New HD is here

I had seen the upload reports sometime ago about some of the Encore Theme channels in HD, finally here! I took advantage of the $3 a month for six months for them worth it for my favorite Westerns now in HD. I've been recording more than than usual movies being home more to watch when I want. This addition is great.
 
It's 2020 HD is pretty well mainstream by now, I think it's high time ALL TV channels should broadcast in HD at least.

Does anybody remember when TV Channels transitioned from B&W to Color? I remember B&W Channels when I was about 5 or 6
then Color TV started happening, but I don't know if you bought a Color TV were some channels still broadcasting in B&W?
 
It's 2020 HD is pretty well mainstream by now, I think it's high time ALL TV channels should broadcast in HD at least.

Does anybody remember when TV Channels transitioned from B&W to Color? I remember B&W Channels when I was about 5 or 6
then Color TV started happening, but I don't know if you bought a Color TV were some channels still broadcasting in B&W?
The answer to that is yes. There were many programs in B&W in the middle 60s. There were not two different broadcasts either, they both lived on the same channel/frequency. Same signal, just depending on whether you had a color TV or B&W is what you saw.
 
It's 2020 HD is pretty well mainstream by now, I think it's high time ALL TV channels should broadcast in HD at least.
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If we are talking about OTA broadcast TV, then broadcasting in SD allows stations to multi-cast more subchannels than they would be able to carry otherwise. I would rather have my local OTA station carry BUZZR in SD, than not be able to carry it at all.
 
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It's 2020 HD is pretty well mainstream by now, I think it's high time ALL TV channels should broadcast in HD at least.

Does anybody remember when TV Channels transitioned from B&W to Color? I remember B&W Channels when I was about 5 or 6
then Color TV started happening, but I don't know if you bought a Color TV were some channels still broadcasting in B&W?
The boxes for TV antennas at Radio Shack always said"Color TV antenna" just so people would know it wasn't just for B&W.
 
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The boxes for TV antennas at Radio Shack always said"Color TV antenna" just so people would know it wasn't just for B&W.
Naw, it was more like "if you want color TV you need this color TV antenna!" We see the same thing today with HD antennas and recently the indoor 4K antenna. Some, if not many, people will think that they need to go buy a new antenna to receive these OTA services. Of course we know that you can receive all of these services, 4K when it gets here, with the same antenna you have always used. Just to touch the base, because of the ongoing repack of channels you may need a new antenna if the one you have is UHF only and your local area is moving to some VHF channels.
 
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Many programs were still broadcast in B&W for years after color TV came out.

It was a lot more expensive to produce a color program than B&W, and many wanted there to be more color sets in people’s homes before making the investment.

Plus, especially in the early days, B&W was sharper, and more stable.
 
Sorry if I get any of this wrong, but this is the way I remember it:

In the early days, there were 2 competing color schemes. One was being pushed by RCA/NBC and the other by CBS. At first, the CBS system was adopted, but no one wanted to make TVs for that system because it was too expensive, and it never caught on. CBS dropped that color system. The FCC wanted to adopt a new color standard and the RCA/NBC system won over CBS's proposal. CBS sulked for years and did not have any color programs, while NBC was an early adopter of color TV shows.
 
The boxes for TV antennas at Radio Shack always said"Color TV antenna" just so people would know it wasn't just for B&W.
And of course, those were the only type of antenna available. So, people would buy one and think "Oh great, now I need to go buy a new color TV to go with it, if I want to be able to watch anything." :biggrin2

Naw, it was more like "if you want color TV you need this color TV antenna!" We see the same thing today with HD antennas and recently the indoor 4K antenna. Some, if not many, people will think that they need to go buy a new antenna to receive these OTA services. Of course we know that you can receive all of these services, 4K when it gets here, with the same antenna you have always used. Just to touch the base, because of the ongoing repack of channels you may need a new antenna if the one you have is UHF only and your local area is moving to some VHF channels.
Let's not forget that the reason many people were able to get by with UHF-only antennas was because, in the digital transition, many stations that had previously been on VHF frequencies chose to move to UHF. So, viewers may have been able to get all of the major networks with a VHF-only antenna before the digital transition, and then found out that they needed a UHF antenna to get the new digital signals. If they happened to switch to a UHF-only antenna, they will now once again need a new antenna (or go back to using their old VHF antenna, if they still have it) now that some stations are being forced to repack back into the VHF range. No wonder some, if not many, people think that they need to go buy a new antenna each time we go through one of these transitions.

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Plus, especially in the early days, B&W was sharper, and more stable.
That was always a nice benefit in the analog days, if you lived in an area without reliable OTA reception, much like myself. When the signal was not stable enough to produce a color picture, I could at least still watch a snowy black-and-white picture. The only modern equivalent to that would be with streaming. If your connection is not reliable enough to deliver a HD picture, then it will buffer, and maybe switch resolution to SD to use less bandwidth.
 
Color TVs were very expensive when first introduced (think 77" OLED) and, as explained above, championed by NBC (owned by RCA) in order to sell TVs. So the first shows were NBC and very few of those. For those who wonder why NBC is called the "Peacock Network" it is because, before the airing of a show, they would have an animated peacock open up its tail feathers all in different colors and announce, "The following program is brought to you "In Living Color". (Which also explains the title of the Wayan's comedy show that came much later)

The first shows I remember were "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" and "Bonanza". We had one family up the street who actually bought one! I remember that his father worked for WQXI (the Atlanta AM station that was the model for the later TV show, "WKRP In Cincinnati") and also had a basement full of shortwave equipment. So he may not have been "rich" (and almost surely wasn't as these were all post WWII clapboard houses) so I bet he was an enthusiastic 'first adaptor' who would have posted here.

And I remember the shocking news from his son (and my friend, Johnny) that Little Joe's jacket was GREEN!
 
Many programs were still broadcast in B&W for years after color TV came out.

It was a lot more expensive to produce a color program than B&W, and many wanted there to be more color sets in people’s homes before making the investment.

Plus, especially in the early days, B&W was sharper, and more stable.

I wish at least some of the Mister Ed episodes were in color.


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