South African TV

[Hartley118]

Funny thing is that in the 405 to 625 transition period people often preferred the 405 line pictures. Some of this was likely due to poor performance of early dual standard sets on 625. Low contrast and/or noisy pictures were a common problem. Valve UHF tuners were not exactly high performance. There is also a psycho-optical effect, when you can see the line structure the picture can appear sharper. Even though it isn't.

Odd thing this subjective crispness of 405 line pictures.  I recall it well - starting with the remarkable 12-inch Pye FV1 in 1951.  It's unfortunate and misleading that the only TV recordings we have from the 1950s are on fuzzy telefilm, giving the impression that pictures were then low definition.  They weren't! - they were sharp and crisp.

Progressing to 1964 on a 23-inch dual standard Murphy, the 405-line picture did have a visible line structure, but somehow had more punch than the 625-line BBC2 picture which lacked contrast and subjective sharpness.  Maybe those dual standard designs had been rushed into production too quickly?  They tended to be short of video gain.  And maybe there was a bit of ringing on the 405-line picture that contributed to the punch.

It was only in 1970 with a UHF-only Bush (with decent black level) that I felt we were at last seeing the full benefit of the 625-line picture.

Martin