Its a bit of history regarding television in Australia, from B&W to the transition to colour In 1975 and the trial of colour in 1967 by the ABC.
Plus a boy singing with the most unique voice for a boy I have ever heard , interesting walk back in time too.

http://televisionau.com/2014/10/40-years-of-colour-tv.html

Interesting article.

Could the boy be Jamie Redfern who toured the U.S. with Liberace?

Wayne.

Could the boy be Jamie Redfern who toured the U.S. with Liberace?


Yes. The front title says he was aged 9 at the time of that video. Now aged 60.

"The Government, however, was maintaining its slow and steady approach — with Postmaster-General Alan Hulme insisting that the transition to colour was not going to be a rush job, taking into account the long term investment by government, industry and viewers on new equipment."

Bureaucrat Hulme, what a 'control-freak', funding for new equipment was not a problem, commercial stations were rolling in money.

Back in the day the Postmaster-General role almost attracted clicked heels and stiff salutes. He could even lay down the law to ABC management. How times have changed.

He could even lay down the law to ABC management. How times have changed.

These days the ABC is a law unto itself. How we yearn for some leadership on that front. The ABC today is like the former NSW Roads and Traffic Authority was about ten years ago when public servants just took money off government and did as they pleased with it. I was so happy when the state government simply abolished the whole department and started afresh. The workers got carried over to the new department but it was under no uncertain terms that everyone and everything was "under new management".

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Yes Brad, precursor to the RTA was the DMR - Department of Main Roads

Also known (for good reason) as the Department of Mates and Relatives.

The ABC is a branch of the Labor Party.

Fact for Mr Hulme: Sometimes zero spending was required to broadcast colour in the late 1960s: Videotape shows from England sent PAL signal right through transmitter (that's why they call PAL/NTSC/SECAM 'compatible' I guess.) The regulators' response was to mandate muting of colourburst and banning importation of TV receivers from Europe. I'm not against sensible regulation, but that was a bit 'bloody-mind-ed'.

Yes, initially the chroma was present but the burst was shaved off by the transmitter / studio's sync generator.

However with a bit of circuitry and a little tweaky-box on the end of a cable you could modify many TVs to lock to the chroma in the picture - this was possible with PAL due to the clever maths involved. Many techs did this. You had a reference oscillator fine tuning knob and a push-button that would toggle the PAL flip-flop to the correct phase. It generally worked quite well, however it did show up group-delay issues with some B&W transmitters.

So the stations started notching out the chroma. Apparently that made life easier for older high-level-modulated transmitters.

Channel 7 in Sydney continued to use their 1960 vintage AWA transmitter for some years after the colour changeover,, modified with some bigger bottles in the modulator. I am told that, to fit in the rack, they had to be mounted sideways and, as a result, performance would deteriorate over about 6 months. In the TV service workshop and in the field, us savvy techs would notice the slowly-softening white to black step on the PM5544 test card of a morning. Then suddenly one morning it would be sharp again - the old transmitter had been treated to a new set of modulator bottles overnight!

QUOTE: However with a bit of circuitry and a little tweaky-box on the end of a cable you could modify many TVs

I saw one of these rigs in Bris c.1970: with a bit of tweaking by owner, a beautiful picture came in (of a broadcast British comedy.)
How did these work sans burst reference? Was the 4.43MHz subcarrier oscillator essentially freerunning with a trim knob?

I saw one of these rigs in Bris c.1970

O/T: so, New Vista, are you an American who spent time on Oz, or are you an expatriate?

QUOTE: are you expat?

I'm a Scot from East Vic; that's why I like the term "Scot-Free", like finding free stuff (thrifty)

Well it can be shown mathematically (not by me though!) that, with PAL, you can extract the burst reference from the actual colour information by virtue of the fact that the B-Y component is swung through 90 degrees on alternate lines. So the B-Y averages to zero degrees, et voila, there is your reference!

It works, too, I've seen it done!

Re "Scot-Free", we used to have a guy working for us in Melbourne who had a VERY interesting backgound.

He got out of Czechoslovakia just before WW2, went to India.
Married a local girl (who was much taller than he was.and a great cook)
Migrated to Australia in 1958. Drove cabs for a while, had 3 boys (all 6 foot 6 + and all truck drivers.)
Came to work for us in about 1980.

His accent was, let's say, interesting and would often cause a listener to enquire "Where are you from, Les?"

To which his inevitable answer was "I'm a bad Czech!"

Yes, these TVs receiving PAL transmissions with the burst stripped off really worked. The TVs were late 60s Euro PAL receivers that used the 7MHz channel, so British 8MHz sets wouldn't work. Furthermore, the Euro sets had varactor tuners, so one could find Aussie channels which were different frequency assignments to various European countries' mess of different channel locations & bandwidths.

The show I witnessed popped into colour after a bit of tweaking; it was from ABC station which I know used a microwave STL, so the PAL signal - sans burst - survived an old microwave link and no doubt an old clunker of B&W transmitter (AWA/Marconi?)

As I recall, the proud owner of the TV had to ride the handheld buggery box as the colour dropped out briefly once.