Color television is a television transmission technology that includes information on the color of the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It is considered an improvement on the earliest television technology, monochrome or black-and-white television, in which the image is displayed in shades of gray (grayscale). Television broadcasting stations and networks in most parts of the world upgraded from black-and-white to color transmission between the 1960s and the 1980s. The invention of color television standards is an important part of the history of television, and it is described in the technology of television article.
A test card, also known as a test pattern or start-up/closedown test, is a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active but no program is being broadcast.
Test Card F is a test card that was created by the BBC and used on television in the United Kingdom and in countries elsewhere in the world for more than four decades. Like other test cards, it was usually shown while no programmes were being broadcast. It was the first to be transmitted in colour in the UK and the first to feature a person, and has become an iconic British image regularly subject to parody.
Carole Hersee is an English costume designer who is best known for appearing in the centrepiece of the United Kingdom television Test Card F, which aired on BBC Television from 1967 to 1998. As such, she became the most aired face in British television history.
PALplus is an analogue television broadcasting system aimed to improve and enhance the PAL format by allowing 16:9 aspect ratio broadcasts, while remaining compatible with existing television receivers, defined by ITU recommendation BT.1197-1. Introduced in 1993, it followed experiences with the HD-MAC and D2-MAC, hybrid analogue-digital widescreen formats that were incompatible with PAL receivers. It was developed at the University of Dortmund in Germany, in cooperation with German terrestrial broadcasters and European and Japanese manufacturers.
The Indian-head test pattern is a test card that was introduced in 1939 by RCA of Harrison, New Jersey, for calibration of the RCA TK-1 monoscope. It was widely used by television stations worldwide during the black-and-white television broadcasting era. It features a drawing of a Native American wearing a headdress along with numerous graphic elements that test different display aspects.
Pye Ltd was an electronics company founded in 1896 in Cambridge, England, as a manufacturer of scientific instruments. The company merged with EKCO in 1960. Philips of the Netherlands acquired a majority shareholding in 1967, and later gained full ownership.
The Philips PM5544 is a television pattern generator, most commonly used to provide a television station with a complex test card commonly referred to as a Philips Pattern or PTV Circle pattern. The content and layout of the pattern was designed by engineer Finn Hendil in the Philips TV laboratory in Copenhagen under supervision of chief engineer Erik Helmer Nielsen in 1966–67. The equipment, the PM5544 Test Pattern Generator, which generates the pattern, was made by engineer Finn Hendil and his group in 1968–69. The same team would also develop the Spanish TVE test card in 1973.
RÚV is a free-to-air channel of RÚV, the Icelandic public broadcaster, launched in 1966. The channel broadcasts primarily news, sports, entertainment, cultural programs, children's material, original Icelandic programming as well as American, British and Nordic content. Among its highest-rated programs are the comedy sketch show Spaugstofan, mystery drama Ófærð (Trapped) and Fréttir (News).
BBC Select was an overnight television service run by the BBC during the hours when BBC1 or BBC2 had closed down, usually between 2am and 6am. The channel showed programming intended for specialist audiences, such as businessmen, lawyers, nurses and teachers, and was designed to be viewed after broadcast via a video recording. It was funded by a subscription, and most programming was scrambled.
The Home-Made Car (1963) is a short, silent film directed by James Hill about a young man who rebuilds a vintage car and finds love. The film was nominated for an Academy Award, and won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Giuseppina is a 1960 short British documentary film produced by James Hill, which was filmed in 1959, in Mandriole, Emilia-Romagna, near Ravenna in the north east of Italy. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Production of the film was sponsored by the British Petroleum company (BP), which also distributed the film. The BP webpage summarizes the film as, "set at an Italian petrol station where various characters pass through on their onward journey, while entertaining and playing with the attendant's daughter, Giuseppina."
Service Information was a regular slot in the early days of colour television in the United Kingdom that gave out engineering information for the radio and television trade. These announcements were made by the BBC continuity announcers of the time and were read over basic in-vision captions. The “programme” was broadcast on BBC2 during trade test transmissions and was not aimed at the general public or billed in the schedule. They went out three times a day 10.00a.m., 11.30a.m., and 2.30p.m. each weekday from 23 October 1967 to 1975, then once a day at 10.30a.m. from 1975 until the final broadcast on 23 December 1982. The IBA had a similar programme called Engineering Announcements.
The Central Television of the USSR was the state television broadcaster of the Soviet Union.
Korean Central Television is a television service operated by the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee, a state-owned broadcaster in North Korea. It is broadcast terrestrially via the Pyongyang TV Tower in Moranbong-guyok, Pyongyang, streamed via the government-run internet television service Manbang, and also uplinked via satellite.
The Telefunken FuBK is an electronic analogue television test card developed in West Germany in the late-1960s and used with analogue 625-lines PAL broadcasts. Not as popular as the Philips PM5544, nevertheless it saw widespread use in West Germany and some other European, Asian and African countries, and by some commercial TV stations in Australia as well as a NTSC 525-lines variant used in Argentina.
The TVE colour test card was an electronic analogue TV test card adopted by Televisión Española with the introduction of PAL colour broadcasts in 1975. It is notable for its unique design, created by the Danish engineer Finn Hendil in 1973, under the supervision of Erik Helmer Nielsen for Philips, the same team that developed the popular Philips PM5544 test pattern. It replaced a previous black and white version developed by Eduardo Gavilán.
UEIT - Universal Electronic Test Chart is a Soviet test card, designed to test TVs operating in the analog SECAM colour standard.
The EIA 1956 resolution chart is a test card originally designed to be used with black and white analogue TV systems, based on the previous RMA 1946 Resolution Chart. It consisted of a printed chart filmed by a TV camera and displayed on a TV screen. Inspecting the chart allowed to check for defects like ringing, geometric distortions, raster scan linearity, cathode-ray tube uniformity and lack of image resolution. If needed, a technician could used it to perform the necessary hardware adjustments.
