Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Nov 16, 2019 13:23:29 GMT
Like the pics of Arsenal's double winning FA Cup team, Lord Em, the great Charlie George.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Nov 16, 2019 14:51:48 GMT
Slightly off topic but before 'Suspect' & 'Rumour' in 1968 Mike Hodges directed a children's serial called 'The Tyrant King' with a script by Trevor Preston, this was the first production Thames made & although originally broadcast in black & white, it was shot in colour. Filmed on location in 16mm by what would become Euston Films, here's more info on it-
I got it on dvd some years ago & despite its credentials I was disappointed by it.
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Post by Dirty Epic on Nov 16, 2019 21:06:10 GMT
One thing I noticed with colour in the late 70's to midish 80's the hues tended to be brighter and more vivid on ITV and a bit more contrasted/muted on BBC you'd notice this on things like the FA Cup or other things they were broadcasting simultaneously. This sort of equalised by the early 90's when I suppose they were using more standardised equipment. As for the TV's themselves not sure when we stopped renting but we bought a Pye (under the skin it was Phillips) 22" in 1981. Like Del said we needed a engineer to look at it a few times and one thing he did was a tube test when it went red, blue, green an black. These older sets wore out much quicker as it was near enough dead by '86 when we got a Teletext Panasonic which survived heavy use to about 2005 and was still working reasonably well. The LCD' s which have replaced it haven't lasted as long mind.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 17, 2019 8:38:16 GMT
One thing I noticed with colour in the late 70's to midish 80's the hues tended to be brighter and more vivid on ITV and a bit more contrasted/muted on BBC you'd notice this on things like the FA Cup or other things they were broadcasting simultaneously. This sort of equalised by the early 90's when I suppose they were using more standardised equipment. As for the TV's themselves not sure when we stopped renting but we bought a Pye (under the skin it was Phillips) 22" in 1981. Like Del said we needed a engineer to look at it a few times and one thing he did was a tube test when it went red, blue, green an black. These older sets wore out much quicker as it was near enough dead by '86 when we got a Teletext Panasonic which survived heavy use to about 2005 and was still working reasonably well. The LCD' s which have replaced it haven't lasted as long mind. Are those the TV's where you would switch them on, hear the sound but have to wait about 10minutes for the picture to warm up?
Back then you also had a TV repair man - who'd come to your home (or school) - whip out his soldering iron (Fnar Fnar - sounding like a Carry On Film) and repair the TV on site. I knew someone who had a TV repair shop in the late 70s - he told me the only reason he went out of business was simply because is manufacturers made it more hard to get hold of individual spares - making the whole repair job seem less worthwhile than just chucking the TV away and buying a new one.
In this caring sharing, green, recycling world we live in today - you'd think that repairing a TV or appliances would be more "greener" - instead of just chucking it away. Mind you it'd be called "Up Cycling"...
Does anyone remember the TV's you'd get on Hire - that had a coin slot fitted to them - as with an old electric meter? You put coins in to watch TV, and someone would come round each week to empty them out? When we were kids, our Neighbour had one.
We used to fill it with Washers and glued together tiddly winks wrapped in tin foil. Always worked!
We were never there when it was emptied....
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Post by Dirty Epic on Nov 17, 2019 8:58:12 GMT
Hi Sparky the Pye we got was exactly the same model as this one featured in this music video for Azari & III, not being funny including the vid but just can't find any images of that Pye TV anywhere on the web. It generally wasn't a bad set for it's day but by the Pye gear was pretty much Philips under the skin. Start up was pretty quick too a second or so but was a push button I'm afraid which was getting dated by 1981. Sadly can't get any images of the Panasonic but it was one of their Quintrix jobs from the mid 80's and for it's time it was a very good set too.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 17, 2019 10:39:13 GMT
Hi Sparky the Pye we got was exactly the same model as this one featured in this music video for Azari & III, not being funny including the vid but just can't find any images of that Pye TV anywhere on the web. It generally wasn't a bad set for it's day but by the Pye gear was pretty much Philips under the skin. Start up was pretty quick too a second or so but was a push button I'm afraid which was getting dated by 1981. Sadly can't get any images of the Panasonic but it was one of their Quintrix jobs from the mid 80's and for it's time it was a very good set too. Blimey, I remember the Pye ones!
I think our first one had a push out drawer on the top RH side, and inside were some tiny knobs set for tuning each channel. It had BBC1, BBC2, ITA1 and ITA2... certainly they were thinking forward with the second ITV Channel.
Though having "ITA1" and "ITA2" really dated the set - as the "ITA" as it was known became the "IBA" in 1972! So - our first colour set had got some mileage long before we got hold of it.
Think it was brought from a chap called Del, all I remember was he drove a yellow 3 wheel van
We forget - Test-Card "F" was introduced for Colour TV - it was designed for setting up equipment at the studio end - through transmitters to engineers at the TV Set/User end. A lot of early colour sets had to have their R/G/B colour tubes set up once installed.
Many engineers only really understood the basics of setting up the TV set using the Test-Card - using the colours/contrast - but didn't understand that it could show up a whole host of issues with your aerial/TV set before even removing the back cover. Each section of the card had a specific purpose.
Not sure on the truth - but there was a tale about the various colour test cards that had been designed before "Test Card F" - each of the former ones showed up too many faults, glitches and issues - so manufacturers asked for them to be modified so it only would show serious issues.
The same Test-Card (designed in 1967) is still in use throughout the BBC today, and also in a number of studios - though with subtle modifications for widescreen & digital TV, and (at the last count) was under the guise of "Testcard W"
In the early days - it was generated from a 35mm slide. These days it's a digital image.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Nov 17, 2019 16:36:44 GMT
To this day BBC programmes have a soft look & bassy sound to them compared to ITV. I notice it most on the sitcoms of the 70's & 80's, ITV's looked & sounded cheap & cheerful, the BBC ones tended to have a more respectable look about them, like more money had been spent. When digital replaced analogue the quality dropped noticeably, when I replaced a Sony Trinitron tv for a digital LG set I was aghast at how bad the picture & sound was in comparison.
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Post by D.C. Burtonshaw on Nov 17, 2019 18:54:06 GMT
Some very interesting info indeed posted here! Many thanks Sparky and Dirty! All I can really add is that going back to my early childhood, my thrifty dad rented b & w sets form Radio Rentals during the 70's and 80's. I felt a bit left out by the 80's though and it was like a special treat watching colour TV at a friend or relatives house! The sets would go wrong, every 2/3 years and we "called the man out" for those times who soon attended our house and repaired it. Always found the back of the TV being opened up interesting and watching the man with his "Avon meter" testing the set first.
Yeah they never lasted really long before conking out again and those early sets weren't compatible for Video recorders either. Also remember waiting for the set to "warm up" when you faintly started to get the sound first. Even when they were working, they often had bad days where they just crackled and gave a bad picture all evening and no amount of changing channels umpteen time (sometimes worked), helped, as well as banging it on the head!
One Christmas, our old b & w had packed up so before getting us the new replacement, Rentals lent us for Christmas, a spare old colour set they had in storage, which us kids were chuffed about. But it was obviously on its last legs as they colours every few minutes kept changing to wrong colours - I remember luminous green snow whilst watching "Where Eagles Dare"!
Dad finally bought a colour when the TV licence fee was one price for all tellies, and the cheaper price for a b & w was abolished.
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on Nov 17, 2019 20:01:34 GMT
I was stupid enough to buy an LCD TV one of the first generation in the early part of this century. It was a 17 inch flatscreen which I bought to replace a 14 inch CRT. I went for that so i could get rid of the huge bracket on the wall the CRT needed as part of a kitchen upgrade. I didn't pay top whack for it paid 400 for it when a 14 inch CRT was about 130. A year or so earlier the flatscreens were about 600 to 800 quid for the small size TVs As Arthur found these type of tv was worse than the CRT in everyway. One of the worst things with these early TVs was the refresh rate. This was so slow that if watching anything fast moving you would see a trail or blur effect. Things like football. I kept my Mitsubishi 32 CRT for another eight years off of the strength of that. I replaced that with an LG Plasma in 2009. The plasma was only really on par with the CRTs. These flatpanel TVs were struggling to match the older technology, which had 40 years of development in colour where as the flat screens only really became available in the late 90s and took a good ten years at least to catch up.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Nov 18, 2019 0:21:57 GMT
Funny how we used to rent rather than buy tv's & video recorders. I remember my mum buying a Sony Trinitron tv in the mid 80's with money her mum had left in her will, it cost about £600, I've actually still got the catalogue the shop gave her with the price written in biro. Buying a new tv was a big deal in those days, like buying a sofa.
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