I bought a new Sears (Sanyo) 19" TV in 1982, top of the line. One of its features was an automatic color control called VIR (Video Interval Reference ??) which enabled the broadcasters some adjustment over the set's color. I recall this TV had an on/off switch for the VIR circuit. I also recall some GE TV's of the era also had this function. I assume the circuitry did what it was advertised to do, as this particular set always had a great picture (it also had a comb filter, somewhat rare on a 19" in '82).

Whatever happened to VIR? Was it quietly incorporated into all new TV's and no reference made to it, or was it discontinued? I was just thinking about my previous TV's the other day and remembered the VIR feature.

Vertical Interval Reference...I have two G-E sets with this feature and both have great pictures.
From what I understand, the VIR takes broadcasted info which is hidden in the vertical blanking field and sets up the receiver's chroma and luminance levels to the program material... It's a clever invention since there will always be a hidden blanking interval in an NTSC signal.

Not sure if later sets had this built in,, I bet they did since the microprocessor and jungle ICs became ubiquitous in 80s-90s sets.

GE advertised that they actually won an Emmy for VIR! We had a console as a kid, maybe an 80 or 81 model, that had it. I never noticed a huge difference with it on or off. Later they had 'VIR-II' but I can't remember what it did. A big, big selling point for the General around that time, the Performance Television era.

Beachboy's post brought back memories for me.

Even VIR-II must not have caught on as GE had hoped, since the company eventually dropped the feature altogether by perhaps the mid-1980s. One of my great-uncles, who worked for GE (in their lighting division in the Cleveland area) in the '50s through about the '80s (IIRC), bought a color portable TV with VIR around 1980-81 or thereabouts (I'm guessing). The set had a good picture, but I honestly don't know if my great-uncle even knew the VIR feature was on his TV. This seemed to happen quite often with automatic color correction features such as GE's VIR, Zenith's Color Sentry, Magnavox's Chromatone, et al.; the switch to activate the system was on the TV, of course, but since most set owners didn't seem to notice it (that switch was often behind a trap door on the front panel or some other out-of-the-way spot), in many cases the switch remained in the off position for the life of the set.

I remember when I bought my first new TV in 79, a GE 19" Tabletop, they had VIR then but I couldn't afford the models that had it, I got one without, probably a good thing after all because I don't think it worked all that well.

I too have seen many GE's from the late '70's-early '80's with VIR. I've also seen some Curtis-Mathes sets from the same time period that had it. I wasn't very impressed.

I remember it. We sold GE for a bit, right around that era.
When it worked, it worked well. Almost too well......
Some stations would be lazy, and not have things adjusted properly, and that VIR would pick it right up. In our area, we only had 3 stations, 2 would always look fantastic, and of course...one would look like sh*t.

Vertical Interval Reference...I have two G-E sets with this feature and both have great pictures.

Can you post pictures of your sets? I grew up with a GE console with the red VIR indicator, been looking for one for at least a decade, but have never seen one around.

I remember when I bought my first new TV in 79, a GE 19" Tabletop, they had VIR then but I couldn't afford the models that had it, I got one without, probably a good thing after all because I don't think it worked all that well.

I agree on it not being so great. I had a few GE sets with it, and always preferred to leave it "OFF".

Charles

Did they still use VIR for Auto Color, I mean before Digital of course.

Whatever happened to VIR? Was it quietly incorporated into all new TV's and no reference made to it, or was it discontinued? I was just thinking about my previous TV's the other day and remembered the VIR feature.

It got displaced by other things that wanted room in the vertical interval. Teletext, closed caption, and ghost cancellation reference signals and such came later.

I remember Consumer Reports magazine rating TVs and discussing the VIR feature. They said the GEs with VIR turned on were not as good as some other sets that lacked it.

Consumer Reports would often describe the shortcomings of most of the "handy" or "one-button color"-type features on TVs during the 1970s (and probably earlier). One common problem was combining automatic fine tuning (a good feature) with the one-button color (a bad feature). My grandmother's 1974 Hitachi 19" color set had the least-problematic version of the "one-button" feature: The button switched to a set of four separate controls on the side of the TV (contrast, brightness, hue, color). I would visit often, and I set up those side controls for a decent picture I would watch before switching back to the garish, lollipop, "we have to get our money's worth out of having a color TV" setup that she and almost everyone else with a color TV in my youth seemed to prefer.

It got displaced by other things that wanted room in the vertical interval. Teletext, closed caption, and ghost cancellation reference signals and such came later.
I am not sure if what I saw in the mid-80s was VIR, but I remember noticing color stripes and some dots and things in the vertical interval on most channels. One time, I hooked up a scope I borrowed from work that has a delayed-sweep feature (Tektronix 2215). With some careful knob-twiddling on the scope I realized the vertical signal included one line of NTSC color bars, one line of multiburst (the vertical stripes of finer and finer B&W lines often seen in test-pattern sets), and maybe some others like a grayscale ramp. It was pretty cool.

Around '92 or '93 I had one of the '79 or '80 GE 19-inchers with the single-knob synthesizer tuner and VIR. I remember the local channels all caused the VIR indicator to light up and the color was pretty good on all except one channel. On channel 8 (CBS) the color and tint went way off and I had to turn off the VIR to get a watchable picture. Channel 8 was also the last to turn on their DTV transmitter and even then, was the last local channel to pick up network shows in HD.

I remember the demo that the salesman gave on the VIR when my parents were shopping for the set we ended up buying. He turned the tint and color controls WAY off, then hit the VIR and they came back into alignment. He was talking about how the VIR took the signal information from the station and adjusted the color automatically.

I saw alot of the VIR sets in the shop. The switch for this function was usually turned off.

Thanks for all the comments and memories about VIR. At least in my experience, it seemed to work well and I left it "on" all the time. I quit using that particular TV in 1992, so I don't remember if the VIR signal was still being transmitted at that point or not. It seems like the advancements in color control have made all the "one button color" systems obsolete.

I am not sure if what I saw in the mid-80s was VIR, but I remember noticing color stripes and some dots and things in the vertical interval on most channels. One time, I hooked up a scope I borrowed from work that has a delayed-sweep feature (Tektronix 2215). With some careful knob-twiddling on the scope I realized the vertical signal included one line of NTSC color bars, one line of multiburst (the vertical stripes of finer and finer B&W lines often seen in test-pattern sets), and maybe some others like a grayscale ramp. It was pretty cool.

You have described VITS (vertical interval test signals). VIR was a chroma and video level reference that was supposed to go from the studio through the whole network and the local transmitters. Since clean color burst and sync had to be inserted at the final transmitter, and that might not match the various degradations to the color signal in the (analog) network, the VIR signal was supposed to let the receiver compensate for all those distortions.
However, some broadcasters (and Tektronix) developed a use for VIR to do closed-loop correction of the local transmitter. When that was applied, the conection to the original degradations was lost, resulting in VIR receivers sometimes getting worse results with VIR on than off. This, along with the desire for that signal real estate for other things, killed VIR.

I remember the demo that the salesman gave on the VIR when my parents were shopping for the set we ended up buying. He turned the tint and color controls WAY off, then hit the VIR and they came back into alignment. He was talking about how the VIR took the signal information from the station and adjusted the color automatically.

That demo was over 50% phony, because the jump back to correct settings was due to going to the internal preset controls. Any "one-button color" set could do that demo. A true demonstration of VIR would be showing two channels with different color that both became correct when VIR was turned on.

GE first introduced VIR to their TV sets in the 1970s. Actually manufacturers had started putting some kind of auto color button on their TVs since around 1969. But when VIR came out it was something revolutionary. When it first came out it had about 30 transistors.
Later it was reduced to a single IC. GE stopped calling their auto color VIR but I think they continued offering an auto color feature in their TVs into the 1990s.

I remember the demo that the salesman gave on the VIR when my parents were shopping for the set we ended up buying. He turned the tint and color controls WAY off, then hit the VIR and they came back into alignment. He was talking about how the VIR took the signal information from the station and adjusted the color automatically.

VIR only worked as long as the network and the station passed the original VIR program signal all the way through the broadcast system to your TV set. Sometimes the station didn't pass the network VIR and sent their own which was not the same. This caused wrong hues and bad color.

Cliff

In 1980 I decided to buy a new TV. I first looked at Curtis Mathis and was expremely disappointed in the color. All the sets I looked at had way too much blue in the picture. I next checked into the Sonys. I was also not pleased with the Sonys on display here also (I would love to have one of those now though). I then saw a GE on display with VIR and could not believe how good the picture looked. I bought the next to top of line model. I always left the VIR on. The red indicator light would go on and off for various broadcasts. That TV always had a great picture and color for years and it still working but after 32 years the color and picture are not nearly as impressive. It does still produce a pretty good picture after it gets warmed up good. The color is dull until it warms up good. Also that slotted mask CRT is not as sharp as the others were. The audio on that TV was also very impressive. I really liked that thundering bass!

I wish I had the skills like most of you do to restore that set to a like new picture :tears: