We got a color TV around 1968. Before that, I'd go to my downstairs neighbor to watch BATMAN in color. Then, My Grandparents got a color set.I couldn't wait to get to my Gandparents' house to see what color "Squiddly Diddley" was. When we finally got our own color TV, my father nastily warned us not to play with the controls.NOBODY ever let kids touch the controls. Everybody was really uptight about that. Another thing that really frustrated me was that when WNAC in Boston showed delayed(From Saturday to Sunday)broadcasts of Cartoons, they were in Black and White. I'd get so mad.The opening said "This program is being brought to you in color on ABC" but it was BLACK AND WHITE!My Mother or Grandmother said"Maybe they meant that sometimes the show is in color but this time it's in B/W".Oh, PLEASE. WNAC in the 60s didn't seem to care much about color. On ED MILLER'S TWO O'CLOCK MOVIE, 50s color films were almost always shown in B/W prints.
We replaced our 19" Emerson B/W with a Zenith color TV in 1970 which was when we could first afford one. A funny sidelight..My father brought home a sheet of plastic designed to simulate color TV. It was green on bottom, kind of an orange -beige in center and blue on top. It lasted 15 minutes.
I remember those stupid plastic sheets. Color was very late to our house. In fact, I was grown up by the time I knew that part of The Wizard of Oz was in color.
I seem to recall WCBS's pattern accompanied by a ~400 Hz tone, but other than that . . . up to its retirement in late '93 (though it was seen on some monitors of the Channel 2 News set into 1995-96), this particular permutation had lasted all of 37 years in "regular" service, since 1956. It appears that, from 0 black to 100 white, the greyscale gradations in the circular pattern were 33.33%, 50% and 66.67% grey, with the background at left and right being 58.33% grey. It also appears the gradations were in halftone and that the pattern itself had been part of a monoscope setup (with the image burned onto a 'plate' that in turn was inserted into a tube that was to be put into the monoscope); 'Vidiot', in a Facebook page of a video restoration concern, noted about ringing around some of the grey on a 1962 screengrab with this very TP (initials courtesy the Worldwide TV/FM DX Association [WTFDA]). The earliest known use of this pattern at WCBS was around 1948; 1950 was when the text layout of calls and city was first put in place, though considerably smaller in relation and more centered than it would be after '56 or so (the 'WCBS-TV', however, was as early as the pattern design itself). It was also the longest lasting amongst the CBS stations; WBBM Channel 2 in Chicago had that test pattern only until the mid-1970's or so, after which they would run electronic color bars in-between broadcast days. Can't say when this was last seen on WCAU Channel 10 in Philadelphia, or KNXT (now KCBS) Channel 2 in Los Angeles, or KMOX (now KMOV) Channel 4 in St. Louis.
Thank RKO General for that. They were loath to spend money on new color prints of films they'd had in B&W for years up to that point. They only had two color film chains on their grounds, both General Electric PE-24's.
Apologies . . . 'TP' was shorthand for 'test pattern' within the confines of WTFDA - the Worldwide TV-FM DX Association.
Just found this: A link to a page with a full sign-off aircheck from '77. Indeed the tone here is def. lower than 1K. I have to dig out my own '93 aircheck and see what's on it. http://www.tv-signoffs.com/clips/WCBS-signoffon-1977.htm
I think that some networks also didn't like stations running their shows on tape delay, and stipulated that such delays could not be shown in color.
We finally got an RCA color set around 1973. Of course everything was in color by that time, and I was too young to have any recollection as to what we watched. I do remember still watching Star Trek reruns upstairs on the old black and white as late as 1977. I don't think that set made the move from Mississippi to New York with us, as I don't have any recollections of it after that point.
Blame this aberration on the shortcomings the video cameras colorimetry, or in other words, how accurately a camera reproduces a given color. As late as the 90's, broadcast grade video cameras still suffered from major shortcomings being able to accurately reproduce certain colors. For instance, cyan (or teal) would typically look blue, magentas (pink) and purples were also very difficult to accurately reproduce. In regards to the example you've mentioned here, involving inside and outside lighting schemes, this adds an entire new dimension of obstacles. Color temperature of the ambient lighting is substantially different between indoors & out (3200 deg vs 5600 deg). While there is filtration available to correct for this, colorimetry again will be adversely affected. In this case, the poor video camera never had a fighting chance. This type of continuity issue should have been expected, but correcting this, either on the set with further camera calibration, or in post with color correction, all cost time & money. As Vidiot pointed out, today these issues are easily corrected in post, as they should be. This is most likely a result of an intended "look" or profile that's been applied to the cameras. Video cameras contain internal circuitry referred to as a Matrix. With it, you can highlight a specific area of hue (or phase) such as red, green, blue, cyan or yellow, and manipulate saturation or hue/phase, without adversely affecting the overall color balance. Most likely the video engineers for whichever networks coverage you happened to be watching have matrixes their cameras to "punch" the greens a bit. Makes for a little more compelling visual. This is not at all uncommon.
Same here. I was living in Port Hueneme California and a good friend behind our elementary school had a color set. Batman it was ! 1965 or 1966. I moved away from California in the late spring '66 so I'd always thought something was awry. Realizing that most shows started their season in Sept or so of the year....I know now why I remember it in California. The show first appeared in January of '66 !! So I was remembering right ! We got our first color set, a Hitachi, for Christmas of '68. Actually...my father presented our family with the TV on Christmas Eve so we could watch the Apollo 8 live transmission. I don't believe it was actually in color though...but still specatcular. In my mind it was color though..because of all the color photos I've seen since. I don't think the apollo missions had a color tv camera till shortly after that flight. Here's what I recall, and then...a color photograph,
No, it was black & white transmissions. As I recall, there were no color cameras on Apollo missions until Apollo 12, where Pete Conrad accidentally pointed it at the blinding Sun and burned it out resulting in NO TV pictures from the moon on that mission. Harry
I don't remember that....but what a boondoggle ! I'm just glad they had a good camera for the moon landing in Apollo 11. Well really...mostly for the excursion rover and the blast-off from the surface ! But that footage of their descent is incredible ? Color ? Since the moon is nothing but grey...who could tell ? Or was in a bit red/orange/yellow cause of the maneuvering rockets ? Hmmmmmm
Damn good thing Cavor had a good color camera for their 19th century trip to the moon ! The Selenites weren't too colorful though were they ?
yep thats as i understood it, in the UK it was carried on the main channels which were black and white until November 69 ( only bbc 2 was colour then ) but it did not matter cos the pics were black and white anyway and as you say Apollo 12 remains the forgotten mission as there were no live tv pics from the moon which was a pr disaster. However from what i can personally recall from 14 or 15 they really got their act together and the pics from the moon were much better and for the first time they even placed a camera so we could watch the LEM blast back off the moon live ( from 14 or 15 ?? ) - luckily for all concerned the rocket never blew up or failed....
I used to know a guy who worked in TV about the beginning. He told me that when he was working at a station in Mississippi they got their first color transmitter but it didn't have the manual with it. They set it up as best they could and started broadcasting. Apparently only one person in town had a color TV and she called the station to complain. With her on the phone the adjusted the colors. One of the stations used to air Cisco Kid episodes in the late 70s early 80s. It was the first TV show filmed in color. Somebody wrote a letter to paper asking about that because they remembered watching the show in B&W in the early 50s. I can't remember why the said it was shot in color. An early case of future proofing I guess. Chad
In late 50's, we had a b&w TV in the living room. After school each day, I'd watch Superman. My house was late in getting color TV, and when we got it, it was a 13", and, that was just in my parent's bedroom in 1965. A few years later we finally got a color TV in living room, a 19". My father was an airline pilot, and so, with his changing schedule, there was no "regular" TV watching for him, and so no great desire to spend big bucks on a 25 inch "console" TV. But, my friend's parents all had day jobs, and were home every night, and they did have the larger console color TVs. I remember visiting a friend of my parent's one afternoon. I wanted to watch some TV. They were so proud of their color TV, that they wouldn't allow me to watch anything in b&w... I had to choose something in color. I thought that was weird. In 1963 and 1964, when the network would show it's annual presentation of The Wizard of Oz, I would get permission to go to a neighbors house to watch it on their color TV. The TV show I remember the most, as being a pioneer in color TV was Bonanza.
That is so funny. We always had a B&W TV never really thought about color, I was fine with B&W. Other friends had Color. One day I came home from school and there was a new TV in the living area, My father had gone out and bought a new Zenith color TV. This was in 1970 and I found that I adapted to color quickly. This was shortly before the almost annual showing of The Wizard of Oz, which was in B&W for my whole life and I was about 16 at the time. I was looking forward to seeing Oz for the first time in color. It comes on and it was in B&W, BUMMER! There was a commercial break after Dorothy's house landed in Oz, I went to grab a soda, came back and sat down on the couch just as Dorothy was about to open the front door. The door opens and all of the color of Munchkin land filled the screen as Dorothy steps outside for the first time, Yea! At the time, I didn't know that the first 20-minutes were in B&W...
My mother won a color TV on an old game show called "Sale of the Century." This must have been 1962 or so (I forget, I was in kindergarden). We were definitely first on the block!
I also remember hearing the 15k pitch from the flyback transformer I remember clearly hearing it where all of the other adults could not. Now, of course, I can't hear 15k but... I have a mild ringing in my left ear (thank you Mr. La Scala), it appears to me to be at the same frequency as the flyback transformers were, so I still hear the flyback transformer to this day.
From what I've seen, Dec. 25, 1993 fell on a Saturday. It's very likely that the last time this was seen in its originally intended usage was the early morning hours of Dec. 26, 1993 - a Sunday. Thereafter Channel 2 went to a full 24/7/365 (366 if leap-year) broadcast schedule, as opposed to just transmission. And TV's never been the same since.
