Purple tinted screens - Were they really purple?

[Heatercathodeshort]

Just to make it clear. The glass of the screen was tinted grey. Mullard called it a 'grey glass screen' The phosphor remained white in all cases.
Some external filters similar to David's Dodo [?] 12" model on the right of his picture had very dark purple filters but soon lost popularity due to their sinister appearance giving the impression that the viewer might be sucked into a black hole. J.

[Hartley118]

Interestingly my projection screen is light grey rather than white. It's claimed to give improved picture contrast.

Martin

[Colourstar]

Here's a Pye VT4 that is neither pink nor grey not tinted at all for that matter. And yes the implosion screen is still in place. This set was last used in the 1960s. The owner remember's watching Churchill's funeral on it in 1965....

Steve

[Okto1984]

I have never seen a purple TV before. Just grey and black. I'm wondering, what colour is the picture when a purple set is turned on?

[FERNSEH]

Another famous set with a purple safety window is the 12" Pye FV1 and the console version the FV1C. Both made in 1951.
Also derivatives, the 16" FV2C and the 14" FV4C also had purple screens.

DFWB.

[mark pirate]

Pye seem to have been very fond of fitting pink implosion screens to their sets,
it seems to have started in 1950 with the LV30, LV51, V09 and V4/V4C. Models after 1955 were fitted with plain implosion screens.

Earlier sets such as the D16T, B18T and LV20 models used the same CRT's, but had plain perspex screens.
I have several period adverts referring to the Pye 'Black Screen' models, but all the sets I have ever seen were pink?

I think it was just a marketing ploy, Bush never used anything other than clear glass for the implosion screen....

Mark

[broadgage]

Depending on the phosphor used in the CRT, the use of a purple or pink filter might have given a truer white picture, at least in theory.

Fluorescent lamps are available in various colours that appear subjectively white. Yet when a scene lit by such lamps is filmed, the resultant pictures have an unpleasant greenish cast.
The prevent this, a light magenta filter is applied to the lamps (if they cant be removed/turned off)

I wonder if someone observed that a working TV on say a film set appeared in the finished colour movie to have a green tinted picture and found that this could be prevented by applying a pink/purple/magenta filter to the TV screen.

In actual use of course the filter over the TV scree was not needed and the "white" even if not true was fine in practice.

[cheerfulcharlie]

If you watched 'Storage Hunters UK' this week on Dave, one of the lockers had a couple of very old TVs in, pretty sure I saw one with a purple screen.

[FERNSEH]

Manufactured in 1953 the Pye V2 did not have a pink screen.

DFWB.

[llama]

Related (just).
Down the Kingsland Road market in the late '50s, early '60s I remember seeing various Del-boy types flogging add-on screens which were tinted blue to the top and green to the bottom. Instant colour TV! At least for a panoramic nature shot. Punters probably actually enjoyed them - the eye would likely ignore the effect for most material.
Graham

[FERNSEH]

More pinkishness. The Pye LV30C.

DFWB.

[mark pirate]

I think the last set to use the 'pink screen' was the VT4, strange that the earlier V2 was not fitted with one?

Mark

[dave walsh]

The LV30 is my set p16 [in a console] that I thought purple not pink but It looks both in that photo Don't suppose it matters that much. It doesn't seem all that "clear" whether the colourisation actually did make such an actual difference to the image [re the punters anyway] or was it just a sales gimmick in the end?

Dave W

[dseymo1]

Originally Posted by Heatercathodeshort

I took these two pictures early this morning. It is frosty and slightly misty here in W. Sussex. One is taken through a mildly pink filter from a scrap V4. It appears to cut through the mist, seen better from the actual pictures.

I suspect that it's acting as a UV filter, quite possibly irrespective of the tint.

[Heatercathodeshort]

Originally Posted by Colourstar

Here's a Pye VT4 that is neither pink nor grey not tinted at all for that matter. And yes the implosion screen is still in place.

That looks very strange. I have never seen a V4/VT4 with a clear Perspex implosion screen. It was advertised as a 'Black Screen' model.

I wonder if the original implosion screen was replaced at the request of it's original owner. The mask in the V series was made of black painted wood.

[mark pirate]

That looks very strange. I have never seen a V4/VT4 with a clear Perspex implosion screen. It was advertised as a 'Black Screen' model.

I have quite a collection of Pye advertising promoting the 'Black Screen', but all the sets I have seen have purple/pink implosion screens.

There was a lot of promotion of the V4's screen angle being designed to stop reflections, I think it was really just marketing guff!

Mark

[Heatercathodeshort]

The pink filter was usually to be seen in the five channel V4. The VT4 has a rather dark grey filter. I will take a picture of the example of a VT4 at the Dulwich museum this Friday. It is very dark.

Attached is a screen shot taken from the Ferguson 988T. The picture improvement is mainly in the detail without affecting peak white or 'blacks'.

The early Pye models when new, before they had faded somewhat, certainly gave the picture a rose tinted glow! It is interesting to note that the 988T filter enhances the visibility of the ion burn on the MW31-18 CRT, not shown on this picture.
Regards, John.

[dominicbeesley]

Originally Posted by mark pirate

There was a lot of promotion of the V4's screen angle being designed to stop reflections, I think it was really just marketing guff!

No, I'd say it really does work. The forward and down facing plate does tend to reflect less from walls/standard lamps etc and the tinted implosion screen really does do its job. I was greatly impressed with the deepness of the picture on my example when it worked... now I really must get on and rewind that lopt...