Color Television was disappointing when first introduced?
 

I have read this from several writers here.
I'm thinking that complaints would have been from those who were bothered by the cost.
Perhaps they mean disappointing to the middle and lower class people?
Seems to me that color TV would have been expected to be purchased primarily by wealthy people. I expect that group would have been more than dazzled by even just a few color programs as money would not have been an issue for them. Also, the wealthy love to brag about what they buy all the while pretending not to be doing so and thus, would not have been disappointed at all.

Today poor people all over will beg, borrow and steal to get large screen TV's. I suspect that in the '50's most lower class people had more sense than to sacrifice for such a luxury as color TV, however, they probably resented those who were fortunate enough to own one.
The poor seem to spend much time resenting the rich for this or that. Seems to me that if they would become better educated they might be able to even the score a bit. Perhaps in the world of the future!
That reminds me... I have alot of learn'n to do.

I think the real disapointment from color TV when it was 1st introduced was the expense, the complexity/dodgy reliability, & lack of programming. I've never seen a CT-100, but I wonder how B&W programs "looked" on it. Were they kinda purplish, greenish, or what? IIRC, lots of TVs were somewhat less than reliable like they are today, and, of course, a color set w/3X the circuitry would be even less reliable. Color TV was a disappointment to its backers, as it took til about 1966 before it really took off. I think Sarnoff felt it would have gone off bigger than TV did initially-Seems like I remember reading he thought there would be millions of color sets out there by 1959 or '60. Color TV WAS very expensive at first-$1000 was a LOT of moolah in 1954-that was a pretty decent used car. Even $495 for a cheapo model in '60 or '61 was still not an inconsiderable sum.-Sandy G.

---

Color sets, even used ones, were fairly expensive even in the mid-sixties and even then, many shows were still being broadcast in B&W.

When displaying a bw picture I don't think any early color set could look as good as a middle-of-the-road monochrome set. BW tv really was close to perfected by the mid-50s & was still new to most people. There are 2 things I can think of that would have sold a bunch of color sets. One, if everything was being broadcast in color (even if it was just everything on NBC) & two if the price was more in line with bw sets. Faced with a difference of $200 for a decent bw set or $600 for a similiar color set-thats a stretch. If you could get one for $400 or even like $375 it would sell a lot of sets. I don't think many folks in the middle class were obsessed with getting color in the 50s or early 60s. Later one peer pressure sold some sets. I know my folks & their friends/relatives were living paycheck to paycheck when they were in their 20s, and we are talking about the late 60s. Most of them had color consoles & I think this was part of keeping up with the Joneses. Now, folks like my grandfather, who could have bought 2 or 3 color sets if he wanted to, were too frugal to make the investment. He replaced a cheap 60s bw set with a cheap 70s bw set before finally going color about 1982.

Speaking of peer pressure and trying to impress the neighbors, there was a MAD Magazine cartoon in the 60's where a housewife looked outside and in total hysteria, exclaims to her husband that the neighbors kids are playing with their empty COLOR TV box and have drug it across the street to their own yard. The husband, a bit confused, looks over at her and says "What difference does that make?" "BECAUSE! Now everyone will think that THEY have the new COLOR TV!!!" :lmao:

I think all the above comments ring true. The mid fifties was a time of prosperity. All kinds of new gadgets were coming on the market. Much like today's electronic candy store. Color tv was not a priority purchase in most middle class homes. As stated, there was little color programming, the sets were expensive and the screens small compared to available b&w sets. This along with the complex chassis and multiple adjustments and nightmarish stories of bad purity and convergence problems, more new terms for consumers. And having to watch less then bright images in dimly lit rooms, scared many potential buyers away. There was a wait and see attitude. "I'll wait for lower prices" or "more color shows". RCA spent millions on developement of color and millions more trying to sell the sets. The public wasn't buying. Less lag time, but several years in, HD is just now starting to catch on. There is still much confusion over types of sets. HD ready, HD monitor, HD built in, set top box, HD coverter. Not to mention plasma, lcd, dlp ect. Then there's The network HD broadcast standard, at least 3 of those. Plus the scare tactic of an analog cutoff date. You weren't told in 1954 that you better buy a color set, because all b&w broadcasts would cease after a certain date. Compatible color. But that's another term people didn't understand that scared off early color buyers.

-Steve D.

Also, the brains at RCA didn't realize that in order for people to want to buy a color TV, there must be a programming reason as well as other reasons. In other words, when they wisely started showing BONANZA in color, the show was so popular that people wanted to watch it in color. When RCA and Disney decided to do the "Walt Disney Presents" show in color in 1961 they changed the name to "The Wonderful World Of Color" and rubbed it in with every episode and commercial that black & white wasn't cutting it anymore. THAT is when color TV sales started really talking off if you look at the graphs.

Too bad RCA didn't think of that about 5 years earlier.

Steve,

I agree. Bonanza and Disney were a turning point for color. And the NBC Peacock at the start of each show didn't hurt a bit. Although it wouldn't be until 1967 that color sets outsold b&w.

-Steve D.

Steve,

That's about the time I was saving my allowance money to get one of those silly GE PortaColor sets. I wanted color TV, dammit! We didn't get a color set until November 6, 1968; a Zenith with Space Command. The first thing we watched on it was Mannix. :banana:

That date sure stuck in my mind; it was an important one in my young life I guess..... (Ya think?)

Our first color set was a used Admiral that Dad purchased around 1965. I think the Admiral was manufactured in the late 50's. Luckily, it had a pretty good picture and was fairly reliable. However, it was a huge black metal box with fugly gold-painted wooden legs. :yuck:

Another factor was the service problem. Many of the servicemen did not know how to service a color set. RCA conducted service seminars through their distributors in an effort to correct that deficiency, but those who attended still had to purchase a lot of expensive test equipment if they were serious about it. For the small percentage of color sets, it was hardly worth the investment. There were many small shops who were still paying off loans on their monochrome test equipment. Of course all of that changed suddenly around 1964. Then you had to make the investment to stay in business.

Let's not forget that tube gear (cameras and receivers) was a lot less stable than transistorized sets, and the variations from set to set and program to program were pretty huge. The question repeatedly asked was "when do you think they'll perfect color TV?" When I was a kid, I just ignored it, but when I became an engineer, I always answered "I hope they never do - that's my job!" :D

But really, some of the things done to get brighter pictures (new phosphors) and brighter-looking pictures (9300K bluish "white" ) made it even harder to get consistent flesh tones, and I remember often seeing blond hair that would look unaturally greenish, for example.

And here I thought that was a bad rinse job! :D

Actually, there was another reason for green hair - The optics in the TK-41 were sensitive to polarization, and when backlight is used, the reflection off hair is polarized (at least to some extent). This polarized light went preferentially to the green pickup tube. Later camera optics reduced or eliminated the problem.

I agree, but
 

I have lived thru the early stages of developement of the color television products, I still say that when RCA jumped the gun and practically claimed credit for the the entire ntsc system, other manafacturers were left in the cold, and as well all know competition is one of the key factors in a product being more readily available and the cost then starts to drop. After the 1st initial surge of color models, all the other companies basically set on the sidelines and said "ok Rca you sell color to the public". and until the early sixties you saw little or no product from the majority. You also have to consider that most of those manufacturers had plenty of stock on components to build b & w sets, they wanted to exhaust those supplies before jumping head first into the color market.

That's right. I have an RCA promotional book for the TK-42 4-tube camera that brags they had eliminated the green hair polarization problem in the TK-42. The only problem was that the TK-42 had an inferior picture compared to the TK-41. NBC refused to use them, sticking instead with their ten year old TK-41s. The TK-42 was the first transistorized color studio camera so it should have been more reliable, but it wasn't. One station in Ohio had four TK-42s - three in the studio, and one permanently located in the shop used as a test jig for repairing modules to keep the other three running! :thumbsdn:

I think RCA "jumped the shark" with the TK42 it was the start of the end of RCA broadcast. Don't forget it made everything look plastic too. Was big and odd looking and that lens what were they thinking. Norelco brought the PC60 to market the rest is history. At least Ampex lasted untill the late 80's.

When the other networks went to the Norelco, NBC was forced to use them also, to match the competition's picture quality. For the first time ever, NBC was using cameras not made by RCA. This was a major embarrassment, resulting in a crash program which led to the TK-44. This was a fine camera, slightly better than the Norelco. As soon as it was available, NBC dumped their Norelcos and used the TK-44 for many years. You can see the TK-44 in operation in the recent movie "Anchorman - the Story of Ron Burgundy" (highly recommended for TV fans and history buffs). Christina Applegate co-stars, and looks great!

<<<That's about the time I was saving my allowance money to get one of those silly GE PortaColor sets.>>>

Heyyyyy! I have one in my bedroom that I watch all the time! : ))

frency I still have my porta-color from 1965
 

When I saw the porta color in 1965 i sold my 1964 zenith and bought it , I still have that set.

Oh, I want to see a photo of this 1965 porta color!

Plumbicons certainly improved the signal to noise ratio, but not the resolution per se(although the lower noise meant edge enhancement could be increased). Also, the lack of deep red response in the early Plumbicons made flesh tones (especially light-skinned) unnaturally even-colored, no variation due to rosy cheeks. I recall some manufacturer was showing a pickup tube for the red channel that used a silicon diode array for the target to overcome the Plumbicon red problem, but I don't know if they ever sold any. Eventually, extended-red plumbicons were developed that were somewhat better.

Today's solid-state sensors naturally extend into the deep red and infrared, and have to be curtailed by an infra-red cutoff filter. This filter is typically more cutting than really necessary, originally designed this way in order to match plumbicon cameras. Makes it difficult to get a good color balance on a TV monitor that is in the picture, because it cuts off much of the rare-earth phosphor deep red spectral spikes.

Panavision (IIRC - maybe some other guys) have shown video cameras for electronic film production with an extended IR cutoff point to more nearly match motion picture film.

I'm not sure when CBS NY started using the Norelco PC-60's,
but in 1967 they changed all the cameras to the Norelco PC-70's
This was before my time but I have been told that the PC-70's
made a very good picture.
Regards,
Swanson

My guess is around fall '65 when Sullivan went to color. They had to shield them with mumetal because of the electrical interference caused by the subway near the theatre.

The Norelcos did make very nice pictures. Lots of 'em, too. They weren't retired until 1984 when a new fleet of Hitachis took over.

In camera maintenance we still have a box of 7586 nuvistors
that the PC-70 plumbicon preamps used.There were 2 7586's
per preamp board that was mounted right on the plumbicon
yoke assy.Most of the nuvistors in that box are pulls.I was
told that the nuvistors were changed during routine
maintenance even if they were not bad.So instead of
throwing out the pulls,someone saved them and mixed them in
with the new ones :no:
Regards,
Swanson

It would be WILD to somehow be granted full access to one of the big network's "Junk Holes"..Wonder what kinds of goodies you'd find there. I remember my frat had the contract to clean out our college's basketball arena the second half of the year, I did some "recon" in all the ratholes under the bleachers & found ALL SORTS of neat stuff-Records going back to the 1800s, old annuals, papers, you name it. It was fascinating-a lot of the stuff, I felt, shouldn't have been tossed into a corner like that & forgotten. Think I said something to a history prof friend of mine, he just looked sad & shook his head. I'd wager some of that stuff is still there, nearly 30 yrs later...-Sandy G.

CBS NY also used Thomson cameras in the 1970's before
they changed over to the Hitachi's.I am not sure when
they phased out the Norelco cameras,but I believe it was
way before 1984.The Norelco's were considered obsolete
when compared to the Thomson cameras.The Norelco's
weighed 140 pounds and the Thomsons were much lighter
and easier to work with.It is possible that they could have
kept quite a few of the Norelco's as backups into the
early 80's,But I think the Thomsons were well in use
at that time.
Regards,
Swanson

Those magnetic fields were produced I believe by genemotors located behind what is now called the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, where Letterman is produced. At age 11, my parents and I were in the audience of the Arthur Godfrey and His Friends Halloween show in that same theater.

While waiting outside before the show, I was checking things out, heard a whirling noise and, around the corner from the theater entrance on Broadway, found the genemotors, which then provided 600 Vdc for subway cars, but are now I guess long gone and only remembered for their magnetic fields that interfered with CBS cameras in the theater.

At the time, I didn’t know or suspect the real reason for those giant machines.

I remember being wowed by how much electricity it must take to run television cameras!

I walked by there this past summer, but couldn’t find a trace of what I heard and saw back in 1951.

Sidebar: There were three cameras as I recall, probably RCA TK-11’s. Partway through the show a camera started to smoke a little. A guy ran out from behind the stage, opened it up, and started poking around inside. They finished the show on the remaining cameras. Live television!

The generator station is still there and we still have to shield
the monitors with mu metal.We do not have to shield the cameras
anymore because they all use CCD's
Regards,
Swanson

As far as "junk holes" are concerned,there are no more at the
CBS broadcast center.I have already searched every possible
crevice in the basement and came up with hardly anything
worthwhile except for a few boxes of NOS tv tubes and
an old Hewlett Packard 410B VTVM.And believe me,the
basement at CBS is massive with lots of caverns with lots
of places to hide stuff.Yes,there was once a treasure trove
down there,but you can thank management for cleaning
it out and throwing away things that they considered useless.
They mostly use the basement now to store office furniture
and other useless crap.I have no idea if NBC or ABC still have
junk rooms or not,they probably don't because their management
most likely has the same mindset as CBS.
Regards,
Swanson

We shot the HDTV test pictures for the FCC ACATS (Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service) in the Ed Sullivan Theater before Letterman moved in. We used all tube cameras, because HD CCDs were not yet in existence (early 90's). We had one BTS HD camera (using Saticons) that could have its modules switched to do 1050 interlaced (960 active lines) and 525 progressive. We had a Sony, which did 1125 iinterlaced, 1035 active (Japanese standard at the time). A second BTS camera was set up to do 787.5 progressive (720 active), the format proposed by Zenith and AT&T (and supported by MIT). Actually, this camera head could accept the the modules, but its viewfinder had been modified to 47 kHz sweep and could not be switched. Also, the video bandwidth on the BTS camera was a little short, rolling off at 25 Mhz or so. The internal control bus ran at 27 MHz, and when we wide-banded the progressive camera, we also had to make a bunch of ground and shielding changes to keep the 27 MHz clock out of the 720p video. All these formats morphed into the present 1080i and 720p.

The color rendition of the cameras was carefully measured on a Macbeth color checker chart and the matrix values adjusted to get signals as close as possible to the SMPTE standards. LeRoy DeMarsh of Kodak did the regression analysis. As I recall, the Sony was farthest off from what we wanted to start with, but we got a good match after changing values. There was also a problem with the "burn-in" of the Saticons - measurements made shortly after opening the iris differed significantly from measurements after the chart had been in place for several minutes.

Trying to get the least noise possible, we ran the BTS cameras at -3dB gain from nominal, putting us dangerously close to comet-tailing. Also, the 787.5p format had no viable image enhancer from the factory, and Zenith had a crash project (successful) to design and build one. This resulted in many long discussions and measurements to assure that the progressive and interlaced enhancement settings were not unfairly favoring one or the other.

The Sony camera used Sony Saticons, and the BTS cameras did too - but Sony kept their special low-noise FET preamps to themselves, and the BTS factory had to unsolder the preamps, which were soldered directly to the front of the tubes, and substitute the more noisy FETs that they could get.

I recall talk of the magnetic fields, but I think we had no problem - the cameras were kept away from the back wall.

One more thing - the theater had a beautiful but broken stained glass panel in the middle of the ceiling. Does someone know if it was restored, covered, or removed when the theater was remodeled for Letterman?

I'll have to ask the guys who did the first remodel if they
remember that stained glass panel and what happened
to it.They just got finished converting the place over
to HDTV.I know they went with a Sony switcher and
I'm pretty sure they are using Sony cameras.I think
they got a real good package deal from Sony.
Regards,
Swanson

Actually, the NYC subway used rotary converters, not MG sets, for 600VDC traction power. It came in (on the IRT) at 11kv 3 phase 25hz AC, which was dropped down to 400something (not 480), fed into a rotary converter, then off to the traction switchgear. Some IND substations used mercury arc tubes, and some substations used 60hz rotaries. AFAIK, the last 25hz unit was retired in 2000, at nearly 100 years of age (!). All of the mecrury arcs are gone - I think those were actually the first to go because of the hazzards involved with repair of them - they were not sealed units and did require periodic repair, plus they had a 24/7 pumpdown via pumps on them. FWIW, NJ transit used the same basic system on the Hoboken division until '83 when they went over to 27.5kv traction.

Rotaries requied a tender to start/stop them as needed - they'd take them off line outside the rush hour to save wear and tear.

Virtually all of the NYC subway today is solid state fed off of 3 phase 60hz power. The signals are still 25hz in places though. NJT uses 100hz signal power which is in fact generated by geniune MG sets. A pole pig sounds really weird at 100hz and sticks out like a sore thumb in the substation...

No real questions here; just some thoughts: We heard from Swanson that the monitors are still being mumetal shielded; we know from nasadowsk the rotaries are now gone; I wonder if current shielding practices in the theater are unnecessary holdovers from rotary days? Maybe the new solid state units still spew out clouds of magnetic pollution. You wouldn’t think so.

I don't know why U U.S.A. folks complained in the '50's and early '60's that a colour tv was 3-4 salaryes. If a "Telecolor" would cost only 3-4 slarayes, by 1989 unless 25% of the house holds would had had colour tvs (colour televison was introduced in Romania in 1983).

What was the price difference in Romania?

A "Telecolor" was about 15,000 lei (fifteenthouthand lei), an "Cromatic" (which had a bigger diagonale) was about 17,000 lei and an Soviet "Elcrom" 13,000 lei.
A sallary was about 1,200-2,200 lei.

iirc the first portacolor was 66.
would you settle for a set with an 80 datecode?
a neighbor has one with a mid 1980 date on the back.in a bright red cabinet.chassis 10he.

Any way you could get some photos of this set? Have never seen a 1980 tube type portacolor yet.