Hello Martin On 21 May 2012, at 20:41, Martin McCormick <[email protected]> wrote:
• After the original 405-line system in 1936, the UK got a new UHF 625-line system in 1964. This would have been totally immune to the trans-Atlantic interference I was talking about. It also had FM sound making it state-of-the-art so you could hear the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and many others better.:-) Ah yes, memories! I still remember our old monochrome TV, we didn't go colour until about 1969 because our antenna system wasn't compatible. When BBC2 started transmitting they put it on UHF as I remember and the old VHF antennas had to be replaced. Also, my parents objected to paying the higher license fee for a colour TV. Eventually they were pushed into it by their children's rebellious and persistent complaining. But colour TV was a revolution to us in those days. • I was kind of surprised to read that colour transmissions didn't start on that system until BBC2 began them in 1967. I read specifically that they wanted to iron out some of the technical weaknesses discovered in the American NTSC system which was the first color TV system in wide use anywhere. Sometimes, being first isn't the best. Once you get a system out there in public use, you're stuck with it. In both PAL and NTSC, the new color transmissions had to be compatible with existing black-and-white sets so they didn't turn in to paper weights over night. I actually know 2 people who are still using old black and white TV's. Of course, they won't work any more after August so they've just about had their day. But yes; it would have upset quite a lot of people had they just changed suddenly to an incompatible system. What I do remember seeing from time to time is interference from European TV channels when conditions were right, usually in the Summer. Gordon tells me that he used to enjoy those times because it meant that the FM broadcast band became a very interesting place to listen and also his VHF and UHF amateur radio adventures became fun as well. He's telling me that in August 1985 there was a massive massive lift and he was working American stations on 144.300 MHZ single sideband and right down at the bottom end of the band on CW. He says he even worked a couple of stations from California and one from somewhere in Canada on FM at the top end of the European band. He thinks that in the states the 2m band goes from 144.00 to 148.00 MHZ. Over here it's only 144 to 146 MHZ. Anyway, that's got him talking about something I never knew. :) • The UK got stereo sound about the same time we did and both systems had ways of inserting low-speed digital information in to un-seen parts of the picture. In America, we used that mostly for closed-captions for the deaf and for tweaks to the NTSC color adjustments to try and try and try to make it more correct. I often wondered what was meant by closed caption. • The UK and other European television systems developed tele text systems for putting TV guides and other interesting features in to the signal. Teletext started in about 1980 and is still in use today all be it now more advanced than the old analogue systems were. But yes, it brought another very useful feature to our TV system. Gordon's telling me about a computer software system that the BBC used to broadcast as part of teletext. When the BBC model B and the Master were available from Acorn, the BBC used to transmit software code that you could download with a teletext adapter to your computer. Gordon wrote a utility to work with one such adapter and the company who manufactured the adapter actually bought the code from him to add to their own software suite because it was something they didn't provide at that time. What happened apparently was that his software could download a page that had a lot of sub-pages and it would then organise them into the right sequence and save them to disk for reference later, rather than having to have it all scrolling in real time. • I think everybody pretty well wrung every last bit of use one could get out of those systems which served us very well until now. It's almost a thing of the past over here. After September the UK will be entirely digital as far as TV goes. I believe the digital TV bands are somewhere in the 1.something GHZ range. Gordon knows a lot about that system. Lynne ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
