Hi,

on July 1st, 1967, the first color tv sets were sold to the public in Germany. You can see the most beautiful advertisings for these sets here:

http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold/archiv/TV/FFS1967/TFK_PALcolor1967.html

Click forward button at the bottom of the page to see the other brands.

- Eckhard

I really liked the ads. Especially the Porta Color one, I've always had a soft spot for those sets.

Although, on the Funkschau page, I'm curious to know what the guy is doing with the magnifying glass (other than perhaps intensifying the X-Rays into his eyeballs)?

David

Hello Yagosaga! Very nice advertising for really nice sets. Last summer I visited many towns in your country and I got the chance to go to many flea markets with the hope to find early color tv such the Loewe Opta or the Grundig (T800/T1000) but no luck. I also enquired the director of the fernsehermuseum in Furth about where to find such sets but again no luck. Are there places/shops in your country where you still can find this kind of things? I must admit I really love Telefunken sets (I have a T 708)!

Hi,

the guy on the Funkschau page is checking the correct location of the cathode rays, illuminating the phosphor dots (purity).

Color tv sets of the first generation are very hard to find. When color tv starts at the end of August, 1967, only 5,000 color tv sets were able to receive the first color tv broadcasts. All these sets were very unreliable. The picture tubes were bad after six years, and the people put these sets to the local damp. I have only three of these very early color tv sets in my collection. I got them via internet or newspaper. People saw my tv web pages and telephoned me, asking whether I want an early color tv set, and so on.

Here in Germany, there are not more than ten collectors which deal with early color televison.

The Telefunken PALcolor 708 is a very common set, I believe that appr. ten or 20 of these sets still exist. But the other sets are much rarer.

- Eckhard

That is one cool looking tv. The bezel around the screen is wood not plastic.
Neat..

That is one cool looking tv. The bezel around the screen is wood not plastic.
Neat..

For the PALcolor, the bezel is wood. But the bezel of the Saba T2000 color on the Funkschau page is made of plastic.

I have found a Youtube video with the video sequence of the color tv start in Germany, Aug. 25th, 1967. Color television was introduced by the secretary of state Willy Brandt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2-Zzrmut-Q

"Jean Putz"- OMIGAWD !! <grin>

Eckhard, I really enjoyed those ads...thanks for posting! 1967 was quite a year for color sets in the US; rectangular screens had become the norm and everybody who was anybody in the consumer electronics industry had a set on the market. It looks like Germany was the same way!

The 40 year anniversary of color tv in Germany has to feel the same way to the German collectors as it did to us when we had ours. Ten more years and you hit 50
Party time....

"All of these sets were very unreliable"...Sounds MOST un-German-like to me. Germany still had a thriving electronics industry in the mid-60s, its still a mystery to me why it took you guys-indeed, ALL of Western Europe-so long to develop a color TV system. And it wasn't like we were keeping anything secret-Anybody could have gone to a major store in any town in the US, plunked down $500-600, & gone home w/a spanking new color TV. Sure, it would have cost a pretty penny to ship one to Europe, but it could have been done..Certainly, there would have been contacts between RCA/Zenith/Motorola/Magnavox & some of the big electronics firms in Europe-Industry/trade groups, this sort of thing. People in these industries typically know one another, & they DO talk, competition & corporate rivalry notwithstanding. Maybe it was harder to share information 40,50 years ago-no internet, but it still could have been done.

"All of these sets were very unreliable"...Sounds MOST un-German-like to me. Germany still had a thriving electronics industry in the mid-60s, its still a mystery to me why it took you guys-indeed, ALL of Western Europe-so long to develop a color TV system. And it wasn't like we were keeping anything secret-Anybody could have gone to a major store in any town in the US, plunked down $500-600, & gone home w/a spanking new color TV.

The Germans had no experience with color television in the 1960s. The reason for unreliability was the picture tube on the one hand and the hybrid chassis on the other hand. The first color picture tube, the A63-11X had not a rare-Earth phosphor for red, and the red gun was bad after a few years. Some sets had Japanese or American color picture tubes--the 25AXP22 for example--they were more reliable.
Many of the early sets had 380 Volts for the deflection and high voltage units. The 380V were not generated by a transformer like in many U.S. sets but by voltage doubling of the mains current. When you switch on the set, the current is up to 600V before the tubes are operating. This could not happen with an U.S. color tv set. Capacitors and many other parts were overloaded and failed with the time.
Other brands used direct rectifying of the mains and two horizontal transformers. These sets were more reliable. But these are sets with many tubes.
The German color tv sets were much smaller than the American sets with less air and cooling inside the housing. Burned plates and arcings were the result. This was another reason for a higher failure rate.

Interesting to hear a review of design weaknesses - but I don't think that has direct bearing on the introduction date of color. I think there was a lot of effort expended on protecting the interests of large European industrial firms.

Here in Italy, we got "official" PAL color TV broadcasts in February 11, 1977, that's a decade later than most other European countries, that's due to our government's terrible bureaucracy (for the same reason we also had just 2 channels to watch until the late 70s, one on VHF and one on UHF)

The very first experimental color programming was the 1972 Munich olympic games coverage, but 99% of our TV sets were still B/W back then...

in the following years there was a lot of uncertainty about the color system that was to be adopted, it could have been PAL or SECAM... so many PAL sets made before 1977 were fitted with an optional SECAM decoder chassis...

a 1975 set is a rare find here... and a 1972 set is a real holy grail, like a CT-100 found in the wild...

What's interesting is that Autovox, an Italian electronics company, was manufacturing a lot of hi-tech solid state color sets exclusively for the german market in the late 60s...

Francesco

Hello,

I have got a recording of the first European color television broadcast with the ARD "in farbe" color presentation logo of the 1960's, displayed on a contemprorary color tv set:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11XMda-7pMA

- Eckhard

What was the price of the tvs comparing to the sallaryes (incomes). How many people got a color tv in 1967? When the qualty of color pictures tubes imporved?

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h10ar.html

median income 1967 = $7143
Color TV (~23-inch table model) about $500, perhaps some leader models $400

median income 2005 = $46326
Tube TVs hard to find - 20-inch = $188
LCD digital HDTV - 26-inch = $398

(All figures NOT adjusted for inflation)

Here's a link to a wonderful WSJ chart on penetration of communications technology from 1920 to 1999

http://www.karlhartig.com/chart/techhouse.pdf

Uh, oh, my question was about Germany...

... When the qualty of color pictures tubes imporved?

You can find previous discussions on this forum.
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=105491

Essentially all the improvements in color picture tubes involved increased brightness and contrast, rather than precise NTSC color characteristics. There were many incremental improvements over the years.

The major stages were probably:
1)experimental phosphors requiring a colored filter over the screen
2) NTSC phosphors used in the 15GP22 and early 21AXP22
3) All-sulphide phosphors
4) Vanadate red
5) yttrium oxide (europium) red
6) zinc cadmium sulfide green (later reversed to remove cadmium from the process due to environmental concerns)
Note that the zinc sulphide blue, zinc sulphide green, europium red combination is what has become standardized (with slightly varying specifications) for PAL, HDTV, and the sRGB standard for digital still cameras.

(following not necessarily in order)
7) rectangular tubes with wider deflection angles
8) black matrix / negative guardband screen
9) grill mask (Trinitron)
10) in-line-gun shadow mask, self-converging deflection
11) darker faceplates
12) improvements to shadow mask thermal stability (materials and/or mounting)
13) for CRT projection sets: various green phosphor formulations including rare earth components to reduce current saturation; liquid cooling / optical coupling; low-flare optics

Probably other things I'm forgetting.

Here in Italy, we got "official" PAL color TV broadcasts in February 11, 1977, that's a decade later than most other European countries, that's due to our government's terrible bureaucracy (for the same reason we also had just 2 channels to watch until the late 70s, one on VHF and one on UHF)

The very first experimental color programming was the 1972 Munich olympic games coverage, but 99% of our TV sets were still B/W back then...

in the following years there was a lot of uncertainty about the color system that was to be adopted, it could have been PAL or SECAM... so many PAL sets made before 1977 were fitted with an optional SECAM decoder chassis...

a 1975 set is a rare find here... and a 1972 set is a real holy grail, like a CT-100 found in the wild...

What's interesting is that Autovox, an Italian electronics company, was manufacturing a lot of hi-tech solid state color sets exclusively for the german market in the late 60s...

Francesco

Hi francesco, maybe this is the model of TV SET AUTOVOX which will you speak.
Is the model TVC 2589/25. Is the tv color of the first generation of Autovox. Date of birth: September 1967. This model I saw, and running very well, in RAI headquarters in Florence in 1976. Was placed in the hall where he had installed near the titanic Ampex VR 2000. Of these Autovox not I've never seen more around! In attach some interestings photos of this set and factory.
Fernando

Interesting to hear a review of design weaknesses - but I don't think that has direct bearing on the introduction date of color. I think there was a lot of effort expended on protecting the interests of large European industrial firms.

I'd be curious as to if RCA ever took out patents in Germany/Europe on the NTSC system, or significant elements of it, and when they expired. I suspect THIS had a lot more to do with color TV in europe than any technological factor. Oh, and the TV stations were all government run, they sure didn't want to toss out good equipment before it was all used up!

Though Germans are pretty bad (actually, they're worse than the US a lot of the time) with 'not invented here', that doesn't explain it - PAL is more or less NTSC with a phase flip on every line (which was almost part of the NTSC standard anyway).

Had anyone ever done a side by side comparison of NTSC and PAL? I've heard all sorts of wonderful things said about PAL, thought they tend to be by people in Europe who have a pretty interesting view of what n NTSC picture looks like, so I'm suspicious...

NTSC and PAL comparisons tend to be very subjective. It seems like whichever one you grew up with is the one you prefer. Its hard to do a really good comparison of just the color system because as far as I know only Brazil uses PAL on System M (525 lines). You would have to get a Brazil set and a US set of the same make and model (equivalent) with the same video and test patters, etc to do a real color comparison.

PAL actually has a lower color resolution than NTSC because it only is able to broadcast 1/2 the color info (the other half is the color correction). But truthfully you'll never notice, we're more sensitive to the monochrome information in the picture than the color.

My personal opinion is that PAL tends to look a little pastel, but the Euro engineers always complain about the overprocessed look of NTSC so as I said its really subjective.

The real feature of PAL is that it has color correction. So its not as susceptible to crosstalk and reflection interference with the color phase.

David

Hello Eckard, Gentlemen,

Thank You! for this beautiful photo gallery of 1967 German color TVs. I spent my summer in the Frankfurt area that year (to learn the language) and discovered those 2 issues of "Funkschau" in the local newstand.

Here are some pictures of a working, not yet restored PAL Color 708 i helped a French friend acquire in April of this year. It will be used with a DVB-T receiver feeding a PAL B/G modulator.

Eckhard, in 1967 many German families purchased a NTSC adapter (4.5 MHz FM audio demodulator) to watch AFN-TV from Frankfurt & Ramstein which broadcast US series, sports & movies for the US air bases. Surely there must be some NTSC B&W or color TVs which stayed in Germany when US servicemen returned Stateside. Have you seen any, small B&W? color roundies?, ...

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

The early color television video-cameras used in West-Germany where solid-state or had some electonic tubes in it?

Hi francesco, maybe this is the model of TV SET AUTOVOX which will you speak.
Is the model TVC 2589/25. Is the tv color of the first generation of Autovox. Date of birth: September 1967. This model I saw, and running very well, in RAI headquarters in Florence in 1976. Was placed in the hall where he had installed near the titanic Ampex VR 2000. Of these Autovox not I've never seen more around! In attach some interestings photos of this set and factory.
Fernando

The set i'm talking about is from about 1972, it had a pushbutton varactor tuner and slider controls, the control panel had "110 volltransistor" written on it.

Sadly, the one i found was destroyed, the chassis was missing, the CRT was smashed, i was only able to save the control panel and the speaker.

il modello di cui parlo e' successivo, circa del 1972, aveva il sintonizzatore varicap a pulsanti e i controlli slider, sul pannello di controllo c'era scritto "110 volltransistor"

Purtroppo quello che ho trovato io era distrutto, lo chassis era sparito e il tubo era spaccato, ho potuto solo recuperare il pannello di controllo e l'altoparlante.

The early color television video-cameras used in West-Germany where solid-state or had some electonic tubes in it?

I cannot find a direct reference, but I think if color broadcasts started in 1967, the cameras used would have been transistorized, and would have used Plumbicon pickup tubes. It would be interesting to know what models were installed.

The set i'm talking about is from about 1972, it had a pushbutton varactor tuner and slider controls, the control panel had "110 volltransistor" written on it.

Sadly, the one i found was destroyed, the chassis was missing, the CRT was smashed, i was only able to save the control panel and the speaker.

il modello di cui parlo e' successivo, circa del 1972, aveva il sintonizzatore varicap a pulsanti e i controlli slider, sul pannello di controllo c'era scritto "110 volltransistor"

Purtroppo quello che ho trovato io era distrutto, lo chassis era sparito e il tubo era spaccato, ho potuto solo recuperare il pannello di controllo e l'altoparlante.Hi Francis
sin, I believe to have you helped. I believe that it was because you had said that was a model end'60s. If the buttons had to change the TV stations I think I have repaired one years ago a friend of mine. is not that it was the maximum as technical, indeed.
fernando

Hi Telecolor 3007
in 1967 the Television cameras were in solid form, the ceremony of began broadcasting in color was resumed with the Philips ldk3 (see photo). For exeperimental broadcast in color (as it did with RAI with RCA TK41) I do not know if the Germany TV Cameras was whit tubes.