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Television Standards Converters, Modulators etc Standards converters, modulators anything else for providing signals to vintage televisions.

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Old 10th Jul 2020, 9:41 am   #1
Andy Doz
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I know there was one of these machines that was saved from Ty Oldfield in Cardiff.... does anyone know who has it?

I have some information that may to be their advantage!
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Old 10th Jul 2020, 5:18 pm   #2
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Hello Andy

I can't help with your search, but I would like to express an interest, not that I/we wish to acquire it, even for me it's a bit on the big side.

But on behalf of the tvcameramuseum and the Broadcast Television Technology Trust www.bttt.org.uk we would be interested to know if it is in use/safe/preserved/ or what??

Best Regards Brian
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Old 10th Jul 2020, 8:22 pm   #3
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Hadn't heard of another one being saved, but good news if it has been!

For what it's worth, we have two, an URSA and an original MkIII converted to dual-standard SD/HD by Philips. Both machines came with a huge number of spares and if the new owner is found we may be able to help with freebie parts. PM me if anything is needed.

We do need some motors for the URSA but it's a background project at the moment.

These machines are seriously heavy and difficult - worse than a Quadruplex in a lot of ways

BTW, the MkII, of which we have one, is far, far worse - you wouldn't believe the size of that one. We think that ours is likely the last survivor . . .

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Old 10th Jul 2020, 9:41 pm   #4
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You've awakened some memories here!

Many many years ago I used to work on MK1's and also MK2. I installed a Mark 2 in central London, and just shifting the mech was hard work. Yes, they were big.
The Mark 1 was valved, & I used to have to set it up many times in a day. Are there any still around? Ours had a Westrex sep.opt/mag play-off machine linked with a selsyn lock.

I remember going on a training course for the mark 2, in Welwyn garden city, great times.

David.
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Old 11th Jul 2020, 9:11 am   #5
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Hello David,

The last (and only) MkI that I ever saw was at the then Plymouth Polytechnic's Hoe Television Centre in Plymouth in the late 1970s. It had been converted to colour and ran to 7 19" racks. It worked very well but they never turned it off!

My Rank Cintel Mk II also began life as a black and white unit with the BBC before they had it 'colourised' in 1969. It has 16 and 35 mm transports plus a sound follower.

Also here are Marconi B3402 (Mk VII series), B3404 (Mk VIII series) plus two B3410 Digital Line Array. The B3404 and one of the line arrays are both in quite good working order. The Rank Cintel Mk III is almost working - just needs some more hours (like a lot of things . . .).

Telecine - the forgotten broadcast TV technology!

Best regards,

Paul M
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Old 11th Jul 2020, 7:18 pm   #6
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The Mark 1 that I worked on had also been converted to colour, but one had to really drive it, as it was prone to drift in the RGB channels. I did a few mods to it at the time, which did improve it. It was a 35mm machine. I wonder what happened to it, It was at S.H. Benson advertising, in Kingsway, London.

I remember some what would now be seen as very risky practice, like taping over the safety interlock switches on the EHT generator, so I could work on it. My then girlfriend, (now my wife) was very worried! Still we had 3 children though, so the X-ray exposure can't have been that bad, despite the warning labels.

I've just remembered where I installed the Mark 2 in London. It was for TVI, were they Whitfield St? It's a long while ago!

As you say, forgotten TV history. Somewhere I think I may have some sales brochures on the mark 2, together with some training notes. I may even have a few frames of de-streak/ afterglow correction film! I know I have some test card C.

David.
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Old 14th Jul 2020, 5:23 pm   #7
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I presume this would be item 418 in this catalogue?

https://www.ppauctions.com/assets/au...1193332400.pdf

Perhaps if you were to contact them and ask nicely they might give you the information you would like?

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Old 14th Jul 2020, 5:26 pm   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vintage Engr View Post
You've awakened some memories here!

Many many years ago I used to work on MK1's and also MK2. I installed a Mark 2 in central London, and just shifting the mech was hard work. Yes, they were big.
The Mark 1 was valved, & I used to have to set it up many times in a day. Are there any still around? Ours had a Westrex sep.opt/mag play-off machine linked with a selsyn lock.

I remember going on a training course for the mark 2, in Welwyn garden city, great times.

David.
I worked on MkI's (35mm and 16mm) which had been colourised. They were not valved? Did this change occur when they were colourised?

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Old 14th Jul 2020, 5:36 pm   #9
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Hello David,

The last (and only) MkI that I ever saw was at the then Plymouth Polytechnic's Hoe Television Centre in Plymouth in the late 1970s. It had been converted to colour and ran to 7 19" racks. It worked very well but they never turned it off!

My Rank Cintel Mk II also began life as a black and white unit with the BBC before they had it 'colourised' in 1969. It has 16 and 35 mm transports plus a sound follower.

Also here are Marconi B3402 (Mk VII series), B3404 (Mk VIII series) plus two B3410 Digital Line Array. The B3404 and one of the line arrays are both in quite good working order. The Rank Cintel Mk III is almost working - just needs some more hours (like a lot of things . . .).

Telecine - the forgotten broadcast TV technology!

Best regards,

Paul M
We had 4 colourised MkI's. All the electronics fitted within the main 'guts' of the machine itself and below the operators desk that generally sat beside it - there were no separate bays of equipment apart from a bay in CAR which held all the telecine encoders. The machines were all 'Uniplex', ie could do either 16mm or 35mm but not both so I am slightly confused by your post. The first dual gauge machine I worked on was the MkIII 16 & 35 mm as designed of course - hopping patch, wonderful bit of kit.

I too attended Plymouth Poly, the only telecine machine I remember was an old Marconi 'monster'! It was so big it was called nicknamed the 'Fish fryer' and looked pretty fearsome to the uninitiated! I think I still have my notes on it when we were required to a 'lab' on it. Once seen never forgotten, I think the Marconi training place in Chelmsford had one too.
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Old 14th Jul 2020, 8:50 pm   #10
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Your 'fish fryer' (!) is the Marconi B3404 which I have a working example of. I don't ever recall there being a B3404 there so that must have been well after my time (76-80). Mine is the one from Marconi College. Attached is a picture (rather poor) of my photoconductive B3404 and a contemporary photo with some of the design team. It has dual 16 or 35 transports or a mix (which mine is) plus dual 35 mm slide projectors. An optical multiplexer switches between the four sources. For what it does, it's really not that big at all.

The Cintel Mk I at the Hoe Centre was - I'm pretty darned sure - organised in bays against a wall in a fairly narrow downstairs room. Definitely had valves in it. At least one of the racks was a 'double' - much as my surviving Mk II is. It's all a long time ago now . . .

My Mk II came from a chap in Malvern many years ago who had upgraded to a Mk III. He complained that it didn't work as well as his old monster machine and regretted swapping it out apart from the saving in floor space.

I suspect that a lot of the Mk Is and IIs wound up being heavily customised/modded/gutted so hard to say what was 'normal'.

BTW, I saw that URSA for sale and decided not to bid - ran out of room here a long time ago and there's already such a beast in the collection, although it lacks its spool motors.

Best regards,

Paul M
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Old 15th Jul 2020, 10:37 am   #11
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All a long time ago as you say, all I can say is that I worked on a total of 8 MkI & II’s 16 & 35mm in 1977/78 and there were no valves at all to be seen anywhere but it doesn’t really matter.

Thanks for those pictures of the fish fryer! At the risk of going o/t do you have any pictures of old Cintel slide scanners? I am trying to find out the Mk number of a particular model that no-one seems able to remember. It was a dual port scanner with the usual flying spot system. There was a very, very similar machine in CAR at television centre (seemed to me to be the permanent source of test card F) which you may have seen and the slide change mechanism was the somewhat infamous ‘sprod’ system. The model I was familiar with looked the same externally, but crucially, it had two rotating slide carousels instead of the two unreliable sprod system slide holders. This carousel system was very reliable. It was about the size of a double American fridge but turned over on its side! Are you familiar with it or know the Mk number?
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Old 16th Jul 2020, 3:47 pm   #12
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The particular MK 1 I referred to was quite old, & at the time, in 1968/9, had only been fairly recently 'colourised'. The racks were a mix of the older Cintel colours, a sort of ' Marconi hammered bronze', and also some black & green.

Definitely valves, I think there were SP61's used in the video channels.. I actually found an old 'baccy' tin recently, that had resistors which had been removed from the RGB channels when I did some mods. Very sad, I must have a good clear-out!
Just to think, that the output from this TK, in RGB, then went into an encoder that took up nearly a whole 6' rack...Now you can get an encoder in a match-box.
The output was then displayed on a Rank Cintel monitor - was it a CVB3136?
Even that had a separate Pal decoder slung underneath it. Our workshop had one of these monitors for each bench, they were real monsters.

David.
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Old 16th Jul 2020, 8:58 pm   #13
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Default Re: Rank Cintel TK

Interesting thread this!

Whilst I haven't got space for a TK machine I have collected some adverts for them.

Attached is a "colour slide Scanner" dated 1958 advert, A valve TK from an 1957 advert. They don't say in the advert if it is a MkII or what. Adverts are always poor in this respect.

An early RGB monitor CB676 but undated. Early colour monitors were fairly desperate and this one has a round tube. Metal cone ??.

I do have a couple of Rank Cintel slide files from perhaps 3 decades later. in the collection. More manageable a bit less than half a bay!
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Old 16th Jul 2020, 9:55 pm   #14
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This thread is exercising me too! Thinking about it, and in line with VE’s memories, I recall the telecine machine at Plymouth was a rather unusual dark bronze colour so I think it was likely to be a MkI which ties in with Paul’s Plymouth recollections (I was there in 1975/76). In which case the ‘fish fryer’ I saw must have been the one at Marconi’s college - I attended a MkIX camera course there in the early 80’s.

Thanks for those photos. Interesting that there is reference to both Cintel and Rank Cintel so I wonder if the adverts cover the period during which Cintel was bought by Rank? Some ‘monster’ sized kit in those photos so more than likely to be valved unlike the machines
I worked on which were all solid state machines.
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Old 16th Jul 2020, 11:39 pm   #15
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There's some more bumph here:
http://tech-ops.co.uk/next/2015/02/b...-in-the-1960s/

I'll see if I can take some pics of my Mk II - it's not very accessible and in a rather haphazard state awaiting 'one day'. It's all there and lots of spares too, including CRTs, PMTs and gates.

Curious thing is that I now work with what was left of the old Rank Cintel electronics team. For the last 20 years they've morphed into very high-end DLP projector design electronics and I've been working with them as a consultant for nearly ten years. Cintel seems to keep bounding back at me . . .

In the meantime, the Marconi Line Array is very nice - all digital processing which for the very early 80s was pretty good going.

The B3404 'fish fryer' soldiers on and I do like it. The Cintel Mk III is awaiting a bit more time too. The bulk of it works but the film transport snaps film.

Always looking for help on our projects - Lincoln area.

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Paul M
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Old 17th Jul 2020, 8:57 am   #16
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I wonder if your ex-Cintel colleagues could be persuaded to write down some of their memories for prosperity? There’s bags and bags of stuff about vtr (always seen as much more glamorous!) but precious little about telecine.

The MkII on the site you link too (very last picture) is exactly as I remember it. The second to last picture (a MkI) was like the ones I worked on except the two rhs cabinets did not exist and were replaced by the operational desk I referred to in my earlier post, it was butted up against the two lhs cabinets. The desk consisted of a top part (monitor and very limited operational controls), a middle part that was essentially just a script ledge and a lower part that contained additional electronics and accessory modules ( I’m thinking of the optional aperture correctors etc).


I’d be really happy to volunteer to assist your team on your projects but Lincoln is simply too far to be practical I’m afraid.
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Old 17th Jul 2020, 9:30 am   #17
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We already have some quite long stories logged from the Marconi side of things - including an hilarious account of attending Buckingham Palace for a Queen's Award to Industry reception for winners which the B3404 was one. That's written by Andy Fremont - the chap with the beard in the pic of a B3404. The BBC still bought zero, typical . . . The write-up on the B3404 is extensive and it will be appearing on our website www.becg.tv as we extend our coverage to VTR, Telecine etc.

The really forgotten area is high power TX. There's a couple of STC CG1 500W units from the 50s in preservation with the British Heritage Television people here: http://405-line.tv/cg1-transmitters/
I do have some drive equipment including a Marconi B7400 series unit that formed part of the Crystal Palace BBC2 UHF TV transmitter but not much more.

The ex-Cintel guys I work with are 'last generation' and don't go back as far as the Mk I, II and III, so not such a rich seam of information as it may be thought.

We're trying very hard to house all of this kit - including all the restored OB trucks, all the VT, telecine and hundreds of cameras of all types. Before the Covid thing kicked in we were negotiating for a 14,000 sq ft building but that's on hold. Our collective money sources have hit the buffers a bit and we're going to have to fund raise. Donations always welcome (hint, hint hint). BTW, we've been warned off the lottery by several groups we know as such projects rarely work out without problems, so if people want to see this stuff preserved, looked-after, interpreted and shown to the public, we need more money to buy our building.

Telecine is one major part of our goals so not forgotten by us!

Best regards,

Paul M
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Old 17th Jul 2020, 10:01 am   #18
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Forgive my ignorance, but for broadcast were these machines used 'live' or was the film recorded to VT for later transmission - obviously when VT was a reliable medium? If so after what date was this done?
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Old 17th Jul 2020, 10:10 am   #19
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Oh yes, they often went 'live' but progressively less and less as transfer of feature films to VT first became the norm.

News still used a lot of film into the 1980s and scanning dense negative 'rushes' was not one of the Cintel's flying spot technology's strengths - they weren't bright enough. Photoconductive led the charge with news. Live telecine lived on in news for quite a while.

The last feature film to air direct from telecine in the UK was - I believe - on Channel 4 sometime in the 1980s but I have no reference for that.

Telecine (and now 'film scanners') are still important for archive and even some (very limited) modern production, so they do live on and Blackmagic took over the Cintel name in this field. See: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/cintel
Not direct to air any more though . . .

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Old 17th Jul 2020, 12:21 pm   #20
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Forgive my ignorance, but for broadcast were these machines used 'live' or was the film recorded to VT for later transmission - obviously when VT was a reliable medium? If so after what date was this done?
Further to Paul’s answers, don’t forget commercials were also transmitted live from these machines well into the 80’s before ‘video’ became the preferred production method.

Transmitting live from telecine was the norm and the only time we transferred a film to VT (where I worked in ITV) was if the film was technically challenging in terms of the quality of the film print or a particularly difficult CinemaScope film for example that could not satisfactorily be panned left or right live on air without getting the classic ‘talking noses’ or somesuch! Otherwise we panned and scanned such film live on air often with no rehearsal. The films were previewed a week or so before transmission and notes were put in a diary to help the person transmitting it the following week who most likely was a different person.

As Paul also says photoconductive telecine machines whilst technically inferior to flying spot machines were the only real choice for news organisations because of the very variable quality of the developed film. ITN were users of this type of telecine, but if they were producing a prestige documentary - think of something like a big royal occasion- they would trundle down to Southern TV with stacks of film reels under their arms and have the lot transferred on a flying spot machine and take the tapes back with them. The advantages/disadvantages of the two different types was a standard board question.

Thanks to the mods for letting this thread drift run, it is good to go back down memory lane!
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