Colour television
Introduction
Plans for colour television in the United Kingdom date back
as early as 1943, when the top-secret Hankey committee was
set up by the wartime Government to make recommendations
for the reinstatement of the Television Service for when
World War Two was over. However black and white television
had already established itself to a reasonable degree prior
to 1939, plus the technology for colour television had not
quite developed into a practical proposition. Also of
course immediately after the war the country's economic
resources were being stretched simply providing essentials
such as building new homes and factories to replace what
had been bomb-damaged, so a new colour service was out of
the question for at least ten years. Meanwhile America,
which was largely uninvolved in the war until nearly the
end, was busy developing and refining television
technologies developed by Europe and itself, which over
time evolved into a standard laid down by the National
Television Standards Committee, or NTSC. However this NTSC
system suffered from being the first of its kind - the
system has fundamental colour hue inconsistency problems
(especially with early receivers), hence its unofficial
title of 'Never Twice the Same Color'.
This is how many people had their first view of
'colour' television - in the 1950s you could buy a
'colourising' filter, place it over your existing black and
white screen, and let your imagination do the rest... John
Logie Baird, the pioneer of television, was working on
stereoscopic colour television shortly before his death in
1946, and the Americans were conducting experiments. But
the technology was very complex; the problem was how to
transmit colour information alongside an existing black and
white image, therefore maintaining 'backwards'
compatibility with existing receivers.
From 10 October 1955 the BBC experimented with colour
television, firstly with a 405 line version of the American
NTSC system - the first generally available
electronic-based system of colour transmission designed for
backwards compatability with existing monochrome
transmissions. Low power test transmissions were from
Alexandra Palace (one of the original studios being
re-equipped for the purpose), using specially made
receivers, but to start a public 405-line colour service at
this stage would result in Britain having to commit long
term to the pre-war 405-line standard which was out of step
with continental Europe (which used the superior post-war
625 line system).
The promotional film
This Is The BBC gives an
insight into one of the London-only experimental colour
television tests performed after closedown during the late
1950s. Unless you were one of the small number of people
who had access to an experimental colour TV receiver,
anyone who caught a glimpse of these tests at home would of
course have only seen them in black and white.
The song used in this particular test broadcast was
"Early one morning", and the participants had to wear
different makeup compared with that used for monochrome
broadcasts as well as brightly-coloured costumes featuring
different colours.
A major problem with early colour television
equipment was its unreliability combined with the huge
number of adjustments that were required for a good quality
picture. The colour television receivers used for the BBC
tests were individually handbuilt by companies such as Bush
and Philips, with various specialist components such as
colour television tubes having to be sourced from America;
the sets themselves were designed to be easily maintainable
by engineers despite their huge complexity, which was
particularly true of the receivers constructed for the
later PAL tests.
Later the French developed SECAM (Sequential Colour
with Memory), and Telefunken in Germany - now part of
Thomson - developed PAL (Phase Alternate Line) which
represented two differing approaches of solving the colour
problems encountered with NTSC, and the BBC experimented
using both, though there were other problems to be solved.
The insensitivity and inaccuracy of early colour tv cameras
and its associated circuitry meant that without adjustments
the resulting picture either had a colour cast and/or made
flesh tones look too red, so extra studio lighting and
make-up was required. In 1961 a committee meeting in
Stockholm allocated UHF frequencies for 36 European
countries, enabling the Government to plan
ahead.
After much deliberation, the government chose the PAL
system - which although was more complex (hence expensive)
it gave the best results. Most of Europe also chose PAL,
and BBC2 officially started its UHF 625-line colour service
on 1 July 1967 (there were a few unofficial earlier
transmissions), though initially only a few programmes in
the schedule were actually in colour. Early programmes
included that year's Wimbledon tennis tournament, The World
About Us (which was basically stock colour documentary
footage - the first programme featured volcanoes), and
imported series such as Star Trek. By December 1967 colour
was available in London, the Midlands, the North and South
of England.
There were many more manufacturers of television
receivers in the 1960s than there are today; Sobell,
MacMichael, GEC, Ekco, HMV, ITT, and Ferguson were just a
few of the more notable ones, though later on more obscure
models were imported to meet increasing demand. Early
colour television sets used valves and were very bulky,
expensive, unreliable, had poor colour quality, and some
sets were prone to overheating. After a succession of house
fires people were advised to stay in the same room as their
television for one hour after it was switched
off.
By 1968 the more far-sighted companies of the ITV
network realised that they too had to prepare themselves
for a future colour service. The first to do so was TWW,
followed closely by ABC: ironically both were to lose their
franchise the same year (though ABC joined up with
Rediffusion to form Thames). TWW's first (and hence ITV's
first) colour camera production (pictured) was "Colour One"
- it was directed by Mike Towers (later Managing Director
of HTV) and was done purely for internal demonstration
purposes. No recording exists because there was nothing
available to record it with.
TWW also took out their colour cameras (EMI type 204
Vidicon using mirror optical splitting and a turret of wide
angle adaptors, originally made for medical applications)
for publicity demonstrations - pictured is the TWW tent at
a Welsh Eisteddfod. The colour equipment used was a work of
ingenuity - only a single RGB monitor was available and the
only colour encoder available was a NTSC encoder, so it had
to be modified to provide a PAL output which was no easy
task.
On 16 May 1969 the Postmaster General gave BBC1 and
ITV permission to start their UHF colour services, and by 1
January 1970 colour television could be received in areas
served by these main transmitters: Crystal Palace (London),
Winter Hill (South Lancashire/Manchester), Sutton Coldfield
(Midlands), Emley Moor (South Yorkshire), Black Hill
(Central Scotland), Rowridge (Central Southern England),
and Dover (East Kent/Sussex).
During the early 1970s much of England, Wales,
Northern Ireland, and Scotland were still totally without
colour television, and despite a mini-budget in July 1971
boosting sales, by 1972 only 17% of households had colour
television receivers though the Olympic Games in that year
did help to stimulate interest. However tales of
overheating and unreliability still put off many potential
purchasers and the cost was still prohibitive for some,
though TV rental provided an affordable alternative to
outright purchase.
By 1976 colour television sets were smaller, far more
reliable and they no longer caught fire due to their
'solid-state' design, meaning that no valves are used apart
from the picture tube. Portable colour televisions became
available, though most of these were still tied to the
mains supply due to their high power consumption; the
exceptions usually had 10 inch or smaller screens. Picture
quality became vastly improved, and the falling price of
sets meant that the number of colour televisions had
rapidly increased to over 7.5 million by 1976. The Home
Entertainment Show 1976 in London showcased innovations
such as teletext, and colour transmissions finally reached
the Channel Islands in the same year.
By the end of the 1970s manufacturers were looking to
add more features to their televisions, and the advent of
reasonably priced silicon chip circuitry meant that special
features such as teletext could be added (a free
information service whereby information is transmitted as
'pages') as well as sometimes other short-lived features
such as 'viewdata' (a primitive internet-style service
using crude block graphics as well as text) and
bat-and-ball style video games. Teletext was the only
special feature that became popular because it was cheap to
add and free to use, together with remote control operation
and electronic tuning. Early wireless remote controls
mainly used ultrasound waves which were inaudible to humans
but could make dogs bark!
The 1980s and 1990s saw further developments in
television design and technology. As early as the mid 1970s
the German set maker Grundig had introduced a system using
easily changeable internal modules with diagnostic lights
so the set could even tell the engineer which part needed
replacing. This idea never caught on but the basic concept
of making the set simpler and cheaper to make remained. In
1983 Ferguson introduced the TX100 chassis, with some
impressive claims (23% fewer adjustments, 5% fewer
components, etc.), and new technologies continued to add
features and reduce costs. NICAM stereo sound was
introduced at the end of the 1980s, and widescreen
television is now the current trend with the start of
digital broadcasting in the UK in 1998 via satellite
(SkyDigital), terrestial transmitters or cable.
