TVs compatible, from one continent to the next??

On Jan 11, 7:02 pm, Jeffrey Angus <jan...@suddenlink.net> wrote:

On 1/11/2011 7:27 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

    So, you used 2" until the other formats were availible?  Umatic was
second generation video for use in classrooms, dubbed from the broadcast
grade masters. Long beofre VHS or any beta crap was availible.  I used
1" Sony at WACX in orlando for the master edit suit.  OTOH, I had 13
Sony U-Matics at the transmitter site for the LaCarte Video automation
system.  WACX had better video quality than most of the other stations
in the market.  The worst used Beta and it was obvious.

Back in 1970 I took course "TV production" in my Senior year.
We had a nice 1" tape deck and a mixer/fader console along with
two dolly mounted cameras.

By 1971, the students had trahed enough of the equipment, so
that they were using a 1/2" Sone deck and hand helds on tripods.

Sigh, what a waste of studio grade gear.

Jeff

The 1" decks you refer to are not the 1" machines used in broadcast.
The broadcast flavor was the late '70s SMPTE C format built by Ampex,
Sony, RCA, Hitachi and NEC but mostly Ampex and Sony. Did I miss any?

G˛

 

On Jan 11, 6:18 pm, "Brenda Ann" <newsgro...@fullspectrumradio.org>
wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)"  wrote in messagenews:51942912a5dave@davenoise.co..uk...

In article <pan.2011.01.12.00.00...@lmao.lol.lol>,
   Meat Plow <mhyw...@yahoo.com> wrote:

I've no experience in PAL or SECAM whatsoever. But to just unilaterally
claim the NTSC is inferior I just don't see it. So there must be more to
the story. Maybe politics in some wild manner? That tends to piss people
off.

Don't think anyone with sense claims any of these are universally
superior. Each had merits and de-merits.

Think it goes something like this:-

NTSC gives the best pictures in the studio.
SECAM records best.
PAL transmits best.

--


---------------------------------------------------------------------------­-----

---------------------------------------------------------------------------­-----

I have read in broadcast periodicals that PAL needed to be
converted to NTSC
in the studio in order to use video effects switching, etc., then
converted
back for transmission. Since the two are virtually the same base
signals,
this confused me.

I think you got your signals a little crossed. SECAM with its FM
carriers for chroma cannot be faded/dissolved. SECAM signals get
converted to PAL for switchers and back to SECAM for transmission. IOW
SECAM is not a production format.

With saturation being the amplitude of the subcarrier, both NTSC and
PAL can be easily faded/diissolved. The chroma will fade to B/W as the
luma fades to black on the composite signal.

BTW who cares? I haven't seen a composite switcher in 15 years.

G˛

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Don't think anyone with sense claims any of these are universally
superior. Each had merits and de-merits.

Think it goes something like this:-

NTSC gives the best pictures in the studio.
SECAM records best.
PAL transmits best.

The reality is much more mundane. NTSC was perfectly fine. It gained a bad
reputation becuase of problems in distribution, which were managment issues,
not technical ones.

The BBC, adopted the original NTSC specification calling it PAL. It included
the alternating line phase (hence the name), that was found to be unecessary
in the US.

For what may have been a good technical reason when the 405 line system was
developed in the 1930's, by the time the new system was designed around 1960,
there was absolutely no technical reason that the US system, as implemented,
would not work in the UK. (50 fields/25 frames versus 60 and 30).

The political reason was to keep the UK electronics companies in work, to
avoid cheap sets made in much larger quantities in the US. At that time,
there was no electronics industry to speak of in Japan, so it was not a threat.

The PAL is better hype was exactly that, it was to make you think that
technically it was different than NTSC and ripping off the british public was
a good thing.

SECAM on the other hand really was designed to make TV Sets incompatible
with NTSC/PAL and more expensive.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Jeffrey Angus wrote:

On 1/11/2011 7:27 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
So, you used 2" until the other formats were availible? Umatic was
second generation video for use in classrooms, dubbed from the broadcast
grade masters. Long beofre VHS or any beta crap was availible. I used
1" Sony at WACX in orlando for the master edit suit. OTOH, I had 13
Sony U-Matics at the transmitter site for the LaCarte Video automation
system. WACX had better video quality than most of the other stations
in the market. The worst used Beta and it was obvious.

Back in 1970 I took course "TV production" in my Senior year.
We had a nice 1" tape deck and a mixer/fader console along with
two dolly mounted cameras.

By 1971, the students had trahed enough of the equipment, so
that they were using a 1/2" Sone deck and hand helds on tripods.

Sigh, what a waste of studio grade gear.

No kidding. One of the local high schools gets new equipment about
every other year when they need to learn on beat up old junk.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <ArWdnX-ND8EQnLDQnZ2dnUVZ_tydnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

So why the mask on the monitors if 'proper camera work made sure that
the active portion of any image was properly framed'? Cameramen not
trusted?

maybe on your planet. A cameraman has a lit of things to pay
attention to. The lines on his monitor make it easy to frame the shot.
Not that you would know.

Can you make up your mind if you're talking about what a camera has
available on the viewfinder or what you'd find on a control room monitor?

Only time I saw an electronic mask displayed on a production control
room monitor was when things were destined for 16mm telerecording only.

And why would the engineer in charge of the actual pictures care
about home overscan? That would be left to the production side.

Notice you've omitted to answer this...

No matter what answer yo got you would still pull out a ruler to
measure yor dick so there was no reason to give you the pleasure.

Seems to me you were a 'back room boy' with no experience of production.
Gawd help us if you were responsible for providing the facilities others
had to work round.

--
*The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <x_ednSj9__42nrDQnZ2dnUVZ_s6dnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

You appear only to have heard of RCA cameras.

Sigh. You appear to bbe an idiot. RCA & GE made most of the studio
cameras in the US.

I don't live in the US.

A few stations got screwed when they bought Philips
cameras that had no factory support and few spare parts.

Pretty well the same as the few UK companies that bought RCA, then.

Vidicon cameras were usable in low light, properly designed. Not
that the BBC was renowned for state of the art.

Really?

it makes as much sense as the bullshit you're posting.

Well, I'm trying to think of a US broadcaster that designed much of its
own equipment. If you want to debate the BBC and 'state of the art'.

I saw one of the first
single gun color TV cameras in 1972/73, built by Magnavox for industrial
video applications. That was at Ft. Rucker, Al. where the video
production section was looking into newer cameras.

Can you name a broadcast use for a single tube colour camera? Apart
from stunt stuff where it would be destroyed.

Yes they were used for ENG before color CCD cameras were availible.

I'm talking about proper broadcasting, not news. News will use domestic
shot pictures if it suits them. Please stick to top end.

If you consider 2" Ampex industrial video, you might argue. The
mobile production units were several tractor trailers full, and they
had just bought the first Tektronix U-matic decks built.

U-matic? Only ever used for news stuff here. And office viewing before
VHS.

1" C Format ruled until the arrival of Beta SP and MII.

So, you used 2" until the other formats were availible?

Which part of 1" C format don't you understand?

Umatic was
second generation video for use in classrooms, dubbed from the broadcast
grade masters. Long beofre VHS or any beta crap was availible. I used
1" Sony at WACX in orlando for the master edit suit. OTOH, I had 13
Sony U-Matics at the transmitter site for the LaCarte Video automation
system. WACX had better video quality than most of the other stations
in the market. The worst used Beta and it was obvious.

Seems to me you know little about broadcast standards.

--
*A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it uses up a thousand times more memory.

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article
<959c8ff9-0e06-4bc5-ba14-53d246331e46@w2g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
<stratus46@yahoo.com> wrote:

The 1" decks you refer to are not the 1" machines used in broadcast.
The broadcast flavor was the late '70s SMPTE C format built by Ampex,
Sony, RCA, Hitachi and NEC but mostly Ampex and Sony. Did I miss any?

Yup. Marconi made a clone. Very good too - with Dolby A for the main audio
pair.

--
*I speak fluent patriarchy but it's not my mother tongue

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <slrniiqh2b.5ne.gsm@cable.mendelson.com>,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@mendelson.com> wrote:

NTSC gives the best pictures in the studio.
SECAM records best.
PAL transmits best.

The reality is much more mundane. NTSC was perfectly fine. It gained a
bad reputation becuase of problems in distribution, which were managment
issues, not technical ones.

Given receivers were fitted with a front panel hue control, it must have
been a known issue. PAL sets have no such device.

The BBC, adopted the original NTSC specification calling it PAL. It
included the alternating line phase (hence the name), that was found to
be unecessary in the US.

I wonder just how available were the delay lines needed when NTSC was
introduced? They were quite an expensive component years later.

For what may have been a good technical reason when the 405 line system
was developed in the 1930's, by the time the new system was designed
around 1960, there was absolutely no technical reason that the US
system, as implemented, would not work in the UK. (50 fields/25 frames
versus 60 and 30).

Well, film uses 24 fps. Probably for a good reason. Which makes 25
somewhat closer. But not going for NTSC allowed the use of 625 lines. And
therefore better resolution.

The political reason was to keep the UK electronics companies in work,
to avoid cheap sets made in much larger quantities in the US. At that
time, there was no electronics industry to speak of in Japan, so it was
not a threat.

The US have never been at the forefront of producing 240 volt 50 Hz
anything - they tend to stick to the local markets.

The PAL is better hype was exactly that, it was to make you think that
technically it was different than NTSC and ripping off the british
public was a good thing.

That would have had more weight if only the UK had adopted PAL.

SECAM on the other hand really was designed to make TV Sets incompatible
with NTSC/PAL and more expensive.

The French often go their own way.

--
*Who are these kids and why are they calling me Mom?

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <yNqdnS4xfenEyLDQnZ2dnUVZ_tqdnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

Back in 1970 I took course "TV production" in my Senior year.
We had a nice 1" tape deck and a mixer/fader console along with
two dolly mounted cameras.

By 1971, the students had trahed enough of the equipment, so
that they were using a 1/2" Sone deck and hand helds on tripods.

Sigh, what a waste of studio grade gear.

No kidding. One of the local high schools gets new equipment about
every other year when they need to learn on beat up old junk.

Big snag with pro gear at one time was it needed pros to set it up and
maintain it. And then there was the size.

--
*Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Brenda Ann]

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
news:5194615812dave@davenoise.co.uk...

Sigh. You appear to bbe an idiot. RCA & GE made most of the studio
cameras in the US.

Well, I'm trying to think of a US broadcaster that designed much of its
own equipment.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That would be NBC (GE) and ABC (RCA). Of course, those networks have changed
ownership in the past few years. NBC is now owned, IIRC, by Universal, while
ABC is owned by Disney.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Don't think you've been following things. DVDs as such
don't have either an NTSC or PAL footprint unless the
originating material had.

I don't think that's correct. There are differences in the number
of scanning lines and frame rate on NTSC and PAL DVDs.

There are - but neither are *fundamental* to PAL or NTSC.

Okay... Right...

With regard to your comment -- which is something like
"there's no water in a glass unless you've poured water
into it" -- what sort of non-PAL or non-NTSC-format material
would you record on a video DVD?

If the material is sourced from a composite PAL recording,
it will retain the PAL footprint.

Now you've lost me. I didn't know that DVDs were -- or could be -- made from
composite sources. MPEG encoding wasn't intended to work with composite
signals -- was it?

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Oh they most certainly do as they are either 525/60 or
625/50. While your computer will have no trouble with
this, CRT sets definitely did (but could usually be adjusted).

Modern sets can't be adjusted. The last TV I owned with a vertical hold
control was the Sony KV-1920. The hold had sufficient range to lock to 50Hz
sources. Every set since then has had scan sync locked to the color burst.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

William Sommerwerck <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:
In every other respect, NTSC is objectively superior to PAL.

Explain how 525 lines gives superior resolution to 625?

I thought we were talking about /color/ encoding and display. But since you
brought up resolution... NTSC has better color resolution.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Don't think anyone with sense claims any of these are
universally superior. Each had merits and de-merits.
Think it goes something like this:-

NTSC gives the best pictures in the studio.
SECAM records best.
PAL transmits best.

#1 is meaningless, because "in the studio", you can display RGB directly,
without encoding.

I remember an article about 15 years ago in one of the pro publications
arguing over color TV standards. The author -- who was someone famous (it
might have been Henry Kloss, but don't hold me to that) -- said that the
best color TV images he'd ever seen were NTSC. He was talking in terms of
optimum reception and display.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

The reality is much more mundane. NTSC was perfectly fine.
It gained a bad reputation becuase of problems in distribution,
which were managment issues, not technical ones.

Given receivers were fitted with a front panel hue control, it must
have been a known issue. PAL sets have no such device.

They don't? I've never understood how an automatic Hue control would work on
a PAL set.

NOTE: I just started browsing the Wikipedia article, which is loaded with
errors. For example, it says:

"PAL was developed by Walter Bruch at Telefunken in Germany."

Note "developed" (not "invented"). Herr Bruch might have added useful
features, but PAL is basically the original NTSC proposal.

"NTSC receivers have a tint [sic] control to perform colour correction
manually. If this is not adjusted correctly, the colours may be faulty. The
PAL standard automatically cancels hue errors by phase reversal, so a tint
control is unnecessary. Chrominance phase errors in the PAL system are
cancelled out using a 1H delay line resulting in lower saturation, which is
much less noticeable to the eye than NTSC hue errors."

Just about everything there is wrong. I think.

I wonder just how available were the delay lines needed when NTSC
was introduced? They were quite an expensive component years later.

The anticipate cost of the additional circuitry was one of the reasons NTSC
dropped phase alternation. The Wikipedia article states that a PAL receiver
"needs" a 1H delay line, but I don't see why that is an absolute
requirement.

For what may have been a good technical reason when the 405
line system was developed in the 1930's, by the time the new
system was designed around 1960, there was absolutely no
technical reason that the US system, as implemented, would
not work in the UK. (50 fields/25 frames versus 60 and 30).

Well, film uses 24 fps. Probably for a good reason. Which makes
25 somewhat closer. But not going for NTSC allowed the use of
625 lines. And therefore better resolution.

NTSC gets around the frame-rate difference with 3:2 pull-down. European TV
simply runs the film 4% faster, at 25fps. Neither system is ideal. At least
Blu-ray displays motion pictures at their correct frame rate.

SECAM on the other hand really was designed to make TV Sets incompatible
with NTSC/PAL and more expensive.

It was actually designed to get around the problems of recording video
images on tape.

By the way... PAL has no more /horizontal/ resolution than NTSC. (The
bandwidth/line is about the same.) The extra hundred scanning lines is nice,
but the eye judges resolution more by horizontal resolution.

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article <igirlg$86a$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
William Sommerwerck <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:
In every other respect, NTSC is objectively superior to PAL.

Explain how 525 lines gives superior resolution to 625?

Because it does it 30 times a second instead of 25. Less bluring in live action.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Oh they most certainly do as they are either 525/60 or
625/50. While your computer will have no trouble with
this, CRT sets definitely did (but could usually be adjusted).

Modern sets can't be adjusted. The last TV I owned with a vertical hold
control was the Sony KV-1920. The hold had sufficient range to lock to
50Hz
sources. Every set since then has had scan sync locked to the color burst.

Correction. My NAD MR-20 also had a vertical hold control.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

People like to make stupid acronyms. Innovations
People Don't Need and Always Off Line, for example.

Perhaps the most-brilliant reverse acronym was for PCMCIA (personal computer
memory-card international association):

"People can't memorize computer-industry acronyms"

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

I wrote:

SECAM on the other hand really was designed to make TV Sets incompatible
with NTSC/PAL and more expensive.

William Sommerwerck wrote:

It was actually designed to get around the problems of recording video
images on tape.

It depends upon what you mean by SECAM. SECAM as a color and video encoding
method was designed as you say, to improve video recordings. SECAM as an over
the air transmission system used by France was designed to produce a signal
that could not be received by an NTSC or PAL TV set, would not display any
color nor have any audio. Or vice versa.

This meant that you could only receive French SECAM TV signals on French TV
sets, and French viewers could not receive foreign signals.

Many countries did use SECAM over the air signals that were compatible with
PAL, and except for the color could be received on PAL TVs and vice versa.
(look up PAL B/G versus SECAM D/K).

Two system (PAL/(me)SECAM) TV sets and VCRs were common, and if I remember
correctly unmodifed PAL VCRs could play (me)SECAM tapes to a two system TV
set.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Don't think anyone with sense claims any of these are
universally superior. Each had merits and de-merits.
Think it goes something like this:-

NTSC gives the best pictures in the studio.
SECAM records best.
PAL transmits best.

#1 is meaningless, because "in the studio", you can display
RGB directly,without encoding.

It would be a very stupid studio that did so if it were intended
for analogue transmission.

How about "under ideal conditions"?