Radio: High Color

Color-TV hearings before the Federal Communications Commission in Washington got down to figures last week. Radio Corporation of America’s Elmer W. Engstrom. vice president in charge of research, cautiously estimated that color converters for present black & white receivers would cost from $125 to $175.

Sets built especially to receive color transmissions, comparable to a black & white receiver in the $795 class, may sell for as high as $1,000. For color sets comparable to black & white receivers now being sold for $250, the price range will be from $400 to $700.

Londoners, thronging last week to the annual “Radio Olympia” exhibit, got their first glimpse of British color-TV (based on the same system developed in the U.S. by CBS). They found the colors pretty but strangely light, as though the image had been painted in watercolors instead of oils. Color-TV for the British public seems at least ten years off, but the manufacturers, Pye Ltd., were trying to sell closed-circuit installations to department stores, hospitals, universities. A Pye official even saw an atomic future for color-TV: “In industrial process, the watching of color changes at different parts of the reaction is of prime importance,” he said. “With color-TV, the controller can see all that is scanned by the camera without endangering himself.”