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Old 26th Aug 2016, 11:20 am   #10
Nicklyons2
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 1,517
Default Re: JVC CX-610GB used in BBC studios?

I've spent some time working freelance for several TV facilities over the years and tacit BBC/IBA approval caused in turn much chagrin and occasionally some amusement. I remember a BBC person appearing at one facility and when he saw we used some Sony monitors he feined shock akin to that of a Victorian lady meeting a harlot in the street; I thought he was going to faint he was so appalled. A few months later I was at a large OB site and popped my head into the BBC's Eurovision co-ordination centre at the OB and beheld around half a dozen KV1340 white portables, modified for video-in, monitoring various feeds. I have BBC North Radio OBs' Hacker off-air monitor fom the 1970s and battered and crudely modded certainly fits the description.
The JVCs of the ilk mentioned in the OP were very useful 'in the field'; they weren't big power users and would run off a 12/13.2V camera battery for an hour or so. Their biggest contribution, in the days when ENG cameras only had small b/w crt viewfinders was it enabled the crew to check the white-balance was OK; the cameraman would do an auto white and the camera would say 'OK' but occasionally the cameras mistook something and the result would look like it was shot through Lucozade wrapping or very blue. The JVC, with the chroma wound up, could be used to double check there was no obvious colour cast to the picture. Sony later brought out professional monitors for 'in the field' just such use but these cost around 4 times as much, weighed around 4 times as much and consumed twice the power (they were nice though).
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