819 line

819-line was an analog monochrome TV system developed and used in France as television broadcast resumed after World War II. Transmissions started in 1949 and were active up to 1985, although limited to France, Belgium and Luxembourg. It is associated with CCIR System E and F. When Europe resumed TV transmissions after World War II (i.e. in the late 1940s and early 1950s) most countries standardized on 625-line television systems. The two exceptions were the British 405-line system, which had already been introduced in 1936, and the French 819-line system. During the 1940s René Barthélemy had already reached 1,015 lines and even 1,042 lines. On November 20, 1948, François Mitterrand, the then Secretary of State for Information, decreed a broadcast standard of 819 lines developed by Henri de France; broadcasting began at the end of 1949 in this higher definition format. It was used in France by TF1, and in Monaco by Tele Monte Carlo. Some 819-line TV sets were available, like the Grammont 504-A-31 from 1951 and the Philips 14TX100 multi-standard 625/819-line TV from 1952 The system was also adopted (with limited bandwidth, affecting image resolution) in 1953 in Belgium by RTB and in 1955 in Luxembourg by Télé-Luxembourg. Broadcasts were discontinued in Belgium in February 1968, and in Luxembourg in September 1971. Despite some attempts to create a color SECAM version of the 819-line system, France gradually abandoned the system in favor of the Europe-wide standard of 625-lines with the final 819-line transmissions taking place in Paris from the Eiffel Tower on 19 July 1983. Tele Monte Carlo in Monaco were the last broadcasters to transmit 819-line television, closing down their transmitter in 1985. This was arguably the world's first high-definition television system, and, by today's standards, it could be called 736i (as it had 737 lines active, but one of the lines was composed of 2 halves) with a maximum theoretical resolution of 408×368 s (which in digital terms can be expressed as broadly equivalent to 816×736 pixels) with a 4:3 aspect ratio.