Bert's view is pretty much correct. In the 70's Leopold Harwood developed circuitry that adjusted flesh tones automatically for NTSC receivers. He was working in the group developing integrated-circuit TV and FM radio circuitry at RCA's Somerville, NJ facility. Jack Avins (inventor of the dual-triode VTVM and a host of FM detectors) headed up the group, which the Japanese called the Magnificent Seven. The group was the first to put whole subsystems into integrated circuit chips. The count-down FM stereo decoder was the first IC larger than 10,000 square mils and comprised some 200 bipolar transistors. Leo was a great engineer with over a hundred patents, many for really ingenious inventions. Perhaps his best known one was base ballasting for transistors, which made power transistors possible. Leo was one of the first to exploit the close matching of components that IC made possible. Leo was actually the first to use current mirrors, though the credit is popularly given to Widlar at National Semiconductor. Leo used a self-biased transistor to replace the diode in an earlier circuit of a gentleman at Sarnoff Labs whose name escapes me at this moment. Al Limberg ----- Original Message ----- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 4:35 PM Subject: [opendtv] Re: PAL > Al Limberg wrote: > > > The problem PAL was designed to overcome was the problems > > with piping composite video over telephone lines. > > Maybe we're talking about the same thing, but I thought it was meant to > solve the problem of colors shifting in receivers as a result of phase > distortion in transmission? The striking difference between PAL and > NTSC, to me, was always the much more natural colors, especially flesh > tones, in PAL. I remember that over here, you had to readjust the color > for every station, just about, in the late '60s. Whereas with PAL, there > was no adjustment at all. No knob. > > Bert > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: > > - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org > > - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.