P3D Re: OT Compatible Color TV

[Rob <lilindn@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> >>B&W television is a completely different story.  The National Television
> Standards Committee was given a mandate to come up with a scheme for
> broadcasting color that did not obsolete the millions of existing B&W
> televisions in the U.S.  As a consequence, NTSC color television is a
> compromise, and nowhere nearly as technically state-of-the-art as it
> could have been, even for the late 1940's.  In other words, someone felt
> that not obsoleting existing televisions was worth the price of
> crippling color broadcasting for decades to come.  (snip)  It was not a
> technical nor market-driven decision.  It was a political decision.

    It was definitely a market-driven decision.  The FCC, in fact, had
chosen an incompatible system as standard years earlier (CBS field
sequential), for its superior color and reliability.  It was a dismal
failure in the marketplace.  Not a single maufacturer expressed interest
in color TV (Air King did only after CBS had acquired them just for that
purpose).  No network (for the most part, not even CBS itself) was
interested in broadcasting a color telecast that would be ignored by the
rapidly growing B&W audience.  While the FCC decision to replace Field
Sequential with NTSC was, by definition, am administrative (and thus
political) decision, it was clearly made on behalf of the sentiment of
nearly the entire broadcast and electronic industries.
     As for its being out of date, even in its time - all the other
alternatives expressed at the time (multiple video carriers, line
sequential, etc) offered less resolution/bandwidth ratio than NTSC.
     Of course, a wider bandwidth signal would improve resolution
capability, but would have greatly increased signal-to-noise ratio
problems in that era.  
     8-VSB and MPEG-2, while not impossible in the 1950's, was clearly
not on the minds of the engineers of the day! :-)
     Rob 
     "Everything I have is Y1.96K compliant"


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