Black and While programs on Color Tv

Filmed B&W programs are often transferred with a color camera or telecine and transmitted as a color signal. The transfer equipment might not be set up correctly.

It's also possible your TV's tracking is off, but you say some B&W programs look okay, so that's not likely.

I occasionally watch this, and haven't noticed any unusual color casts in B&W shows ("Bat Masterson", "Sea Hunt", etc).

I've noticed something similar on Blu-rays, both color and B&W. Scenes appearing in the supplemental material have a different color balance or cast, even though they're presumably derived from the same source. "North by Northwest" and "Young Frankenstein" are good examples.

Could it be that these are programs/movies that were 'colorized' in the very early days of that process -- which rendered ghastly results IMO, and which have simply never been re-colorized with new techniques?

Jonesy

No. No one would colorize an entire TV series, as the cost would be outrageous.

The newer computer-controlled colorizings are excellent.

Neither. The color burst has to be turned off for B&W programming, so the color killer circuit doesn't create artifacts. Stations used to be very careful about this, but over the years some just don't bother anymore.

Also an artifact of NTSC - Never The Same Colour -

John :-#)#

Not true. NTSC is neither inherently inaccurate or unstable.

In any case, I think this is digital, and doesn't used NTSC encoding.

The UK PAL (Phase Alternate Line) inverts the subcarrier phase on alternate lines so phase distortion during transmission cancells itself out - NTSC doesn't and is inherently prone to drift, hence it was dubbed; Never Twice the Same Colour.

Aparently the US military incorporated a swinging phase error in their GPS satelites to stop all and sundry using it without the decoding key - it was a British engineer that cracked it using a technique based on PAL technology.

It may be the source material, too. These days, most everything is digital, even what the stations play from probably comes off of a computer.

You don't mention where you are. ThisTV is from Weigel Communications, which is based in Chicago and broadcasts on WCIU (ThisTV is 26.5). One of the technicians (hvs10trk) is a regular on this forum:

Drift of /what/? I've wasted many hours explaining why NTSC is, overall, better than PAL.

The US video distribution system never had much trouble with phase errors. European systems did.

Note quite. The GPS system did have the higher resolution data encrypted. There were several systems to improve accuracy without the keys, such as broadcasting it on FM radio subcarriers, differential units (multiple antennas) and so on.

During operation Desert Storm (aka the First Gulf War), there were not enough millitary GPS units to go around so President Clinton ordered the encryption turned off.

It has stayed off except in a few limited areas, such as a small portion of the area between Cuba and the US.

That's why there have been proposed replacement systems by Russia and the EU, there is always the real possibility that the US will turn on encryption again and everyone's "SatNav" will be useless. As in "about 100 meters, maybe two hundred, maybe 100 meters ago, turn in some direction and go for a while".

Geoff.

Sigh. The NTSC was created for B&W television.

Acronyms are always changing, for example:

GSM (French for mobile system group) -> Global System for Mobiles. DVD (Digital Video Disk) -> Digital Versatile Disk

Geoff.

But they traded color drift for high-brightness ficker; not necessarily a good choice, since the early color drift of NTSC, being due to equipment instabilities, was soon fixed by better gear, while PAL's flicker problem, having been designed in, persisted.

Isaac

I have a PAL TV set that displays very bright white as black. Someday I'll replace it. :-)

Geoff.

Yeah but if they left the color burst on, it would present as a colored snow all through the picture.

The OP is talking about a dominance of green, which I've seen too on some B&W telecasts. I've also seen it there up to a commercial break, then the next segment is normal.

I always figured it was something at the station rather than the print they were using. Some peice of equipment in the chain that normalizes color or something which needs to be turned off or bypassed for B&W shows.

-bruce snipped-for-privacy@ripco.com

As far as I know, this is closer to the truth. The consensus has generally been that Never Twice the Same Color was due to poor studio practices, not problems inherent in NTSC. To give a small example... The early episodes of "Barney Miller" were shot on cameras that were not properly aligned or calibrated. This is easily visible.

Flicker is due to the 50Hz field rate, its only noticeable if you're used to

Which really is a design flaw, there was nothing that required it, and a 60Hz rate screen is not really a problem with 50Hz lighting.

The need to be synced to the power line frequency was needed in the 1930's when the 405 line system was developed due to arc lights being used for studio lighting. By the time PAL was developed (early 1960's) arc lights were long gone.

It was just done to be incompatible with the US.

The US got you back, the number one design criteria of ATSC was that it was not DVB-T compatible.

Geoff.

You can get tablets for that.