors,& the 30fps rate of the NTSC system.
To get around this,a complex mechanism was used which presented each frame multiple times.
"50Hz" systems,with their 25fps rate just ran the projector at 25fps--easy,who cares about a 4% increase in the speed of motion,or sound tones.

In the late 1950s,the first Quadruplex Video Tape recorders made their appearance.
A VTR could produce a recorded copy virtually indistinguishable from the original,& allowed editing without a razor blade & special glue!
"Kines" became a thing of the past for distribution within a given system,but were still used to send programs to countries with a different system.

In the mid-to-late 1960s ,the BBC produced the first Standards Converter.
This allowed interchange of signals between the old British 405 line system ,the 625 line system being introduced in the UK,& those already used in Europe.
Of course,625 PAL transformed into BW 405,& 625 SECAM into BW in either of the other two systems.
Later,more sophisticated Converters were designed,which could convert 525 line NTSC,too.

One Wiki page refers to programme exchange using film in the 1980s,but that is utter dreck!

It may seem as remote as the Punic Wars to people who weren't yet born,but those of us who lived through this progression as our everyday jobs know the relevant dates & details.

[uncle_bob]

Why did the USA got stuck with this 525 line resolution and NTSC for so long?
[...]
Usually the US is fast in adopting newer and better technology.

Probably because of the latter. They deisgned and put a system in place committing to it, others looked at it, noted the drawbacks and did better a couple of years later... but the US was now stuck with the original system.

New and fast isn't always better.

Hi

"Simple" answers:

There was an *enormous* investment in transmitters and studio gear. The RCA promo at the top of this thread is a very classy ad (for the time) to get people to invest in transmitters.  All of it done with private funding (except for PBS which sort of does not count). The broadcast gear is / was pretty much all owned by small outfits. A string of a few dozen transmitters makes you a "big player" in the TV broadcast business. The networks for the most part don't own very many stations directly. That made for a *lot* of push back at the transmit end of things when a change was suggested.

As time went on, along came cable. Yes, they are a bit bigger outfits these days. They have the same issue. Big investment in equipment. Major cost to make a system wide change. Lots of resistance to a change in standards. No real improvement in revenue since they mostly have to carry over the air broadcasts free of charge. (Free being a very relative term in this case).

Finally there was a realization by at least a few broadcasters that they had a really good deal in terms of spectrum allocations. The amount of RF they got back in the 1950's looked like a chunk of wasteland. Now it looks like a gold field. The observant figured out that any change in standards likely meant a loss of part of that gold field. Even if you aren't mining the gold ... loosing the deed to the field makes you unhappy

All of this created an environment where making any change was an up hill battle. The advent of digital systems finally made it impossible to stop.

<SNIP>  (yes I could go on ...)

Bob

[CatalinaWOW]

Why did the USA got stuck with this 525 line resolution and NTSC for so long?
[...]
Usually the US is fast in adopting newer and better technology.

Probably because of the latter. They deisgned and put a system in place committing to it, others looked at it, noted the drawbacks and did better a couple of years later... but the US was now stuck with the original system.

New and fast isn't always better.

Hi

"Simple" answers:

There was an *enormous* investment in transmitters and studio gear. The RCA promo at the top of this thread is a very classy ad (for the time) to get people to invest in transmitters.  All of it done with private funding (except for PBS which sort of does not count). The broadcast gear is / was pretty much all owned by small outfits. A string of a few dozen transmitters makes you a "big player" in the TV broadcast business. The networks for the most part don't own very many stations directly. That made for a *lot* of push back at the transmit end of things when a change was suggested.

As time went on, along came cable. Yes, they are a bit bigger outfits these days. They have the same issue. Big investment in equipment. Major cost to make a system wide change. Lots of resistance to a change in standards. No real improvement in revenue since they mostly have to carry over the air broadcasts free of charge. (Free being a very relative term in this case).

Finally there was a realization by at least a few broadcasters that they had a really good deal in terms of spectrum allocations. The amount of RF they got back in the 1950's looked like a chunk of wasteland. Now it looks like a gold field. The observant figured out that any change in standards likely meant a loss of part of that gold field. Even if you aren't mining the gold ... loosing the deed to the field makes you unhappy

All of this created an environment where making any change was an up hill battle. The advent of digital systems finally made it impossible to stop.

<SNIP>  (yes I could go on ...)

Bob

Not to mention the enormous investment on the receiving end.  I agree there are lots of reasons that the change took so long.   Many more could be identified.

[uncle_bob]

Not to mention the enormous investment on the receiving end.  I agree there are lots of reasons that the change took so long.   Many more could be identified.

Hi

The common counter argument on the receiving end is an estimate that >50% of the receivers are upgraded (but maybe not replaced) in 5 years. It took *way* longer than that to roll out HDTV broadcasts ...I've worked on TV transmitters that were far older than I was at the time. That said, yes, it didn't take much to get Joe average voter scared about "loosing all his TV". Far more so in the late 60's when a change probably made some sense and cable was not even close to what it is today.

Bob

[Synthetase]

That said, yes, it didn't take much to get Joe average voter scared about "loosing all his TV".

I remember a bunch of scare campaigns in Australia on that score in the 90s about the switch to digital TV. People were stirring up panic about how (then) digital sets cost around $10k, so TV wouldn't be accessible to people who couldn't afford the new tech. Of course by the time the analogue transmitters were turned off, it hardly rated a mention because almost nobody actually used the analogue signal and set-top boxes for older sets were dirt cheap. I do sometimes miss the clarity of rapidly-changing stuff like fast-flowing foaming water from the analogue days. I don't know if HD broadcast television is any better than SD on that front, because I almost never watch TV any more and can't be bothered tuning in the HD stations.

[uncle_bob]

....., because I almost never watch TV any more and can't be bothered tuning in the HD stations.

Hi

And that's what this all has now come to. Broadcast TV still around in 40 years? I doubt it ....at least not in a form we would recognize as broadcast. On demand, Wi-Fi based TV - sure, but that's only "over the air", not broadcast. When it's just downloading a CODEC to change standards, the whole standard thing becomes a lot less significant.

Get all those political ads on VHS tape now, you'll miss them in 40 years !!

Bob

[Synthetase]

Get all those political ads on VHS tape now, you'll miss them in 40 years !!

Yeah Want to know how much of your brain is devoted to remembering utterly useless crap? Go to youtube and ask for videos of ads from your favourite decade.

[uncle_bob]

Get all those political ads on VHS tape now, you'll miss them in 40 years !!

Yeah Want to know how much of your brain is devoted to remembering utterly useless crap? Go to youtube and ask for videos of ads from your favourite decade.

Hi

Want to be *really* scared? Dig up ad jingles /ad music / advertising punch lines from when you were < 2 years old. See how many of them you recognize ? Now, how many other things can you identify from back then? Yes, it's scary.

Bob

[babysitter]

PAL is evil, because of.... evil NAZIS

Walter Bruch, the "face" and most famous (co-)developer of PAL, was operating the camera at the 1936 olympic games.
You know, when Adolf Hitler was present.

[Macbeth]

PAL is evil, because of.... evil NAZIS

Walter Bruch, the "face" and most famous (co-)developer of PAL, was operating the camera at the 1936 olympic games.
You know, when Adolf Hitler was present.

Wasn't there a groundbreaking film by some fräulein in 1938 covering the Olympics - of note is including Jesse Owens (USA)? Hitler & Goebbels were not very happy with it, despite it glorifying aryans and the nazis...

[tooki]

Goodness gracious you all love to quibble and argue even when dead wrong.

Fact: ST:TOS was shot and edited on film and was remastered in HD and the difference in resolution is plain as day.  STNG was shot on film and edited on video, so the HD remaster took a lot more work since all the FX had to be redone. Again, the difference is plain as day. (Indeed, the resolution is so high that the flaws in the set dressing and makeup become painfully obvious.)

Honestly I have no idea where you guys get the idea that film doesn't significantly exceed SDTV resolution; just look at the restored editions of The Wizard of Oz and Metropolis to see how much detail  film captured.

100Hz TVs solved a real problem. Those weren't boutique videophoolery, they were made by every major manufacturer of TVs. Many people perceive flicker at 50Hz. That is indisputable fact.

(Edit: Fixed phone autocorrect typo.)

[Kilrah]

The common counter argument on the receiving end is an estimate that >50% of the receivers are upgraded (but maybe not replaced) in 5 years.

Nowadays yeah that sounds OK... but certainly not when PAL was introduced... at least when I was when I was a kid nearly nobody had a TV that was less than 10-15 years old.

My parents dragged their old Philips set for 35 years, getting rid of it around 2008 or so when it became a problem when connecting it to a cable decoder. For some reason the picture was dark.
It worked pretty much flawlessly until then, the only thing on it was that I replaced the NiCd battery that held the (20) channel memories in 2000 or so.

[uncle_bob]

The common counter argument on the receiving end is an estimate that >50% of the receivers are upgraded (but maybe not replaced) in 5 years.

Nowadays yeah that sounds OK... but certainly not when PAL was introduced... at least when I was when I was a kid nearly nobody had a TV that was less than 10-15 years old.

My parents dragged their old Philips set for 35 years, getting rid of it around 2008 or so when it became a problem when connecting it to a cable decoder. For some reason the picture was dark.
It worked pretty much flawlessly until then, the only thing on it was that I replaced the NiCd battery that held the (20) channel memories in 2000 or so.

Hi

The key point in the "magic number" is that an upgrade is made (new TV is bought). Indeed, the old one rarely got (or gets) tossed out. It simply got moved to another room. You went from one TV in the living room (remember that?) to another in the family room to another one in the basement. Over 15 to 20 years, you went from a one TV household to a three TV household. At some point you might have lost a power transformer or a CRT and scrapped the old one. When solid state caught hold, you may have stopped re-tubing the older sets. Eventually the black and white TV in the basement just didn't cut it for the football game. Lots of variables.

Bob

[vk6zgo]

Goodness gracious you all love to quibble and argue even when dead wrong.

Fact:STNG:TOS was shot and edited on film and was remastered in HD and the difference in resolution is plain as day.  STNG was shot on film and edited on video, so the HD remaster took a lot more work since all the FX had to be redone. Again, the difference is plain as day. (Indeed, the resolution is so high that the flaws in the set dressing and makeup become painfully obvious.)

Honestly I have no idea where you guys get the idea that film doesn't significantly exceed SDTV resolution; just look at the restored editions of The Wizard of Oz and Metropolis to see how much detail  film captured.

35mm &  70mm yes,16mm not so!
Due to the enormous investment in the large formats,they reached high degrees of sophistication,
16mm,on the other hand,was "the poor relation".

At any given time,the number of 35mm telecine chains throughout the world could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The TV standard film format was 16mm,& the telecine chains,editing equipment & film processing were all for that size film.

The aim of television standards was to,on the screen,emulate the resolution,noise performance,etc,of a bright projected 16mm image.

16mm taken with a standard portable camera,converted to video in a telecine chain,& edited into a taped studio production,suffered degradation in the conversion,(Vidicons were nowhere near as good as Image Orthicons & the later Plumbicons)resulting in a strange inversion of real life.

Internal shots were nice & bright,with good resolution,whereas outdoor shots were  dull & murky.
Note this was due to the less than stellar performance of the 16mm cameras,followed by obvious limitations in the telecine --not due to the VTR or editing.

Star Trek "the next Generation" may well have been mastered on 35mm film,but that does not logically lead to your comment.

No professionals produced prerecorded TV on VT until the late 1980s, when VT  actually became  good enough to retain decent image quality in editing (and even then it was rare in big budget TV).

Editing using film is a total nightmare.

What do you call big budget?
Major sporting events,(Olympic Games,International Football ,Auto Racing,The America's Cup,the Band-Aid Concerts,& so on),were all recorded & edited using VTRs.
Every large televised event was recorded,edited,& presented using VTR.

How long ago did this trend exist? ---well I watched the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games in Perth Western Australia,long before there was any Broadband link between the Eastern States & Perth,let alone from Tokyo.
They sent the tapes by plane.
This was before the days of Standards Conversion,so NHK must have provided a 625 line chain,including VTR.
It was,emphatically,not telecine!

Everything was on film, because only it had good quality. That's why we can watch the original Star Trek in HD now: you just re-telecine the film at higher resolution.
VT was originally used only to record live TV, which before that was either not recorded at all, or was recorded by filming a TV.

"Kines"(recorded by filming a TV) were regarded with some degree of horror in Oz,& were not widely used,as the start of TV in this country pretty much coincided with the appearance of the first VTRs.

I was lucky enough to see the old & the new.

In 1965,I joined a newly established TV Station.
Its original set up was one VTR,& three telecine chains.
Ads were hand spliced into movies & other shows,like "Gilligan's Island","Bewitched","The Addams Family",& so on,which were all 16mm
"In house" stuff was live,or taped,& material from other Oz stations was all taped.

I then went off to work on TV & Radio Transmitters for many years.
This did not mean that I knew nothing of what was happening in Studio practice,as a lot of information was freely available.

Even,so when I joined another TV Studio in 1988,I was surprised that the number of VTRs had increased to dozens,& the Telecine to one,rarely used,chain.
Many of the old shows were still shown from time to time,but they had been all transferred to tape.

As for why converted TV sucks: 25<->29.97Hz frame rate conversation is essentially impossible to do without artifacts. The 10Hz effect you describe comes from the 4.97 dropped frames per second. It doesn't divide evenly so you get judder.

This argument may have been valid in the 1960s,but our present system of digital TV didn't rise "full-grown from the sea-foam" like Aphrodite---many of the techniques used were available decades before,& were used in Standards conversion.

(For content originally  shot at 24fps, they instead run the film at 25fps, which then has no judder but does run fast and with a slight change in audio pitch, which I can readily detect in content I'm familiar with.)

So you are one of the "golden-eared brigade"?

One great advantage of  digital TV is that very early newsreel film,at  around 16fps,is not used in standard telecine chains at 25fps,
Seriously scary shots of the Imperial German Army lose their menacing aspect when they are all prancing along at a jaunty gait.

100Hz TVs solved a real problem. Those weren't boutique videophoolery, they were made by every major manufacturer of TVs. Many people perceive flicker at 50Hz. That is indisputable fact.

Indeed,but millions don't!
Millions more happily watched 24fps in cinemas!

[amspire]

(For content originally  shot at 24fps, they instead run the film at 25fps, which then has no judder but does run fast and with a slight change in audio pitch, which I can readily detect in content I'm familiar with.)

So you are one of the "golden-eared brigade"?

I have always wondered what people with perfect pitch think of movies on 50Hz PAL shown 4% faster then in the cinema. I don't notice, but then again, perhaps if everything is slightly fast, you get used to it.

[tooki]

35mm &  70mm yes,16mm not so!
Due to the enormous investment in the large formats,they reached high degrees of sophistication,
16mm,on the other hand,was "the poor relation". […]

First off, thanks for the info!

What do you call big budget?
Major sporting events,(Olympic Games,International Football ,Auto Racing,The America's Cup,the Band-Aid Concerts,& so on),were all recorded & edited using VTRs.
Every large televised event was recorded,edited,& presented using VTR.

Which are live events, not prerecorded as I specified (I guess I meant scripted — sorry, it was a rushed reply on a phone!).

(For content originally  shot at 24fps, they instead run the film at 25fps, which then has no judder but does run fast and with a slight change in audio pitch, which I can readily detect in content I'm familiar with.)

So you are one of the "golden-eared brigade"?

Well, in terms of pitch I'm pretty good! And while I do demand a certain level of performance in my audio gear, I certainly don't subscribe to anything even distantly related to audiophoolery!

One great advantage of  digital TV is that very early newsreel film,at  around 16fps,is not used in standard telecine chains at 25fps,
Seriously scary shots of the Imperial German Army lose their menacing aspect when they are all prancing along at a jaunty gait.

Hah yes!!! For how long have people thought that old films were slapstick because of the speed, when in fact it was basically faulty reproduction!

100Hz TVs solved a real problem. Those weren't boutique videophoolery, they were made by every major manufacturer of TVs. Many people perceive flicker at 50Hz. That is indisputable fact.

Indeed,but millions don't!
Millions more happily watched 24fps in cinemas!

The fact that many people aren't bothered doesn't diminish the annoyance to those who are!

Also, as I understand it, cinema projectors project each frame 2 or 3 times to produce a frame rate of 48Hz or 72Hz, and additionally, it's my understanding that our perception of flicker in full-frame displays (like film) vs. scanned displays (like CRTs) is quite different.

I have always wondered what people with perfect pitch think of movies on 50Hz PAL shown 4% faster then in the cinema. I don't notice, but then again, perhaps if everything is slightly fast, you get used to it.

When I first moved to Europe from USA, I found the higher pitch to be exceptionally annoying, in particular with any content I had already heard correctly before. To be honest, it never stopped being annoying! (Think of the common situation of knowing a song intimately from the CD release, then hearing it in a film soundtrack sped up. Anyone with a good ear for pitch will notice. It's just a question of whether it bothers them!)

Luckily, digital distribution (beginning with some DVD releases) changed this, and now things are usually shown with correct pitch and runtime.

[Dr. Frank]

As PAL was able to correct these phase shifts of the color reference signal, but for a higher price compared to NTSC, it also stands for: PAL = Pay additional luxury.
That correction was done by an ultrasonic 64µs delay line for every other row. Great stuff!

Frank

[coppice]

As PAL was able to correct these phase shifts of the color reference signal, but for a higher price compared to NTSC, it also stands for: PAL = Pay additional luxury.
That correction was done by an ultrasonic 64µs delay line for every other row. Great stuff!

Frank

Many early PAL TVs did not include the delay line, for cost reasons. Not just the cost of the hardware, but also the related patent licences. If the transmitter alternates what it sends you need to alternate what you expect at the receiver, but that costs very little. The delay line to gain the benefit of alternation is entirely optional.

[Circlotron]

That was the same year we got Black and White TV here in Australia! None of that colour rubbish for us until 1975.

And what's more, we went straight to transistor colour TVs, not 30 valve room heaters!
The Philips K9 was a great TV. TV servicing was changed forever once those and similar sets appeared.

[SL4P]

While we're nitpicking...
From the late 70s- In Sydney alone, I could identify at least half-a-dozen 35mm capable telecines (almost all of them Rank-Cintel), and a similar number in Melbourne...  primarily in post-production facilities, where the raw footage was shot on 35 neg, and transferred to tape for editing.

As for colour tape facilities, the place I worked was opened in 1969, with full PAL colour from studio (and an old Marconi Mk7 16/35 optical telecine)... due to legislative issues the content wasn't transmitted colour until 1973!   VT was Ampex and RCA 2", then A, B, C format (1"), and then Beta...  by the later 80s, we were using D1, Digi-Beta and D2... along with gear like Abekas disk recorders.
(a few memories rolling in there!)

[Mechanical Menace]

Indeed,but millions don't!
Millions more happily watched 24fps in cinemas!

The fact that many people aren't bothered doesn't diminish the annoyance to those who are!

Also, as I understand it, cinema projectors project each frame 2 or 3 times to produce a frame rate of 48Hz or 72Hz, and additionally, it's my understanding that our perception of flicker in full-frame displays (like film) vs. scanned displays (like CRTs) is quite different.

You need to have a scene update 24 times a second to give almost anyone  the convincing illusion of smooth motion but you need rates above about 80hz for almost nobody to perceive the flicker. Most people can't even acclimatise to the 24hz flicker so can only deal with it in short bursts before before they end up with an headache or the like. 24hz is also uncomfortably close to the worse frequencies for most photosensitive epileptics. At 48hz almost everyone can acclimatise to it and those very very rare few who can't can normally take it much longer than 24hz. At 72hz...

We're even more sensitive when it's a constant light source. How many of us can happily watch line frequency video but find line frequency fluorescent lighting distracting even at 60hz? But incandescents don't bother anyone even at a 50hz line frequency because they double that rate to well in the "that fast nobody can notice" mark.

Also I know for a fact some people still felt the need for expensive 120hz crts in NTSC territories.

[CatalinaWOW]

Incandescents are less objectionable because thermal lag in the filament reduces the amplitude of the light intensity variation dramatically.  Both show variations at twice line frequency.  But fluorescents drop intensity all the way to zero each half cycle.  So even though they are varying at roughly two octaves above most individuals cut off frequency there is sufficient amplitude to cross the detection threshold for many people.

The television scene which shows full amplitude variation between light and dark at frame rate is highly artificial and rarely seen.  I am sure that most people would find watching such a scene disturbing, even on a high frequency monitor.