819-line was an analog monochrome TV system developed and used in France [1] [2] as television broadcast resumed after World War II. Transmissions started in 1949 and were active up to 1985, although limited to France, Belgium and Luxembourg. [3] It is associated with CCIR System E and F. [3]
When Europe resumed TV transmissions after World War II (i.e. in the late 1940s and early 1950s) most countries standardized on 625-line television systems. The two exceptions were the British 405-line system, which had already been introduced in 1936, and the French 819-line system. During the 1940s René Barthélemy had already reached 1,015 lines [1] and even 1,042 lines.
On November 20, 1948, François Mitterrand, the then Secretary of State for Information, decreed a broadcast standard of 819 lines developed by Henri de France; [1] [4] broadcasting began at the end of 1949 in this higher definition format. It was used in France by TF1, and in Monaco by Tele Monte Carlo. [5] [6]
Some 819-line TV sets were available, like the Grammont 504-A-31 from 1951 [7] and the Philips 14TX100 multi-standard 625/819-line TV from 1952. [8] [9]
The system was also adopted (with limited bandwidth, affecting image resolution) in 1953 in Belgium [1] [4] by RTB and in 1955 in Luxembourg by Télé-Luxembourg . [10]
Broadcasts were discontinued in Belgium in February 1968, and in Luxembourg in September 1971. Despite some attempts to create a color SECAM version of the 819-line system, [1] France gradually abandoned the system in favor of the Europe-wide standard of 625-lines with the final 819-line transmissions taking place in Paris from the Eiffel Tower on 19 July 1983. [11]
Tele Monte Carlo in Monaco were the last broadcasters to transmit 819-line television, closing down their transmitter in 1985.
This was arguably the world's first high-definition television system, and, by today's standards, it could be called 736i (as it had 737 lines active, but one of the lines was composed of 2 halves) [12] with a maximum theoretical resolution of 408×368 line pairs (which in digital terms can be expressed as broadly equivalent to 816×736 pixels) with a 4:3 aspect ratio. By comparison with modern digital standards, 720p is 1,280×720 pixels, of which the 4:3 portion would be 960×720 pixels, while PAL DVDs have a resolution of 720×576 pixels.
The testcards used with the system had resolution gratings that went up to 900 TV lines. [13] [14] However, the theoretical picture quality far exceeded the capabilities of the analogue equipment of its time, and each 819-line channel occupied a wide 14 MHz of VHF bandwidth.
| Field frequency | Active picture | Field blanking | No. of broad pulses | Broad pulse width | Line frequency | Front porch | Line sync | Back porch | Active line time | Video/syncs ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 Hz | 737 lines | 41 lines | 1 per field | 20.0 μs | 20475 Hz | 0.5 μs | 2.5 μs | 5.0 μs | 40.8 μs | 70/30 |
819-lines were broadcast using two CCIR systems, System E and System F.
| CCIR System | Lines | Frame rate | Channel bandwidth(MHz) | Visual bandwidth(MHz) | Sound carrier offset | Vestigial sideband | Vision mod. | Sound mod. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E | 819 | 25 | 14 | 10 | ±11.15 (+ on odd numbered channels; − on even numbered channels) | 2.00 | Pos. | AM |
| F | 819 | 25 | 7 | 5 | +5.5 | 0.75 | Pos. | AM |
System E implementation provided very good (near HDTV) picture quality but with an uneconomical use of bandwidth; a 625/50 signal providing the same clarity as an 819-line image, but matted down 4:3 with the same number of lines, would still need nearly 6 MHz for the vision carrier alone (vs typical 5 to 6 MHz in actual use), and 5 MHz for 525/60 (vs typical 4.2 MHz), although a 405/50 transmission could get away with only 2.5 MHz (typical 3 MHz, as System A made no allowance for the Kell factor and thus had a "narrow pixel"/"tall line" appearance). Thus even an unusually crisp "standard" definition (or slightly soft 405-line) image only needed half, or even one-quarter the vision bandwidth of the 819-line system to give a "balanced" appearance, despite their lower overall resolution still seeming perfectly clear on the more affordable small-screen receivers often used in the pre-color era. With the usual additions of sound carrier and vestigial sideband the result was a combined signal that demanded approximately two to three times the bandwidth of more moderately specified standards, even when colour was added to them (as the color subcarrier resides within the luma signal space).
System E television channels were arranged as follows:
| Ch | Picture (MHz) | Sound (MHz) |
|---|---|---|
| F2 | 52.40 | 41.25 |
| F4 | 65.55 | 54.40 |
| F5 | 164.00 | 175.15 |
| F6 | 173.40 | 162.25 |
| F7 | 177.15 | 188.30 |
| F8 | 186.55 | 175.40 |
| F8a | 185.25 | 174.10 |
| F9 | 190.30 | 201.45 |
| F10 | 199.70 | 188.55 |
| F11 | 203.45 | 214.60 |
| F12 | 212.85 | 201.70 |
System F was an adapted 819-line system used in Belgium and Luxembourg as an answer to the bandwidth problem, using only half the original vision bandwidth and approximately half the sound carrier offset. It allowed French 819-line programming to squeeze into the 7 MHz VHF broadcast channels used in those neighboring countries, [3] albeit with a substantial loss of horizontal resolution (408×737 effective); although this still offered approximately twice the actual clarity of 405-line System A (twice the lines, roughly the same horizontal definition), the contrast between vertical and horizontal resolution would have made it seem perceptually softer than a 625 line signal with the same bandwidth. Use of System F was discontinued in Belgium in February 1968, and in Luxembourg in September 1971.
Between 1976 and 1981 when French channel TF1 was switching area by area to the new analog 625-lines UHF network with SECAM colour, some transmitters and gapfillers broadcast the 819-line signal in UHF. [17] When switching to 625-lines, most gapfillers did not change UHF channel (e.g. many gapfillers using this transmission located in French Alps near Grenoble, Mont Salève and Geneva began broadcasting on UHF channel 42, and continue to use this frequency to this day). They were switched to 625-lines in June 1981.
This is a list of nations that used the 819-line system for television broadcasting:
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analog television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields per second, and associated with CCIR analogue broadcast television systems B, D, G, H, I or K. The articles on analog broadcast television systems further describe frame rates, image resolution, and audio modulation.
SECAM, also written SÉCAM, is an analog color television system that was used in France, Russia and some other countries or territories of Europe and Africa. It was one of three major analog color television standards, the others being PAL and NTSC. Like PAL, a SECAM picture is also made up of 625 interlaced lines and is displayed at a rate of 25 frames per second. However, due to the way SECAM processes color information, it is not compatible with the PAL video format standard. SECAM video is composite video because the luminance and chrominance are transmitted together as one signal.
Broadcasttelevision systems are the encoding or formatting systems for the transmission and reception of terrestrial television signals.
The Office de radiodiffusion-télévision française was the national agency charged, between 1964 and 1975, with providing public radio and television in France. All programming, especially news broadcasts, were under strict control of the national government.
HD-MAC was a broadcast television standard proposed by the European Commission in 1986, as part of Eureka 95 project. It belongs to the MAC - Multiplexed Analogue Components standard family. It is an early attempt by the EEC to provide High-definition television (HDTV) in Europe. It is a complex mix of analogue signal, multiplexed with digital sound, and assistance data for decoding (DATV). The video signal was encoded with a modified D2-MAC encoder.
The 405-line monochrome analogue television broadcasting system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting. The number of television lines influences the image resolution, or quality of the picture.
Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française was the French national public broadcaster television organization established on 9 February 1949 to replace the post-war "Radiodiffusion Française" (RDF), which had been founded on 23 March 1945 to replace Radiodiffusion Nationale (RN), created on 29 July 1939. It was replaced in its turn, on 26 June 1964, by the notionally less-strictly government controlled Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), which itself lasted until the end of 1974.
Analog high-definition television has referred to a variety of analog video broadcast television systems with various display resolutions throughout history.
RTL9 is a French-language Luxembourgish television channel shown in Luxembourg, France, Monaco, Africa and the French-speaking regions of Switzerland.
CCIR System B was the 625-line VHF analog broadcast television system which at its peak was adopted by more than one hundred countries, either with PAL or SECAM colour. It is usually associated with CCIR System G for UHF broadcasts.
The 567-line television system was an experimental late 1940s proposal by Philips of the Netherlands for a European television system, with some test transmissions being made from Eindhoven.
625-line is a late 1940s European analog standard-definition television resolution standard. It consists of a 625-line raster, with 576 lines carrying the visible image at 25 interlaced frames per second. It was eventually adopted by countries using 50 Hz utility frequency as regular TV broadcasts resumed after World War II. With the introduction of color television in the 1960s, it became associated with the PAL and SECAM analog color systems.
CCIR System G, also known as the "Gerber Standard", is an analog broadcast television system used in sixty countries around the world for UHF channels. System G is generally associated with System B for VHF.
CCIR System H is an analog broadcast television system used in Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Malta, Slovenia and Liberia on UHF bands, paired with System B on VHF. It was associated with PAL colour.
CCIR System I is an analogue broadcast television system. It was first used in the Republic of Ireland starting in December 1961 as the 625-line broadcasting standard to be used on VHF Band I and Band III, sharing Band III with 405-line System A signals radiated in the north and east of the country. The Republic of Ireland slowly extended its use of System I onto the UHF bands.
525-line is an American standard-definition television resolution used since July 1, 1941, mainly in the context of analog TV broadcast systems. It consists of a 525-line raster, with 480 lines carrying the visible image at 30 interlaced frames per second. It was eventually adopted by countries using 60 Hz utility frequency as TV broadcasts resumed after World War II. With the introduction of color television in the 1950s, it became associated with the NTSC analog color standard.
CCIR System E is an analog broadcast television system used in France and Monaco, associated with monochrome 819-line high resolution broadcasts. Transmissions started in 1949 and ended in 1985.
CCIR System L is an analog broadcast television system used in France, Luxembourg, Monaco and Chausey. It was the last system to use positive video modulation and AM sound.
CCIR System K is an analog broadcast television system used in countries that adopted CCIR System D on VHF, and in Benin, Guinea, Republic of the Congo, Togo, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Réunion, Rwanda, Chad, Central African Republic, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and French Guiana.
CCIR System C is an analog broadcast television system used between 1953 and 1978 in Belgium, Italy, Netherlands and Luxembourg as a compromise between Systems B and L. Used on VHF only.
