german television sets

[ysl 462]

Hi, im interested in importing a german wega television set built for east germany during the communist period. primarily im buying it on design grounds however im interested to know whether their televisions work on the same system as ours ? i.e can i plug it in and use it or am i looking at building a more modern uk set in to the case ?

I already have a philco predictor and a kerracolor that i have rebuilt using 1980s bang and olufsen guts , As the chassis of b+o televisions are made up of several interconnected small chassis these are ideal for mounting in unusual shaped cases , while not actually having to modify the case in any way . thus they can both be reassembled as built if required.

[dave walsh]

Welcome to the forum YSL. This is the first ref to E German TV I have seen [although there are french imports]. If that is your focus [no pun intended] the film Goodbye Lenin might be of interest. A woman has been in a coma and attempts by relatives to convince her that the Wall is still up involve showing her old East German TV programs via VTR's. It was shown on Film 4 19/1/08 but should be repeated. Cheers Dave Walsh

[dsergeant]

It will no doubt be to the European System B, identical to our Pal I 625 line but with 5.5MHz sound IF. You will need to change that to 6MHz, may be transformers or ceramic resonators depending on model.

Dave

[Steve_P]

This is true for Black and White. For colour it's more tricky. They chose SECAM, but dual standard sets appeared in 1977. Channels are the same, except for the 6 or 5.5 thing, which is easy to change.

Of course in the war it was 441 Lines.

Cheers,

Steve P.

[Station X]

As I understand it the French developed SECAM rather than use PAL so as to protect their home television manufacturing industry from imports. The Soviet Block then decided to use SECAM to prevent their citizens receiving TV signals from Western Europe. Their FM radios had a different tuning range for the same reason.

I think we need to know more about the Vega set before it's possible to say what modifications will be needed.

[Michael Maurice]

Originally Posted by Station X

As I understand it the French developed SECAM rather than use PAL so as to protect their home television manufacturing industry from imports. The Soviet Block then decided to use SECAM to prevent their citizens receiving TV signals from Western Europe. Their FM radios had a different tuning range for the same reason.

I think its more complicated than that and highly political. Colour was invented in the aftermath of WW2, the Americans were there first with NTSC, PAL was developed by the German Telefunken company who looked at the Amercan System and brought in the correction system that NTSC lacked.

The French developed SECAM because they hated the Germans and didn't want to support their system.

The British were working with the Germans so adopted PAL as did the rest of Europe.

The Middle East always had French leaning, so they adopted the SECAM system except Israel which adopted PAL. The Russians also took to the SECAM system for the same reasons. Russians and those who lived in the communist block would still have been able to receive broadcasts from the West though not in colour.

[evingar]

except Israel which adopted PAL

You would have thought the Israelis would have hated the Germans as much as the French hated them (if not more). Then again we tend to hate the French more than the Germans

[Michael Maurice]

Originally Posted by evingar

You would have thought the Israelis would have hated the Germans as much as the French hated them (if not more). Then again we tend to hate the French more than the Germans

Yes they probably did hate the Germans but Israel was British before 1948 though why they adopted system B/G and used European mains outlets with 220V defeats me!

Mods sorry if this is going OT, we'd better bry and keep to the original subject

[DrZarkov]

You can receive with a GDR-set west German black and white programmes, colour programmes will be in black and white. Depending to the previos owner of the set there is a very big chance that it has a PAL-decoder.

The brand Wega are in fact Sony TVs, assembled in W.-Germany for sale in smaller, specialized shops.

[brianc]

Hopefully not too off-topic but I seem to remember that one reason that a lot of the Middle East went for SECAM was that the French government, through Thomson CSF which was then state owned, gave huge concessions in price and credit when colour was being set up in the 1970s. I worked for Ampex, an American company, who sold complete TV stations as well as VTRs world-wide and we had a huge task beating the French to win contracts because of the free credit etc.
Cheers
Brian