The Wild Blue Yonder

In Los Angeles, delegates to the 31st annual meeting of the National Association of Radio & Television Broadcasters were treated to a few eye-popping promises for the future:

P:ABC-TV, using a special TV camera, gave an experimental demonstration of 3-D television. After a halting start (it was discovered that the pictures at the receiving end were reversed and spectators had to turn their Polaroid glasses around), the performance rivaled movie 3-D in almost every respect. But it is generally conceded that 3-D television is still years away from the living room.

P: John Mullen, chief engineer of Bing Crosby Enterprises, described his video tape recorder, a revolutionary electronic method of putting both sound and picture on strips of magnetic tape. The system could eliminate film entirely in TV, both in color and black & white, and should be in final design by next year.

P:Manufacturers Philco and Du Mont demonstrated machines designed to get a much-better-than-ordinary picture from TV film. Using prisms and a new light source, the machines (already in production) scan the film continuously, thus eliminating the flicker of ordinary film projection.

P:Neal McNaughton. engineering manager of the NARTB, forecast worldwide TV within ten years, explained: "The answer to global television lies in a submarine cable that will use a transistor repeater unit, smaller than a cigarette, to augment microwave relays between the continents of the world."

P:RCA's Board Chairman David Sarnoff promised an RCA video tape recorder within two years, and a presentation, by the industry, of the case for color TV before the Federal Communications Commission within three months. He also departed from his prepared address to kick subscription TV in its coin box. Said Sarnoff: "I sincerely believe that pay-as-you-see television on a national basis will prove to be a snare and a delusion." Instead, Sarnoff urged the broadcasters to stay close, as always, to their advertisers.

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