Fifty-five years ago today

[Dave S]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

NBC press release on debut of color TV

Color TV is just a bit over a year older than me!

[Blast]

Thanks for posting that, tv_nut. RCA was once a proud company, weren't they? Now they're just a name on a box...

[Robert Grant]

Beautifully written and illustrated article.

Kudos to Francis Bello.

Does anyone have the rest of the text "continued on page 201"?

Rob

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Robert Grant

Beautifully written and illustrated article.

Kudos to Francis Bello.

Does anyone have the rest of the text "continued on page 201"?

Rob

Of course - thanks for the sanity check

[zenith2134]

Some of this stuff is way above my head. I love reading about it though. Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to learn more about early color TV broadcasting.

55 years ago was just about 2 years before my father was born. Wild. My first color TV wasn't until the 80s.

[old_tv_nut]

Here's an example of deliberately running an image orthicon well above the knee - a clip of Jim McKay, as part of a brief tribute on CBS Sunday Morning.

Note that the effect is very non-linear. It is much stronger in darkening the dark side of an edge than in brightening the bright side. This is because the redistributed electrons respond to the local fields between the target and collector mesh, and fall preferentially on the dark areas, instead of having a fixed pattern of redistribution (as a Gaussian sharpening filter or "unsharp mask" would have). Therefore, it cannot be simulated correctly with a linear filter.

[old_tv_nut]

By the way, did you notice that there were many affected areas besides the background next to the shirt?

[colorfixer]

I was watching a special on PBS featuring Roy Orbison. The program was taped live in Australia in 1972, in glorious black and white (no color until 4 years later), and the cameras used were run near to or above the knee, as any reflections or lighting were doing just the same thing.

The camera's vertical linearity was also suffering at times.

I wonder how old those cameras were.

Strange to see even in that day and age. Made everything look a lot older than it was.

[old_tv_nut]

Here's a video showing more carefully chosen exposure over the knee in a black and white studio environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbNRHuyuPSA