Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
When colour started in the UK, it was only on one UHF channel out of 3.
The other two were still 405 line VHF. So the first colour sets were dual
standard.

Where they? I have never seen a dual standard (405/625) line TV set on a
website, listed on various collectors pages, nor do any of the people who
have video tours of their 405 line TV collections on youtube have any.

I'm not saying they did not exist, but if they did, people are going to a lot
of trouble to omit them. You'd figure the guy who has one of the
last 405 line TV sets (the model, not the actual set) and proudly shows it,
would have one of the first 405/625 sets too.

Given the US never attempted to make sets to the UK mono standard of 405
lines - which pre-dated any US one - just why do you think they'd have
been interested in any other UK market? A few years later, UK colour sets
were UHF only when the other channels went colour.

Well, they would not. But in 1956 back when the UK was still stuck in the
1930's, you could buy a US color TV off the salesroom floor. If the BBC wanted
to go to color, they could of just adopted the US system, and let people
import US sets with transformers until one with 240 volt power supplies
became available.

BTW, what you said about 405/625 line sets in general was not true, BBC one
was a dual service, the second BBC channel was never 405. It started in
1963, two years before there were color broadcasts.

As for tuners, ALL US sets had UHF tuners by the summer of 1964.

I also doubt any US manufactured set would have been cheaper in the UK
after transport and setting up a service/dealer network, etc. US cars, for
example, have never been competitive here, price wise.

Bad example. UK cars are mirror images of US ones, the only difference
between an NTSC set receiveing NTSC signals in the UK versus the US was the
power line voltage. An external transformer would have been around $25, which
on a $1,000 item was trivial.

We've long since established that by 1956 the power line frequency did
not matter.


Your idea that the whole world should adopt US standards regardless of
local conditions was just to protect their home industries says much.

WTF? Now you are projecting. Since PAL is the original NTSC standard as
proposed, the UK had no TV network to speak of (just left overs from the
1930's), why not adpot an off the shelf technology that's already in use.

People wanted color TVs in 1956, they did not want a british system with
little or no benefit except that it would take nine years before the
first broadcast.

In the 1950's the concept of COTS (commerical off the shelf technology) did not
exist and I'm not sure it has ever existed at the BBC. To be blunt, if the
BBC had adopted the RCA system 100%, there would have been color TV in the
UK in 1957.

So what real benefit did PAL provide?

It's the reason why the far east has taken over the manufacture of such
things. They tend to make what people want, rather than what the
manufacturers think they should have.

Actually they did not. They started making what they wanted you to buy, but
at a price so low you could afford to buy it and live with the missing features.

Look at VHS. VHS forced out all the other systems because the EU was going to
impose VCR quotas. To prevent it, the Japanese manufacturers, except for Sony
stopped making PAL and SECAM VCRs in favor of NTSC ones. They literally sold
the NTSC ones BELLOW COST just to keep the factories running.
(look up "dumping" and VCR).

People did not want VHS VCRs, they wanted BETAMAX VCRs. But when the equivalent
VHS VCR was on sale for half of a Sony, they bought them anyway.

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.