40 years of color television in Germany

[yagosaga]

Hi,

on July 1st, 1967, the first color tv sets were sold to the public in Germany. You can see the most beautiful advertisings for these sets here:

http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold...color1967.html

Click forward button at the bottom of the page to see the other brands.

- Eckhard

[dtuomi]

I really liked the ads. Especially the Porta Color one, I've always had a soft spot for those sets.

Although, on the Funkschau page, I'm curious to know what the guy is doing with the magnifying glass (other than perhaps intensifying the X-Rays into his eyeballs)?

David

[tritwi]

Hello Yagosaga! Very nice advertising for really nice sets. Last summer I visited many towns in your country and I got the chance to go to many flea markets with the hope to find early color tv such the Loewe Opta or the Grundig (T800/T1000) but no luck. I also enquired the director of the fernsehermuseum in Furth about where to find such sets but again no luck. Are there places/shops in your country where you still can find this kind of things? I must admit I really love Telefunken sets (I have a T 708)!

[yagosaga]

Hi,

the guy on the Funkschau page is checking the correct location of the cathode rays, illuminating the phosphor dots (purity).

Color tv sets of the first generation are very hard to find. When color tv starts at the end of August, 1967, only 5,000 color tv sets were able to receive the first color tv broadcasts. All these sets were very unreliable. The picture tubes were bad after six years, and the people put these sets to the local damp. I have only three of these very early color tv sets in my collection. I got them via internet or newspaper. People saw my tv web pages and telephoned me, asking whether I want an early color tv set, and so on.

Here in Germany, there are not more than ten collectors which deal with early color televison.

The Telefunken PALcolor 708 is a very common set, I believe that appr. ten or 20 of these sets still exist. But the other sets are much rarer.

- Eckhard

[roundscreen]

That is one cool looking tv. The bezel around the screen is wood not plastic.
Neat..

[yagosaga]

Originally Posted by roundscreen

That is one cool looking tv. The bezel around the screen is wood not plastic.
Neat..

For the PALcolor, the bezel is wood. But the bezel of the Saba T2000 color on the Funkschau page is made of plastic.

[yagosaga]

I have found a Youtube video with the video sequence of the color tv start in Germany, Aug. 25th, 1967. Color television was introduced by the secretary of state Willy Brandt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2-Zzrmut-Q

[Sandy G]

"Jean Putz"- OMIGAWD !! <grin>

[bgadow]

Eckhard, I really enjoyed those ads...thanks for posting! 1967 was quite a year for color sets in the US; rectangular screens had become the norm and everybody who was anybody in the consumer electronics industry had a set on the market. It looks like Germany was the same way!

[roundscreen]

The 40 year anniversary of color tv in Germany has to feel the same way to the German collectors as it did to us when we had ours. Ten more years and you hit 50
Party time....

[Sandy G]

"All of these sets were very unreliable"...Sounds MOST un-German-like to me. Germany still had a thriving electronics industry in the mid-60s, its still a mystery to me why it took you guys-indeed, ALL of Western Europe-so long to develop a color TV system. And it wasn't like we were keeping anything secret-Anybody could have gone to a major store in any town in the US, plunked down $500-600, & gone home w/a spanking new color TV. Sure, it would have cost a pretty penny to ship one to Europe, but it could have been done..Certainly, there would have been contacts between RCA/Zenith/Motorola/Magnavox & some of the big electronics firms in Europe-Industry/trade groups, this sort of thing. People in these industries typically know one another, & they DO talk, competition & corporate rivalry notwithstanding. Maybe it was harder to share information 40,50 years ago-no internet, but it still could have been done.

[yagosaga]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

"All of these sets were very unreliable"...Sounds MOST un-German-like to me. Germany still had a thriving electronics industry in the mid-60s, its still a mystery to me why it took you guys-indeed, ALL of Western Europe-so long to develop a color TV system. And it wasn't like we were keeping anything secret-Anybody could have gone to a major store in any town in the US, plunked down $500-600, & gone home w/a spanking new color TV.

The Germans had no experience with color television in the 1960s. The reason for unreliability was the picture tube on the one hand and the hybrid chassis on the other hand. The first color picture tube, the A63-11X had not a rare-Earth phosphor for red, and the red gun was bad after a few years. Some sets had Japanese or American color picture tubes--the 25AXP22 for example--they were more reliable.
Many of the early sets had 380 Volts for the deflection and high voltage units. The 380V were not generated by a transformer like in many U.S. sets but by voltage doubling of the mains current. When you switch on the set, the current is up to 600V before the tubes are operating. This could not happen with an U.S. color tv set. Capacitors and many other parts were overloaded and failed with the time.
Other brands used direct rectifying of the mains and two horizontal transformers. These sets were more reliable. But these are sets with many tubes.
The German color tv sets were much smaller than the American sets with less air and cooling inside the housing. Burned plates and arcings were the result. This was another reason for a higher failure rate.

[old_tv_nut]

Interesting to hear a review of design weaknesses - but I don't think that has direct bearing on the introduction date of color. I think there was a lot of effort expended on protecting the interests of large European industrial firms.

[Kiwick]

Here in Italy, we got "official" PAL color TV broadcasts in February 11, 1977, that's a decade later than most other European countries, that's due to our government's terrible bureaucracy (for the same reason we also had just 2 channels to watch until the late 70s, one on VHF and one on UHF)

The very first experimental color programming was the 1972 Munich olympic games coverage, but 99% of our TV sets were still B/W back then...

in the following years there was a lot of uncertainty about the color system that was to be adopted, it could have been PAL or SECAM... so many PAL sets made before 1977 were fitted with an optional SECAM decoder chassis...

a 1975 set is a rare find here... and a 1972 set is a real holy grail, like a CT-100 found in the wild...

What's interesting is that Autovox, an Italian electronics company, was manufacturing a lot of hi-tech solid state color sets exclusively for the german market in the late 60s...

Francesco

[yagosaga]

Hello,

I have got a recording of the first European color television broadcast with the ARD "in farbe" color presentation logo of the 1960's, displayed on a contemprorary color tv set:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11XMda-7pMA

- Eckhard