Dave Plowman
TV receiver CRT tubes weren’t 4:3 aspect ratio (even allowing for the rounded corners). They were more like 5:4 – the same as early colour sets.
Mike Jordan
Unlike the first colour I saw in TC outside the (real) ICR which was a round tube I think!
The monitors we had in Switching Centre had the name of the person who wound the scan coils labelled on them as it was such a clever job!
We used of course go to the TC club on Sunday evenings then down to the viewing rooms in the basement to watch "Rowan and Martin" in COLOUR – whoopee!
Dave Buckley
Ah, “Rowan and Martin (Laugh in)” – with a picture of reduced size with black all the way round which was something to do with the standards converters of the time. Even the BBC2 con announcer made reference to the small picture!
There is an explanation of why the picture was reduced in an article about the development of converters on the ENGINF web site.
The ENGINF link on converters is:
http://www.bbceng.info/Operations/studio_ops/reminiscences/tvc/d-mccarthy-tvc.htm
Pat Heigham
Ah! Now you’re talking! “Rowan & Martin” (Goldie Hawn would look gorgeous in B/W or Colour (Color))
In later years of my career, I worked for a facility company that attracted a lot of work from US TV companies, which required shoots in Europe: ABC, NBC etc. We tended to agree that we all preferred the slightly softer, more pastel colour rendition in 525 NTSC, than the zingy 625 PAL. Closed circuit, i.e. from Betacam recorder to monitor, it looked lovely, but I understand that the problem lay with aerial transmission, leading to the fond acronym “Never Twice the Same Color”.
Jeff Booth
The colo(u)r issues were because the Americans used different coloured (red) phosphors in their monitors (the red was slightly more orange than in the UK). That is why the skin tones looked strange. Conversely UK shows converted to NTSC had a slight blue/cyan tint to the skin tones. Early (and ACE I believe) Standards Converters didn’t colour space convert so skin tones remained looking odd.
Nowadays the colour space conversion is done as a matter of course. With HD there isn’t an issue. The problems arise when shows are shot on ‘toy’ cameras.
Never Twice the Same Colour syndrome was also apparent on (long) analogue cable runs. All to do with the delay by frequency of the cable being used.
Pat Heigham, Jeff Booth
Some time ago, I invested in the Panasonic World Standard VHS recorder, which would convert. Not too bad quality, and was useful for a local Guildford Ice Hockey team whose Canadian coach had a load of training tapes in NTSC, which I copied to PAL for him. As it took place in real time, I watched some of the broadcast matches – a rough, violent sport!
For anyone who may be interested, there’s a gal in Ealing, Lucinda Reeve, married name Woodward , who has a collection of most every format video machines and can make transfers between. (I hope her hubby puts up with all the kit!). She managed to make a DVD copy from a medical microscope tape, recorded on a Shibaden 3/4" open reel, for a professor friend of Trev Webster.
