charles wrote:
In article , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:
In article , The Other Mike
wrote:
On Thu, 20 Apr 2017 11:16:35 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

Old kit becomes obsolescent naturally. Anyone still using a 405 line
VHF TV? No? Was that because of the EU?

Indirectly it was, the Krauts invented PAL, we managed perfectly well
with black and white tv's.

PAL was developed at the request of the European Broadcast Union. The
previous colour TV system, NTSC, had undergone extensive trials by the
BBC etc and been found lacking.

Not quite true. The BBC found NTSC quite useable - provided it was treated
properly. A test was made by sending am NTSC signal by landline/microwave
to Moscow & back - with no significant degradation. The BBC backed NTSC,
but when the majority of countries opted for PAL, they used that system.
One obvious indication of NTSC as the BBC's choice was the high stability
crystals needed for colour reference were built for NTSC.

There's an obvious reason why a German maker spent large sums developing
PAL as a European standard (incidentally first used in the UK, before
Germany) and that was they actually invested in industry, unlike the UK
which preferred to pay out as much as possible to shareholders. Hence
there being no UK owned electronics company these days, while the
descendants of Telefunken are still going strong.


NTSC is fundamentally a flawed system. I worked with NTSC sets and the
necessity for a Hue control was a pain and it cannot handle reflections
causing multipath signals. In hotel distribution systems, the picture
was frequently unwatchable. Very few european volume electronics
companies exist these days because their production costs are too high
and they cannot compete in the world market place. .