French color TVs 1969-1970
 

Roundup of French color TVs 1969-1970
Courtesy Jerome Halphen

14 pages of French magazine "Le Haut-Parleur,"
which published a yearly Radio/TV special issue listing all models on the market.

Dozens of models that received both 819-line monochrome and 625-line SECAM; even a two-screen set for simultaneous color and monochrome.

http://www.bretl.com/documents/1969-...chcolorTVs.pdf


And a reminder:
Many early color TV articles are on my site at
http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/tvarticles.htm

Some French TV'S of that era
had a lockable front control panel door.
The keys are visible on the EMO
model.The ultimate parental TV
control maybe?

No french provincial cabinets? lol

Some sets sold in Spain during the early 60s also had this feature, and it was very prominent in the advertising of the day. What's baffling is that there was only one channel on the air when the sets were sold, so...no idea.

What ??

https://www.flickr.com/photos/100014...posted-public/

Quite a selection of manufacturers!

Barco is really Dutch. Once worked at a station that had Barco monitors. They were 100% modular. You could change the standards just by swapping boards.

If our member from France enters this topic (threads):
1) What was the avarage income (sallary) in France around that time. But the minimal one?;
2) When around 50% comed to get a color tv?;
3) Untill when color tvs where manufactured in France with French made components?

Hi to all,

@TeleColor 3007 :

1) What was the average income (salary) in France around that time and the minimal one ?

according to this document, see tabulated data on page 2 :
https://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/pdf/ebook/ebook121.pdf?

average yearly income was 9900 Euros in 1960
minimum was 4300 Euros
(converted from French Francs to Euros)

2) When did around 50% of the population have a color TV ?
i didn't find when the 50% point was passed, but found this :
24% in 1977
30% in 1978 :
https://www.persee.fr/doc/estat_0336...num_110_1_4256

Personally, i would say that color TV growth was very rapid between 1978 and 1985. VCRs appeared in 1976 and a color TV was the first purchase before considering a VCR.

In the early years (1967+), color TV penetration was very slow for 4 reasons :
- only one color channel, state-controlled
- high cost of receivers : 33.33% Value Added Tax (luxury product)
- requirement for dual-standard (819 B&W + SECAM 625 Color)
made color TVs complex, expensive and not very reliable
- TVs had to work on 110 VAC and 220VAC ---> expensive power
transformer. The country was still in conversion from 110V to a 220V grid.

in comparison with Germany : 220VAC only, 625 PAL only & AC transformerless TVs = cheaper TVs

Commercial TV broadcasting (more color channels) only started in 1986.
Compare with the UK which had commercial ITV start in 1956 !

3) Until when were color TVs manufactured in France with French made components ?

Probably until the mid-1980s. Japanese small-screen sets started to be serious competition at the end of the 70s : Sony with its beautiful Trinitron & high-reliability solid-state chassis, then Hong-Kong/Singapore/Malaysia sets.

At the component level, the decline took a longer time, until the mid-1990s. Powerful groups such as Philips produced CRTs and semiconductors & VideoColor (Thomson Group) likewise.There was also Telefunken.

I hope to have partially answered your question...

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

Thank you for the info. I thought only in Romania we had dubios taxes on electronics, but it seems it wasn't so.
I thought France had only 220 Volts back then. But again I was wrong. In Romania we had 120 Volts a.c. in some areas from Bucharest up untill 1976 or 1977, but we managed to have some 120 - 220 Volts tv sets without a transformer. Or the buyer purchased the transformer.
Found an 1971 "Schneider" color tv on youtube :)
So, in 1969-1970 only the rich or the one who where eager to get a color television and could get some money got one. You could buy them in loans?
Thanks for the info again! I opened a discusion about the tvs on a Romanian forum and put a link to here too!

Hi to All,

Hello Telecolor 3007, you wrote :

"So, in 1969-1970 only the rich or the ones who where eager to get a color television and had some money got one ?"

True. If you look at the catalogue of French color TVs Old_TV_Nut kindly posted on his site (Thanks !), some quote prices. At the 1967/1968 introduction of color sets, the standard model was a 25"/63cm rectangular screen with a 4500 French Francs price tag. This was also the price of a popular, cheap car the Renault 4L, See it here :

https://www.google.fr/search?q=Renau...w=1173&bih=735

Interestingly enough, when the first US color TV, the RCA CT-100 came out in 1953, its price was also the US Dollar equivalent of a small car.

"You could buy them with loans ?"
Well you could always ask your bank for a loan and get a yes/no answer.
I think your question is : could you get a color TV by rental ?

In England, color TV took off thanks to rentals, weekly or monthly payment. It was very popular and immensely helped the introduction of color. In France, you could rent, LOCATEL was the main provider, but the French are very reluctant to rent forever and not own the product in the end, so rental was a very small part of the market. The general attitude was "i will do without and wait until prices come down + more channels + better reliability".

"Thanks for the info again! I opened a discusion about the tvs on a Romanian forum and put a link to here too!"

Thank You ! & you're welcome !

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

I didn't know about color tv rentals. In Romania (at least in the '60's) you could rent some electronics for events.
"Renault" 4... there where several in Romania too (seen them in Bucharest)
But I wonder, who made the picture tube for the French color tv sets. "Videcolor" as far as I found camed out only in 1971.
The Germans (West) also where intrested in exports. Never seen a French tv in Romania. Germans (East and West) yes. Plus Dutch "Philips". 'Telecolor' 3007 had sometimes "Videocolor" picture tubes (mine haves "Toshiba").
I guess since most people dind't had a color tv before 1973, French early color tvs are rare :(
Here is that "Schneider": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9MGbYrO5jI

But how come that most of those early French had such quite big screen for it's days.

Hi to all,

Hello Telecolor 3007,

You wrote :
"I didn't know about color tv rentals. In Romania (at least in the '60's) you could rent some electronics for events."

In France, rentals were mostly for industrial/training/institutional video.
3/4" U-Matic, cameras, switchers.

"But I wonder, who made the picture tubes for the French color tv sets. "Videocolor" as far as I found came out only in 1971."

You're probably right. Philips set up a color CRT factory in Dreux, first stone set in 1965 to produce the A63-11X 25" color tube for all Euro color TVs of the Philips Group. The factory operated under the RTC-Compelec name, a full Philips daughter company in France.

VideoColor came later. Thomson acquired a RCA licence, therefore US technology.
They had big industrial facilities near Lyon & Agnani (Italy).

"The West Germans were also interested in exports"
True. Telefunken produced color CRTs.

"Never seen a French tv in Romania. Germans (East and West) yes, plus Dutch by Philips. 'Telecolor' 3007 televisions sometimes had "Videocolor" picture tubes (mine have Toshiba tubes)"

It's sort of strange there were no French color TVs as the Warsaw Pact nations + USSR adopted SECAM, at least in the early years. Lousy marketing...

"I guess since most people didn't have a color tv before 1973, French early color tvs are rare. Here is that Schneider color TV :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9MGbYrO5jI

Thanks ! will watch,

"But how come that most of those early French color sets had such quite big screen for their time ?"

Color sets were extremely expensive so a large screen helped to justify price. 25 inches was still a big (luxury) screen for a B&W set.
Also with Philips producing the A63-11X in France, it became the obvious de-facto choice of CRTs for first generation color sets.

There were some (very few) manufacturers who made other choices. If you look at the Old_TV_Nut pdf, look at Pizon-Bros. They made an all-transistorized color TV with a 15"/39cm screen (RCA tube). To keep cost down, the TV was 625 SECAM only, "forgetting" 819 lines altogether. A smart idea, Pizon reasoned that the customer already owned an old B&W 819 set so it was un-necessary to offer a full dual-standard color set.
See screenshot of a restored Pizon-Bros 15" color TV.

Full restoration topic (in French) but lots of photos of the chassis & screenshots :http://retro-forum.com/viewtopic.php...hilit=TV+Pizon

Best Regards
jhalphen

I wonder about the details of who made the glass envelope parts for the tubes. In the U.S., as far as I know, no TV manufacturer made the glass. That was done by a special factory of a glass company, and the picture tube manufacturer then assembled the funnel, gun, and screen (another big factory). And then it went into the TV (another big factory).

How was this work divided in Europe?

Hi to all,

Hi Wayne, you're right of course. In France, SOVIREL made B&W bulbs (recognizable with a stylised S embossed in the glass) and (maybe) Saint-Gobain, now a World Class supplier of all glass-related products.

From my experience with the RACS brothers who inherited the company founded by their father, Corning Glass was a major bulb/faceplate/neck supplier until the very end of CRT production.

Mr Raedersdorff Senior, the RACS founder was a Corning-Europe engineer for many years before setting up his lucrative CRT-rebuild business.

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

In Romania we had colour television only in 1983. Well, you could watch color broadcasting from sourinding countries before that. In Iugolsavia they subtitled movies (in Romania too) so you could watch forgein movies if you knew French, English, probably German and Italian. But I didn't see no black and white French set either (except for two with French components, assambled in Romania - V.S. 43-611 - metal case and one V.S. 54-612 or V.S. 43-613 - wooden case; 43 was the diagonal in centimeters; those sets with French compoments where extremly rare, so that's why I've seen only 2). Oh, Romania and former Yugoslavia used P.A.L. from the beging.
So if "Philips" had a picture tube manufacturing plant in France probably most of them used "Philips". "Videcolor" made picture tubes in France?
Other Europeanen countries had smaller, 21"-22" (54-56 c.m.s.) or smaller color tvs, so they where more apealing in terms of price. You can find some British one here: https://www.oldtechnology.net/colour.html
Yeah, that "Pizon-Bros" company was smart. I wonder if they got more sales with that.

Found out that forum on the links page of a French old tv site - remember there where 2 with orange.fr and found one of them. Maybe I will register there.

Having a transfomer wasn't bad. Transformer meant that if the heating filament of one lamp went down, since filaments where connected in paralel (not in series) you hand't had too look what electronic tube went down, you could see the simptoms and guess which went down. If the trasnformer was a transformer and not an autotransformer you could be also protected form electrocution when touching the chassie or the antena. Soviet tv's didn't had the best picture tubes, but most of them had a transformer and that was good.

Later edit: in that catalogue there is one tv set with 2 picture tubes? Why? One was for color television, the other for black and white so not to use unecesarly the color picture tube when watching black and white?

Spain has entered the chat.
-------------------------------

This is an interesting topic and I decided to do a little research before just posting "we picked PAL" and...wow! I uncovered a fascinating story of international intrigue and cold-war politics that I didn't expect to find.

The Spanish newspaper El País published in 1978 a story finally revealing what was behind the decision and how it came to be. Spoiler: Spain picked SECAM first! So in the mid-1960s the French government made an alliance with several other countries to use the SECAM system, though no broadcasting began. Two years later the Spanish government casually mentioned that they would be using PAL, but did not publish this decision in the BOE, effectively not making it official. It turns out that in the intervening years, the German government offered a loan to the Spanish government of 200 million DM that came with a condition to use Telefunken's PAL. But this was never made official because the French were in the process of their own bribe, in the form of a business deal for Thomson (the inventor or SECAM) to purchase the General Electric Española television factories and business for 300 million pesetas and the possibility to support Spain's bid to join the EU. A double cross!

In the end Spain ended up with PAL, France ended up with a Spanish TV factory*, and the Spanish government ended up with a pile of cash. Here's the full article, which reads pretty well using Google Translate: https://elpais.com/diario/1978/09/28...01_850215.html

I had always made the assumption that since PAL was most similar to the various flavors of CCIR black and white in use at the time, it was chosen for expediency vs. the weird French system by most of the countries that adopted it. As Spain was not an important market, relatively speaking, in the 1960s all of this political machination leads me to wonder if something similar played out in the other countries. In the end SECAM was only used by France and their territories, some other dependent nations, and...the USSR. This would be a fascinating story to hear!




*Someone up thread was wondering if anyone actually produced entire CRTs. I can report that GEE (the Spanish division of GE) indeed had a CRT factory in Madrid and I have seen a 21" tube stamped FABRICADA EN ESPAÑA with the GEE logo on it. This is the same GEE that Thomson wound up with. Incidentally, none of these GEE sets were based on American designs, unlike the Philcos and Zeniths of the day. They were all home-grown, near as I can tell, and there are very, very few in existence. All the advertising at the time was focused on how only GEE sets had a "black screen" that allowed you to watch for hours without hurting your eyes.

I have a GEE set up on the bench right now, produced in 1968, that I need to finish up and make a post on. What's curious is that THIS particular set was built neither by GEE, nor by Thomson, but by Miniwatt, which near as I can tell, was actually owned by Philips. I have seen this same GEE-labeled set sold under the Emerson, Westinghouse, Kolster, and Iberia brands in Spain and under at least one brand in Germany. Pre-EU Europe sure were a promiscuous bunch. Incidentally every Spanish-made set I have also sports a metal "luxury tax" plaque riveted to the chassis.

I'm not aware of seeing any Thomson sets here that were made prior to the BPC era. I'm not saying there were none, but they sure are scarce.

Finally I'm not sure who sold the first color sets in Spain - there are almost none for sale today. One I have found is a Zenith four-tube PAL console that pops up for sale from time to time but the seller never answers any messages. I really, really want to get my hands on that!


Edit: here is a link to another retelling of the PAL vs. SECAM story: https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/45...elevision.html

I know a little off topic but here in the U.S., I think we crossed the 50% color TV line in 1972. We got our first color set in 1971 so we were among them. My aunt had an old RCA CTC-14(?) roundie since 1962 or so. I lived and grew up in the Pittsburgh PA area and I'm still nearby in the Ohio Valley jsut to the west and Pittsburgh had the last only Black and white TV station. It was WQEX, channel 16, sister to WQED, channel 13. WQEX used the short lived WENS UHF transmitter from the early 1950's until it died in the late 1980's, broadcasting in black and white only. Most of the time it seemed that WQEX was a black and white broadcast version of "Britbox" showing a lot of British programs like Dr. Who and so on.

From what I understand there was no CTC-13/CTC-14 or they existed as a 32VDC farm set version of the CTC-12. The main difference between the 12 and 15 was the switch from octal to Novar/Compactron type sweep tubes.

Hmmm, I do stand corrected then, it has been a while but I always remembered her as the "Aunt who had a color TV" until we got color in 1971. I'll jave to ask her if she remembers when they bought it.

No sorry, BARCO is from Belgium/ City called Kortrijk)! They produced not only
broadcast equipment, they were wellknown for their radios
and TV sets.
Somtimes they produced TV sets which were sold under different labels!
My collection covers some of these sets.
https://www.barco.com/en/about-barco...campus-belgium

BARCO timeline:
https://www.barco.com/en/about-barco/history/timeline

Regards,
TV-Collector:stupid:

Thanks for the correction! I had it confused with Philips.
Silly American I am!

I wonder what cameras French colour television used in it's early days.

Hi to all,

The link below leads to the yearly special issue of French magazine "Le Haut-Parleur" (the Loudspeaker). It covers for the year 1962 the state of the art of products available and to come on the French market.

Exhaustive listing of table radios, transistor radios, B&W living room TVs and portable TVs. No color yet, Sorry !

There are interesting technical articles covering the choice of a future FM Stereo system, the current and planned TV transmitter network pending the introduction of the UHF 625 service (started in 1964) and much detailed info on the Telstar satellite.

It's all in French, Sorry ! but tech is universal, right ?

@Old_TV_Nut : Pages 106 through 125 show all the TVs, if a pdf extraction of only the concerned pages is possible, it might be interesting to store the TV only data.

An interesting TV is on pdf page 117, the Radio-Celard 8" all-transistorized B&W TV (see pix). No mention of Sony yet !

Total file size is 66Mb, so please be patient if using a low bandwith data connection.

http://www.retronik.fr/revues/haut-p...ro_Special.pdf

Best Regards
jhalphen

A Barco TV Monitor
 

A CTVM 3/51 from the 80's. The module extender has its own slot in the module bay.
It has a Delta gun CRT that was much sharper than anything Sony had at the time.
Believe the Barco USA office is only 2 townships up the road from me.

Hi to all,

@Kf4rca, we had several of these Broadcast quality Barco 21"/51cm monitors in the Video Lab at the Ampex facility in France.
We found out the hard way that the flybacks would fail if the monitor was not run with an active video or black burst sync signal present at all times.
This advice was given to us by the Barco Service dept after sending several units for repair.
Apparently the un-synced line oscillator would creep up in frequency and go into some form of runaway which in turn destroyed the flyback.

Best Regards
jhalphen

Thanks for the warning. They were used as TV teleproduction monitors, so they always had a video signal going to them.
As I recall, when we bought our Ampex VPR80's (in the console), they had small 9 inch Barco monitors in them.
BUT, years later we had problems with Ikegami monitors burning up flybacks. The fix was a kit that EVEN changed part of the aluminum chassis in them.

I would think the problem more likely was the oscillator running too slow, so the peak (and average) sweep current got too high due to the horizontal output on-time being too long. The first IBM PC color monitors had a similar problem, dying if operated without sync. Those of us in the TV industry pointed and smirked at the IBM design. I'm surprised Barco would make such a mistake. They must have been close to the edge of overheating and/or exceeding the safe area of the simultaneous voltage and current of the output device.

Thanks for the heads-up, but I think I will not excerpt part of this to post - there is so much interesting material besides the TV model listings! I recommend those who are interested to spend the time to download the whole thing.

Hi to all,

@Wayne B. you're surely in the true about the mechanism which destroyed the Barco's flyback and H out transistors. Our lab guys weren't too interested in the inner workings of monitors, they just made sure the info got around "don't use the Barco(s) without Sync !"
BTW, i made a mistake, it was the 22" or possibly the 25" model which failed. These were carted around standalone for demos or customer training and not nicely wired in a permanent rack.
H out transistors were pricey in the 80s, ouch !

Glad you liked the French magazine !
a group of guys of our forum is scanning back issues. Like the UK mag "Wireless World" it ran from the 30s to 2000, so the database is huge. They proceed by sampling interesting issues in each era. Publication is +/- one every week, see here, 43 page long topic, everything is in pdf so downloadable :

http://retro-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=249295

directory of the scanned issues of Le Haut-Parleur :
http://www.retronik.fr/revues/?dir=haut-parleur

@Kf4rca, yes the VPR-80 came with a CTVM22 9" monitor "side-car" style.
On the VPR-1/1C/2/2B/VPR3 & the Quads (AVR2/AVR3) having a bridge monitor we used the Tektronix 12" Trinitron monitor, then later Trinitron HR.
When i worked at RCA (summer jobs) there was a 12" Conrac, also with Trinitron tube. I got a write-off for a song, fixed it & still have it in the
attic...

@TeleColor3007 : you asked "I wonder what cameras French colour television used in it's early days."

You must define "early days" : 1)Monochrome
30s : Barthelemy mechanical design, CDC (Compagnie Des Compteurs), 30/60/120/180 lines

Mid-end 30s : experimental Iconoscope, (US import), Telefunken licensed Iconoscope, Radio-Industrie cameras.

Mid-end 40s, same as prewar, then CFTH (Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston), then Thomson-CSF. Thomson reigned supreme as a French supplier & state-controlled TV.

2)Color :

Thomson ruled the roost from 1950 to the 80s, then Japanese cameras took over (Sony, Ikegami) via U-Matic news reporting, then Betacam.
From the Jo Flaherty, head of engineering at CBS + Sony venture came the MicroCam, a truely miniaturized ENG camera. Thomson made some improvements and it became a popular product.

RCA (TK-76) was also very popular for ENG. Later, the Philips LDK-14 & Ikegami HL-79. Still later, Sony BVP-300/330.

Before CCDs, camera tubes (Orthicon, Image-Orthicon) were of RCA US construction & later manufactured under license by Thomson & EEV (UK).
Philips made huge inroads with the Plumbicon tubes for color pickup.
Later on, Japanese Saticons, Newvicons were also offered as options in new cameras.

Visit the Camera Museum :
http://www.tvcameramuseum.org/

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

So in 1967-1972 French colour television had "R.C.A." cameras?

Very likely. Its only simple component changes that would need to be made to convert NTSC to PAL. The early cameras were built at the component level- resistors, capacitors, and transistors. IC's hadn't come along yet.
SECAM is a transmission standard. Studio equipment is PAL.

I don't know if this was still the case by 1967, but IIRC the TK41 sent RGB video to It's racks so the camera head it's self would only need changes to it's internal sweep timebase and the rack equipment supporting it could be redesigned/modified for converting RGB to PAL.

Hi to all,

@Telecolor 3007 :

French color TV, early years, 1967-1972 :
- Studio : Thomson CSF
- ENG News + U-Matic recorder : RCA, Sony, Thomson, Ikegami

some English cameras : Marconi, Link, Bosch-Fernseh

I never saw an RCA TK-41 in France, by the late 60s lighter more modern cameras were available.

The state controlled channels Antenne-2, first with color in 1967 then the first channel (much later) + the SFP (Société Française de Production) all used Thomson studio cameras, pretty much a "must buy French products" policy.

Studio work was very early on done in RGB as even simple effects are nearly impossible to do in SECAM because of the constant FM color information.

When private TV finally started in 1986, most studio work was in PAL with final transcoding for broadcasting.

When component Betacam appeared, a lot of studio work switched to all-component production thus avoiding PAL to SECAM transcoding artifacts.

One must keep in mind that studio cameras evolved slowly, ample lighting was no problem and weight was a secondary concern with fixed location equipment.

For field work, light weight & economic battery/power requirements made the users eager to embrace every new model as technology advanced.

Best Regards
jhalphen

I believe the color cameras after the TK-41 also sent RGB to the CCU (Camera Control Unit) as you surmise, but really, if the chroma encoding circuit design had to be changed from NTSC to PAL, what difference did it make where it was located?

By the way, the TK-41 used separate coaxial cables for baseband R,G,B. Later cameras used triax:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triaxial_cable
I believe this still carried R,G,B signals, but frequency-multiplexed on RF carriers so they could be sent via a single conductor.

"Bosch"/"Fernseh" wheren't German or Dutch. "Fernseh" was a colaraboration between "Bosch" and "Philips". In Romania we used cameras, black and white and color made by these companies.
I wonder if the image pick-up tubes from "Thompson" where French made or import made.
I've seen some import color tv sets where avaible.

Hi to all,

@Telecolor 3007 : Bosch-Fernseh is a 100% German company, they started in the 1920s. They might have cooperated with Philips for certain products but otherwise were in direct competition, especially for cameras.

When the Plumbicon came out (a Philips invention) everybody adopted it as it offered really superior color pickup performance.

Thomson (Please no "p") color cameras used Thomson made tubes.
Some tubes were interchangeable with other makers (EEV, Brimar...) as they were produced under RCA license.
In the B&W era (50s-60s) RCA tubes such as the Orthicon & image-Orthicon were of US origin. Europe was still rebuilding in the aftermath of WWII and did not possess the sophisticated technology necessary to produce tubes as complicated as the Image-Orthicon.

Best Regards
jhalphen

If "Thomson" made color pick-up tubes so early it's meaning that French electronics industry was more developed than I thought. Probably it was costly to make things for such an quyte tiny marker (compared to Western-Germany and even Great Britan (United Kingdom) ), but you made it. I'm curios if any of those cameras still survives today.
But the picture tubes from the colour tvs, in 1967-1972 where French made (at least one of them?).

1st 3 models of Romanian tv sets where assambled using "C.S.F." components. But they where extremly rare... so rare that most people think that 'Naţional' V.S. 43-614 (using "National-Panasonic/Matushita" components) where the 1st one.
Here is the very 1st model, V.S. 43-611 (there where V.S. 54-612 and V.S. 43-613 - some one haves one): https://evenimentemuzeale.ro/evenime...at-in-romania/ I wonder what is the French model.
Off-topic: some Bucharest made trams (streetcars) used "Thomson"-"Huston" controllers. I've seen two restored one with such controllers.

Don't forget the Russians were building cameras too:
https://www.tvcameramuseum.org/soviet/sovthumb.htm

I know that. But U.S.S.R was big country.