PINCUSHION CORRECTION TECHNIQUES

Since magnetic deflection of the electron beam is along the path of an arc, the screen should ideally have corresponding curvature for linear deflection. Therefore electron beam travels farther at the corners causing more deflection at the edges. This results in a stretching effect where top, bottom, left and right edges of the raster tend to bow inwards towards the centre of the screen. The result is a pincushion like raster. Such a distortion is more severe with large screen picture tubes having deflection angles of 90 or more.

Fig. Pincushion distortion of the raster. In black and white receivers, pincushion distortion is eliminated by suitable design of the yoke and the use of small permanent magnets mounted close to the yoke. These magnets are so positioned that they stretch the raster along the sides of the picture and thus compensate for the pincushion distortion. In colour picture tubes the deflection current in the yoke is modified by dynamic pincushion correction circuits. Such a correction automatically increases horizontal width and vertical size in those regions of the raster that are shrunken because of pincushion distortion. The necessary correction is achieved by introducing some cross modulation between the two deflection fields.

E-W Correction To correct E-W (horizontal) pincushioning, the horizontal deflection sawtooth current must be amplitude modulated at a vertical rate so that when the electron beam is at the top or bottom deflection current of the raster, the horizontal amplitude is minimum and when it is at the centre of the vertical deflection interval the horizontal sawtooth amplitude is maximum. To achieve this a parabolic voltage obtained by integrating the vertical sawtooth voltage (network R1,C1 in Fig) is inserted in series with the dc supply to the horizontal deflection circuit. As a result, amplitude of individual cycles of the 15625 Hz horizontal output varies in step with the series connected 50 Hz parabolic voltage. The modified horizontal sawtooth waveshape over a period of the vertical cycle (20 ms) has the effect of pulling out the raster at the centre to correct E-W pincushioning.

N-S Correction The top and bottom or N-S pincushion correction is provided by forcing the vertical sawtooth current to pulsate in amplitude at the horizontal scanning rate. During top and bottom scanning of the raster a parabolic waveform at the horizontal rate is superimposed on the vertical deflection sawtooth. In fact this increases vertical size during the time the beam is moving through the midpoint of its horizontal scan. The parabolic waveform at the top of the raster is of opposite polarity to that at the bottom since the raster stretch required at the top is opposite to the needed at the bottom. The amplitude of the parabolic waveform required for top and bottom pincushion correction decreases to zero as vertical deflection passes through the centre of the raster. The basic principle of obtaining necessary deflection waveshapes is the same as for E-W correction.

AUTO DEGAUSSING CIRCUITS

There are many degaussing circuits in use. Figure shows details of a popular automatic degaussing circuit. It uses a thermistor and a varistor for controlling the flow of alternating current through the degaussing coil. When the receiver is turned on the ac voltage drop across the thermistor is quite high (about 60 volts) and this causes a large current to flow through the degaussing coil. Because of this heavy current, the thermistor heats up, its resistance falls and voltage drop across it decreases. As a result, voltage across the varistor decreases thereby increasing its resistance. This in turn reduces ac current through the coil to a very low value. The circuit components are so chosen that initial surge of current through the degaussing coil is close to 4 amperes and drops to about 25 mA in less than a second. Once the thermistor heats up degaussing ends and normal ac voltage is restored to the B+ rectifier circuit.

FREQUENCY INTERLEAVING
The colour video signal contains two independent informations, that of hue and saturation. It is a difficult matter to modulate them to one and the same carrier in such a way that these can be easily recovered at the receiver without affecting each other. The problem is accentuated by the need to fit this colour signal into a standard TV channel which is almost fully occupied by the Y signal. However, to satisfy compatibility requirements the problem has been ingeniously solved by combining the colour information into a single variable and by employing what is known as frequency interleaving. The energy content of the video signal is contained in individual energy bundles which occur at harmonics of the line frequency (15.625, 31.250 ... KHz) the components of each bundle being separated by a multiplier of the field frequency (50, 100, ... Hz). The shape of each energy bundle shows a peak at the exact harmonics of the horizontal scanning frequency.

A part of the bandwidth in the monochrome television signal goes unused because of spacing between the bundles. This suggests that the available space could be occupied by another signal. It is here where the colour information is located by modulating the colour difference signals with a carrier frequency called colour subcarrier. The carrier frequency is so chosen that its sideband frequencies fall exactly mid-way between the harmonics of the line frequency. This requires that the frequency of the subcarrier must be an odd multiple of half the line frequency. The resultant energy clusters that contain colour information are shown in Fig. 26.2 by dotted chain lines along with the Y signal energy bands.

BANDWIDTH FOR COLOUR SIGNAL TRANSMISSION

The Y signal is transmitted with full frequency bandwidth of 5 MHz for maximum horizontal details in monochrome. However, such a large frequency spectrum is not necessary for colour video signals. The reason being, that for very small details, the eye can perceive only the brightness but not the colour. Detailed studies have shown that perception of colours by the human eye, which are produced by combinations of the three primary colours is limited to objects which have relatively large coloured areas ( 1/25th of the screen width or more). On scanning they generate video frequencies which do not exceed 0.5 MHz. Further, for medium size objects or areas which produce a video frequency spectrum between 0.5 and 1.5 MHz, only two primary colours are needed. This is so, because for finer details the eye fails to distinguish purple (magenta) and green-yellow hues from greys. As the coloured areas become very small in size (width), the red and cyan hues also become indistinguishable from greys. Thus for very fine colour details produced by frequencies from 1.5 MHz to 5 MHz, all persons with normal vision are colour bling and see only changes in brightness even for coloured areas. Therefore, maximum bandwidth necessary for colour signal transmission is around 3 MHz ( 1.5 MHz).

MODULATION OF COLOUR DIFFERENCE SIGNALS

Production of Colour Difference Voltages The Y signal is modulated and transmitted as is done in a monochrome television system. However, instead of trasmitting all the three colour signals separately the red and blue camera outputs are combined with the Y signal to obtain what is known as colour difference signals. Colour difference voltages are derived by subtracting the luminance voltage from the colour voltages. Only (R Y) and (B Y) are produced. It is only necessary to transmit two of the three colour difference signals since the third may be derived from the other two.

Modulation of Colour Difference Voltages The problem of transmitting (B-Y) and (R-Y) video signals simultaneously with one carrier frequency is solved by creating two carrier frequencies from the same colour subcarrier without any change in its numerical value. Two separate modulators are used, one for the (B-Y) and the other for the (R-Y) signal. However, the carrier frequency fed to one madulator is given a relative phase shift of 90 with respect to the other before applying it to the modulator. Thus, the two equal subcarrier frequencies which are obtained from a common generator are said to be in quadrature and the method of modulation is known as quadrature modulation. After modulation the two outputs are combined to yield C, the resultant subcarrier phasor. Since the amplitude of C, the chrominance signal, corresponds to the magnitudes of colour difference signals, its instantaneous value represents colour saturation at that instant. Maximum amplitude corresponds to greatest saturation and zero amplitude to no saturation i.e., white. Similarly, the instantaneous value of the C phasor angle () which may vary from 0 to 360 represents hue of the colour at that moment. Thus the chrominance signal contains full information about saturation and hue of various colours.

NOTE: The colour-difference signals which constitute the modulating information are zero when the picture detail is non-coloured (i.e., grey, black or white shades).

COLOUR BURST SIGNAL

Suppressed carrier double sideband working is the normal practice for modulating colour difference signals with the colour subcarrier frequency. This is achieved by employing balanced modulators. The carrier is suppressed to minimize interference produced by the chrominance signals both on monochrome receivers when they are receiving colour transmissions and in the luminance channel of colour receivers themselves. However, even at 100% modulation two-thirds of the total power is in the carrier and only one-third is the useful sideband power. Thus suppressing the carrier clearly eliminates the main potential source of interference. The transmitted does not contain the subcarrier frequency but it is necessary to generate it in the receiver with correct frequency and phase relationship for proper detection of the colour sidebands. To ensure this, a short sample of the subcarrier oscillator, (8 to 11 cycles) called the colour burst is sent to the receiver along with sync signals. This is located in the back porch of the horizontal blanking pedestal. The colour burst does not interfere with the horizontal sync because it is lower in amplitude and follows the sync pulses.

NOTE: The composite colour video signal at the output of video detector consists of luminance (Y) signal, the chrominance signal, the colour burst, sync pulses and blanking pulses. The sync and colour burst do not appear in the display because these are blanked out during retrace intervals.

WEIGHTING FACTORS
The resultant chrominance signal phasor (C) is added to the luminance signal (Y) before modulating it with the channel carrier for transmission. The amplitude, i.e., level line of Y signal becomes the zero line for this purpose. Such an addition is illustrated in Fig. for a theoretical 100 percent saturated, 100 percent amplitude colour bar signal. However, observe that it is not practicable to transmit this chroma waveform because the signal peaks would exceed the limits of 100 percent modulation. This means that on modulation with the picture carrier some of the colour signal amplitudes would exceed the limits of maximum sync tips on one side and white level on the other. For example, in the case of magenta signal, the chrominance value of 0.83 when added to its luminance amplitude of 0.41 exceeds the limits of 100 percent modulation of both white and black levels. Similarly blue signal amplitude greatly exceeds the black level and will cause a high degree of overmodulation. If overmodulation is permitted the reproduced colours will get objectionably distorted. Therefore, to avoid overmodulation on 100 percent saturation colour values, it is necessary to reduce the amplitude of colour difference video signal before modulating them with the colour subcarrier. Accordingly, both (RY) and (BY) components of the colour video signal are scaled down by multiplying them with what are known as weighting factors. Those used are 0.877 for the (RY) component and 0.493 for the (BY) component. The compensated values are obtained by using potentiometers at the outputs of (RY) and (BY) adders. Note that no reduction is made in the amplitude of Y signal. It may also be noted that since the transmitter radiates weighted chrominance signal values, these must be increased to the uncompensated values at the colour TV receiver for proper reproduction of different hues. This is carried out by adjusting gains of the colour difference signal amplifiers.