Also included, for amusement, are the now defunct 405 and 819
line systems. Britain came within a hair's breadth of having
NTSC colour added to its 405 line system (with a 2.6578125 MHz
colour subcarrier), but in the end, it was decided that it would
stimulate the economy if everyone was forced to buy a new TV
set: so we migrated temporarily to 625 NTSC-I (BBC experimental
specificiation issued March 1963, 4.4296875MHz subcarrier, very
impressive chroma bandwidth ) and then finally to the politically
expedient 625 PAL (a system with European decoder patents was
chosen in an attempt to exclude Japanese TV manufacturers from
the European markets).
The French 819 line system was HDTV before its time, but it was
bandwidth hungry; and the compromise bandwidth restriction of
system F completely defeated the object. As far as the author
knows, no 819 line colour experiments were ever conducted.
(DWK) |
