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Television Media

Fifty Years of Color Television 469

Posted by michael from the get-off-the-couch dept.
peter303 writes "The Houston Chronicle notes that color TVs were first manufactured on March 25, 1954 at a price of $1000 (about $4000 in today's dollars). Some of the older folk here remember the excitement of your first neighbors acquiring one of these in the 1960s and as the TV series one-by-one switched to color. Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV."
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Fifty Years of Color Television More

Fifty Years of Color Television

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  • Yes, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by smsp ( 736236 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:39AM (#8668184)
    Yea, but when will slashdot get some new colours too?

  • "Fifty Years of Color Television!!" (Score:4, Funny)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) * on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:39AM (#8668189)
    ...and there's STILL nothing on!

  • 1669 hours... a perspective (Score:5, Interesting)

    by amyhughes ( 569088 ) * on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:40AM (#8668196) Homepage
    Adults are projected to watch, on average, 1,669 hours of television in 2004, about 70 days worth, according to census figures.

    1669 hours... a perspective:

    If you are awake 16 hours per day 1669 hours is 104 days, not "just" 70. Apparently, on average, adults watch TV 29% of their waking hours. If you work/commute 45 hours per week, your "free time" is, if you do nothing else, about 9 1/2 hours per day, of which, on average, you watch TV 4 1/2 hours.

    So the average adult uses more than half of their available time watching TV.

    Pretty sad.

    Amy

    • Re:1669 hours... a perspective (Score:4, Informative)

      by TimSee ( 765338 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:46AM (#8668302)
      According the US Labor Dept Inflation Calculator, a $1000 TV in 1954 would cost about $6900 in 2004 dollars - about the price of a nice High-Def Plasma...interesting.
    • Not that supprising, im sure American adults watched more that 1669 hours of Janet Jacksons nipple, without including time spent watching the rest of the superbowl.

    • Re:1669 hours... a perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:48AM (#8668334)
      I concur, reading /. is much more productive.
    • Easy to over generalize using a single number. I'd love to know what the standard deviation on the calculation of average numbers of TV watched/year is. I'd be willing to bet that it might even be a bimodal distribution with two major populations at ~8 h/day and ~1-2 h/day.

      Also, how do weekends get factored in? Is the TV on in the background while you're doing something else? What about special events? During football season, I'm glued all day on Sunday/Monday night, but otherwise, my TV watching is on

    • Re:1669 hours... a perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jens_UK ( 615572 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:49AM (#8668368) Journal
      And years ago, the average American spent X amount of time listening to the radio, and before that, books. Years from now, it will be the internet, and then after that people will waste time on the holodeck.

      So your problem is with people, and not tv, right?

      • Re:1669 hours... a perspective (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:37PM (#8669131) Journal
        Books aren't a waste of time. Well, unless they're vitriolic political commentaries about the evils of the left or the evils of the right.

        TV doesn't encourage you to think, it's just sitting there in front of you, a lot of it full of mind-numbing reality TV garbage. Now if PBS was winning the ratings war, I wouldn't be worried.

        • Re:1669 hours... a perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

          by realdpk ( 116490 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @01:26PM (#8669829) Homepage Journal
          I disagree. Just as there are bad television programs, there are also bad books. _Lots_ of bad books. Most books are indeed a waste of time. I'm sure you can name a list that aren't, but that list would only encompass a small fraction of the number of books out there.

          The thing about the anti-TV elitists that I've noticed is that, unless you read the same list of books as they do, you are a "lesser" man. "Oh you haven't read ?" as they look down on you.

        • Not true. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @06:46PM (#8674204) Homepage Journal
          There is nothing on TV that makes you not think.
          The Simpsons brought up all kinds of ideas, thoughts, ans stuff to think about. Many people may have chose not to take the opportunity to discuss some issues, but thats not TV's fault.

          I challenge you to pick a TV show that there is no opportunity to think.
    • Is that counting the TV just being on as background noise? :-)

  • improvements (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wmeyer ( 17620 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:40AM (#8668197)
    Actually, there have been numerous quality improvements, though they have come in the receivers, rather than in the NTSC standard. The standard itself is rather elegant, and apart from the error that resulted in shifting to a non-integer frame rate (and the problems that has created for designers of hardware for decades), it has proved very robust.
    • and apart from the error that resulted in shifting to a non-integer frame rate

      What is a non-integer frame rate? Do you mean the Horizontal and Vertical Scans out of sync with each other? Or is one or the other a strange multiple of the carrier wave? Or what?
      • Many people refer to television's refresh rate as 30 frames per second, but the truth is that the refresh rate is 29.97 frames per second.
      • IIRC, NTSC runs at 59.94 fields per second or thereabouts. It is NOT 60 fields per second, otherwise you get one noticable glitch about once every twenty seconds.
        • So, the framerate isn't an integer multiple of some arbitrarily chosen units? That doesn't sound like a problem with the framerate. It sounds like a problem with the units chosen.

          • Re:improvements (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:11PM (#8668748)
            Actually, the problem is that the frame rate is not an exact integer multiple of the 60Hz AC power frequency, which is usually the largest source of electrical noise. It's off by a fraction of a percent; that's why you often see a distortion slowly creeping up the screen about once per minute as the frame rate beats against the power line sine wave. If the frame rate were exactly locked to the power line frequency, the distortion wouldn't move, so you wouldn't notice it.

            IIRC, the original B&W broadcast was at 60 frames/second, but there was some technical reason they had to slightly shift it in order to add the color subcarrier. Old B&W TVs were the worst with this noise distortion because they weren't designed to try to prevent it.

            (I think that color TVs only became truly usable in the 80s when they introduced decent automatic color correction. Before that, it seemed you could only watch in one of two colors: purple or green. No matter how much you fiddled with the knobs on old color TVs, it never looked quite right.)

            • Frame Rates, etc. (Score:5, Informative)

              by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @02:06PM (#8670437) Homepage

              Actually, the problem is that the frame rate is not an exact integer multiple of the 60Hz AC power frequency, which is usually the largest source of electrical noise. It's off by a fraction of a percent; that's why you often see a distortion slowly creeping up the screen about once per minute as the frame rate beats against the power line sine wave. If the frame rate were exactly locked to the power line frequency, the distortion wouldn't move, so you wouldn't notice it.

              Uhhh... Okay. Credentials: Former professional video technician (at the SkyDome in Toronto) before being hired to design radar video systems for Litton. Also an avid collector and restorer of early television sets. [glowingplate.com]

              In the 1950s, AC power was not universal, especially in rural areas (note the sustained popularity of the "All American Five" AC/DC table radio at that time). Lots of places had DC, and lots of cities had 25Hz power well into the late 1950s. Nor was it necessarily going to be in sync from one town to the next, so you couldn't guarantee that the 60Hz powerline hum could be synchronized with the TV station's 60Hz vertical signal. In other words, you couldn't be guaranteed that the hum was going to happen in the vertical blanking interval (that black bar you see rolling when the vertical hold control is set wrong).

              I suspect that the vertical was chosen to be at 60Hz more because the large current draw of the vertical output tube driving the deflection yoke would then be more likely to occur during the charge cycle of the set's filter capacitors, allowing smaller capacitors to be used (cheaper). This of course being a time when electrolytic filter capacitors (in fact, all small parts) were still hand made.

              Even more importantly, you should remember that most early TV sets (until the advent of selenium rectifiers in about 1955) had full-wave rectifiers, generally using a 5U4 or similar tube. A full-wave rectifier folds the negative half of the sinewave up to the positive side, which effectively doubles the frequency to 120Hz.

              Either way, if the set is operating correctly, regardless of color standard, you will not see any powerline artifacts or ripple. It's when the horizontal system starts to come out of resonance that the biggest current draw happens in the set. Your horizontal output tube (transistor) consumes the most power of any part of the set; if a typical 1950s DuMont or Admiral has a cathode current of 120mA (at ~300V) and you misadjust the horizontal hold, that current will spike to over double that. That will load down the set's power supply, discharge the filter capacitors more, and you might start to hear 120Hz (full wave rectifier at 60Hz) hum in the set's speaker.

              IIRC, the original B&W broadcast was at 60 frames/second, but there was some technical reason they had to slightly shift it in order to add the color subcarrier.

              Yup. The original NTSC standard was 30FPS; when the 3.58MHz sinewave which carries color was added, the bandwidth of the signal had to be increased. (The original was 3.5MHz bandwidth for the image; reducing the frame rate slightly was sufficient to keep the bandwidth inside the original spectrum and didn't screw up many of the existing TV sets.)

              Old B&W TVs were the worst with this noise distortion because they weren't designed to try to prevent it.

              Note that the NTSC color TV standard was adopted in 1953, though not implemented until 50 years ago today. Every TV set built since then has known about the new frame rate the sets would have to handle. I actively collect and restore early TV sets, and I only have a few which predate this - they're rate.

              Again, you don't get powerline beat in the picture unless something is wrong with the set's filter capacitors.

              If you're getting a beat in the picture which, on a blank raster, moves in time with the vertical hold control, then you've got a problem where the vertical is either consuming too much current, or a

      • Re:improvements (Score:5, Informative)

        by wmeyer ( 17620 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:57AM (#8668490)
        What is a non-integer frame rate?

        The frame rate in monochrome television was 30fps. In NTSC, it is 29.97fps. This leads to the need for "drop-frame" timecode, and other delights.

        Drop-frame attempts to correct for the time errors by dropping two frame addresses periodically. The algorithm is that the first frame of the first second of each minute not evenly divisible by ten is identified as frame 2, not frame 0. The 18 frames per 10 minutes thus dropped reduces the cumulative error to a little more than 2 frames per 24 hours.

        There are other techniques recommended for reducing the residual further.

    • Re:improvements (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tuzanor ( 125152 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:14PM (#8668782) Homepage
      I wouldn't go so far as to call NTSC "elegent", though it is clever especially with regards to how it implemented colour. PAL is a much cleaner standard, as the europeans (as they often did) took what they saw as flaws in NTSC and implemented things differently. Though PAL has a lower frame rate (25 as apposed to 30), it has a higher resolution and doesn't requier a TINT or HUE control, and the colour is better. When there are problems in the signal, with PAL you will see weaker colour, but with NTSC you can see the wrong colour (ie "green faces"). SECAM (the french standard) is even better because it uses FM modulation for colour, so it eliminates both these problems, though it has its issues (you can't "mix" two SECAM signals together, which makes it a pain for some professionals).

      Check out this [nmia.com] link to read more on it. Also this [epanorama.net] link has some interesting info.

      • Re:improvements (Score:3, Interesting)

        by wmeyer ( 17620 )
        I wouldn't go so far as to call NTSC "elegent"

        Then you have probably not fully comprehended all the design features in the standard, nor allowed for the fact that all the design was accomplished in a time when calculators were mechanical monstrosities, and computer modeling simply didn't exist.

        Though PAL has a slightly higher horizontal and vertical resolution, it also embodies mathematical relations that are anathema to digital processing. Moreover, with a frame rate of only 50Hz, it evidences signific

      • Re:improvements (Score:4, Funny)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:46PM (#8669268)
        it is clever especially with regards to how it implemented colour

        Many people in the TV production biz say that NTSC stands for Never The Same Color

        • Re:improvements (Score:5, Informative)

          by wmeyer ( 17620 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:51PM (#8669339)
          That definition was declared by the Brits, and SECAM was also defined as Something Essentially Contrary to the American Method.

          I've worked in television for over 30 years, and although there are certainly shortcomings in the NTSC standard, they are dwarfed by the failings in the delivery systems (transmitters and cable systems), so that the resolution visible in the living room has typically been about 50% of that seen in production rooms.

  • "older folk"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jules ( 2226 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:41AM (#8668210)

    Cheeky buggers.

    I remember when business desktop computers first went to color. First the IBM PC and then the Mac (technically I suppose the Apple ][ was a business machine). "Ah," I thought to myself, "this will never catch on..."

  • Sad thing about HDTV. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:41AM (#8668220)
    Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV.

    Was HDTV really even necessary? Our tax dollars were spent mandating its deployment, our money will be wasted purchasing the receivers (which are going to have to be in all TVs), and what does it do for us? Nothing.

    We worry about the effects of lack of exercise, overeating, diabetes, etc, yet we mandate better TV signals and are double paying for it.

    • Re:Sad thing about HDTV. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Enry ( 630 ) <enry@@@wayga...net> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:48AM (#8668348) Journal
      Think of it this way.

      You have to work harder to pay the increased cable bill as channels have to pay to buy new equipment. Then you have to work harder still to afford the new TV to receive the signals. Then you have to get a car big enough to carry said new TV from the store to your house. Then you have to haul it around and get it in a place where your wife (or SO) approves so it follows the flow of the room. By this point, all the overtime/additional work and physical exercise has caused your heart to explode. You die, your spouse/SO gets your life insurance, your company gets to hire a younger replacement worker and pay 2/3 of what they paid you.

      Lower unemployment, more money flowing in the economy, and all the fat unhealthy people are gone! All because the FCC wanted HDTV.

      (just kidding....or am I?)

    • Re:Sad thing about HDTV. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by wmeyer ( 17620 )
      Was HDTV really even necessary?

      No, it really wasn't, and the right way to make the change would have been to allow the market to drive the conversion, rather than issue a fiat. Instead, there are innumerable new problems with license issues, and many LPTV broadcasters at risk of losing their allocations. And in the end, much of the programming, is, as ever, crap.

      500 channels, and nothing on.

      16:9, and still nothing on.

      And by the way, it will be quite a while before anyone outside the top 15 or so market
    • "Was HDTV really even necessary?"

      It probubally wasn't necessary.

      "Our tax dollars were spent mandating its deployment, our money will be wasted purchasing the receivers (which are going to have to be in all TVs), and what does it do for us? Nothing."

      The TV industry had to do some new product so increase thier pocket books. Why not use lobbiests to get a law for a change and force people to change. THe average person wouldn't change if they weren't forced. It's just a way to have a garuntee see for a

    • Re:Sad thing about HDTV. (Score:3, Informative)

      by TGK ( 262438 )
      Of course not, which is why it isn't happening. The 2006 change over [fcc.gov] is to DIGITAL not HD. All HDTV signals [howstuffworks.com] are digital [howstuffworks.com], but not all digital signals are hd.

      Example: If you get DBS Satelite (Dish Network, DirecTv) you are getting a digital signal. If you have digital cable you're getting a partialy digitial signal.

      The reason this is happening is because the FCC wants to get the Analog bands back. My understanding of this (which may be flawed, you network gurus can feel free to chime in on this) is that

  • A story... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pcmanjon ( 735165 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:41AM (#8668221)
    My dad recalls (born in 1952) when his neighbors got color TV and he remembers everyone on the street tried to get in the house to watch it.

    He remembers one time when it broke and the whole neighborhood pitched in to fix it...

    • Re:A story... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jeffkjo1 ( 663413 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:54AM (#8668460) Homepage
      My grandpa worked as an RCA repairman for many years (I've been told stories about how every time a new computer was invented, he had to go to night school to learn how to fix it.)

      Anyway, one day he brought home a box of parts and a picture tube from RCA and built their family a color television. My father remembers how every week neighbors would come over to watch the Wonderful World of Disney because it was one of the few color programs each week.

      My childhood's claim to fame is a 386 Packard Bell and Prodigy.... sigh.

    • Another story on the power of TV... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:37PM (#8669140) Homepage
      Growing up in the 70's, my family was like most lower-middle clans. We had one TV in the living room and we all zombied out to it. Once it broke and it took two weeks to get the parts (remember when you repaired TVs?). With nothing to do, we did a lot of reading and played a few board games. Mostly, though, we played with the cat.

      Maybe six hours a night, we'd drag string around the living room, goof around with the fether duster, throw things back and forth, etc. The beast, very aloof even for a feline, got more attention in two weeks than she probably had in the previous six months.

      Man, was she pissed when we got that TV back.

  • Sure there has been an improvement..... I no longer have to watch scrambled p0rn. That is a hell of an improvement

  • Yep... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ERJ ( 600451 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:42AM (#8668238)
    They did it right back then. Good technology (lasted 50 years), allowed the market, not the government, to push adaptation. Somehow I doubt we will still be using HDTV (at least what the current incarnation is) in 50 years.

  • Wide-format, taking long enough! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by addie ( 470476 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:42AM (#8668239)
    Last time I was in Britain, I made some comment to a cousin of mine about their wide-format TV and all the shows that are shown in that format. She responded "Yeah, we just go that last year, we're so far behind North America". Boy was she surprised to hear that we're still years away from that change over here!

    And of course the fact that PAL is higher resolution that NTSC, and we realize how little has changed in this past 50 years. Why exactly has it taken North America so long to change to a better format? I'd imagine the HDTV change will happen almost overnight, much like the DVD revolution, but it sure took a while for the quality of TV to step up a notch.

    Now if they could only do something about what's actually ON the tube.... or, um.. the flat panel?
    • but standard PAL tv also has the headache-inducing interlaced 50Hz scan rate, while NTSC is slightly better at 59.94Hz interlaced. there are tradeoffs with both. I have a PAL-60 tv, so my gamecube plays at 60hz interlaced, but my local terrible Saechsich television stations still use standard pal.

    • Re:Wide-format, taking long enough! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zerbey ( 15536 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:50AM (#8668380) Homepage Journal
      Wide format is slowly coming along, about 40% of the shows I watch are broadcast in widescreen right now. My biggest beef at the moment is the number of broadcasters who slap a watermark right in the middle of the black lines thus confusing my TV so it can't stretch the image properly. Yes, I can use one of the manual presets but then it chops off the edges.

      My Phillips TV does a really good job of automatically stretching the screen when it detects widescreen.
    • "I'd imagine the HDTV change will happen almost overnight, much like the DVD revolution"

      I really doubt this - DVD players were relatively inexpensive, and there were plenty of DVDs available at a reasonable price.

      The investment of HDTV is huge - a new TV, new receiver, new service, etc.

      ~Berj
    • Old video engineers' joke... NTSC = Never Twice the Same Color PAL = Perfect At Last Anyone remember the acronym basis for SECAM?

  • 2006? Now! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 )
    What changeover in 2006? HDTV is being broadcast now. At least here in Boston, most broadcast channels are available in HDTV. Much like in the 60s when shows were switching over to color, the same trasnition to HDTV is taking place now.
    • government mandated changeover. that could spell the end of this T.V. fad. Less than 100 years in the history of mankind can definately be considered a passing fad.

      I for one welcome our new "Kill Your Television" overlords.
    • 2006 is a noteworthy point because the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has mandated a changeover from NTSC to ATSC by the end of 2006, provided that the technology has achieved 85% market penetration by then.
      • provided that the technology has achieved 85% market penetration by then.

        What exactly does that mean? 85% of all homes own an HD set(fat chance)? 85% of all broadcasts are available in HD format (possible but unlikely)?

    • Glad to see the money saved on highway construction went to good use.

  • Smell-o-vision?! (Score:3, Funny)

    by pixelbend ( 628541 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:45AM (#8668273)

    Forget HDTV, where is our Smell-o-vision? [retrofuture.com]

  • quality hasn't changed since ~1939. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by millia ( 35740 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:45AM (#8668278) Homepage
    actually, the quality hasn't changed, back even further than that. since color tv was to be able to be forwards and backwards compatible with black and white, the color signal was hacked into the black and white standard.
    this was not the case in britain, where a new, but incompatible, standard was created, that used bandwidth more effectively, and had better color.
    so hdtv is the first new standard since about 1939. it's about damn time.
    this proves, once again, that standards are a double-edged sword. use and choose carefully...

  • Cable TV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DeepDarkSky ( 111382 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:45AM (#8668282)
    I don't know about the TV image qualities where you are, but Cable TV certainly improved image qualities. Ok, ok, this is not an improvement on image quality, but on transmission, but to the people sitting at home, it didn't make a difference. Why do I bring it up? Because Cable TV allowed for additional channels and offered image quality good enough that people are willing to pay to subscribe to it. And quite frankly, no matter how good the pictures, if you don't have good transmission/reception, it's still pretty crappy.

  • I never complained (Score:3, Interesting)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:45AM (#8668283)
    I never complained about the quality. I'm pretty sure few people have. I tried digital cable for three months and thought is sucked. Interrupted movies. Pixelated scenes. Heck, did that with an antenna withought coughing up $80/month.

  • Make big bird yellow! (Score:3, Funny)

    by dwhittington ( 577769 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:45AM (#8668285) Homepage Journal
    Black and white wasn't enough for me, I guess...

    My mom recalls me, as a toddler, telling my dad to "make Big Bird yellow".

    In more recent years, Tivo is my second most favorite enhancemenet to television.

  • And TV still sucks! (Score:4, Funny)

    by CharAznable ( 702598 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:45AM (#8668286)
    I find no confort in being able to watch "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance" in HDTV...

  • um.... television?? (Score:4, Funny)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:47AM (#8668325) Journal

    Are you referring to my Gamecube monitor?

  • I suppose quality is subjective then (Score:3, Interesting)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:47AM (#8668329) Homepage Journal
    I think TV has more to do with what is ON it, not what is IN the TV electronics.

    Programming quality has greatly improved since even the 1980s, and so has the picture/colour too, in my opinion. The cameras are sharper, and don't produce as many streaks when they move in dim areas.

    The quality of the TV electronics has declined if anything. Now that they are made in Mexico, instead of places where quality was a desirable feature, I hear lots of people complaining they die within a year. Plasma TVs for instace only have a lifespan at maximum of about 7 years, compared to I suppose ~15 for CRTs. I have two working 20" colour TVs that are both at least 15 years old.

    I would rather watch a fuzzy show I like, than a sharp/crystal clear show of some tiresome comedy like Everybody Hate Raymond.

  • Improvements in TV broadcasting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Phantom69 ( 758672 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:48AM (#8668346) Homepage
    But what about digital TV broadcasts, we've had these for a few years, and they've certainly made a big difference to the old analogue signal. Plus there's also audio improvements including Mono -> Nicam Stereo, and Doly Digital 5.1 broadcasts through digital satellite transmissions (using Sky+ for example). AND we also have receiver improvements, including CVBS -> S/Video -> RGB -> Component, and 100Hz TVs, widescreen TVs...

  • Has it been that long? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by objekt ( 232270 )
    Yes I can remember seeing color TV in the late '60s, but it wasn't until the mid '70s when my family finally replaced our old black & white TV. A lot of people held off saying they'd wait "until color is perfected." In my memory, color didn't look reliably good until the '80s.

  • The real improvements... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by deman1985 ( 684265 ) <dedwards&kappastone,com> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:49AM (#8668354) Homepage
    To say that there have been no major quality improvements in color television isn't entirely correct. The televisions themselves have implemented better and better filtering algorithms and can better lock onto signals than they used to. Color realism has gotten better with newer TV's to project more fleshy tones and more accurate color temperatures.

    Then there have been improvements in the means of broadcasting signals. Cable TV was introduced, and not too long after was followed by satellite reception (with their appropriate receivers), both of which improved the strength of the signal and integrity of the image. In more recent years, digital cable and satellite hit it big, and allow for near-perfect signal quality and picture integrity.

    The only thing that hasn't really changed up to this point has been the resolution, and this has partly been a result of how well the TV market took off after its introduction. It's hard to change a standard once it has been in place and is used by everyone. Optimally, it would be nice if there was a way to allow HDTV signals to continue to be received by regular definition TVs so that broadcasters wouldn't have to maintain separate equipment, but the technology is so much different that it would be impractical. This is why the introduction of HDTV has taken so long.

    • Re:The real improvements... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ratboy666 ( 104074 ) <fred_weigel@[ ]mail.com ['hot' in gap]> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:54PM (#8669387) Journal
      Interesting - I just want to expand on your "fleshy" point:

      Modern TVs use a colour gamut designed to improved flesh tones, yet they have a smaller gamut than the original colour specification. In other words, an antique original colour TV is able to represent MORE colours than your current set.. It just won't do hiqh quality pr0n as well.

      As to "near-perfect" signal quality and picture integrity... I would argue that "digital" mpeg encoding reduces quality. The mpeg encode of course relies on "picture integrity" (actually, no, everything is bundled up into 188 byte packets, with the assumption that there will be lossage, and no retransmission).

      As to resolution - 480i has been "good enough". Indeed, DVDs are 480i/p as well. Generally, few complaints.

      1080i (etc.) HD formats. ARE a major step. Roughly, an order of magnitude improvement. But, for many, 480i/p is "good enough" (please note that HD has 6 times the datarate of a current DVD - and DVD *is not* an HDTV format. The only source of HD will be broadcast (possibly cable or sat..). And, you won't actually be able to *record* an HD signal using normal consumer gear).

      And, I find that 480i/p is good enough for me. I do have a largish set, and still don't really have the urge for HDTV. If we had "super-DVD" out there, with 1080i format movies, THEN I would for it. But, I honestly don't care for broadcast formats.

      That's probably just me, though...

      Ratboy.

  • Quality improvements (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I suspect the number of charged particles shot at viewers has been reduced.

  • magnets (Score:2, Interesting)

    by donnyspi ( 701349 )
    You used to be able to put a magnet up to a B&W TV and distort the picture temporarily. That was fun. Then along come these color TVs that when you put a magnet to them it premanently makes sections of it all red, blue, or green. Bah! That's not fun.

  • Resolution concerns? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by torok ( 632410 )
    The current standard has been around for 50 years because it's "Good enough". Nobody saw (and still, few people see) a reason for switching to higher resolution television. I suppose it would be nice for your hardware to show movies in hi-res, but who can honestly say they can't wait to see The Simpsons broadcast in hi-res?
  • . . . on March 25, 1954 at a price of $1000 (about $4000 in today's dollars).

    Ouch. There's an argument against keeping your retirement savings in bills stuffed in a mattress. :)

    Since the birth of the US, the dollar has depreciated by 95% of its value (that's 2000% inflation). A dollar used to be defined as 1/20th of an ounce of gold, and now it's around $400/oz.

  • Inflation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hungus ( 585181 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:55AM (#8668466) Journal
    According to The Inflation Calculator [westegg.com] What cost $1000 in 1954 would cost $6468.58 in 2002 and I know teh US hasn't been dropping prices of late.

  • Actually there were two other revolutions (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:56AM (#8668479) Journal
    Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV.

    Assuming HDTV actually switches over in 2006...

    I would argue that there were two major quality improvements in TV with the advents of video tape and digital compression. The first was a revolution of time, since people could now watch what they wanted when they wanted regardless of when the stations/theaters were showing it. The second enabled a revolution in distribution, as it allows cleaner transmission in smaller channels and arbitrary additional content. This is mainly manifested in DVD but is equally applicable to digital cable, video on demand, and online distribution (legal or otherwise, with anime fansubs and other non-domestic shows being the most striking application). Thanks to digital tech you can bundle on a ton of extras, edit with ease, and lower the cost of distribution and replication to inconsequential levels.

    HDTV is a nice improvement in video quality to theater-grade levels. But the video and digital revolutions are far more significant, and will continue to trump HD where both can not be accomodated. After all, what matters the most is not the presentation but content.
  • From the summary: "2006 changeover to HDTV."

    IIRC the changeover is merely to over-the-air broadcasts, and would be of DTV [keohi.com] and not necessarily HDTV. In other words, providers could digitally broadcast standard-definition (480i) signals if they chose to do so, which would be better than analog 480i, but it's definitely not high definition (720p, 1080i/p). They would do this so they can broadcast more standard definition signals [pbs.org] on the same allocation of bandwidth that they would otherwise use up with one

  • Color TV in 1928 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrIrwin ( 761231 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:58AM (#8668527) Journal
    Baird system, 3 mechanically spinning (Nipkov) disks with different coulered gelatines.

    BTW, they even did 3D TV around the same period.

    Needless to say few people ever purchased Baird televisors, the picture quality was even worse than NTSC.

  • wow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:59AM (#8668533) Journal
    Nothing highlights the amazing cost that has been aquiring HDTV like this.

    $1000 then / $4000 now for the first round of color TVs?

    It was something like $10000-20000 for the first round of HDTVs. In the last year they were just now coming down to the $4000 range, especially if you count the cost of the HDTV tuner as part of the TV cost.

    Today you can get them for sub-$1000 but not with a tuner so far, which puts it at a minimum of $1200 for full HDTV.

    How long did it take before the broadcast networks considered color to be "it"? I know in the early 80's I was still watching on a B&W tv about 1/2 the time. -Good- color quality didn't really happen until the late 80's.

    That is 30 years for a full transition.

    Makes the time it has taken to get HDTV adopted (2 years before it is considered defacto, probably 10 more before you get rid of the majority of old color boxes that are using downscan converters) to be alot less painful than people usually make it sound.

  • HDTV won't just affect couch potatos (Score:3, Insightful)

    by k_killmore ( 731490 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:00PM (#8668548)
    As someone who is extremely interested in DV production, HDTV and more specifically HD DV are going to be a boon to the industry.

    Consumer and pro-sumer cameras are going to get a whole lot better in terms of color sampling and resolution. The ability for the start-up movie maker or videographer to turn in a superior product will prove to be much better with this technology, also.

    I don't know how much different the standard is for HDTV between different countries, but I'm sure if pros and the like don't have to choose between NTSC, PAL, and SECAM, there will also be quite a few happy people out there.
  • Is that the same nation in which I have driven for almost a day without being able to listen to a single radio station? Where, in a region as cold as Michigan, well-insulated windows with double glazing are still not the norm? Where a state with 20 million inhabitants could end up fearing about having enough electricity? Where the typical highway is in such a bad state that you would almost wish the speed limit was 60 mph instead of 70? I must also have missed that high-tech public transportation system...a
  • I believe that our status as a "high-tech" country caused this lack of change in TV technology. High-tech doesn't just apply to what we have in theory or in labs, it has to do with what the common person actually owns.

    We have a huge installed base of TVs. Practically everyone has one or three. This is an immense amount of inertia to overcome, and it isn't conducive to rapid or frequent changes in basic technology.

  • An older folk (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:08PM (#8668681) Journal
    I remember the first color show I saw was a Hallmark Special. It was awful - the colors were smudged and speckly and I wondered why anybody would want a color TV. Things stayed that way for several years until I happened to be at a friend's around 1962. They had just bought a brand new TV that put up an image that looked pretty much as they do today and I thought - "Gee (we said Gee back then) - that looks as good as a movie! These color TV's might be pretty nifty (another word we used back then...)"

    Meanwhile, another friend of mine's dad was working with Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley to develop the Trinitron tube. Sony ended up with the manufacturing rights because not one of the 5 U.S. television companies was interested and the Europeans couldn't manage the manufacturing difficulties.

  • "In Living Color" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:10PM (#8668719) Homepage
    I am not old enough to remember the 50s, but I can remember catching all the familiar 60s sitcoms and that was the time when they were making the transition to color. Early Gilligan's Island episodes and I Dream of Jeannie episodes were in B&W, as you can verify on Nick at Nite. Yup, it sure was different seeing Jeannie's costume in black & white. And I had no idea Gilligan wore a red shirt in the early episodes.

    Anyway, like all new technology, first they trumpt the technology itself. I remember NBC shows beginning with the colorful peacock logo and the voiceover saying, "The following program is brought to you in living color," a sentiment that today makes you think, "Duh!" but back then meant something new about the tech. That's the typical arc for technology. First they talk about the tech, and then the tech just melts into the background and nobody thinks about how it happens, they just enjoy that it happens.

    • Re:"In Living Color" (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Imperator ( 17614 )
      They do the same thing today with HDTV. They love to show you a bunch of tiny old TVs next to a huge new HD screen so the disparity is as great as possible. Of course, they try to show you the "quality" of the new system. I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to judge a higher-resolution screen as viewed through my low-resolution screen. Yet sometimes they show a HD screen by itself and say "look at the quality!" as if they think it's somehow going to show through to me. I think it's pretty funny actually.

  • Quality was LOUSY until the 1970s... (Score:5, Informative)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:10PM (#8668724) Homepage
    In theory, the quality should have been OK, and perhaps it was in a studio, on a high-quality monitor, via closed circuit.

    In practice, the home receivers of the late 1950s and 1960s were lousy. They were very temperamental beasts. They had no built-in degaussers and if you moved them or turned them you'd get color changes due to the earth's magnetic field.

    The tube circuits were unstable and drifted. They had no ability to compensate for any signal variation, so colors shifted from program to commercial, from program to station break, from program to program, and sometimes from camera to camera within a program. You were constantly leaping up to fiddle with the contrast, brightness, saturation, and hue adjustments.

    The tubes were never properly converged (and had about seventeen tweaks needed to converge them).

    The picture tubes were circular rather than rectangular and cut off significant parts of the picture. The phosphors couldn't deliver much brightness, so they couldn't put the usual neutral tint in the CRT face; a set when turned off looked pale grey rather than dark. When turned on, room light washed out the colors (and if you turned the brightness up the picture looked even worse).

    They were trophies and icons of conspicuous consumption, but it wasn't much fun watching them. I've often suspect that at least part of the reason for the popularity of the Disney show is that animated cartoons were relatively unharmed by slight color distortions.

    In the 1970s, solid-state circuits and the introduction of various AGC and other automatic-adjustment features finally brought home receivers to the point where they were worth watching.

  • Color TV and YIQ (Score:3, Interesting)

    by commonchaos ( 309500 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:41PM (#8669190) Homepage Journal
    Color TV is quite a cool hack, when you think about it. The color encoding that they used, YIQ [wikipedia.org], allowed for backward compatibility with black and white television.
  • Cause the improvements I've seen over the last 20 years don't qualify as Ironic.

    When I was a kid, we got two and a half channels with crummy reception. A few years later, we got a 15 foot dish and watched much better signals before the channels started encrypting....but they STILL had issues with sparklies when sunspots were active....18-32 analog channels on 10-15 satellites, requiring a dish to rotate to get to them. Then we went to an 18" dish that gets 150+ channels on two satellites that don't require repositioning, and all look uniformly good (some compression artifacting) especially when compared to two and a half channels in the late 1970s.

  • No improvements? What about Vert. hold! (Score:4, Informative)

    by helix_r ( 134185 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @01:21PM (#8669765)
    "...Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV..."

    No improvements??!! Don't you remember "vert. hold" and having to adjust that up until sometime in the 80's. IC-based PLL circuitry has really improved TV since the transistor and tube days.

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