View Full Version : When it was introduced for the 1st time the stereo television


Telecolor 3007
01-12-2009, 01:44 PM
When and where for the 1st time on the world stereo sound was introduced for the television?

anytune
01-12-2009, 02:06 PM
According to Wikipedia:
The US Federal Communications Commission announced stereophonic FM technical standards in April 1961, and licensed regular stereophonic FM radio broadcasting to begin in the United States in 1961. In 1984, Multichannel television sound was adopted by the FCC as the U.S. standard for stereo television transmission...Sporadic network transmission of stereo audio began on NBC on July 26, 1984, with the Tonight Show, although at the time, only the NBC station in New York City had stereo broadcast capability;[30] regular stereo transmission of programs began in 1985.

Telecolor 3007
01-12-2009, 02:27 PM
Somebody talled me that he saw pre 1984 Europeanen stereo tv sets. Was he wrong?

andy
01-12-2009, 03:01 PM
000

Kiwick
01-12-2009, 06:24 PM
Somebody talled me that he saw pre 1984 Europeanen stereo tv sets. Was he wrong?

I've seen a Philips stereo TV set using the K12-Z chassis from 1981, here in Italy, stereo TV broadcasts started in 1983

I'm quite sure that the very first stereo sets were made in the late 70s, the euroAV (SCART) socket was introduced in 1978 and it provided stereo input and output pins.

julianburke
01-12-2009, 09:46 PM
Did you know that Carl Eilers of Zenith invented the standard for FM stereo that the FCC adopted of which we use today? Zenith poineered the stereo sound system for TV's as well. In the late 50's Zenith was working on "Phonevision" which was subscription cable TV and other items such as remote controls. Zenith was real big into pioneering the television market. I saw where Eilers died this last June at age 83.

bgadow
01-12-2009, 10:21 PM
The introduction of stereo tv was interesting to me as a kid. First, Maryland Public Television aired a country music video show every Saturday night hosted by the morning dj on WPOC Baltimore. They would simulcast in stereo on that station and I would regularly tune it, the sound on our GE console tv cranked down, the sound on our Zenith console stereo cranked up. A great novelty factor. I remember the local tv station running a spot promoting stereo tv-they showed a Zenith console and how the indicator would light up when it was receiving stereo. NBC was the network that really pushed it, as I recall.

holmesuser01
01-13-2009, 06:28 PM
Magnavox had a C4 chassis with a 19" tube that was considered to be higher end stereo when new...

When I was in college in the late 1970's, I took a course called "Survey Of The Music Business" It was an overview of the recording industry, and being that the college was in Nashville, TN, it was a good course.

In one class, my addition to the discussion was telling the class that Magnavox and Zenith were working on a totally stereo television that would be available within 5-6 years. The instructor looked at me like I was a total fool. Look what happened!

andy
01-13-2009, 07:19 PM
000

Geoff Bourquin
01-14-2009, 12:40 AM
I built a stereo TV decoder back in about '85 or '86. It didn't impress me. I'm not sure now whether it was a crummy design, or maybe the stuff I was watching wasn't in stereo. I couldn't get my hands on a DBX decoder, so Im sure that made some difference.
I was working for a Zenith dealer back in '84. We sold a few stereo decoders made by Zenith. What I remember most is how I disliked the membrane keypad on those.
Now that I think of it, a lot of things had those membrane keypads on them back then. Remember the Timex/Sinclair computers? I hated it so much I wired a full size keyboard onto my Timex.

Whoops. Didn't mean to change the subject.

daro
01-16-2009, 05:31 AM
Stereo sound broadcasting started in Australia in around 1985 & is based on the German system.

NowhereMan 1966
01-18-2009, 01:58 PM
The introduction of stereo tv was interesting to me as a kid. First, Maryland Public Television aired a country music video show every Saturday night hosted by the morning dj on WPOC Baltimore. They would simulcast in stereo on that station and I would regularly tune it, the sound on our GE console tv cranked down, the sound on our Zenith console stereo cranked up. A great novelty factor. I remember the local tv station running a spot promoting stereo tv-they showed a Zenith console and how the indicator would light up when it was receiving stereo. NBC was the network that really pushed it, as I recall.

I remember that too on NBC where you would see:

(((( IN STEREO ))))
Where Available

radiotvnut
01-18-2009, 02:37 PM
I remember that too on NBC where you would see:

(((( IN STEREO ))))
Where Available

I remember seeing the same thing as a kid at the beginning of "Knight Rider". I also remember my Dad asking me what that meant. In his mind,stereo meant a device with a turntable and tuner.

bgadow
01-18-2009, 10:15 PM
It added a coolness factor to all those NBC shows, even if you were just watching it on your 12" bw! The network was on the top of their game right then; I was a big SNL fan all through the early-mid 80s and well remember them using that logo.

John Pinckney
01-18-2009, 10:29 PM
Somewhere in my video collection, I have a recording of the first local Stereo program done by WDCA-20 in Washington, D.C. It was "Creature Feature" with that epic motion picture classic "Monster From the Surf". The audio from the movie was in mono, but apparently nobody bothered to look at the phasing of the mics as the audio was more L-R/L+R than the expected L+R/L-R. Thus, serious distortion on my mono tape!

Oh yes, the intro to WDCA's first Stereo broadcast? A rubber chicken being zapped to bits between two Van de Graaff generators!

ChrisW6ATV
01-19-2009, 02:27 AM
I remember when The Tonight Show and a few others started being in stereo in 1985. Our lousy cable-TV system in Burlingame, California filtered out the stereo subcarrier, though, but the pilot tone would still light up the stereo indicator light on my Super Beta VCR. Then, I tried a rabbit-ear antenna and got an excellent signal from NBC Channel 4 and started recording lots of shows.

That was only a few months after I had first ever had cable TV, and one of numerous bad experiences with cable until I finally dumped it for good in 1995.

sweitzel
01-19-2009, 12:19 PM
Back in '85 or '86 I had a Recoton FRED II stereo and SAP decoder box. It was a weird device that used some kind of inductive hockey puck looking piece of plastic that you glued to the bottom of the TV near the volume control. Somehow it managed to pick up the MTS signal and feed it to the decoder for stereo sound. It never really worked very well.

ChrisW6ATV
01-20-2009, 01:58 AM
The FRED II could also be connected directly to the MTS/MPX outputs of mid-80's TV sets, or could even decode stereo TV sound from channel 3/4 outputs of some VCRs/cable boxes/TV tuners. Mine worked very well with a StarSight tuner/guide decoder in the 90's.