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7: Choice of Coloursystem TENYEARSOF COTOUR 7: Choiceof Coloursystem . Pat Hawker ENGINEERING,industrial, administrative and political time,during the course of 1951. factors all became hopelesslyintertwined in the long but But in 1949the FCC decidedthat for colour to be used evenfirallyunsuccessful attempt to establisha singlecolour- generally it must be capable of fitting within the standard encodingsystem for Europe. From 1962-67the struggle American 6MHz channel,and began a seriesof hearings, oscillated wildly between the three main systems - the The industry formed the National Television System American NTSC, the French SECAM and the German Committee,whose purpose was to assistthe FCC and bring PAL. There were also many variations within the SECAM togetherthe ideasthen being pursuedseparately by different and PAL systems,plus some outsiders such as NIIR, firms. FAM, TSC, SEQUIN, LEP, and counterideas such as the This period also saw the developmentby RCA, under a Post Offrce's pilot-tone reference system for NTSC, crash programme,of the Tricolour shadowmaskdisplay suggestedby Dr N. W. J. Lewisin 1964. tube. This was an immenselyimportant development,since In February 1965the official UK delegationwent to the it made obsoletethe spinningcolour discs usedin sequential CCIR Study Group XI meetings at Vienna firmly systemsand the then possible alternatives- the costly committed to support NTSC - yet before the end of that projection systemsbased on Schmidt optics, or the bulky year it had swung over equally firmly to support PAL. tlree orthogonally mounted cathode-ray tubes viewed Indeedfor much of 1964and 1965the otrJypublfc support through diachroicmirrors. The shadowmasktube drew on in the UK for either PAL or SECAM came from a few the ideas of W. Flechsig, Dr A. N. Goldsmith, A. C. technical journalists and the small engineering team at Schroederand others.The key problem - how to line-up ABC, Teddington. At that period the British industry, accurately several hundred thousand tiny holes with an through BREMA, was solidly behind NTSC. The BBC's equal number of phosphor-dottriplets - was solved by then Director of Engineering,Sir Francis Mclean, wrote in Harold Law with his "lighthouse"technique, using light to March 1965 that "the NTSC system is much to be simulatethe electronbeams. In 1950the first shadowmask preferred". The PMG made a statementin the House of tube was demonstrated. Commonson February 3, 1965 in favour of NTSC. Yet During 1950-52NTSC emergedas a "system", drawing today almost everyone in British broadcasting circles freely on the work of severalfirms and including the colour- sincerely believes that the UK made the right choice in dot sequential and other ideas of RCA. One of the opting for PAL. Even in the United States,the birthplace of ideas that was considered but not adopted was "colour NTSC, one finds a belief that European television benefits phase alternation" (CPA), which was proposedby B. D. from having chosenPAL or SECAM, thoughclearly many Louglin of Hazeltine. It was later the genius of Dr Walter of the original problems in handling and, particularly, in Bruch to join the potential advantagesof CPA with the tape recording NTSC havenow beenlargely overcome. electrical memory introduced by Henri de France for Why did it take skilled engineersand administrators so SECAM in order to form the basis of PAL - but we are long to come to what, with hindsight,may seemthe obvious running aheadof our story. choice? And why af,ewe still left with all three systemsin Although it is often saidthat a camelis a horsedesigned generaluse? by a committee,the NTSC standard that emergedfrom all this was undoubtedlya work of genius.It solvedeach of the problemsit had beenset: a fully-compatiblesystem, in the History of Colour standard channel bandwidth; good reverse-compatibility (display of black-and-whitepictures on a colour set); Baird, in his disconcertingmanner of rushing on to the excellent potential colour fidelity with an absence of next problem before solving the last one, demonstratedlow- crawling patterns (other than the degree of cross-colour dcfinition colour in the 1920s.Less well known was his later inherentin any systemusmg frequencyinterleaving), and war-time demonstrationof"relatively good quality electronic virtual absenceof colour dots on black-and-whitedisplays. colour, and his developmentof the two-gun and three-gun The FCC authorisedNTSC colour transmissionsfrom Tcleshromepicture tubes. January 1, 1954, and NBC (the broadcastingcompany In the 1930s there had also been proposals by the atfiliated with RCA) was particularly prominent in Frenchman Georges Valensi that a compatible colour promoting the system. system,i.c. capablc of being receivedalso as black-and- But the growth of colour set saleswas slow. Early sets white, might be based on the conc€pt of luminance and were expensiveand unreliable; colour cameraswere bulky, chrominancc. required intense light and were prone to drift. And the But much of the early work on colour was based on whole system was soon found to be susceptibleto scqucntirl, non-compatiblc systcms. CBS in America differential phase and differential amplitude problems, dcmonsratod a 343-linc l2Gflcld scqucntialsolour system particularly when networkedacross the country. The user in 1940and, aftcr thc war cndcdin 1945,developed a 525- neededto compensatefor phase variations by means of a line, 144-field sequentialsystem which required a l2MHz hue control, and it was soonclear that many viewersfound channel - this syst€m was even used operationally for a it dilficult to adjustboth the saturationand huecontrols. 64 TELEVISIONDECEMBER I 977 R-Y Video siqnal synchronous with R-Y and detect or B -Y chroma signalson Chroma alternate I Chroma filter and I Ines amplrfret fi lte. and B-Y amplili€r synchronous delector B-Y FM demod L---------J ta*,,"no,'"", I ident controtled l--lfl-!l Fig. 2: Simplified Burst gaie SECAM decoder. The R-Y and B-Y colour- and difference signals are transmitted on alternate lines. The amplifier combination of the delay line and the switch enablesthe lines to be repeated, the demodulators detecting alternate lines twice. The reduced vertical colour Line frequency resolution is of little 9atrng pulses practical significance,the gretatadvantage of the systembeing that detection is not phase sensitive.The switching has to be Fig. | : Basic NTSC decoder. Detection takes place on the tips synchronised,so that the correct signals are fed to the two of the referenci sfgnal. Since the phase of the signal demodulators, and for this purpose positive- and negative- determines the colour, if the. signal phase shifts spuriously going sawtooth signals are transmitted during the field flyback incorrect colours are detected. The hue control enabtes the blanking interval to provide the necessary identification - reference signal to be shifted to compensate. becauseof the odd number of linesper picture, the first line of eachalternately carries R-Y and B-Y chrominancesignals. For the broadcastera new and unexpectedproblem soon arose.In 1956Ampex startledthe televisionworld with the first successfulvideotape iecorders. But the early VTR Chr0ma Delay line machinesintroduced linear phaseerrors which madetheir filter and and R-Y/B-Y performanceon colour at best marginal (even when the amp lifier matf ix recordingheads were sent with the tapesfor playback).If NTSC had been drawn up after the developmentof the VTR, it is highly likely that more attentionwould havebeen givento the ideaofphase alternation. A cornbinationof factors - high receiverprice, limited amount of colour programming,variable colour fidelity, VTR problemsetc. - kept demandfor colour setsin the United Stateslow. At one period only NBC wereregularly Line frequency transmitting colour. It took almost ten years for colour trigge. pulses salesto reach one million year (1963, a with 1.4 million, Fig. 3: Basic PAL-D decoder. The use of a delay line and a was the turning point). Europe was in no hurry to start matrix circuit enables the two transmitted colour-difference colour underthose conditions. signals to be separated prior to detection. To make this Some European engineersfelt that the slow start to arrangement work, the polarity of one of the colour-difference colour in the USA was influencedby the unnatural hues signals (in practice R-Y) has to be reversed, i.e. its phase seen due to the susceptibilityof NTSC to small phase shifted by | 8O", on alternate lines. This.means that a O/l80" errors.There were two ways out of this problem:to develop phase shift switch is required in the decoder, with ident to synchronise its better studio equipmentand tighten the specificationof operation with the switching at the transmitter. By processing the signals in the delay distribution links; or to develop a new system less line/matrix circuit, the effect of spurious phase shifts is converted into a susceptibleto phaseerrors. slight loss of saturation. Start of SECAM Henri Peyroles of CFT became extremely active in propagatingthe ideasof SECAM, and his engineeringteam Henri de France proposed a system which he called includedthe redoubtablePierre Cassagne. It was also clear SECAM ("sequential and memory"). This encodedthe that behindCFT stood the active supportof PresidentDe colour without using quadraturemodulation for the two Gaulle, and indeed a Government minister was for a time colour-differencesignals: instead, he proposedthat at any directlyconcerned with promotingSECAM. givenmoment only onechroma signal would betransmitted, and
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