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Fifty Years of Color Television

Posted by michael on 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."

19 of 469 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, but... by smsp · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yea, but when will slashdot get some new colours too?

  2. "Fifty Years of Color Television!!" by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...and there's STILL nothing on!

    1. Re:"Fifty Years of Color Television!!" by eln · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yah, but at least now you get to pay for it.

    2. Re:"Fifty Years of Color Television!!" by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2, Funny

      You wouldn't be saying that, if they didn't cancel Knight Rider.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    3. Re:"Fifty Years of Color Television!!" by Golias · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or as I like to call those shows, "furniture porn."

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  3. "older folk"? by Jules · · Score: 4, Funny

    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..."

  4. Smell-o-vision?! by pixelbend · · Score: 3, Funny

    Forget HDTV, where is our Smell-o-vision?

    --
    Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
    1. Re:Smell-o-vision?! by ross.w · · Score: 2, Funny

      Appeals mostly to Deltas and Epsilons

      --
      If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
  5. Make big bird yellow! by dwhittington · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  6. And TV still sucks! by CharAznable · · Score: 4, Funny

    I find no confort in being able to watch "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance" in HDTV...

    --
    The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
  7. um.... television?? by theMerovingian · · Score: 3, Funny


    Are you referring to my Gamecube monitor?

    --
    "If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
  8. Stop insulting senior citizens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    • 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.

    No, we older folk remember the intruduction of wireless radio, you insensitive clod!

  9. Re:1669 hours... a perspective by RainbowSix · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's ok though. amyhughes says we spend over half of our free time watching TV, but I troll Slashdot from work :)

    --
    --------
    It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
  10. Re:Sad thing about HDTV. by Enry · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?)

  11. 1954($1000) == 2004($400) ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    maybe $40 Canadian dollars.

    Anybody double checks this figures, or they come out of somebody's ass.

  12. This Onion is for you by aliens · · Score: 5, Funny

    Area Man

    --
    -- taking over the world, we are.
  13. Re:Wide-format, taking long enough! by VAXcat · · Score: 2, Funny

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

    --
    There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
  14. Another story on the power of TV... by Embedded+Geek · · Score: 3, Funny
    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.

    --

    "Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."

  15. Re:improvements by hackstraw · · Score: 3, Funny

    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