Old color was much more beautiful

[Pete Deksnis]

Soooo-o-o-o many variables at play. Actually, the only way to be sure you view broadcasts according to FCC-defined '1953NTSC' color television specifications is with a properly restored and calibrated CT-100, including gray scale adjustment for Illuminant C, the standard white point.

My reason for the strong statement about vintage consumer television sets (appropriate professional monitors and true clones of the CT-100 could meet the requirements also) revolves around the improvement of brightness of the picture: Phosphors changed; color picture tubes became more efficient (vertical stripe vs. delta, for example); but, as picture tubes generated brighter light, so did the spectrum change from the original R, G, and B phosphors used in the 15GP22.

Improved-brightness tubes required a change in the design of the NTSC-correct matrix found in the CT-100. The new matrix circuits favored acceptable flesh tones, often at the expense of correct hue in other areas of the picture.

By the early 1980's, this shift from original 1953 specs became so pronounced that is was officially acknowledged by SMPTE, as they shrank the 1953 color space to acknowledge its loss over the years.

Note that this was not a change in FCC broadcast standards; to the best of my knowledge, these have only improved with the advancing technology, and the analog transmitter of today is capable of sending my CT-100 the signal it was designed to process.

We can only hope that the telecine guys making the transfers of vintage color video strive to maintain 2.2 gamma and the color space of bygone technology. Cause it sure looks great on roundies!