Back in the 60s a buddy of mine decided to build his own Heathkit color TV. He was adjusting something in the back when he poked a screwdriver just slightly off target. The next thing he knew he was across the room with the screwdriver still in his hand.
No, but the receiver can have filters installed at the intermediate frequency stage to filter the colour signal from noise. Thats what the advert is saying, improved IF stages, improved intermediate frequency handling…
Colour has an intermediate frequency because its QAM modulated and mixed with the B&W signal.
All I can contribute is what an old timer told me once in a conversation about “the old days”. He said the first color TVs had problems with the colors not being true, colors changing shades, and colors even “running” a little like water color paint. He said he actually liked black & white better because of those problems.
Paging “Madman” Muntz:
Muntz developed a television chassis that produced an acceptable monochrome picture with 17 tubes. He often carried a pair of wire clippers, and when he thought that one of his employees was “overengineering” a circuit, he would begin snipping components out until the picture or sound stopped working. At that point, he would tell the engineer “Well, I guess you have to put that last part back in” and walk away.
Muntz, Musk, what is it about guys named with an “M”?
In high school (circa 1970), a friend of mine opened up the back of an old TV and made a Jacob’s Ladder. (Not a picture of the actual one my friend made.)
I’m guessing his father may have told him how it could be done, but I doubt he expected Kevin to actually do it. No one died. 
NTSC=Never The Same Color.
Had to look that up! The blurb was very interesting, so I am posting it here in case there are others like me. LOL
> ## What is NTSC?
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> ### Definition
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> NTSC is the color television standard established by the National Television Standards Committee in the United States in 1953. The NTSC standard’s distinguishing feature was that it added color to the original 1941 black and white television standard in such a way that black and white TVs continued to work.
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> Another distinguishing characteristic was that NTSC’s dependency on accurate phase meant that it was difficult to maintain the color as the signal was transmitted and processed. Television engineers often joke that NTSC stands for “Never Twice the Same Color.”
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> The NTSC standard adds a color subcarrier which is quadrature-modulated by two color-difference signals and added to the luminance signal. The genius of the system is that black and white TVs ignore the color components, which are beyond the black and white signal’s bandwidth.
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> The NTSC color subcarrier reference is 3.579545MHz. The horizontal sync rate (H) was adjusted slightly from the black and white standard’s 15.750kHz such that the color subcarrier is 455/2 times H. The vertical rate is Fv = Fh x 2/525.
The quote I posted contained this: “The NTSC standard’s distinguishing feature was that it added color to the original 1941 black and white television standard in such a way that black and white TVs continued to work.”
My question is, even using the old low definition mode, would the modern digital signal work on a black and white TV, or did the technology invented that “alleviated that concern” make that impossible now?
Discharging CRT capacitors with a screwdriver became pretty routine practice for our techs. It’s really quite safe to do assuming it’s a long screw driver. It would be nice to have a switch in the circuit to connect bleeder resistors to drain the caps though as noted above an added cost for that wouldn’t be accepted by TV manufacturers. The price tag of the color monitors we were using really could have accommodated that but where’s the fun in that?
You really don’t recall the big switchover from NTSC to ATSC, and the external converter boxes?
I remember all the dire announcements and the countdown towards the death of analog TV, but I never really delved into exactly what was happening. Thinking back, I do remember something about an attachment everyone had to get. I guess that’s the box to which you are referring. So, would that box work on a black & white TV as well as the old analog color, or are we so far advanced now that the box wouldn’t work at all?
It wouldn’t make much sense to make a black and white TV with an HDMI input, much less one with a CRT. Any signal could be converted in some manner for display on a B&W display of any type. What would be unique is some manner of creating the intensity of the a white dot based on the color information. I imagine even the simplest methods would produce a reasonable image.
I agree but, when I was a little girl, I remember my dad having black & white in the garage, and it’s a nostalgic memory. The rest was just theoretical curiosity.
Yes, because the whole point of the converter was to translate the new digital transmissions to a signal that old analog equipment could receive and display, including old B&W sets.
That is so cool! Thank you for responding. I think the trick at this point would be to actually find a black & white TV and/or one of those “little boxes”. I can actually imagine what would happen if I tried.
Company: (pause) … “I’m sorry, Miss, you want a what?!” “Ah … have you tried the Smithsonian or a local museum?” LOL
Or about half the attics in the US.
This explains the difference in radio silence from the transmission that could be heard between the 82 pontiac phoenix/chevy citation and the 61 pontiac bonneville I used to own. The 82 was noisy as hell through the radio while the 61 was blissfully silent. I always wondered why.
I have an approximately 50 year old RCA black-and-white TV set that still works. All three over-the-air-digital-to-analog converter boxes that I have tested have produced a high quality black-and-white NTSC analog output when connected to this set.
This is amazing! It’s not actually truly “black and white”, is it? Isn’t it kind of “grayscale”?