Patent GB-1190029-A (GB)
Title: Colour Television Apparatus
Inventor: EILENBERGER ROBERT LEWIS
IPC: H04N7/14
Filed: 1967-12-13
Abstract: 1,190,029. Colour television. WESTERN ELECTRIC CO. Inc. 13 Dec., 1967 [19 Dec., 1966], No. 56597/67. Heading H4F. A colour television, camera for use in a video telephone system comprises an optical system which projects on to the light sensitive target 110 of a single vidicon tube 111, Fig. 1, the red, green and blue components of an image of a scene in non-overlapping relationship, the area 112 of the green components on the target being greater in both dimensions than each of the areas 113, 114 of the red and blue components. Since the target of a standard vidicon is circular the projected components which are rectangular are arranged to occupy a square area on the target. The area 112 of charge pattern representing green information occupies the entire width (L) of the square and two-thirds of its height (<SP>2</SP>/ 3  L), and the charge patterns representing the red and blue information are ¢ L in width and 1/ 3  L in height. The optical system comprises lens 101 which focuses a real image of the scene in the plane of mask 102 having a square aperture, and an anamorphotic lens system 103 which magnifies the image by a factor of 3/2 in the horizontal direction only. Lenses 104, 105 and 106 form real images 112, 113 and 114 via green, red and blue filters 107, 108 and 109 on to the target 112 as shown. Simple linear scanning of the target is effected by means of sweep generators 115 and 117 controlled by a master sync. generator 204 in a central office 200 associated with subscriber A's transmitting set. Image 112 (green information) is scanned in T seconds, where <SP>3</SP>/ 2  T is equal to the period of the vertical sweep voltage, Fig. 3 (not shown) the value for T being selected to equal the period of the frame rate (without any interlace) of presentation in the receiving set, e.g. <SP>1</SP>/ 60  sec. After the <SP>1</SP>/ 60  second in which green image 112 is scanned, the red image 113 and blue image 114 are scanned during the remaining 1/120 sec. Since a small separation is maintained between the images on the target, black-direction levels will occur in the video signal when the scanning beam passes from the green image to the red and blue images, and repetitively as the scanning beam passes from the red to the blue image. The video signal is encoded by an analogue to digital converter 201 and a second video signal from a second transmitting set (not shown in Fig. 1) is received on line 151 and similarly encoded in a converter 202. Converters 201 and 202 are arranged to produce identical digital code words during the occurrence of horizontal sync. pulses, but unique digital code words during the occurrence of vertical sync. pulses. By means of gate 203 alternate frames (each lasting 1/40 sec.) of the two video signals from converters 201 and 202 are passed to the transmission medium 250. Transmission medium 250 is connected to central office 300 associated with subscriber B's receiving set 900, Fig. 2. In office 300 the digital signal is connected, to a gate 301, first and second vertical sync. code detectors 325, 326 and a horizontal sync. code detector 327. Gate 301 separates the digital signals from converters 201 and 202 on to leads 304 and 303 respectively by means of the unique code words detected by detectors 325 and 326. The signal on lead 304 thus contains alternate 1/40 second intervals of digital information and 1/40 second blank intervals. The outputs of detectors 325, 326 and 327 synchronize sync. generator 328, the output of which operates gates 305 and 307 in colour separator 302 to give the green, red and blue portions of the digital signal on lead 308, 309 and 310 respectively, the black-direction level being used to operate gate 307. The green and red digital signals are delayed for (T+¢ Th) seconds and ¢ Th seconds respectively in networks 311 and 312, Th being one horizontal line period, so that the digital words on leads 323, 324 and 310 representing the beginning of the first scan lines of the green, red and blue images occur simultaneously (waveforms D, E and F, Fig. 4, not shown). To obtain digital signals for the red and blue which are continuous and of substantially the same length in time as the digital signal for the green, office 300 contains a line stretcher 313 and a frame stretcher 400, Figs. 1 and 2, which operate on the red and blue digital signals. In line stretcher 313 each segment of red and blue digital signal representing a single horizontal scan of each of the red and blue images is spread out to a full line scan interval of Th seconds by reading the digital words out of core memories 316-319 at one-half of the rate at which they were written into the memories. The resulting red and blue digital signals on lead 321 and 322 only last for half the time interval of 1/60 second occupied by the green digital signal on lead 320 since the red and blue images are scanned in the vidicon by onehalf the number of lines required for the scanning of the green image. To produce a red digital signal having a time interval and a number of scanning lines equal to that of the green, each digital signal representing a scan line of the red image is passed via a gate 401 and one of the gates 411, 412-41N (where N is the number of scan lines of the red image) to one of the line memories 431, 432-43N (acoustic delay lines) and each line is read out twice in sequence by gate 441, i.e. each line is doubly produced and thus lasts for two lines. The blue digital signal is expanded similarly, so that the signals on leads 320, 491 and 591, Fig. 2, comprise the green, red and blue digital signals all having a total frame time of T seconds. Although the digital signals on leads 320, 491 and 591 are simultaneous and provide information for a full time interval T equal to one frame in the receiving set, there are gaps in each of the digital signals equal to two 1/60 second intervals between each 1/60 second interval of signal. To fill these gaps the signals are connected to frame repetition apparatus 600 which includes gates 610, 620 and 630 and frame memories 611, 621 and 631. The three simultaneous digital signals on leads 612, 622 and 632 are then converted into three simultaneous analogue signals which are mixed 800 into a single signal for transmission to subscriber B's receiving set 900.