Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Apr 17, 2019 20:53:57 GMT
Large square cassettes in these Philips machines I believe, think this is the type use in the Sweeney episode Contact Breaker. Never noticed this! I'll have to look closer. Though you are more than likely correct.
I think Philips and Pye were the main players in home Video during the 70s; Ampex where the main ones for Broadcast. I seem to think Sony and all those came along a little later. Though am probably wrong!
I don't remember Rank AV doing anything, apart from Film Telecine machines. (Again - Pye were first with these!)
Ampex - they were bloody great things weren't they?
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Apr 17, 2019 21:09:21 GMT
The Ampex machines were massive. The first ones used 2inch tape on reels; which I think had 4 tracks - hence the name '2 inch quad'; editing was carried out by actually cutting the tape, removing (or adding) the required piece, and then rejoining it all using specialised thin tape and a paste containing iron filings.
VT editing in this way was a specialised black art; and required use of a special splicing cutter/joiner and a microscope. Electronic editing came along a little later; where you needed two or three machines to transfer tape. 2" tape was used until around the late 1970s.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Apr 17, 2019 21:24:38 GMT
I wonder if that was Denis Norden's house, pretty impressive place. I saw another similar film on yt about video recorders featuring Leslie Crowther, can't seem to find it now. It showed him in the lounge of his house, similar set up to Denis Norden's place, explaining how to use a VCR, 'when you want to go to the toilet just press the pause button', etc.
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Post by Sparky on Apr 18, 2019 6:04:57 GMT
I wonder if that was Denis Norden's house, pretty impressive place. I saw another similar film on yt about video recorders featuring Leslie Crowther, can't seem to find it now. It showed him in the lounge of his house, similar set up to Denis Norden's place, explaining how to use a VCR, 'when you want to go to the toilet just press the pause button', etc. How times change....
When you want to go to toilet these days, you can just hit "Pause" and stop Live TV. I wish there was a button marked "Take off air altogether" - that button would be very well used on my remote! I think I remember seeing the Leslie Crowther film on ATV one Sunday afternoon.
I seem to remember Tommorrows World doing a fair few bits on home video tape recording.
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Apr 18, 2019 7:46:39 GMT
I wonder if that was Denis Norden's house, pretty impressive place. I saw another similar film on yt about video recorders featuring Leslie Crowther, can't seem to find it now. It showed him in the lounge of his house, similar set up to Denis Norden's place, explaining how to use a VCR, 'when you want to go to the toilet just press the pause button', etc. How times change....
When you want to go to toilet these days, you can just hit "Pause" and stop Live TV. I wish there was a button marked "Take off air altogether" - that button would be very well used on my remote! I think I remember seeing the Leslie Crowther film on ATV one Sunday afternoon.
I seem to remember Tommorrows World doing a fair few bits on home video tape recording.
Tomorrow's World! One of my favourite programmes, every Thursday I think. Raymond Baxter was great, and James Burke. Baxter had been a Spitfite pilot in WW2, when flying over northern France a V2 suddenly took off in front of him and his wingman fired it and missed. Good job as that would have finished them both.
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Post by Sparky on Apr 19, 2019 10:56:20 GMT
On the subject of 2" video tape and Editing.
This is a BBC training film from around 1969/70; and shows 2" quad tape in use, and how it is edited. BE WARNED - it's quite a bit heavy going on the technical aspects; and assumes you have some knowledge of Video Tape. I had to sit through it 3 times to understand much of it (and still don't understand the soundtrack sync/process and edit pulses)
Anyway.... possibly the best example of 2" quad as it's finest!
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Apr 19, 2019 17:33:23 GMT
I'll have a watch of this later, looks interesting.
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Post by Sparky on Jun 5, 2019 16:18:38 GMT
Continuing the conversation about television station coverage and the overlap of regions. This is a map of the VHF 405 line (Black & White) ITV network circa 1975.
By this time, Colour Television had been 'officially' in operation for 6 years - at first from the most powerful transmitters (Crystal Palace, Croydon, Sutton Coldfield etc) - and then the smaller relays stations would open throughout the 1970s, bringing colour to most of the country. Channel Television was the last area to get colour - during the summer of 1976; this was due to the complexity of getting colour signals across the channel from the main land.
Anyway - the VHF 405line network continued in operation, until the last surviving transmitter at Litchfield was closed down at the start of 1985.
As you can see from this map - the VHF signal was more robust, and needed less transmitters to cover the country; and also provided a better overlap. Handy - if you liked seeing what was on in another region.
For instance; if you look at the ATV area in the centre; it's VHF overlap actually spread way beyond the midlands; into the Anglia area (lt Blue) and well into the London area (Pink).
Granada (Dark Green on LH side) spreads into a small part of the HTV area, and well into the North West of the ATV region.
Around Bristol/Bath (Yellow) is the HTV area - where most of it is also covered by Westward TV (lt Blue bottom left of country).
On the other hand, Yorkshire TV (Brown), covers much of the North East of the ATV area, a portion of the Anglia area and a small portion of the Tyne-Tees area.
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Post by Sam Tyler on Jun 5, 2019 17:23:58 GMT
Fascinating stuff Sparky and thanks for posting. We (I) tend to forget that the old 405 lines was on VHF rather than UHF but I suppose it didn't need anywhere near the same bandwidth as the PAL signal and the carrier frequencies were that much lower. Of even greater comparison is when you consider that by the time the last 405 line transmitter was shut down NICAM stereo was on its way, squeezed into the PAL signal and which pushed the UHF signal further. The 80's was certainly an interesting time with the development of the TV signals for terrestrial transmissions until such time that analogue satellite TV and the step increase with the likes of D2Mac, SECAM, PAL, and NTSC transmissions. Sam.
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Post by Sparky on Jun 5, 2019 17:51:32 GMT
Fascinating stuff Sparky and thanks for posting. We (I) tend to forget that the old 405 lines was on VHF rather than UHF but I suppose it didn't need anywhere near the same bandwidth as the PAL signal and the carrier frequencies were that much lower. Of even greater comparison is when you consider that by the time the last 405 line transmitter was shut down NICAM stereo was on its way, squeezed into the PAL signal and which pushed the UHF signal further. The 80's was certainly an interesting time with the development of the TV signals for terrestrial transmissions until such time that analogue satellite TV and the step increase with the likes of D2Mac, SECAM, PAL, and NTSC transmissions. Sam. I am sure I saw a short feature, made by the (then ) IBA in 1984; explaining that the VHF signal would be closed down in 1985. Even by then, there was a minority who still were watching on an old VHF set.
It amazes me that while all this development was going on during the 60s - we looked at other broadcasters (US / Europe) for ideas, and then on just about every occasion - ended up with something that we had developed ourselves, via the BBC and ITV jointly.
Experiments with Stereo sound for TV began sometime in the 1970s.
Before Central TV came on air in 1982 (replacing ATV); all of their promotional music/beds/idents/stings/presentation music was specifically written for them - and recorded in Stereo. Even in 1981; Central hoped to have stereo sound within a year or two.
Sadly - it was only broadcast in Mono - as Central had updated their music/presentation by the time Stereo came in.
It is said, that their "globe" logo was a nod towards Television of the future, with satelitte broadcasting such.
I did my own bit of "research" as a kid - by spinning the aerial round, while my brother messed with the TV tuning..... We did managed to get Granada and YTV as well as Central... not quite to BBC or IBA standards of engineering!
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