405 still alive? (A British TV WI)

Partly inspired by reading this page (though it's not that brilliant).

Seems like there had been demonstrations of modified NTSC colour demonstrations as far back as the 1950s, and even as late as 1965, ITV companies were lobbying for some sort of 405-line colour service.

So my question is this: supposing the powers that be had ecided to ignore the Pilkington report and move ahead with some sort of basic colour (NTSC or maybe SECAM?) 405-line service much earlier, not launch BBC2 in B&W 625 lines, and not have to build an expensive new 625-line transmitter network all over the country?

Obviously NTSC (nicknamed "Never Twice the Same Colour") had distinct disadvantages from 'multipath reflections and other prblems' [as stated here] over later rival colour systems, so obviously there were distinct advantages for waiting until this development took place.

Butwhat of the advantages? Mainly I would imagine due to bandwidth: the original linked page claims that had UHF bands been used with this system, it might easily fit 6 or 7 new stations as well as the original 2 of VHF, and allegedly twice the same amount of channels on a future digital service. Obviously, though, at the expense of quality.

I doubt we'd be seeing many more of these channels immediately- there were vague plans in reality to use spare carrying capacity to create a second ITV network (eventually to become Channel 4 in the '80s) or a BBC3 (though due to costs, it might not have been done). Maybe with all the money that might have been saved from less extensive modifications to the transmitter network, these might be realised? Maybe eventually an additional channel to that might eventually follow some time into the 1990s.

Any other thoughts?
 
If Britain was using a system that was simultaneously incompatible with European PAL and also American 60 Hz 525-line NTSC, would that mean that televisions would be more expensive in Britain in the longer run due to lacking economies of scale?

The first linked article claims that Sky television could have been offered UHF band- wouldn't that imply that it wouldn't actually be a satellite anymore? :confused:
 
If Britain was using a system that was simultaneously incompatible with European PAL and also American 60 Hz 525-line NTSC, would that mean that televisions would be more expensive in Britain in the longer run due to lacking economies of scale?

Working from a POD of essentilly the early 1960s, Britain wasn't actually part of the EU and also manufactured quite a lot of its own stuff. So perhaps not in the short term, though I dare say when foreign imports became a bigger deal (I think Japanese models particularly out-competed the old, less reliable British makes, but where manufactured I don't know), it might well make things more expensive.

Consider though that not all of Europe uses PAL- France at least uses SECAM. Then I don't think it matters, as Britain and perhaps Ireland were the only places to use 405-line in Europe anyway, and Ireland had 625 2 years before we did. France I think used the very unusual 819-line system at one point, though not in colour IIRC.

A common European standard might be what pushed things that way in OTL- 625 line B&W if not colour.

The first linked article claims that Sky television could have been offered UHF band- wouldn't that imply that it wouldn't actually be a satellite anymore? :confused:

Sky does actually broadcast some channels on digital terrestrial nowadays, so it's not impossible to believe that the analogue form wouldn't carry one of the channels- doubtful mind you. Also, I think the original Sky Channel carried on cable, though it started out as an obscure experimental satellite station.

Probably likely some Murdoch-owned enterprise would fill one of the extra niches, mind you, if there are around nine possible allocations. And then, would there have been as much need for Sky? (Remember it was a loss-making venture to begin with.) I doubt we'd get any of these extra channels 'til the 1990s anyway, as the political will is just not there for quite such open commercial competition before then.
 
There was a 405 line version of the PAL system, PAL-A, which used existing VHF frequencies, and was pitched to the U.K in the early 1960's, and test transmissions for said system may have been undertaken, to compare with a 405 line NTSC based system, but both the PAL-A format & 405 line NTSC, was eventually rejected in favour of the 625 line PAl-I system...
 
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Any other thoughts?

Nice choice of WI, Lynzie. :cool: NTSC-A is one standard that, along with Brazil's PAL-M, I find to be very interesting. Even though the final result for NTSC was due to pressure from RCA, one of the biggest electronics companies in North America at the time.

If the UK stuck with the original 1953 NTSC specs for colour TV, then it could easily work without additional modification (and probably export that to Cyprus, Israel/Palestine/Jordan, etc.). There are, however, some issues that need to be addressed, of which a big one is interference. I remember reading somewhere than an RTÉ channel (I forget which channel and which region of Ireland) had to be moved since it was interfering with one of the Spanish channels, which just happened to use the same channel as RTÉ. There are going to be similar problems here, particularly in the case with Ireland, France, and the Scandinavian countries with UHF, which would need to be addressed.

Another area would be stereo sound - obviously, NICAM is not going to fit on a 405-line channel (neither, just for sure, would NICAM fit on a 525-line channel here in North America). This limits the choice of stereo sound codecs, even more so with the positive modulation of System A, which means either shoehorning in BTSC or using an analogue codec like Germany's FM-FM/Zweiton.

Indeed, some of the problems that NTSC-A would have, due to positive modulation, been not too different from France's SÉCAM. To quote from Wiki:

Unlike PAL or NTSC, analog SECAM television cannot easily be edited in its native analog form. Because it uses frequency modulation, SECAM is not linear with respect to the input image (this is also what protects it against signal distortion), so electrically mixing two (synchronized) SECAM signals does not yield a valid SECAM signal, unlike with analog PAL or NTSC. For this reason, to mix two SECAM signals, they must be demodulated, the demodulated signals mixed, and are remodulated again. Hence, post-production is often done in PAL, or in component formats, with the result encoded or transcoded into SECAM at the point of transmission. Reducing the costs of running television stations is one reason for some countries' recent switchovers to PAL.

TVs currently sold in SECAM countries support both SECAM and PAL, and more recently composite video NTSC as well (though not usually broadcast NTSC, that is, they cannot accept a broadcast signal from an antenna). Although the older analog camcorders (VHS, VHS-C) were produced in SECAM versions, none of the 8 mm or Hi-band models (S-VHS, S-VHS-C, and Hi-8) recorded it directly. Camcorders and VCRs of these standards sold in SECAM countries are internally PAL. They use an internal SECAM to PAL converter for recording of broadcast TV transmitted in SECAM. The result could be converted back to SECAM in some models; most people buying such expensive equipment would have a multistandard TV set and as such would not need a conversion. Digital camcorders or DVD players (with the exception of some early models) do not accept or output a SECAM analog signal. However, this is of dwindling importance: since 1980 most European domestic video equipment uses French-originated SCART connectors, allowing the transmission of RGB signals between devices. This eliminates the legacy of PAL, SECAM, and NTSC color sub carrier standards.

In general, modern professional equipment is now all-digital, and uses component-based digital interconnects such as CCIR 601 to eliminate the need for any analog processing prior to the final modulation of the analog signal for broadcast. However, large installed bases of analog professional equipment still exist, particularly in third world countries. In most cases all processing within the TV-station is PAL and on the output line a PAL to SECAM trancoder is used before feeding the transmitter. This is because switchers and effect mixers can easily handle PAL (or NTSC) but the SECAM-signal can't be mixed in the same way due to the frequency modulation of the color information.

Likewise, in the case of Brazil's PAL-M standard, processing is done in NTSC but transmitted in PAL.

Just my 2¢.
 
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