Still a mystery to me

[oldtvman]

As a technician and fellow collector I'm amazed at the performance the early color sets were capable of producing. Along with the fact that most of the early color video display good color and were for the most part very stable.

So I pose the question to you, other than the fact that the sets were high maintainence, why did people back in the 50's always complain about color television. Keep in mind I was a kid then and just seeing color television was amazing enough.

I suspect the poor opinion of early color was based upon the fact that most people didn't know how to properly adjust the sets and the fact that the sets alone did require a lot more service and maintainence in order to keep them operating correctly.

What are your thoughts?

[Dave A]

I was the same kid in the days. First set was grandma's in 1958 and my neighbors at about the same time. The common thread was someone had to have money for one of these things and they were generally 50+ and scared to turn a knob on the set. I figured out these sets quickly and was the brave one to move the knobs while the elders were panicking.

[Steve McVoy]

They were rarely set up correctly, and they really weren't stable. If you went into a store that had several on display, they would all have different color rendition. Reliability was also a big issue - we don't notice that much as collectors because we typically only run a set for a few hours a month compared to 5-6 hours a day for viewers back then. Finally, there was significant difference in the quality of color programming, particularly local programming.

[Username1]

I saw a few All in The Family episodes where the tv quit, and they had to run to someone
else's house or to the bar to watch something. Or the fiddled with it, and while we can
relate to the problems, I think a lot of younger people would not be able to.
And that's it, people today are use to stuff that is more trouble free. Just think
about the pictures we have seen of tv repair shops with FLEETS of service vehicles,
most of which were out each day, all day.... I think sets needed service almost
yearly back then, and if it didn't you were lucky...
I think daily use was less, I don't think a tv was on in the room for company, or background
noise..... I do that when I work, but I don't think they saw the use back then. And I would bet
that people were mindful of the fact that after a number of hours it would need service.
And I think people took it serious, Like years ago people serviced their own cars, 3,000 miles, oil.
And they were fully aware of service needs of their machines. Not so much today. Today people
often put off regular service, and complain, even get mad at their stuff when it quits after being
neglected.

[sampson159]

back in the early 60s,i was training as a service tech.many calls were due to color and tint misadjustment.degaussing was another issue.most of the service calls on color sets were user committed.we always had a boatload of 6gh8a s on board too.most of the older folkes hated color sets and were never happy.they only bought for their kids,etc.the early to mid 60s color sets were pretty damn good and very reliable in my opinion.

[DaveWM]

The 1st time seeing a color tv as a kid must have been in the early 1960's. I am pretty sure there was a BW program on and the thing that made it known as a color set to my young mind was the color fringing (poor convergence). Needless to say I did not get it (why have a color tv). I suspect convergence and purity were no where near as good as we see on old sets that are worked on by collectors that understand how to adjust them.

[Sandy G]

We were LUCKY here-We apparently qualified for "Cable" under LBJ's "Great Society" stuff, we had cable from late 1964-early '65 on... Pretty sure color was thrown in, too. But I do remember older folks bitching & griping about how BAD their color sets were-I doubt if many of 'em were set up properly...Back then, MOST color sets were bought thru an appliance dealer-Or a dept store, & their "Servicemen" had virtually little or NO training.

[sampson159]

sandy g ,you are on the money again!new color sets were sold here by appliance dealers and they had no servicemen in the field.they would bring a service flyer with them when they delivered a set.make a few half hearted adjustments and go.many sets would need degaussed,had poor gray scale,etc.purity and convergence would be so far off,that the set looked like a kalidescope.we would have to do a proper set up.makes all the difference in the world.like rebuilding your engine but not setting the timing,air/fuel mixture,idle,etc.

[Tom S]

Our first color set was in 1963. A Curtis Mathis 21". True there was more maintenance on it, it had a great picture all the time with little adjustment. Only problem was the tuner was weak in it. Had to be replace a few times. I was almost 6 when we got the set and I learned very early how to set it up. I only wish I had that set now. My Father worked in the local school system so money wasn't alot. The set was 900 bucks. I'd get up early on Saturday to watch cartoons. The best in color. And by the way, the dealer was only a Tv shop. No appliances so the techs were great.

[sampson159]

dad bought a philco ford roundie in 1964.spanky mcfarland was in the store promoting then.the picture was actually the best on the floor.dad took the display model,taqlked them down on price and paid cash.when it was delivered,we watched it until 2 am.next day,no high voltage.6kd6 went and service tech came out monday to replace.set lasted 10 years,no problems other than crt got jolted annually for the last 5.my dad marked the controls so we couldnt fiddle with it.other the sun tv tech who came out,only me and dad serviced the set.it was sold to a neighbor.repalced by a d16 slide control.that set is still in operation at my brothers.its been repaired twice in its long life.both were really good performers and had long lives.of course my das had an airline console radios from 1939 that is still working flawlessly to this day.he had good luck with the things he purchased

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by Dave A

The common thread was someone had to have money for one of these things and they were generally 50+ and scared to turn a knob on the set. I figured out these sets quickly and was the brave one to move the knobs while the elders were panicking.

Originally Posted by Steve McVoy

They were rarely set up correctly

Combine these two, and you have exactly my experiences. My grandmother got a color TV set for her 80th birthday in 1974, and she was the first to have one in my immediate family. After seeing color TV sets in various other places, the first thing I found out with my grandmother's set is that you could adjust it to get REAL color, not "color TV color". She did not like the way I set it up, though, so I made sure to put it back to "the color TV look" for her when I was done watching it. Her set had the "one-button color" feature, so I set that to her preferences and left the manual controls set to an accurate picture.

Too many people in the early days seemed to "want to get their money's worth" from a color TV set it seems, for lack of a better term.

[old_tv_nut]

Lots of reasons why usual performance of early color was not the best.
1) tube circuits drift
2) interaction of circuits - horizontal phase and therefore burst gate was affected by H Hold setting, thereby changing overall hue if ghosts were present
3) color greatly affected by fine tuning
4) tube circuit designs were more susceptible to transmission variations - designers were making do with as few tube sections as possible; compare that to late solid state designs with analog ICs, where enough transistors could be thrown at the problems to get perfect sync without any adjustment
5) people afraid to adjust color, which was really needed on a program by program basis
6) 10% of men have seriously color deficient vision, yet they would be the one in the family to determine how the controls should be set (I am not speculating - have actually experienced this).
7) not enough red drive, especially in early sets - resulting in a cyan white point (9300k +27 MPCD), which emphasized flesh tone variations in the broadcast
8) early sets (after abandonment of P1 green phosphor) that still used straight NTSC color decoding instead of modifying for the new phosphor - tended to make purplish blues and greenish yellows
9) green hair (mentioned to me many times by non-expert viewers) because of (8) and also because of polarization sensitivity of the TK-41 optics
10) instability of color cameras
11) instability of the long chain of analog amplifiers between the camera and the receiver - proc amps were used to restore the color burst to FCC specs before emission, but the degraded color in the image was not corrected.

This eventually became less of a problem partly because of transistorized gear, but also because there were cooperative campaigns involving receiver manufacturers and broadcasters to get every one in a given market to match. Work had to be done with early cable providers also, since their proc amp settings tended to mismatch between sources.

The VIR signal was invented to be inserted at the source and suffer the same degradations as the video, so automatic adjustment could be made before transmission. Or if no adjustment at the transmitter, a GE set with VIR could make the adjustment automatically at home. One big problem - broadcasters started using the VIR locally to adjust just the degradation from their transmitter. Now the VIR signal was correct, but the video coming from the network was not. Then TV manufacturers had to abandon it because it often made things worse.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

7) not enough red drive, especially in early sets - resulting in a cyan white point (9300k +27 MPCD), which emphasized flesh tone variations in the broadcast

This bluish-white 9300k, what I call "TV white", was the standard in consumer TV sets for a number of years, it seems. I know it was on otherwise high-end displays such as the Sony 25-inch "XBR Pro" as late as 1989 or so, and I also have seen reference to that temperature (or at least bluish-white) in older color-TV setup instructions. Stores loved it certainly, as it made sets look brighter and attract more attention. Only after 1990, when a magazine called "The Perfect Vision" had articles about color temperature and how to improve it in several issues, did I start to see sets that allowed user-adjustable settings.

[reeferman]

In my opinion it was a clear case of dollars and cents.
The inflation calculator at bls.gov says $1000 in 1954 is the equivalent to 8,784 dollars and 13 cents today. Not counting upkeep.

[oldtvman]

I guess my point was if any of us owned a color set in that era would we be able to get a great color picture on any of those sets, and my gut feeling is we could, even considering all the variables listed above. I've had any number of early color sets and for the most part they were all capable of producing a good picture.