Crystal Palace DSO is looming...

[Hybrid tellies]

We said goodbye to analogue TV from Mendip a couple of years ago. Due to the weather conditions I could only just about see CH5 from Croydon on CH37 via my DX setup, D100 tuner, loft mounted Grid aerial with low noise mast head amp. I just saw it drop out at 00:32 this morning. I watched the BBC1 announcement on my iphone.
So what next? I shall try and monitor the last analogue signals from Blue Bell Hill and perhaps Dover until June. Not sure whether Heathfield has already gone DSO or not so will have to check up on this.

[radioredcat]

Well done John HKS I wish I could have done similar but no room here for vintage TV's sadly.

The analogue from C/P must have been on reduced power because I have not seen anything from C/P as the weak signal I have seen on CH 33 is Bilsdale off the side of the aerial and the same goes with Croydon.

So I now will rotate the aerial and enjoy analogue from Bilsdale until autumn and I will upload my last reception from C/P with teletext clockcracker page as a way of my own celebration.

Andy

[pichacker]

"And finally....." > As used to be said on "That's Life"

[Andrew2]

Originally Posted by pichacker

Graham,

As I look out the window I feel that something I cannot see is missing forever....

A bit off topic but my girlfriend said to me last night "You know I love you, but you are weired sometimes!!"



Steve.

Strange, isn't it? Here in Winter Hill land, we lost our analogue a couple of years ago and of course I stayed up to bid a fond farewell to the signals as they were turned off one by one.
I was quite upset when I finally got to bed.
When you have spent all your working life with first of all monochrome analogue followed by the wonderful analogue PAL colour system, it is a wrench to suddenly realise it's gone forever.
PAL in particular was a work of art, as was NTSC from which it was developed. All those bits and bobs to keep it sync'd up and behaving itself - the burst gates, the PLL'd s/c osc, the synchronous demods. The clever interleaving of the Luma and the chroma, the careful choice of frequencies and offsets, all to squeeze the best possible results out of the available technology.
That was my life, that was....
And just look at what passes for a 'good picture' on Freeview! No fine detail to speak of, edge enhancement to give it the illusion of sharpness, odd-looking faces with spots and stubble that seem to move independently...

One good thing about the DSO is the signals are up by 10dB or so, strong enough to use my pocket digital TV with it's weeny aerial downstairs 20 odd miles from CP. I got it for the supurb FM radio in it, better than any analogue FM radio I have used while walking. Now I can get the digital radio stations too (4extra is good and in stereo on DTV unlike DAB where it is mono).

[Heatercathodeshort]

The signal from CP was incredible. Three of the receivers we were playing with employed valved UHF tuners [PC88/PC86] and operated grain free without aerials.
It really was great fun and I must thank Gerry for allowing us to cram his home with nasty television receivers. To be honest he absolutely loved it and we really did have a great time. A really good send off! Regards, John.

[radiolot]

Originally Posted by Heatercathodeshort

Had a fantastic night at the Vintage Wireless museum with Gerry, Peter Sanders, Daniel, John Thompson and myself. We set up around 16 receivers of all types from pre war to a 1985 colour portable. The Tower is very visible from the front upstairs window of the VWM as you can see from the pictures. We took the short journey round to the Palace as we had expected it to be lit up but it turns out that the floodlighting will take place at around 9pm this evening. I have attached a few of the many pictures we took last night. More to come.
The receivers operating were: HMV 907 1938. HMV 901 1936. EKCO TS48 1948. GEC BT302 1959. EKCO/Ferranti T368 1960. BUSH TUG12 1949. PYE D16T 1946. McMichael MP17 1958. Philco A1707 1948. Murphy A56V 1938. KB VC1 1963. BUSH TV22 1950.
On the table: FERGUSON 16" 1400. FERGUSON 11" 900. TOSHIBA 10" 'CUTE' ULTRA 1500. ULTRA 850 and a few more!
More to come. John.

John - please write something in the BVWS Bulletin and include pictures. The one with the CP mast on the hill and a TV22 on in the window is epic.

thanks
Lau.

[Heatercathodeshort]

I doubt if the pictures would be good enough quality for the Bulletin Laurence but I certainly will post a few more here as I believe Petertheorgan will. Thanks by the way. J.

[Heatercathodeshort]

I should add that we had a super display at Gerry's on Sunday. Loads of telly junk all working with guys bringing along their treasures for test. What with Auroras, distribution amplifiers, diplexers, the museum standard converter and dual standard receivers, it was a mind blowing experience to connect it all up. We had great fun meeting everyone. Gerry even put on his white laboratory coat. I'm still unpacking the plastic boxes containing all the leads and bits and bobs...J.

[murphymad]

Hi John,

Please do let Carl have the pictures for the BVWS Bulletin.

I am confident that they are good enough and certainly most interesting for the membership.

Mike...

[Heatercathodeshort]

Thanks Mike. I have had a word with Peter and he is going to forward me a few pictures of the closedown to add to mine. I will write a little article and let you have it ASAP. John.

[Lucien Nunes]

a TV22 on in the window

If that is the TV22 that has been at Gerry's since the early 90's, it was the one my uncle David gave to me in the late 70's, on which I watched the closedown of 405. I have some pictures of that moment somewhere. It was not until a couple of years later that it was fired up once again on the output of the analogue converter. It's great to hear of the party at Gerry's, well done to all who helped make an occasion of it. I missed the whole CP closedown process as (ironically) I was returning on a late flight from Dublin where we had spent the day upgrading a building-wide IPTV system.

I could not help thinking during the day, as we twiddled with MPEG-2 encoded streams being squashed down to the minimum bitrate to allow dozens of connections from each gigabit port, that it was a step backwards. Even HD, crammed into 10Mbps of MPEG-4 (or worse, upsampled 720 over an HD channel where all the bandwith is being used up to encode the artefacts) looked like a crude, 'painting-by-numbers' imitation of the clean, natural pictures I had grown up with in the bygone era of analogue broadcast.

Yes, bygone era, it took a while to sink in.

Lucien

[petertheorgan]

Yes Lucien

you are correct ,,,,,,,it has been a little under the weather for some time but John W and I have just recapped it and now it is working beautifully , the photo is not really correct for the evening , but i will also add a photo of it showing analogue on the last night

Peter

[petertheorgan]

a few more photos of the evening

[Heatercathodeshort]

Peter, I can't help thinking, by the look of that picture, you appear to have come into contact with the mains EHT supply from that Philco we were working on. I don't remember you touching it but it only takes a split second of inattention...Come to think of it, by the look of my picture, I came into contact with it around 1960..
Really great pictures. John.
PS I missed from the list the RGD TV/radiogram seen working behind Gerry.

[AidanLunn]

Originally Posted by murphyv310

Hi.
Certainly Crystal Palace was the first transmitter used in the UK for System I but not in the British Isles, Eire was using System I for a couple of years before us.

I apologise, I meant our variant, System I-1.

[Mr Hoover]

Originally Posted by MurphyV310

Certainly Crystal Palace was the first transmitter used in the UK for System I but not in the British Isles, Eire was using System I for a couple of years before us.

Don't forget Crystal Palace was conducting 625 line tests from late 1957 and into 1958 on approximately Ch 44 (The Uhf channels weren't allocated till 1961) using 6.5 MHz intercarrier sound,some 405 transmissions were also made I believe.

There then was a bit of a lull where narrowband squarewave signals were put out on the same frequency for propagation tests.

By 1961-62 Ch 44 was back doing colour tests and joined by Ch 34 to enable Secam and NTSC comparisons in real time,not sure if 6.5 or 6MHz audio was used then.Possibly even Pal was included by mid 1963.

Towards the end of 1963 Ch 34 was converted to 33 in preparation for the start of BBC 2 and 44 went off the air.

Old Practical TV magazines have a lot of references to all this activity.

Cheers

Hugh



Hugh

[IanNVJ35]

It mey be just me, but now I turn on my TV and see just static I lose enthusiasm to even turn on the digital converter. My enthusiasm to watch live TV has waned and I am turning to my collection of tapes instead.