RCA's ColorTrak system for picture and color control is no more--at least they don't use the term any longer for whatever system replaced it, if any. Here's why I think they don't use the ColorTrak control system anymore.

When RCA's ColorTrak system was first introduced (in the '70s), color TV transmission was not nearly as tightly controlled at the transmitter as it is today. The result was the picture on viewers' sets would sometimes appear off-color on older sets, requiring the viewer to readjust the tint and/or color controls at least once during a program. RCA's ColorTrak (and other manufacturers' answers to it, such as Zenith's Automatic Tint Guard [ATG] and later Color Sentry, Magnavox's Chromatone, et al.) put an end to this constant readjustment, because the system constantly monitored the color signal from the station and corrected the color and/or tint as necessary. Remember RCA's advertising pitch for ColorTrak? " . . . grabs it, aligns it, refines it (the color TV signal) and locks the color on track."

Today's TV stations transmit a very high-quality signal from computer-controlled transmitters and studios, not to mention the satellite feeds from the networks, so the pictures on our TVs today from network stations, especially on cable (I think the latest figures show some 80 percent of American homes are now receiving TV programming either via cable or satellite) is so good (because of the very tight controls over signal quality) that the need for automatic control circuits in individual receivers is nowhere near as pressing now as it was in ColorTrak's heyday. Today's sets, all but the very inexpensive ones, have some sort of automatic color control which can be enabled or disabled, as desired or needed, via an on-screen menu selection (e. g. my 1999 RCA XL-100 has a menu option on the "Picture Quality" onscreen menu which allows for enabling or disabling the automatic color function). These auto-color controls keep things like flesh tones (which are among the most important and difficult to reproduce colors in a color TV picture) from drifting off to pink, green or some other ghastly color; even though the system is no longer referred to as ColorTrak by RCA, the auto-color control in today's RCAs performs the same function as the earlier system.

There are other differences between today's color control systems and RCA's original ColorTrak, such as the fact that ColorTrak (and Magnavox's Videomatic and VideoEye, the former being an automatic brightness/contrast control, with the photocell beneath the CRT, the latter being an extension of that which used the photocell to control color fidelity, saturation, etc. in the company's high-end color sets as well) used a photocell directly under the CRT to sense changes in room lighting, as did some GE portables in the late '50s (today's sets do not have this feature) and possibly still others as well. However, as I said, with the color quality being tightly controlled at the transmitter and in the studio (not necessarily in that order), by the time the signal gets to your antenna or cable system, the "grabbing, aligning, refining" once done by RCA's ColorTrak and other systems at the set has already been taken care of by the TV station or network, so all that shows on viewers' sets is a pleasing color picture, with little or no adjustment of controls necessary. This is probably why the color, contrast and other controls (except, of course, for channel selection, power on/off, and volume control) in modern TVs are now located (hidden, really, until they are invoked by the menu button on the TV set or remote) on the onscreen menus, rather than on the front of the set.

I do not adjust to change easily, but this is one change I am glad to see. Television receivers have finally become what they should have been from the beginning, IMO--set-and-forget instruments in which all the viewer has to do anymore is sit in front of the set, pick up the remote, push the power button, select the channel he/she wants to watch--and then simply sit back and enjoy the show. No more worrying about picture quality. General Sarnoff would have been proud. Now, if Hollywood would get on the stick and start producing decent TV programming . . .

I have found that the more modern sets compensate better for color variations between stations, but I have actually found that the variations in color and tint are still there (perhaps not as great as when stations used mostly tube equipment though). The Color saturation and tint can vary from channel to channel especially on cable TV; the variations are most notable on the oldest sets.

One of the biggest variations seems to be with DVD's. The DVD chroma intensity usually appears a lot stronger than that from a TV station.

...

I think the older systems such as Accutint (RCA) Auto Tint Guard (Zenith) and so on just changed the characteristics of the color demods to make control adjustment less critical.

Some of the systems that are billed as "Auto Color" such as Accumatic (RCA) and Chromatic (Zenith) and a whole bunch of other names, ITT, APS, One Button Color, etc. mainly switched to a group of preset controls so that if the user really messed up the manual settings he could push a button to activate the presets. These may have incorporated the auto-tint function as well.

On the Magnavoxes the Chromatone tends to give the picture a sepia tone by increasing the red level and decreasing the blue and green. I think that is all it does.

Now that we've got the picture nicely under control, how about automatic volume control on ALL tv's. I'm tired of the commercials being 3 times as loud, at least, as the program. :mad:

Yea! Whats the deal with the loud commercial volume? I'm glad someone mentioned it. I thought maybe I was going crazy for a while. I would nodd off in front of the tube and be awoke to an alarmingly loud commercial. I guess if its like a lot of other things today it's another way for some corporation to shove ads down your throat. Everyone should register their phone on the national no call list for tele-marketing. It works and its free! Also send all your junk mail back to the sender in the provided post paid envelope. Sorry to get off subject.

Power to the people!:D

I too was going to say something about volume!! It's bad enough having commercials try to wake you up, but when the station's own programming volume changes between their promo spots, news, commercials, and station ID it's enough to make you want to scream.

What is it with varying volume levels between stations too? Isn't there some sort of base line that's standard and set by the FCC? Cable TV is the WORST for this sort of thing. It would be a simple thing for a cable company (and I suppose for satellite too) to regulate this at their source so that the output is pretty much all level. Isn't that supposed to be one of the benefits of digital? Being able to manipulate signals in some manner with no loss or degradation of same?

Anthony

The loud commercials are done by having the actors speak at a constant level, then sending it out at the maximum allowable level. Normal people vary the level of their voices and so the station engineer has to set the level so that peaks do not exceed the maximum.

Rob

I think that too often there is a lack of proper audio level maintenance at the TV station. Commercials come into the station from different production houses and may have been recorded at different levels...some stronger, some weaker. If the audio level is not watched and adjusted as the programs are aired...yes, some will be louder and some softer.

In a lot of TV stations, at least those still using video tape, when they are playing network or tape programs, they do not use a separate audio mixing board. There is a knob to adjust audio level but a lot of the time the master control op. is more concerned with punching up the video of the next source to play and does not constantly adjust the audio and check the audio meters...which you must do to maintain a consistant level.

Automatic gain control and compression of the audio at the station can help compensate for variations in source audio level but many times the processing is not set up optimally.

At cable companies audio signal control is more difficult as they can have hundreds of different audio sources for the different channels...and usually the CATV head end is not staffed. There is no one there to adjust the levels if the source level varies. Again, compression and AGC of all inputs would help but in a lot of cases may not be used.

Additionally, they are using audio equalization to emphasize only certain frequencies. The bass frequencies are filtered out as these increase the overall VU level of the signal, whereas a middle-to-high midrange frequency (say 300-3000Hz like the phones are limited to for optimum voice clarity) give more perceived dB levels at the same VU level. By focusing the frequency range to be more aligned with the hearing sensetivity, the ads can get more volume regardless of volume setting. Engineers and auto-volume controls watch the VU meters, not the overall frequency balance, so this is something that can "slip by" all but the most attentive filter.

What REALLY grates my nerves is the trend of commercials using "alarm clock beeping" or "cellphone ringing/pager beeping" noises. We're conditioned to focus on the source of these noises, and more often than not, it's just a stupid advertisement on the radio/TV. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Funny thing I've been noticing lately is that one of the local PBS stations (KCSM College of San Mateo CA) has been airing shows late at night that have the sound OUT OF SYNCH!

How the hell can this be? It's not like as in an old movie projector if you had a loop in the film around the optical sound pickup (off by a couple of sprockets/frames). I thought the sound was synched IN the tape's signal somehow. It's the strangest and most annoying thing.

The soundtrack almost sounds like it's been dubbed as that's how the ear perceives it, but I've watched it carefully and it's just plain out of synch. Go figger.

Anthony

...

We have Charter Cable here, & they do the commercials at ear-splitting volume as well. The programs are attentuated to near inaubibilty, so you have to crank it up to hear them & then, Ka-Boom !! If that wasn't bad enuff, they pre-empt lots of the "national commercials" for local dreck, which usually has a nice 60hz hummm on it & 2 or 3 pops & cracks when the do the pre-empting. Sweet. -Sandy G.

Originally posted by heathkit tv
Funny thing I've been noticing lately is that one of the local PBS stations (KCSM College of San Mateo CA) has been airing shows late at night that have the sound OUT OF SYNCH!

How the hell can this be? It's not like as in an old movie projector if you had a loop in the film around the optical sound pickup (off by a couple of sprockets/frames). I thought the sound was synched IN the tape's signal somehow. It's the strangest and most annoying thing.

The soundtrack almost sounds like it's been dubbed as that's how the ear perceives it, but I've watched it carefully and it's just plain out of synch. Go figger.

Anthony


This is the first time I've ever heard of TV audio being out of sync with the video. Ordinarily, this doesn't happen (I have never heard of it happening on live shows such as news, etc.), or at least it didn't years ago when the station engineers paid a lot more attention to details than some do today.

You are correct about sound on filmed programming sometimes getting out of sync with the picture (I was on the AV crew in high school over 30 years ago; we would have this happen with film every now and then, but never with video tape). I would think a professional broadcast television station, especially one affiliated with a national network such as PBS, however, would watch these things a lot more carefully and correct them before the film ever got on the air. However, in today's have-to-have-it-done-yesterday world, details are often forgotten or overlooked, leading to such mistakes as you describe. I remember a couple of instances back in the '60s and '70s in which engineers at two of the local network TV stations in Cleveland misjudged the timing of a network feed by a few seconds and inadvertently showed the local ID for the networks' flagship stations in New York (WNBC-TV for NBC and WCBS-TV for CBS). One morning, before the station signed on, I was amazed to see the local NBC affiliate in Cleveland, WKYC-TV, showing a picture of something (I don't remember what it was anymore--this was over thirty years ago) spinning on the screen, with a "boing" sound from my TV's loudspeaker. To this day I don't know what that was; an equipment test, perhaps? Then there are the times behind-the-scenes studio and film or tape cues are inadvertently shown before the commercial or program itself begins. Again, this is likely due to engineers being in too much of a hurry to put these things on the air, without checking to see that the film or tape is at the starting point of the program or commercial (the part the viewing public is supposed to see).

Originally posted by Sandy G
We have Charter Cable here, & they do the commercials at ear-splitting volume as well. The programs are attentuated to near inaubibilty, so you have to crank it up to hear them & then, Ka-Boom !! If that wasn't bad enuff, they pre-empt lots of the "national commercials" for local dreck, which usually has a nice 60hz hummm on it & 2 or 3 pops & cracks when the do the pre-empting. Sweet. -Sandy G.

Sandy,

Where I live, 30 miles east of Cleveland, we have Comcast cable. The pictures are great and the sound levels are maintained as they should be, with absolutely even volume between commercials and programs (although I would never notice increases or decreases in commercial volume, or differences between program sound volume and that of commercials, as a rule unless I was looking for them, since I almost always hit the mute button on my remote when the commercials come on).

It sounds to me as if Charter Cable doesn't control volume levels anywhere nearly as closely as Comcast and other large cable companies. You mentioned in a reply to one of my posts some time ago that the cable system in your area started out as a CATV system, with the conversion to a full-service cable system coming some years later. How big a cable company is Charter? I never heard of it before now. Sounds to me like it's a very small system, with subscribers mostly in small towns like yours.

As to cable companies occasionally replacing national commercials with local ones, this is a common practice; Comcast and probably other cable companies do it as well, to promote local businesses. Happens on every cable channel except WGN on Comcast. I just ignore it. It's probably been going on for years and won't stop any time soon, if ever.

Kind regards,

The Jan.31-Feb.6 issue of TV Guide (page 20) has an interesting one page article titled "Turn It Down." It addresses viewer complaints about the problem of volume level differences between programs and commercials and between different stations. And what the FCC may do about it.