TV Does Color (Part 2)

In the first part of this article, we discussed the early beginnings and efforts of a few companies like RCA and CBS to establish a color standard to be broadcast on TVs in living rooms across the country.

After failed efforts at rudimentary coloring of black and white broadcasts, the public continued to buy black and white TVs. There wasn’t a lot of public interest in color television shows, at least not enough for RCA to continue their ongoing feud with the FCC to come to some agreement or ruling on color for TV standards. And during this time, RCA’s rival, CBS kept stumbling in their efforts to broadcast an effective and satisfying color system to the masses.

Flash forward a few years later to post-war 1946. RCA has finally developed and presented a type of color receiver that was compatible with existing standards, and was comprised of three separate picture tubes for each primary color (cyan, magenta and yellow). Lacking all the technology we have today regarding blur correction, the picture of this system seemed to suffer during video movement. This left many at a loss, despite the presence of bright colors finally.

Seven years later, the FCC finally came to implement a standard for broadcasting color TV. Both RCA and CBS did their best respectively to woo the FCC into choosing their systems, but the FCC surprised many and went with RCA. It was also a surprise when, in 1950, the FCC reversed their prior decision and decided to adopt CBS’s color standard. Lawsuits ensue and RCA loses, leaving CBS time to being producing millions color TV sets.

Strangely enough, the extension of the Korean War led CBS to stop producing color television shows and TVs alike. RCA got the help of the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) to believe in their proprietary color standards. This led the FCC to reverse their decision again, siding with RCA’s system compatibility.

On January 1st, 1954, the Tournament of Roses Parade was the first country-wide full color broadcast, brought to you on television sets made by such manufacturers as General Electric, Philco, and of course, RCA. Color blossomed on the TV sets of everyone across the land, and the rest, as they say, is history.

To see all of your shows and movies in the brilliant color capable by today’s technology, check out DirecTV! They provide the most channels in high definition so that you can get the best performance possible (and your money’s worth) from your modern television.

TV Does Color – A History Lesson

With all the talk these days about HDTV, flat screen TVs, satellite TV, video games and a myriad of other television related topics, its easy to forget the humble days of black and white television. With this article, I’d like to briefly explain how we got to this world of beautifully vivid color that is today’s modern TV.

Black and white television had not been around for very long before color TV came to be, but not before many failed attempts in the early 40s by a few overseas companies and some corporations like RCA. RCA developed a technique that involved broadcasting the television images separated into the three primary colors, cyan, magenta and yellow, through spinning filters transposed upon the original black and white image, rendering a colored but not truly color, video.

At the same time, rival company CBS had been developing it’s own color system, similar although completely incompatible with RCA’s current color standards. Basically this meant that if one wanting to view a black and white TV show on any other network broadcast, and then a color show on CBS, two completely different television sets would have to be owned. After this issue, the two companies battled it out over channel space, ultra-high frequency (UHF), and a few other technological issues that heavily involved the oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). These events led to a stalling of CBS’s efforts while RCA continued to profit off the sale of thousands of black and white TV sets.

Next time, we’ll discuss the other stumbling blocks tossed in the way of getting color broadcast into our homes, and what technological and legal hurdles had to be traversed to create the world of color we all now enjoy in our movies, satellite TV shows, video games, and other media.

To see all of your shows and movies in the brilliant color capable by today’s technology, check out DirecTV!  They provide the most channels in high definition so that you can get the best performance possible (and your money’s worth) from your modern television.