Vintage TV in Brum, 16th Nov 2019

[peter_scott]

There will be a "Kaleidescope" vintage TV event at Birmingham City University on Saturday 16th November. It's to celebrate 50 years of colour on all 3 channels. BBC2 had gone colour in 1967, ITV and BBC1 followed in 1969.

Jeffrey will be part of the BECG team bringing "Southern" to the event. This outside broadcast truck will be fully operational and free to look around inside: https://becg.org.uk/projects/southern-television/

The event is posted on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/colour-tv...5577425113

Tickets are free but if you want to come it's best to register on Eventbrite.

[peter_scott]

Sorry, for the broken link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/colou...ts-75577425113

[AC/HL]

Added to the calendar. Click on the entry to request a reminder.

[Duke_Nukem]

Cant seem to register - just takes me to a page with some animated shaded horizontal bars !?

TTFN,
Jon

[peter_scott]

Hi Jon,

Best to contact Jeffrey.

Peter

[Stuart R]

Sounds like a great event, I hope to go along. Kaleidoscope do some interesting screening events which get even more tempting if old technology is involved.

SR

[Duke_Nukem]

Just to follow up on the issue I was having, I just couldn't get the registration site to work (Firefox under Linux), despite disabling plugins. I installed Opera and that worked.

TTFN,
Jon

[AJSmith625]

For those, including myself who couldn't make this event today, here is the report carried on yesterday evening's ITV news Central.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o-3L3qbypo

[Duke_Nukem]

And here's a few photos from today.

TTFN,
Jon

[beery]

Nice!

The cameras left to right are I think:-

Marconi Mk9 (the one with the magic alignment button)

Marconi Mk4 (the last of the Marconi turret cameras and my favourite )

Marconi Mk2 (this is one that I discovered in a scrapyard where I had a Saturday job)

Marconi Mk3 (iconic, but, huge)

Wish I had been there to see it.

Cheers
Andy

[dave walsh]

Many thanks to Jon for the photos and AJ the local TV link. It's really good to be able to see what was going on and "view" the vintage clips! Taking the trouble to share the event with others who couldn't be there echoes the original ambition of the TV pioneers ie to invent a system of "seeing from affar"-the entertainment aspect came later! Way back then there was speculation along the lines of "imagine being able to go to the Theatre without leaving your home ". I think, in many ways, we are still behind the curve on that one. Yes there are plenty of major live events transmitted [in colour] from a great distance all the time but [streaming aside] not a lot of smaller scale broadcasts. This terrific surprise that so many people still have B+W TV's is quite amusing. Would it be regarded as typical British eccentricity or is there a similar situation elsewhere? The access to yesterday's event also ties in quite nicely with "The Monochrome Blues" on this weeks The One Show [Radio 4] gently poking fun at us vintage enthusiasts [in more ways than one]

Dave

[Colourstar]

Originally Posted by AJSmith625

For those, including myself who couldn't make this event today, here is the report carried on yesterday evening's ITV news Central.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o-3L3qbypo

That's a surprisingly lengthy and well put-together report. Nicely done!

It really was a fantastic day with barely enough time to take it all in. The lectures were informative and entertainingly presented, Peter Purves was an excellent guest and then of course there were the archive programmes themselves. The beautiful warm colour on the BBC's 'Once More With (Julie) Felix' really did justice to the PAL system. It looked as if it could have been made last week, rather than in 1969. The definition was crystal clear, even when shown on a huge video projector screen. Fabulous!

Hats off to all involved with Kaleidoscope and to the BECG team for their hard work and dedication and also of course to Mikey for transporting some of his vintage colour sets to the event. I hope the RNLI did well out of the donations.

Steve

[dave walsh]

Was it the Julie Felix episode that included The Incredible String Band Steve?. Wireless World had a colour cover that showed them in the Studio Set-1969 might be too late though. I think. The ISB appearance has certainly been shown on BBC4 if it wasn't at the event.

Apologies for the typo in my other post. It should, of course, have been the Now Show not the epitome of family entertainment on BBC1!

Dave

[HamishBoxer]

I remember the colour tv installation film.

[Colourstar]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

Was it the Julie Felix episode that included The Incredible String Band Steve?.

Dave

Hi Dave, no not that one sadly. The guests were Tom Paxton and guitarist Julian Bream. I'm pretty sure there's an even earlier surviving colour edition from 1967 featuring Leonard Cohen.


Steve

[Stuart R]

An interesting day, but there just wasn't enough time to take it all in! By choosing to sit in on all the presentations, I missed my chance to look round the OB unit.

Quite a few items had to be dropped from the running order to finish on time. With the high standard of lectures mentioned by Steve, I was looking forward to an item on Colour Recovery - and the Origami!

Julie Felix had two guests in the featured episode, Julian Bream and Tom Paxton.

A good day for a very worthy cause, but too much going on to see everything.

SR

- Thanks for posting the Central News link, I was standing outside the pub, hoping their large screen TV might have switched over from the BBC - no such luck!

[AidanLunn]

Originally Posted by beery

Marconi Mk9 (the one with the magic alignment button)

Cheers
Andy

It's a Mk8, Marconi's first three-tube colour camera, dating from about 1970, the Mk9 was white with black trim and was introduced in 1978.

[beamcurrent]

The MkVIII data can be found here Marconi always referred to their cameras in full Roman numerals.

http://www.tvcameramuseum.org/marconi/mk8/index-1.html

also Mk9 data on the museum site.

[red16v]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

Was it the Julie Felix episode that included The Incredible String Band Steve?. Wireless World had a colour cover that showed them in the Studio Set-1969 might be too late though. I think. The ISB appearance has certainly been shown on BBC4 if it wasn't at the event.

Apologies for the typo in my other post. It should, of course, have been the Now Show not the epitome of family entertainment on BBC1!

Dave

The WW cover is from October 1967. I use it as my avatar on a couple of forums. It features a couple of Marconi MkVII's. Here's a link to the cover:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com...ld-1967-10.pdf

There are actually some interesting colour TV articles within that issue if you care to peruse it more fully, colour standards conversion etc.

I came across this link today with information about BBC 1 going colour, it includes a scan of the RT with a list of programmes being transmitted in colour prior to the official date.

https://www.transdiffusion.org/2019/...-colourful-one

[PaulM]

The event was certainly an awful lot of work, but we're pleased that people enjoyed it! The old technology worked very well but we were very short of light for 4-tube cameras and it was perishing cold on the Friday evening.

There will be some more 'behind the scenes' tales to tell about this 'adventure to Birmingham' in due course, but thanks to everyone who made it so memorable and successful.

Keep an eye on our website at www.becg.org.uk

As noted on our website, the distortion on the sound on the item was not us! The sat truck took our line level feed but only had mic channel inputs which they added attenuators to - obviously not enough . . .

We hope to be doing another MkVII related event very soon - not hardware this time. Watch this space, as they say.

Best regards,

Paul M