Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Gerry has asked me to let members know that he will be getting some more Auroras in the near future. Contact him via his website to get pricing and reserve one.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Gerry has 5 Auroras left. These are available at £199.00 each including special delivery. Please contact him at Crowthorne Tubes should you want one.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

That's a very good price indeed.

To anyone who's been pondering the purchase of one of these excellent units, but hasn't yet got around to it, I'd say now is the time to do it.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I have just bought one from Gerry. It is the new version with channel selection via a minature switch on the back. No need to go inside box. I am amazed how small it is. It arrived yesterday and is working fine. Two Tv's I have had for over 25 years in the loft are now producing moving pictures on Ch2!
Apart from going to the USA to get one Gerry is the best bet.
I am now going to feed the baseband output into a VCR and record some old stuff on 405 lines. Then build a modulator so I can have two channels going at once!

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I have made this thread "sticky" as updates on a reliable UK supplier of the only standards converter now commercially available is useful info that shouldn't be lost down the page.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I to have just bought an Aurora from Gerry. Am amazed at the perfomance from its built in testcard through to any signal I have put in it. The best £200 I have spent in years. Thank you Gerry.

Regards Dave

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

You can rely on the Aurora's performance exceeding that of any TV. Darryl's design has few if any compromises that affect picture quality. That this is possible at an affordable price is partly due to the capabilities of some of the chips but most importantly to Darryl's skill as an engineer.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Do these ever go wrong? I'd like a spare one but as I have never heard of one breaking down it seems hard to justify.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Basically they don't go wrong. I can't remember all the problems (there haven't been many) but one was DOA due to a badly soldered pin on the FPGA. Another had a faulty F socket. There may have been 1 or 2 others.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Mine works perfectly :thumbsup:.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

It is true that Gerry at Crowthorne Tubes is now the official place to go for Aurora converters in the UK. We're working through the pains of all the paperwork, and you can still obtain them directly from the Aurora website, but this looks like it will be the best solution for people in the UK. No more unknown customs fees or handling charges.

The only confirmed failures I can think of with these converters after 6 years and more than 500 units shipped are the two Jeff mentioned. One was an intermittent short inside the F connector. The person who had this converter did a wonderful job dissecting the connector and finding a sliver of metal from when it was manufactured inside the connector. The other was an unsoldered pin that was intermittent on the FPGA.
I think twice over the years I sent out the wrong model, but caught the error right away and shipped out the correct unit.
There was an initial intermittent failure on a WC-01 due to an unsoldered part, and one of the original Multi-Standard units got a blown video output when 180V from a valve amplifier got into it :)

Darryl

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

This is good news for UK customers. Presumably this is also good for the whole of the EU unless you have made any other arrangements.

Darryl, could you put the relevant info on your website.

There has been one Aurora reported as dead which turned out to be user error. The user will not be named in order to protect the guilty party even though he doesn't deserve it;) I also have dim memories of somebody else talking to me a few years ago about a faulty unit. Can't remember who it was and they haven't followed it up so I'm guessing that turned out not to be a real fault.

That F connector fault was astounding. About as unlikely a fault as you could imagine.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Well, all i can say is Thank You.

David GM8JET

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

No other arrangements have been made for the EU, so Gerry is the guy for them as well. I'm not sure how easy it is to send from the UK to the EU, but it has to be easier and lower cost than for me to send directly to the EU.

Links have been added to my website alerting UK and EU customers. Hopefully this makes it easier and cheaper for everyone.

I remember the one a few years ago that had a reported problem but was never returned so I'm not sure what the status of that one became.

The intermittent F connector was an amazing fault. The owner took it upon himself to diagnose the problem and did a fantastic job disassembling the connector and photographing the metal sliver. A tiny curl of metal that would periodically touch the center conductor!

Darryl

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

There is no extra VAT, duty etc payable when sending stuff within the EU. The UK is in the EU, despite quite a few people wanting us to leave. The only extra cost compared to sending to the UK is postage.

If both seller and buyer are registered for VAT there is a procedure for handling this correctly. I don't think Crowthorne is registered and I can't imagine many Aurora buyers are either. A VAT registered EU buyer getting an Aurora for use in his business might be better off ordering direct from Darryl as he can then reclaim the VAT but there's no guarantee that he will ultimately end up paying less than from Crowthorne.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Good information Jeff. Thanks.

When I posted I was thinking continental Europe but typing EU. I have updated the web site to be a bit more clear.

Darryl

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Hi.
The old multistandard converter is also a magic piece of kit with all the different outputs. I have had mine from around 2004/5 and it has been 100% fine. I borrowed the lead from Jeffrey a couple of years ago and did an upgrade and that's all.
Darryl's products are 100% ;D

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I have two of these miracle converters. 100% reliable. Only one major problem...They are so small and easily lost! If it falls from it's usual home on the shelf in my museum, you have to follow the co-ax lead back to the F connector to find it. Seriously they really are fantastic producing a signal so clean that you forget that 405 is no longer with us in the true sense. It can be a very strange experience working on a 405 line receiver over an extended period. You completely forget that the signal is in fact arriving via the Aurora. A fantastic bit of kit and a lot cheaper than the £50.000 which I believe was the total price of the original converters installed at the transmitters. [Jeffrey you may know the original costs]
I believe the Aurora would have found a very good home at Crystal Palace had it been available in 1969. Regards, John.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I have no idea about the original cost of the CO6/501 and CO6/509 converters. The analogue CO6/501 was state of art when it was designed in the early 1960s. It must have cost a good many £1000 then, heaven knows what at today's prices. The digital CO6/509 was also close to state of art in the 1970s but remember that DICE came very soon after. Probably not as expensive in real terms as the CO6/501.

It would be intresting to know what problems they had at Pye when they built the CO6/501 for ITV. Transferring BBC designs into commercial production has a reputation for not being easy.

An unmodified Aurora could have been inserted in the broadcast chain. Direct comparison should show that the Aurora is better than the CO6/501 and possibly very slightly worse than the CO6/509. In practice with colour inputs the Aurora would outperform the CO6/509 because the Aurora has a comb filter to separate the luminance. In all other respects, reliabilty, size, power consumption, the Aurora wins hands down.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

My Domino - bought before the Aurora came out - was twice the price at £400. It doesn't, however, suffer the problem of John's Aurora of getting lost down the back of the sofa! ;D

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

The Domino was an excellent product in its time and the price was fair. It's just that the Aurora is both cheaper and better in every respect. Apart from a troubling tendency to get lost behind the sofa:)

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Mine was the one with the intermittent "F" connector. It was one of the very first to be shipped in May 2006 (apart from Jeffrey's evaluation units). I connected it up to a dual-standard TV which hadn't seen a VHF signal since 1985, but I couldn't get a peep out of it! The fault cleared after a bit of fiddling with the cables, and didn't return for some years.

Being one of the early ones, the "sleep" feature kept catching me out, so Jeffrey very kindly updated the firmware, to make the feature optional. The unit survived the journey to and from North London without the fault putting in an appearance.

It was only a few months ago that the fault returned, and stayed just long enough for me to measure a dead short at the RF output. As soon as I had measured the short, it was gone. It continued to come and go, and the unit was becoming unusable, so something had to be done.

With Darryl's guidance, I removed the connector from the board (a difficult job involving two soldering irons and a lot of bad language) and dismantled it to find the swarf that had caused all the grief.

I should mention that Darryl had offered to replace the unit, despite it being over 5 years old, so I did have that option if my attempt at repair had failed.

I was pleased to find the fault at last, but that connector was a pig to remove, and I wouldn't want to have to do another. The chances of this happening to any other Aurora are slim indeed, so I don't think we need to worry.

The attached photo shows the connector, with the threaded barrel removed. The swarf can be seen as a thin dark line against the translucent insulation. It had been resting against the centre pin, making and breaking contact at random.

Roy

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Thanks for posting Roy.

I am still amazed (and grateful) that you were not only able to get the connector off the board (a feat in itself!) but to disassemble the connector and find the fault. The picture is simply amazing. Roy and I corresponded about this for a while trying to determine what was going wrong, and taking a few measurements, but Roy's initial suspicions proved to be correct in the end. Myself and Tyco (the connector manufacturer) owe Roy a beer for this one!

Darryl

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Or my Dinosaur.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Hi.
It would be interesting to see who were the original buyers of the multi-standard and SCRF converters in the UK.
The only other Multi-standard owner I know of is David Boynes!

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I think my Domino was the very last one built; the web-site had announced it 'no longer available', but an e-mail enquiry resulted in my getting one after all. £400 turned an academic interest into a real hobby.

I still use it, and in comparison with the Aurora I think it's slightly 'raggy' on fast pans & the like. Perfectly good for everyday use.

Can anyone enlighten me about an odd phenomenon concerning American DVDs and British players. My aurora 'can't see' the picture from a US DVD, but a British 625-line TV can. I suspect that the video-out signal from the DVD player is some intermediate, non-broadcast TV standard, not listed in 'World TV Standards', and that this standard is close enough for a 625 set to cope, but not an Aurora.

Am I anywhere close, and if so, is an Aurora available for it?

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I don't think either the Domino or the Aurora could cause ragging on pans. This is simply because neither does any interfield processing.

The problem with playing NTSC (strictly 525/60) material on a PAL (strictly 625/50) player is that the line and field rate will be 525/60. The colour subcarrier is coded as 4.43MHz PAL. This is the same as with most multistandard VCRs. Most TVs will be entirely happy with this but converters will not be.

There is no simple answer to converting 525/60 to 405. I think the expensive Aurora World Converter will do it. Alternatively some players may convert to 625/50 internally. The final approach is there may be software based converters that can convert the files on a DVD from 525/60 to 625/50. This need not be done in real time and the result can be burnt to a writeable DVD.

It would be theoretically possible to make an SCRF converter that takes 525/60 and outputs 405/60. Whether vintage TVs would like the non-standard field rate is another question. I don't think this is a sensible approach.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

My guess is the DVD is outputting 525/60 with 4.43 chroma as Jeff suggests. In this case no rate conversion is being performed since most modern television will lock to just about any format.

One of the initial cost reducing measures I took on the SC converters is they cannot do any rate conversions. Since most people will be using their antique sets in the country of origin, or at least a country that uses the same mains frequency, this is usually not a problem. Adding rate conversion adds substantially to the cost and complexity of a converter.

I did create the SCRF-343A converter for just this occasion. Since the line frequency of 405/25 and 343/60 are nearly identical, one can operate a 405 set using a 60Hz source by only adjusting the frame rate of the set from 50 to 60.

Darryl

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Presumably there's not enough space in the FPGA to make a switchable 405/50 and 343/60 converter, possibly with autosensing of input field rate.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Not with the one that is currently being used. I could go with a larger part, but that would raise the cost and I'm not sure if it would benefit very many users.

Darryl

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

What's the likelihood of a domestic 405 set being able to manage 60 fields? Beyond the normal frame lock, I imagine. The mains frequency shouldn't be significant; we used to be on 40 cycles hereabouts, and we all watched TV.

Can the WC-01 do it? Perhaps it's time to bite the bullet: $1360 US is about £858 at the moment. Customs would probably bump it up, but it could still be under a grand.

I'll re-assess the ragging. I've not played the disc direct to 625, so it could be any one of a number of causes, or possibly my incorrect observation.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

The WC-01 can do anything in to anything out. You just select the output standard and feed it with NTSC/PAL/SECAM. There would be no need to operate the set at 60Hz since it can convert 525/60 to 405/50.

The $1360 price is only if you require the optional driver board for mechanical televisions and even then this can be done externally by the user. The price for the unit is $985.

Darryl

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I have a Pioneer DVD player which will do NTSC>PAL. I just tried it with the SCRF-405A and I get sound only. Whereas my 1987 Ferguson will happily display a stable colour picture. I guess that means it (the Pioneer) is sorting the colour but leaving the lines/frames alone.

Regards,

Paul

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Yes, that's exactly what I get, the DVD sound imposed on the built-in testcard. It seems that British 625-line sets can resolve US 525-line TV. Can you hear the drop in the line whistle?

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

PAL: 15625Hz; NTSC: 15734Hz (approx) About 0.7%, about a tenth of a semitone. Assuming you can hear those frequencies at all I think even a trained musician wouldn't notice that. You might just hear a beat note if there were PAL and NTSC sets operating in close proximity but I've never heard it myself.

If a set has an audible frame timebase the difference between 50Hz and 60Hz is very obvious.

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

I bought both the first multi standard type around 2004, and later a SCRF with the 405 NTSC option
(Although I am not in the UK, I am in the Republic of Ireland!)

Andy, EI3HG

Re: Auroras at Crowthorne Tubes
 

Hi Andy.

I have two of the NTSC SCRF 405 line auroras, one of my off screen pictures from my modified Decca using Darryl's NTSC SCRF converter appears on Darryl's website.
Meanwhile the Multistandard converter carries on without a glitch, I find that it is one of the best pieces of equipment I have ever bought.
I would also say that the RT Russell Test Card Generator is another excellent piece of kit.