Cozi-TV on 30-2 Hartford

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:37:12 -0800 (PST), Martin Waters <martinjwaters@yahoo.com> said:

> They used to run the NBC sports channel (WVIT is an O&O) on 30.3,
> but NBC moved it to cable nationally.

I think you mean Universal Sports.  NBCU only owns a fraction of it
(less than a controlling interest), which may explain why Comcast
hasn't put it back on here in eastern Mass.

> Speaking of picture resolution, they showed (at least for
> Christmastime) a lot of 1950s' British TV -- Robin Hood-, Sherlock
> Holmes-type stuff. Some of it looks really grainy. I'm wondering if
> some of it's from kinescopes. Did Britain initially use a TV system
> with even fewer lines than the original U.S. standard?

You betcha!  The historic British television standard was System A,
405 lines, interlaced, field rate 50 Hz, positive video modulation
with AM audio below the lower sideband.  Originally introduced in 1937
with double-sideband modulation, vestigial sideband (pioneered in the
U.S.) was introduced after the War by filtering out most of the upper
sideband (rather than the lower sideband as done in all other systems
except the French 819-line System E, which also had to cope with
positive video modulation and AM audio below the video carrier on some
VHF channels).

Some evidence indicates that the BBC was prepared to introduce
colo(u)r television in the early 1960s using NTSC-A, but when the
government decided to move television to the UHF band using the new
625i50 System I (first introduced in Ireland, but also adopted in the
UK and South Africa), it was felt that adopting the German PAL color
standard would provide for easier program(me) sharing with other
European state broadcasters and news-gathering cooperatives.  Thus,
System A was never operated in color, although it could have been (the
equipment was ready for testing, and the modifications to NTSC were
slight).  Similarly, the French System E was considered too difficult
to adapt to color; both systems were phased out in the early 1980s, at
which point television broadcasting on the VHF band totally ceased in
Britain.  The BBC and the ITA (as it then was) had operated System A
on VHF and System I with PAL color on UHF in parallel for more than a
decade by that point; BBC 2 and later Channel 4 would be licensed for
PAL-I/UHF only.

Our historic television system, for what it's worth, is System M.  The
Japanese used the only slightly different System J (they differ in
black level and frame rate -- 30 Hz for System J vs. 29.97 Hz for
System M when used with NTSC color).  NTSC-M is or was used in all
other countries that use 6-MHz television channels and 60 Hz
electrical supplies, including South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines,
Diego Garcia, most of the Caribbean including Cuba and the Dominican
Republic but not the French territories, most of Central America,
Guyana, Venezuela, and western South America.  Vietnam also used
SECAM-M.  PAL-M has only ever been used in Brazil.  System N is a
625i50 system for 6-MHz channels, and is primarily used in
southeastern South America, with PAL color.

-GAWollman