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Post by David Buck on Oct 7, 2015 20:37:20 GMT
Just curious about the scope of use for a 405 line converter as mentioned by Phillip Morris, so did the old 405 line equipment from british broadcasters end up in the colonies/commonwealth after they'd finished with it ? I've seen comments before that redundant tv equipment followed that route - was it true of entire VT formats ?
the BBC & Granada (& Anglia?) had most of the surviving 405 line tapes , and I guess the BBC's are now with the BFI, but we know from the Callan DVD's that even the BFI had been dumping 405 line tapes after doing less than stellar optical conversions, so would a modern 405 line converter solely be useful as a service to convert the few hundred UK tapes that are left?
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Post by Peter Stirling on Oct 8, 2015 0:17:03 GMT
Just curious about the scope of use for a 405 line converter as mentioned by Phillip Morris, so did the old 405 line equipment from british broadcasters end up in the colonies/commonwealth after they'd finished with it ? I've seen comments before that redundant tv equipment followed that route - was it true of entire VT formats ? the BBC & Granada (& Anglia?) had most of the surviving 405 line tapes , and I guess the BBC's are now with the BFI, but we know from the Callan DVD's that even the BFI had been dumping 405 line tapes after doing less than stellar optical conversions, so would a modern 405 line converter solely be useful as a service to convert the few hundred UK tapes that are left? There would have been no problem in selling old equipment on as the TV cameras/VTRs etc could have been quite easily converted between the standards with a matter of a swap of a few circuit boards or even just a switch Where you have the problem is once you have something recorded in one standard is getting it to play on another. I think with the matter of the ABC's Callan was, it was converted by video (rather than film) tele -recording to 625 to allow it to be repeated on Thames TV. I would think that Thames TV (as a new company) had very little or no interest in 405 line equipment. So this or a film TR was the only practical way of showing it again. To allow it's purely 625 line programmes to be seen on old 405 line TV's it would have had a 625 to 405 line converter at the transmitter (which was the size of a small room) and actually remained in operation until 1985 when the 405 line system was finally switched off. Today of course a 405 to 625 line converter would probably be the size of a freeview box and in the same price range? Aurora produce a 625 line to any standard ever made box for a couple of hundred pounds, although not much use to users of this site as it does not input 405 lines but does output them.. |
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 8, 2015 12:42:13 GMT
IIRC not many other countries used 405 lines, Ireland & Hong Kong are the only others that come to mine.
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Post by Ray Langstone (was saintsray) on Oct 8, 2015 12:49:02 GMT
""For a brief time in 1939 there were experimental 405 line transmissions from stations in Montrouge, France and Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland.""
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 8, 2015 17:03:23 GMT
According to one site on the history of Irish TV RTE's 625-405 line converter broke down & for a time a camera was pointed at a monitor to do an optical conversion.
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Post by richardwoods on Oct 8, 2015 17:44:49 GMT
Just curious about the scope of use for a 405 line converter as mentioned by Phillip Morris, so did the old 405 line equipment from british broadcasters end up in the colonies/commonwealth after they'd finished with it ? I've seen comments before that redundant tv equipment followed that route - was it true of entire VT formats ? the BBC & Granada (& Anglia?) had most of the surviving 405 line tapes , and I guess the BBC's are now with the BFI, but we know from the Callan DVD's that even the BFI had been dumping 405 line tapes after doing less than stellar optical conversions, so would a modern 405 line converter solely be useful as a service to convert the few hundred UK tapes that are left? There would have been no problem in selling old equipment on as the TV cameras/VTRs etc could have been quite easily converted between the standards with a matter of a swap of a few circuit boards or even just a switch Where you have the problem is once you have something recorded in one standard is getting it to play on another. I think with the matter of the ABC's Callan was, it was converted by video (rather than film) tele -recording to 625 to allow it to be repeated on Thames TV. I would think that Thames TV (as a new company) had very little or no interest in 405 line equipment. So this or a film TR was the only practical way of showing it again. To allow it's purely 625 line programmes to be seen on old 405 line TV's it would have had a 625 to 405 line converter at the transmitter (which was the size of a small room) and actually remained in operation until 1985 when the 405 line system was finally switched off. Today of course a 405 to 625 line converter would probably be the size of a freeview box and in the same price range? Aurora produce a 625 line to any standard ever made box for a couple of hundred pounds, although not much use to users of this site as it does not input 405 lines but does output them.. I beg to differ  missingepisodes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=4&action=display&thread=8906 |
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Simon Collis
Member
I have started to dream of lost things
Posts: 536
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Post by Simon Collis on Oct 8, 2015 19:04:19 GMT
According to one site on the history of Irish TV RTE's 625-405 line converter broke down & for a time a camera was pointed at a monitor to do an optical conversion. That used to be the standard way of converting to and from the French/Canadian 819-line system if I remember right. |
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 9, 2015 13:17:25 GMT
According to one site on the history of Irish TV RTE's 625-405 line converter broke down & for a time a camera was pointed at a monitor to do an optical conversion. That used to be the standard way of converting to and from the French/Canadian 819-line system if I remember right. The French have had some odd systems over the years, there was a Paris 441 line (?) at first, & SECAM for colour, which was hard to make studio equipment for. |
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Post by Peter Stirling on Oct 9, 2015 14:00:06 GMT
That used to be the standard way of converting to and from the French/Canadian 819-line system if I remember right. The French have had some odd systems over the years, there was a Paris 441 line (?) at first, & SECAM for colour, which was hard to make studio equipment for. ..and not forgetting 9.5mm film....they have certainly done in their way LOL |
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RWels
Member
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Post by RWels on Oct 9, 2015 16:38:13 GMT
Say the people who drive on the wrong side of the road, and were very late to convert to decimal currency and the metric system.  |
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Post by Peter Bradford on Nov 4, 2015 21:56:14 GMT
Since you ask about VTR machines is particular, many of the Ampex and RCA models produced in the 1960's were designed to be multistandard - 405/525/625.
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Post by Ken Griffin on Nov 7, 2015 12:39:01 GMT
IIRC not many other countries used 405 lines, Ireland & Hong Kong are the only others that come to mine. Ireland didn't really use 405-line equipment to any great extent. RTÉ used 625 lines as its production format. The only 405-line equipment used was that utilised for standards conversion in terms of (a) converting UK videotape material to 625-line format and (b) converting RTÉ's 625-line broadcast feed to 405-lines for the transmitters which used that standard. |
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Post by Peter Stirling on Nov 7, 2015 12:57:34 GMT
IIRC not many other countries used 405 lines, Ireland & Hong Kong are the only others that come to mine. Ireland didn't really use 405-line equipment to any great extent. RTÉ used 625 lines as its production format. The only 405-line equipment used was that utilised for standards conversion in terms of (a) converting UK videotape material to 625-line format and (b) converting RTÉ's 625-line broadcast feed to 405-lines for the transmitters which used that standard. Did RTE actually buy any UK programmes? I thought viewers in Eire had dual standard TV sets so that if they wanted to watch UK programmes they just pointed an aerial to the North and switched to 405 lines which was very good at travelling long distances. |
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Post by Richard Marple on Nov 7, 2015 21:47:08 GMT
The South & East of Ireland was often nicknamed "One Channel Land" by the Irish media in the 1970s due to the fact it was out of range of any UK transmissions.
This was one of the reasons when RTE2 started in the late 1970s it featured a lot of British TV.
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RWels
Member
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Post by RWels on Nov 7, 2015 22:40:21 GMT
RTE bought At Last The 1948 Show.
Mind you I never checked if it actually went out, I just saw it mentioned in some paperwork.
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