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Fifty Years of Color Television
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."
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
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.
--- Bill
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...
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?
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...
stored on computers from birth to the grave
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.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
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.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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 markets begins producing in HDTV, so you can look forward to actually enjoying the 16:9 only on network shows and DVDs.
As to DVDs, don't expect great HDTV there until we see the blue-ray technology in our homes, as the data rates (even in MPEG2, MPEG-4, or H.264) will have to be a good deal higher to deliver on the H in HDTV.
--- Bill
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.
KappaStone
I recall as a kid anxiously waiting for our new color set to arrive so we could watch the premiere of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in color.
Of course, that old set lastest for DECADES. My last two TVs have lasted a combined total of 7 years.
I feel old now.
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.
According to The Inflation Calculator What cost $1000 in 1954 would cost $6468.58 in 2002 and I know teh US hasn't been dropping prices of late.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
One interesting part of the development of color tv relates to the YUV color space used. This color space calculates color by the difference between two of the channels, the third channel is the detail. So BW tv's just ignore the color channels and color tv's add them in. YUV in roughly the same as the LAB color space used in Photoshop. Open a photo and convert it to LAB, then look at the channels. Rather brilliant solution, huh?
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
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.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my 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.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
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.
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.
so,if we never got colour television would that have prevented the late 90's slew of home design/decoration/demolition programs, the inventors have a lot to answer for! ;)
Software Freedom Day!.
"Why is it that every time we have an article even remotely related to TV, we get the same people complaining that Americans watch too much TV"
For the same reason any group of people makes a fuss about their existence: to demonstrate a viable alternative. It's unusually common to believe that everyone else thinks the same way you do. That's why people stick to small talk- to avoid the complications and emotions that come out of discovering this other person you want to like (or at least tolerate) is the opposite to you in all the areas you truly value.
For the sake of completeness, I'll say: TV sucks, SUVs suck, malls suck, SSRIs suck, laziness and obesity sucks. I've tried them all and abandoned them all. So there.
This is the marketplace of ideas, isn't it?
I think Noah Webster's "hey, let's tweak spelling" idea draws about as much vacuum as the Microsoft CrLf nonsense.
If there is anything to be learned from engineering in general, and software engineering in particular, it's that standardization totally pays for itself, and non-standardization is a thief that keeps on stealing.
A thoughtful, comprehensive approach to spelling reform might be useful.
-----^
As it is, Webster should be totally rejected, and we should simply go with the colourful British spellings.
And if you've conservative hair #1 on your ignorant booty, you'll agree that Americans ought to change where it makes sense, and gaff off goofballs trying to use change for its own sake as a marketing tool.
-5, spelling troll
In '65... and all the cool TV shows of the era... "Combat", "12 O'Clock High" were still in black and white!!
But what really kills me... I remember my mother letting me stay home from school to watch all the Gemini launches in *color*... and now I see shows on the History Channel about Gemini and the film is black and white!! I REMEMBER color! Where's the color!!
Color TV is quite a cool hack, when you think about it. The color encoding that they used, YIQ, allowed for backward compatibility with black and white television.
http://www.tvhistory.tv/1951%20CBS%20Color2.htm
I bought an HDTV tuner ($400) and attached it to a standard 19" computer monitor (under $100), so I had a passable OTA HDTV system for under $500. The image size was pretty much the same as the that of the 20" NTSC TV it replaced.
The two downsides were:So I eventually replaced the 19" computer monitor with a widescreen HDTV monitor with integrated NTSC tuner that had been a demo model. Still, the whole thing was under $1000.
Samsung HDTV tuners like mine seem to be selling for under $150 on ebay these days, so perhaps the subject of this post should be "under $250" is possible. Or heck, my cable company says I can rent an HD cable box for an additional $4 month (though I don't know if it has a VGA output), but I'm happy with over-tho-air.
You write your nine symphonies, then you die.
This is why it floors me that people have these incredible surround sound systems at home--and consider it to be the best 'theatre' experience ever--yet TV pictures haven't improved, really, since they were invented. What's a TV screen resolution--300x400? Awful.
Actually Color TV is older than 50 years. And it was developed by a mexican engineer.
Some links for you to explore:Ronald knows better
Another history on the subject
Quoted in slashdot on a previous article
George Brown's book, "Part of Which I Was" covers the history of his time at RCA. Unfortunately, it's out of print, but he sounds like a good guy.
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on