If those were color televisions in a department store, there were only two times during the 1965-1966 season where the three would roll their color bumpers at the same time. It would have happened on a Wednesday night at 9 PM when CBS would have aired GREEN ACRES in color, ABC had THE BIG VALLEY in color, and NBC aired BOB HOPE/BOB HOPE CHRYSLER THEATER in color. So at 9 PM on that night, you might have witnessed something like that YouTube mash-up. Or, as many department stores closed at 9, a better chance might have been on Thursday night, when CBS aired MY THREE SONS at 8:30 in color, ABC started either O.K.CRACKERBY or THE DOUBLE LIFE OF HENRY PHYFE, both color shows, at that time, and NBC aired LAREDO starting at 8:30. In the fall of 1966, ABC dropped their standardized bumper in favor of having each show have its own In Color bumper, so this could have only happened in that one season. Before then ABC and CBS ran very few color shows, usually only specials.
WPIX's test pattern, which lasted from 1949 to about 1976, looked something like this: By the time the station went 24/7, the only times they signed off were for transmitter maintenance, and they used either SMPTE color bars or this old-style color approximation of the above:
It's funny how limited the color palette actually is here - I mean to sell the thing... Why didn't they put his hat BLUE instead of muddy/grey? Perhaps on purpose, for some reason...
It might have been blue, but that film is so faded that the colors have all slid to the red side of things.
It's Eastman color film that has faded to red like they all do. ****ty film process. A shame, really. If they had processed it in Technicolor it wouldn't have faded. Here is some Technicolor from the middle 1930s. See what I mean?
Yeah, Technicolor movies are eye-popping. Watch something like Pillow Talk on dvd or better yet, Blu-ray. Dazzling color! This youtube vid doesn't do it justice but you can still imagine how good it really is.
That is, of course, the dreaded Eastman Color. But it has been digitally "restored" from a fading Eastman negative.
By the way, I've PM'd you two years in a row about donating but never got a response. I don't use PayPal. Is a check okay and if so, who do i make it out to?
Introducing the Philips G6 25" colour set. Dual standard 405/625 operation (Techno types note it wasn't just about line standards but little things like AM/FM sound switching too!) tubed audio stage with negative feedback and black and white button to put in black and white with a hint of blue as per actual black and white tubes. You set the system standard on each preset which was easier than our previous modified 405 set with under the set Tuner and line output frequency convertor for 625. Remained in service until the mid 80's here cos I loved the picture quality. The tuning indicator really is a tube as were a good number of parts on the set.
My color TV moment was the first time I watched Dorothy Gale step out of her tornado-tossed house and into the world of color. I had never seen "Oz" in color before, and I was awestruck. That brick road really is yellow! And the ruby slippers! And the close-ups of Judy Garland's beautiful face. I loved color TV, and I loved Judy Garland.
if thats dual standard that must be a 67-9 set, my guess would be 68 ?? ( although 25 inch colour set would be unusual this early, were not most colour sets in the UK in the 60's 21 inch ? ) We did not get colour until 73 ( and that was a big boy 25 or 26 inch ) but we had a dual standard 23 inch B/W set in order to receive BBC2's 625 lines in 1964 ( had to have a new ariel too - still got it still working ), although i was a kid i remember you had to switch the button over when u wanted to watch BBC2, then one day I remember it was announced we could now leave the switch on 625, which i guess must have been the day of November 69 all UK three channel colour switch over. I also remember the new test card ( see above ) suddenly appearing on bbc2 only ( 1967 ) although i had no idea at the time that was the colour test card, and then bbc 1 starting to use the new card 2 years later. I can't recall which test card ITV used but i have a funny feeling they used the same card but i am sure somebody as geeky as I can put me straight on that if i am wrong.
Small correction: the crappy Eastman prints fade to Magenta, after the Yellow & Cyan layers evaporate. We can digitally restore those layers to a point, but the trick is when the fading is uneven and has a lot of density flicker. For that, they pull out the massive computers, break the image down to Red, Green, and Blue, and basically fix the problems "as if" they were 3-strip Technicolor. And then at the end, they put them back together again and we make normal color out of it. It can work to a point, but it's never as good as it is when the original elements have survived intact. In many cases, the negatives are more stable than the prints and hold up very well over time, provided they haven't been cooked in a forgotten, dusty warehouse. But there's a lot of "it depends" to that.
I'm here rather late, but I'll post anyway. First color TV, bought by my family at my constant instigation, was around 1975, and it was a Toshiba that lasted many years. I had seen color before at friends and relatives' homes, and in hotels and motels, so I can't pinpoint the first thing I saw in color. Funny thing is, I have absolutely no memory of seeing The Flintstones in black and white pre-1975, although I did regularly every day at noon during our elementary school lunch break on Montreal's CFCF-TV. Maybe somewhere in my mind, seeing the "in color" part of the credits was tricking my brain... I can better pinpoint the first stereo TV program I saw. It was in Florida in 1985 or so, on an exquisitely ugly looking and huge Magnavox TV, and it was The Golden Girls. I was astounded at the lush stereo quality of the theme song, and knew I had to get such a TV. We eventually did, another Toshiba, which was unique for its speakers not pointing front, but to the side of the TV. I was astounded a second time when watching Johnny Carson, and the stereo sound of the audience made it seem like they were in my living room, almost like surround sound. Unfortunately, the TV was defective and we returned it, and no other stereo TV we got had that great side speaker feature. ETA: I see I did post on this thread back in '11. The old memory is fading...
Here's some Canadian content... CTV CTV Colour CBC CBC 1971 Colour Butterfly Radio-Canada (French CBC) Le Papillion Tele-metropole (now TVA), a very blatant NBC ripoff Indicatif Télé-Métropole
Another interesting thing, I came across a late 1960s TV Guide, I believe the New York City edition and possibly 1967 or 1968, and I couldn't believe how many programs were still in black and white, mostly on the independent stations. Of course, a lot of these were old movies on WOR and WPIX, and I believe NET (now PBS) was still in mostly black and white at the time, but still, my perception, was that color programs as a whole were few and far between.
We had one of the first color tvs on the market. Pretty big, too. Early 60s. 1962 or '63, I guess. My mother won it on a game show called "Window Shopping" and it was a big deal. A whole bunch of other stuff, too. I remember a tandem bike. Classic. My mother loved game shows. She was on "Window Shopping' "Sale of the Century" and "Jeopardy." She was smart and pretty. That helped get her on, I'm sure.
