Apologies if this has been covered here but talking of VCRs got me thinking about films. Do you know how say a broadcaster would show a film Sparky? Did they play it from a reel to reel and point a camera at what was played or is the reel to reel linked to a transmitter direct ?
Originally, all film was shown via Telecine machine.
Most TV stations BBC and ITV from the 1950s had a number of Telecine Machines, both 35mm and 16mm.
All films would be supplied as they would be to a local cinema, in the various cans.
The Telecine staff would then need to check the films before transmission.
The first Telecine Machines were developed by Pye, and nothing more than glorified Cinema Projectors; though with a much lower wattage lamp source, and where the lense would be - would be a Pumbicon Tube to recieve the picture from the gate.
This signal would then would be broadcast.
Obviously, technology improved, and by the Colour TV era; Rank had developed quite sophisticated Telecine Machines.
These things could "grade" a film scene by scene - ie colour balance/correct each scene, also they could broadcast a negative - and convert it to a positive picture.
Also, they were dual, so could run either 16mm or 35mm, and were programmable.
The BBC, and in particular ATV on 'the other side' screened feature films direct from Telecine to transmission.
The big issue came with Cinemascope films, which (of course) wouldn't fit on the 4:3 TV screen correctly, and a lot of the action and captions would be cut off.
With a Cinemascope film, they would "zoom" out of the picture, at the start, so it resembled a Letterbox, so they could fit in the credits, then once the film started, zoom back in a bit, but risked cutting off the heads of the actors.
ATV devised a method around this (this really did happen for most of the 70s).
They would transfer a copy of the feature film in full to a UMatic tape a day or so before transmission.
The film would be broadcast live from the telecine machine to the region.
At transmission time, the pre-recorded tape, would be started about 1 or 2 minutes before the Telecine machine.
The Telecine operator had a viewing monitor to watch the Umatic recording which would be 3 or 4 minutes in front of picture on the monitor for the Telecine Machine, and would manually Pan and Scan the action on the film as it went out live.
By the late 70s, Rank had developed programmable automation units to do this - and so a film could be pre-programmed and just monitored.
By the early-mid 80s, most TV stations transferred the entire film to a Video Tape - and would use that for broadcast after making any cuts.
Thus freeing up a couple of Telecine machines for other use.
All adverts up until sometime in the 1980s were broadcast direct from 35mm film.
This was because it was much easier to assemble different ad break reels, instead of having to contantly re-edit tapes.
Talking of cuts - cutting a physical film was hard and messy, as to cut a section of picture, it's soundtrack is 18frames in front of the picture.
So, they would make a seperate Mag Soundtrack, edit the film and cut the Mag to match - but it was still messy.
I'll post some pictures on here. of some kit that was in use.