Colour TV

[staffslad]

Re: Colour TV

Our first colour TV was a 22" Pye model, bought late in 1973. It was not reliable and every time we came back from our annual week's seaside holiday it would fail to turn on, requiring a trip to the TV repair shop. We got a 22" Bush model 7 years later and the Pye was put in my bedroom for a while. I hooked up our first VCR to it but when you tried to play a tape the picture would gradually start to bend and made it useless for watching tapes, so it was consigned to the attic.

[Richard1978]

Re: Colour TV

That would vary from model to model, depending upon the design of the circuitry. On some sets the vertical and horizontal fields tended to collapse more or less simultaneously, resulting in a picture shrinking "evenly" toward the middle. With some other designs, one timebase would collapse more rapidly than the other, resulting, for example, in the picture initially collapsing down to a thin bar or even a single bright line across the middle of the screen before it would then collapse inward from the sides a moment later. And with colour, since the convergence would then be all over the place with a shrinking image, you could sometimes see various colour patches in different parts of the remaining frame before it faded.

The ex-rental set my Aunt & Uncle had in their back room used to fade into a multi coloured circle for a couple of seconds before vanishing. Me & my cousin were a bit merzerised by it.

[PC66]

Re: Colour TV

I used to be interested in the pattern created when a TV was turned off & would take a few seconds to fade away.

That would vary from model to model, depending upon the design of the circuitry. On some sets the vertical and horizontal fields tended to collapse more or less simultaneously, resulting in a picture shrinking "evenly" toward the middle. With some other designs, one timebase would collapse more rapidly than the other, resulting, for example, in the picture initially collapsing down to a thin bar or even a single bright line across the middle of the screen before it would then collapse inward from the sides a moment later. And with colour, since the convergence would then be all over the place with a shrinking image, you could sometimes see various colour patches in different parts of the remaining frame before it faded.

[Richard1978]

Re: Colour TV

My gran was the first person I knew to have a remote control TV, not sure of the set make but the controller was fairly hefty even by the mid 1980s.

I used to be interested in the pattern created when a TV was turned off & would take a few seconds to fade away.

[PC66]

Re: Colour TV

when you tuned it off there would be a white dot in the middle of the screen.

Caused by the electron-gun in the tube still being hot enough to cause emission after the scanning fields had collapsed. Some models added a section to the on/off switch which biased the CRT to cut-off upon switching off in order to eliminate the spot.

no remotes back then u wanted to turn it over you had to get up.

The first TV remote controls in the U.S. were around in the 1950's, at first just small control boxes on a long cord, then designs such as the "Flash-Matic" which was basically just a concentrated flashlight beam aimed at one of several different photocells mounted at the four corners of the screen (aim at one corner for channel change, another for mute, etc.). The ultrasonic devices started to appear during the 1960's, but remote-control options were still often limited: Channel change, volume, mute, standby, sometimes extra buttons added to adjust brightness etc. Infra-red started to become the norm during the 1970's, with extra features.

The U.K. was always a little more conservative in adopting "new fangled" gadgets; it wasn't really until the 1970's here that the devices started to be marketed in any significantly big way (the introduction of Teletext in the early 1970's probably helped).

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

ah yes now its coming back to me.
think it had a certain smell to it as well.

On B/W You got the sound first and then the picture when it had warmed up and when you tuned it off there would be a white dot in the middle of the screen.

[escorteclipse1990]

Re: Colour TV

thats a blast from the past how they had to warm up forgot all about that.
cant remember what make our colour one was.
but im quite sure the buttons where just black plastic not raised or anything.

no remotes back then u wanted to turn it over you had to get up.heh.

On B/W You got the sound first and then the picture when it had warmed up and when you tuned it off there would be a white dot in the middle of the screen.

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

thats a blast from the past how they had to warm up forgot all about that.
cant remember what make our colour one was.
but im quite sure the buttons where just black plastic not raised or anything.

no remotes back then u wanted to turn it over you had to get up.heh.

We have always had a colour television, but my grandad had B/W right up to about 1989 i think. I remember the set very well it was a late 60's Philips about a 20 or 22 inch and it took about 5 mins to warm up.

[escorteclipse1990]

Re: Colour TV

We have always had a colour television, but my grandad had B/W right up to about 1989 i think. I remember the set very well it was a late 60's Philips about a 20 or 22 inch and it took about 5 mins to warm up.

[PC66]

Re: Colour TV

id have thought bbc 1 would have been before bbc 2 and itv in terms of broadcasting in colour.

It might have been, had decisions about what system to adopt been made somewhat more quickly than actually turned out to be the case.

BBC-TV recommenced broadcasting after the war using the same 405-line standard as had been used before, and service was extended around most of the country during the late 1940's/1950's. Commercial TV in the form of ITV started in 1955, initially just in the London area, but expanding to cover the more populous midlands & north within a couple of years, and across most of the country by the early 1960's. It too used the 405-line system, on different VHF channels.

But following the U.S.A.'s adoption of the NTSC colour system in 1954, the BBC was experimenting with adapting it to suit our existing 405-line system within a short time, certainly as early as 1956 if not before. But while many experiments were conducted, no firm decision was made about the direction to take.

By the time 1960 rolled around, it had already been decided that ultimately the U.K. would move from the existing 405-line system to the 625-line format which was emerging as the common European standard at that time, so the new BBC2 network was constructed to use the new 625-line system from the outset when it went on air in 1964 (and "BBC-TV" became BBC1 at the same time in order to distinguish it).

More colour experiments ensued, by which time both PAL & SECAM (the other two basic broadcast colour standards) were available as options. It's quite remarkable that while it was clear that Britain would go to colour, no official decision as to which standard to adopt was made until as late as 1966, at which point PAL was decided upon. But with the aim then firmly established of switching everything to 625 lines ultimately, any idea of introducing a different colour system for the existing 405-line standard was abandoned.

And so it was that BBC1 & ITV did not get colour until 1969 when they eventually opened their first 625-line transmitters. The old 405-line transmitters continued to broadcast BBC1 & ITV in parallel (in black-&-white only) until they were finally all closed down at the beginning of 1985.

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

id have thought bbc 1 would have been before bbc 2 and itv in terms of broadcasting in colour.
that does shock me.

i just thought bbc 1 as a channel came before those 2 channels.

i remember having a black and white portable i used to watch even in the late eighties wish id never got shot of it.

think we had a colour one by 81/82.
but not certain.

[PC66]

Re: Colour TV

From what i can find out the first colour broadcasts ran between 1967-1969 here in the U.K.

Five years late with a reply, I know, but 1967 was the first year of official colour broadcasts in the U.K. But that was only for BBC2, which had started broadcasting on 625-lines/UHF in 1964.

BBC1 & ITV were still only being broadcast on the older 405-line standard on VHF at that time, and had to wait until around 1969 for their first colour broadcasts when they too started broadcasting on UHF & 625 lines. It took a couple of years for the service to be extended across most of the country. Although not part of the U.K., the Channel Islands which were included within the general U.K. TV plan were the last area to get colour around 1975.

[Retrogames]

Re: Colour TV

Yeah my bro+ his mrs just have a detuned tv nowadays, ariel cut off, no sky/freeview/virgin box, they save the licence fee by watching dvds, box sets, and playing games, i'd do this if it wasnt for the odd gem like Sherlock and Not Going Out (new series starts soon!)

Lovefilm is probably a better option with all its tv series now, abailable for less than the licence fee too!

[Sly]

Re: Colour TV

There's always something on mine. Hardly any of it's broadcast though, games FTW there.

[Retrogames]

Re: Colour TV

We got a colour Telly in 1984, Dad bought a Betamax recorder and a colour Telly at the same time. Us kids got a c64 and a portable tv Xmas 1986 as mum had got a job at Granada TV and could rent them for £5 a week. The tv shop got robbed when she'd worked there for six months, cue Dad shouting that 'women shouldn't work anyway' and us scared of losing our rented tvs!

I used a b&w 10" tv that I picked up second hand for my camper van well into the mid 90s. Any knock on the door and it got shoved into the cupboard in case it was tv licensing lol. I then got treated to a black plastic 20" Ferguson by the parents which lasted til 2003. The speakers packed up in 2002 so I watched it for over a year with subtitles on or if I was alone with headphones plugged in!

A decade on and we have a 42" Sony in the front room, two projectors (bedroom and home cinema) a 26" in the games room, and the kids are getting 32" TVs soon. Still nowt on the Telly eh!