How Can We Help?
Analogue Colour Television (NTSC/PAL)
The history of analogue colour TV is somethign every broadcast engineer should have an appreciation of because so much of the technology we deal with today has been designed to work around technical constraints which can be traced back to analogue systems.
These videos made by Technology Connections below don’t always get th explanations quite right but in general they are ‘good enough’ to give you a good understanding.
1: Compatible Color: The Ultimate Three-For-One Special
Technology Connections – 13m 10s
This video details a number of historical attempts for creating a compatible colour TV standard – much is irrelevant to modern day but still interesting to hear.
Note: This being a US-made video it video refers to Y I Q values for component colour which was the names in NTSC. In PAL the equivalent is Y U V (later Y Cb Cr)
2: Trinitron: Sony’s Once Unbeatable Product
Technology Connections – 12m 40s
The story of how Sony created a new design for colour CTR TVs.
3: These Are Not Pixels: Revisited
Technology Connections – 17m 03s
More detail on how CRT colour televisions worked by using three separate electron guns and a shadow mask.
4: Analog Color TV Wrap-Up – Some extra info
Technology Connections – 12m 10s
Well explained video on why PAL was better than NTSC but also highlighting that it came 10 years later so it was designed to be superior as it learned from the weaknesses of NTSC.
Rememeber that when 625 line TV was launched in the UK it was marketted as being High Definition as it was a major step up from the original 405-line standard.