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Old 5th Dec 2017, 11:23 pm   #24
Halfabee
Triode
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Glasgow, UK.
Posts: 49
Default Re: Fifty Years of Colour Television in the UK

What a fascinating thread, compulsive and informative reading bringing back some happy memories of first generation colour equipment, a lot of which was still in service into the mid eighties.
In 1981 Marconi installed four MkIX cameras at BBC Glasgow, no doubt hoping to win the contract to replace the 2001s in the main studio.
Engineering loved them, they were beautifully built and reasonably reliable. Light entertainment and game show producers also liked them, however drama lighting directors (aka the princes of darkness) thought the images lacked subtlety, one commenting that the pictures 'look a bit ITV', that was their death knell.
So the old EMIs were coaxed along for another couple of years and the poor Marconis lived out their lives in a 'talking heads' news and sport studio.
I guess the 'highs out of green' design with limited red and blue bandwidth didn't help. The 4 tube cameras and even, dare I say it, the full bandwidth RGB Link 110/120 displayed a more natural sharpness, compared to which the MkIX pictures looked a bit 'electronic' even after the BBC mods to shift the aperture correction peak out of band.
Within a few years it was all academic, British manufacturers failed to predict the demand for operationally practical and reliable light weight cameras, and were put to the sword by the likes of Sony and Ikegami.
Still, as HKS would say... HAPPY DAYS, we had time to 'play'.
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