This is how many people had their first view of 'colour' television - in the 1950's you could buy a 'colourising' filter, place it over your existing black and white screen, and let your imagination do the rest... John Logie Baird, the pioneer of television, was working on stereoscopic colour television shortly before his death, and the Americans were conducting experiments. But the technology was very complex; the problem was how to transmit colour information alongside an existing black and white image, therefore maintaining 'backwards' compatibility with existing receivers.

By 1959 the BBC started to experiment using the system of transmitting colour pictures developed in the USA, which had evolved into a standard laid down by the National Television Standards Committee, or NTSC. However this NTSC system suffered from being the first of its kind - colour hue was (and still is) notoriously difficult to reproduce accurately and consistently, hence its unofficial title of 'Never Twice the Same Color'. Low power 405-line NTSC test transmissions were from Alexandra Palace, using specially manufactured receivers.

Later the French developed SECAM (Sequential Colour with Memory), and Telefunken in Germany developed PAL (Phase Alternate Line) which represented two differing approaches of solving the colour problems encountered with NTSC, and the BBC experimented using both, though there were other problems which were not just restricted just to the actual system being used. The insensitivity and inaccuracy of early colour tv cameras and its associated circuitry meant that without adjustments the resulting picture either had a colour cast and/or made flesh tones look too red, so extra studio lighting and make-up was required.

After much deliberation, the government chose the PAL system, which although was more complex (hence expensive) it gave the best results. Most of Europe also chose PAL, and BBC2 started its UHF 625-line colour service in July 1967, though initially only a few programmes in the schedule were actually in colour. Early programmes included that year's Wimbledon tennis tournament, The World About Us (basically stock colour documentary footage - the first programme featured volcanoes), and imported series such as Star Trek. By the end of the 1960's BBC1 and ITV both started a 625 line UHF colour service.

There were many more manufacturers of television receivers in the 1960's than there are today; Sobell, MacMichael, GEC, Ekco, HMV, ITT, and Ferguson were just a few of the more notable ones, though later on more obscure models were imported to meet increasing demand. Early colour television sets used valves and were very bulky, expensive, unreliable, had poor colour quality, and some sets were prone to overheating. After a succession of house fires people were advised to stay in the same room as their television for one hour after it was switched off.

By 1976 colour television sets were smaller, far more reliable and they no longer caught fire like their early counterparts. Portable colour televisions became available, though most of these were still tied to the mains supply due to their high power consumption; the exceptions usually had 10 inch or smaller screens (such as models produced by Sanyo and Sony). Picture quality became vastly improved courtesy of new tube designs and circuitry, and the falling price of the receivers meant that most people now owned a colour television. 1976 also saw colour transmissions finally reaching the Channel Islands.

By the end of the 1970's manufacturers were looking to add more features to their televisions, and the advent of reasonably priced silicon chip circuitry meant that special features such as teletext could be added (a free information service whereby information is transmitted as 'pages') as well as (in some cases) other short-lived features such as 'viewdata' (a primitive internet-style service using crude block graphics as well as text) and bat-and-ball style video games. Teletext was the only feature that became popular because it was cheap to add and free to use, together with remote control operation and electronic tuning.

There was a craze in the early 1980's for what is known as 'spatial' sound, ie. the creation of a stereo effect using a single (or mono) sound source. Such 'stereo' televisions also had stereo sound inputs so that the stereo output from the new generation of VCR's with stereo sound capability could be plugged in for true stereo sound from pre-recorded tapes with stereo soundtracks. Stereo sound from television transmissions in the UK had to wait for the advent of NICAM digital stereo encoding by the end of the decade (though the BBC did not start a full stereo service until September 1991).

The 1980's and 1990's saw further developments in television design and technology. As early as the mid 1970's the German set maker Grundig had introduced a modular construction for their receivers, which featured modules which could be easily plugged and unplugged, and had diagnostic lights on them so the set could even tell the engineer which part needed replacing. This idea never caught on, but the basic concept of making the set simpler and cheaper to make remained. In 1983 Ferguson introduced the TX100 chassis, with some impressive claims (23% fewer adjustments, 5% fewer components, etc.)