Telefunken color roundie?
 

In an old Telefunken tv set ad I found a color roundie, sold by Telefunken in 1965. Does somebody here has informations about this set? Was it made by Telefunken itself or by another (American?) company? I know that Philips has made roundies for the Canadian market in 1964, but I didn't heard before that Telefunken did the same thing.

http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold...lefunkentv.jpg

Probbably a CTC-15 clone. Sure looks like a '15

Very interesting...and I agree that it is probably a clone. Nothing about this set says "German" except the name. I wonder which side of the pond it was sold on?

Probably this side.

The control layout looks exactly like my Sylvania 580 chassis set, which is a CTC-15 clone. Given how long it took for the Germans to figure out color (i.e., waiting for RCA's patents to expire), I suspect the set was in fact a clone.

Oh yeah, if I hear that 'PAL is soooooooo much better' stuff one more time.....

I don't think so. In the first years of color TV we had so much trouble with these over-complicated PAL sets that I think it would be a better idea to introduce a reliable NTSC system rather than a unreliable PAL system. The people are very angry with their first sets. Color was instable (even with PAL) andoften a service man had to be called. We had in PAL some problems too which you don't have with NTSC: we had much cross color bars in the picture and color frings. The situation became better first with the introducing of PALplus in the 1990's. With PALplus and PALplus color tv receivers we have now a really good picture. But when I came to America and Canada I saw that the NTSC sets already have the same good and reliable picture now. Germans often want to be perfect. That's their mistake. "Good enough" not perfect would be a better way.
Thank you for your comments with respect to the Telefunken set. It looks like a RCA clone I think.

here in Australia....
 

PAL vs NTSC ....well we waited twenty to get colour because of the "need" to get something better than NTSC.... aaagh!!!

I have to say PAL is better because of the true rgb colour etc and the lack of hue error. BUT that said NTSC is not that bad ....my Zone 1 NTSC DVDs often look very good. :)
BUT now the debate is irrelevant as we enter the era of HD digital tv.

Picture Always Lousy V Never Same Colour Twice... Boxing gloves on :)

I *loathe* NTSC simply because of the lower resolution. I *do* however like the 60hz frame rate. I can detect flicker on 85hz monitors due to my eyesight problem, but NTSC is definitely better than PAL in this regard. (I was in the US in 1992, and we saw a fair amount of TV, so that's how I remember it)

I have a fair few R1 DVDs, and they all look really fuzzy (in true NTSC on a Sony Trinitron) versus R2 PAL DVD, but the picture is far more stable. The one thing that really bugs me is that, even on RGB from the DVD player, I *still* have to use the Sony's tint control on almost ANY R1 disc to get reds rather than browns. Grrrr...

For some reason, the NTSC pictures off Laserdisc seem less affected than those off of DVD - which is very odd; DuranDuran's "Decade" looks awesome on NTSC Laserdisc...

I'm willing to bet that the R1 Superbit version of "The fifth element" will look as good as our standard R2 PAL version though. I watched it on ye olde VHS last night and forgot just how good my VHS machine was... ...but it's still no DVD copy.

BTW - I will not, unless forced to, buy a 100hz set - the motion smearing and artefacts are far worse than a bit of flicker...

Granted NTSC drifts, but I've never heard one good explination as to why PAL would correct the 'drift', or why PAL wouldn't need a tint control. I suspect lack of tint control is more a function of PAL being so much more complex that it'd cost too much to add, than any real feature of PAL.

I honestly don't get the point behind phase switching. It was considered for NTSC and dropped because of flicker/fringing effects. People say it 'corrects color errors' but can never really explain how. IMHO, PAL was created more for the reasons SECAM came about, i.e. it was something that wasn't NTSC.

SECAM - now that's a bizzare system. Does anyone even understand it? Do the french understand it, even? :)

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A "simple" PAL receiver does not have the delay line that produces electrical averaging of successive lines. Don't know if any simple PAL sets are made these days. This would be like the early NTSC xperiments with alternating phase, and depends on the human eye to do the averaging. Eyeball averaging is not perfect, and the resulting effect was known as "Hannover bars" in honor of the home town of Walter Bruch, PAL inventor.

On another note, there is a classic paper from the NTSC color development days on why a tint control is needed even when there is no variation in phase (to compensate for the particular red/green color mixing characteristics of the viewer's color vision). The variation of red/green ratio to make flesh tones is actually considerably larger than the smallest noticeable difference, even among "normal" viewers that would not be considered to have a color deficiency. However, since there are typically more than one person using the same TV, a single tint setting that is a compromise for everyone viewing is most practical, and it might as well be the "standard" one that PAL and NTSC use. Viewers with normal vision will find the result acceptable, although not an exact match to what was in front of the camera. Note also that the really proper adjustment for an individual's color vision involves the complete color matrix of 6 values, i.e., gain and phase for each of the three color-difference signals. Adjusting the tint can correct the flesh tones for viewer differences only at the expense of throwing other colors out of whack.

Actually, I don't think there were ever PAL TV sets without the delay line. In fact, the wretched 64us delay line was one of the reasons why PAL is more expensive to make than NTSC. Still, top level analog decoders for PAL do produce a better picture than NTSC, but with the advent of digital delay or fully digital decode, the differences have dissapeared. The only thing is that some digital decoding chipsets save on costs by using low resolution AD conversion and the results are quite appaling - color banding all over the place...
The REALLY surprising thing is that some of the plasma and LCD TVs use really horrible digital processing, with about 5 bits of resolution per color. Just yesterday I looked at a TOTL Philips LCD TV, playing THEIR OWN promotional DVD and you could clearly see the color bands moving across the picture on wipe-fades! Why would someone pay $6000 for such a set is a complete mystery to me...

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AHA! So this could explain everything in my case - I'm partially colour blind between red, brown and green! The nystagmus I suffer from is the reason I'm so susceptible to flicker, but maybe this colour problem is why I don't get on with NTSC :)

I thought it was just me who saw the colour banding problem on plasmas (my eyes do weird things all the time!). Thank GOD it's not!

BTW - when in my old house share, we had Sky Digital (digital satellite). ON things like Futurama, colour banding was all over the shop - truly awful. Combine that with 100hz processing AND plasma, and you can have some of the worst colour pictures ever devised!

Some years ago, I had a bout of iritis (like arthritis, but the immune system is attacking the iris instead of the joints) in one eye (probably started by irritation from something in the eye). The eye became supersensitive to bright light, and the medicine (drops) increased my flicker fusion frequency in that eye to where I could see essentially 100%-contrast flicker on a 60 Hz TV screen. Fortunately this returned to normal afterwards (and also fortunately, this has never occurred again, as they say it is unpredictable). I'm relating this just to point out that susceptibility to flicker is viewer dependent as well as color reproduction.

My last encounter with 50 Hz pictures was on a hotel set, and I found that I saw flicker mainly in large white areas. The strangest thing about the program was that it was a rerun of Startrek, which of course I had seen previously in NTSC, and the speedup of the film from 24 fps to 25 fps gave Captain Kirk's intro "...to Bravely go where no man has gone before." a distinct adolescent squeek.

A quick look at the mask looks identical to a Curtis Mathes roundie... also an RCA clone. Looks like the only thing different is the name at the bottom center.

My current location: Columbia River, Kalama, Washington State

Thank you very much, this is exactly the same design.
The only simple PAL set I know is the Kuba Portacolor (1967). It has a tint control at the back.

that Kuba is G.E portacolor with a different chassis. it appears to be using the original G.E crt & convergence yoke.
it also looks like it is using the original G.E case & knobs

Yes. The flyback is G.E., the y delay line and the tuner is G.E. too. And the hv rectifier is an original Compactron tube while all the other tubes (except the crt) are European tubes.

He he he - yep, I first noticed the 24-25 fps speedup when I'd taped "Weird science" off the telly (1991-ish?). The bit when Gareth and Wyatt get slushied at the mall has "Tesla girls" by OMD faintly audible in the background. I'd just got "The best of OMD" on CD (having only had a CDP for about 3 months) and I instantly noticed the 4% pitch increase - and figured it was an error. I didn't find out until a couple of years later that film ran at 24fps (non-interlaced).

I can see flicker in the cinema fairly easily on some films...

BTW - it's more sharp outlines (like chrome trim on cars, etc) that show up flicker to me solid white bands aren't so bad, but large areas of red and green, even on RGB from a DVD, flicker like a mare to my eyes!

The best tricks when you have nystagmus though are these:
Red and blue (e.g. pyjamas, a painting, etc) in bright light (natural or incandescent) - the blue flickers REALLY badly!
Red LED displays (such as 1980s clock radios) - in a dark room with very low ambient light (e.g. moonlight through curtains), the LED numbers will float around the room while the background stays put.

The only thing I can think of is that nystagmus is more active on colours than b&w (maybe something to do with the different ways the eye detects chroma over luma) - very weird indeed!

Anyone who says "I'm blind without my glasses" or whatnot usually gets an automatic "whatever" out of me :)

I own an Grundig TV of 1994 vintage & It is 100Hz PAL & SECAM (120Hz NTSC) & the colour is fantastic on both PAL & NTSC I don't know what the picture would look like on SECAM as there is no sources of that signal can be found. I feed my video signals as S-VHS thus getting rid of the chroma Lum interference problems with PAL & NTSC alltogether, I do find the colours on NTSC tend to be better then on PAL.

Forget all this mumbo jumbo... The real problem is the way you blokes spell:

C o L o R

:banana:

As long as I can see my Coronation Street in NTSC, that's all that matters. :thmbsp:

Working for a UK based company here in the states in the early '90's gave me my first exposure to PAL. One of the companies sales people found out that I did TV work and asked if I serviced British sets . I replied "not yet". He had a Ferguson 13" color portable and a Panasonic muti-standard vcr he used to view soccer game tapes his brother would send him ( the vcr would not output a useable ntsc picture with a pal tape). The Ferguson lacked a/v inputs and had developed an intermittant rf problem. He brought me the set to repair along with an autotransformer and attached UK power stip to power the set and the vcr as a signal source. The only problem in the set turned out to be a poor solder connection (thank goodness - no documentation avail. on this side of the big pond). It surprised me to find a power xfmr in a port. set which made it pretty heavy. I was also surprised to find it would pick up off air local channel 15 but of course no color or sound but good synch! Honestly, the set performed well with the taped programs but with all the normal vhs limitations. I wish I had a pal broadcast signal to judge by. I have always found a tint control to be handy when trying to get a "good" picture on a set with with a marginal crt and gray scale tracking problems. I remember, back in the bad old days (60's -70's), a tint(hue) control could get more work out than the volume knob. This was not only station to station but also program to program (remember the repairman saying "don't go by commercials for adjustment"?). These days it seems like if you have to adjust the hue at all it's a set and forget thing unless one of the guns start to take a dump and you ain't got time or funds to fix it. I saw my first color tv in 1966 and here 39 years later I can say "NTSC, you've come a long ways baby". I kinda happy with it, especially considering the limited amount of viewing time I have. I hedging my bets though. I just picked up a 46" widescreen HDTV for $300!!!! It's a mexican set that they left the crt grounds off of and it looks like I'm still $300 away from HDTV nirvana. It'll still never replace my love for ntsc or my roundies, or my Chromacolors, or my CTC-68's..................

Most of the color problems are non existant with S-video. Most D/A converters and RGB encoders produce very nice quality NTSC and PAL signals. Just look at DVD players, satellite receivers, video games, etc, which produce very nice quality video that looks pretty decent on most TVs.

Jonathan