40 years of color television in Germany

[nasadowsk]

Originally Posted by 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.

I'd be curious as to if RCA ever took out patents in Germany/Europe on the NTSC system, or significant elements of it, and when they expired. I suspect THIS had a lot more to do with color TV in europe than any technological factor. Oh, and the TV stations were all government run, they sure didn't want to toss out good equipment before it was all used up!

Though Germans are pretty bad (actually, they're worse than the US a lot of the time) with 'not invented here', that doesn't explain it - PAL is more or less NTSC with a phase flip on every line (which was almost part of the NTSC standard anyway).

Had anyone ever done a side by side comparison of NTSC and PAL? I've heard all sorts of wonderful things said about PAL, thought they tend to be by people in Europe who have a pretty interesting view of what n NTSC picture looks like, so I'm suspicious...