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We were watching one of the Doctor Who stories from 1971, stretching four episodes long, and they had a fascinating extra about the restoration of this specific show, how the original tapes were 625 lines PAL, and had to be converted to 500 lines NTSC for the U.S. It turned out that the original 625 PAL tapes were all but lost, and they had to reconvert or "upscale" back up to a 625 PAL, from 500 line NTSC, and while I honestly didn't under stand some of it, it was fascinating, none the less. It's interesting that, way back in the late 60's, early 70's, they almost had 720p clarity and sharpness way back then, but it's not too surprising, seeing the quality of some of these restored programs
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Before video tapes, French tv used even 819 lines for the, then, unique (black and white channel). They changed later for 625 lines, when the second channel appeared. Unlike other countries (like the US), television has been for décades a state monopole in France (until the '90's). -
Even worse "625" line TV only had 575 lines of those for the picture content and the rest were for sychronisation use and beam flyback in CRT sets. A similar number of lines were lost from the US 525 system taking it down to 480 so lines had to be "lost" when going to the US tapes. The other difference that made conversion difficult was the number of fields per second UK 50 US 60, so fields had to be blended to make the extra ones (no computer interpolations in those days).
Trying to get back the original from the US tapes had multiple problems!!!!!Comment
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Back in the early days of U K tv, the BBC were trialing the Baird system versus the Marconi system of PAL 405 Lines. The latter won and was adopted. In those days most tv sets had very small cathode ray tubes. They were also very expensive to buy so most people rented them. It was not until the Queens coronation in 1951 that tv in the home really took off. Just the BBC channel and also not broadcasting all day? The Commercial channel began a few years later, 1954/55.Comment
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I have always loved the nickname for NTSC, just thinking about it makes me smile. Never The Same Colour, due to the hue control.
Being from the generation from when colour was introduced, as a child I thought for many years that all americans had purple and orange faces. As this was the case whenever a news broadcast was transmitted on a PAL television.
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... and then you see how much further home video tech would fall with the early VHS! You don't really realize how poor it was until you watch it next to laserdisc, then laserdisc to DVD, and on and on.Comment
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The Baird system which Ken mentions was. I believe, a mechanical scanning system which started out at only 30 lines and had a viewing aperture of only a couple of inches. The BBC were playing around with this in the late 1930's and were actually broadcasting 30 lines programming, but it did not stand a chance against the all electronic system using a cathode ray tube display. 405 line broadcasting was the standard in the UK until well into the 1960's. When I was growing up there in the 1950's only wealthy people had a TV. but as Ken says it was the Coronation that really put TV on the map. The big thing I remember was the first live pictures from the USA relayed across the atlantic by the Telstar satellite. I stayed up all night to watch that, but all we got was the Indian head logo because the receiving station in Cornwall had the antenna polarity reversed! The next day they got it right, and the Telstar satellite was imortalized by the Tornadoes with their smash hit record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ee6p4z29QComment
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Hah! I never knew the history of Telstar!Comment
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There was also the frame conversion to consider, with PAL tv giving 25fps /50hz and NTSC 30fps/ 60Hz. I think the NTSC countries had a better deal with conversions, with the better PAL signal being down graded to NTSC. When it went the other way (NTSC to PAL) watching such content in the UK during the 70's meant everything was smudgy with strange colours and hues. Things did get better by the 90's although it still looked 'American' as one would say when viewing 'ST: the next generation', or the 'X files'.
A lot of filmed shows from the US were shown from film prints and not videotape. The BBC though one-day it might pull a 'fast one' during the showing of a later series of 'Dallas', which up to that point had been shown direct from film. They decided instead to show a videotape conversion, resulting in lots of viewer complaints. They were then forced to convert to showing film prints as soon as possible to avoid loosing viewers.
Regarding the Dr Who restorations conversions back to PAL, the general pattern has been to use the B/W 16mm films still held by the BBC and take the colour info from the NTSC videotape and overlay them, the film giving a sharper image. Sometimes the colour comes from a broadcast 2" NTSC tape, sometimes from a Umatic tape if the broadcast tape is if not available. There were times when the only copy around in any format was on NTSC tape, with no 16mm print. Its very lucky for those who collect the classic series that some American/ Canadian TV services kept their tapes, unlike the BBC.
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Recently they have also been able to recover the colour from the "colour dots" formed by not filtering out the chroma sub carrier frequencies when making the 16mm film prints. This was thought to be impossible due to the loss of the colour burst signal t the start od the lines, but HD scans and computer software has now got over that problem (with some manual intervintion).Comment
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Yes! I remember watching how they were actually able to restore the color to the first episode of Are You Being Served, which was originally shot in color, but the original color tape was lost, but they did that conversion due to color info "Stored" in the black and white. Pretty darned cool!Comment
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Fascinating thread and have read techie talk I wasn't aware of. My early pro video years started with Umatic and in those days ANY Standards Conversion meant a trip to the "West end" (London) where the big boys were with seriously large and expensive Standards Converters and rate cards to match.
Those wonderful couples who did the Las Vegas Presley wedding thing, were then confronted with a massive bill to get the crappy NTSC 7 minute VHS into PAL.
Then in the late 80s Panasonic introduced the W1, which was more than adequate for domestic conversions of NTSC. Weddings and Dolphin experiences etc...and paid for itself quickly.
Going back to TVs mid 60s, my parents upgraded their 14" Pye for a 17" Peto Scot 405/625 switchable...a total pile of Poo. Might have been their first colour set.
Meanwhile my grandmother (INUENDO WARNING) 🤪 had a 9" Bush 🤔. Wonderful brown bakelite case with big knobs on the front.
How times have changed watching HD on a 10" tablet.
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I still remember the worst conversion of a film shown on TV. It was "Dressed to Kill". I assume the station wanted an edited copy to avaid some sex scenes. What they got was a badly converted video copy that had been telecined to NTSC with 3:2 pull down (three feilds on one frame 2 on the next) that meant than pans and camera movements jerked as the wrong fields had been discarded. Watching some parts gave me motion sickness feelings. It wasn't until I bought the Super 8 400ft cut down I found out what had been cut.Comment
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Yes, they showed the effects of the poor conversions in the past that made earlier conversions look terrible, sharpness wasn't too good, and anytime a person moved, there was terrible blurring or "ghosting" to the image, and sadly, a lot of people in the past used to think that this was just bad quality inherent in UK video. The exact opposite is true.Comment
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