TV Breakdown Appreciation Thread

That YTV one was interesting for the LWT colour bars. I think that's been on this thread before, but I would suggest that either YTV was showing it locally, and British Telecom, trying to establish the feed again routed things to LWT by mistake, or LWT was networking it.

Interesting they went to the Independent television breakdown caption, as opposed to a YTV caption. I always thought that it had to be black sent to the transmitter for 30 seconds before the transmitter took over. That wasn't 30 seconds!

Possibly it was 30 seconds on the original but whoever uploaded the video cut some of it out?

I would have thought the caption at the transmitter would appear when there's a lack of video rather than black video. 30 seconds of that seems a long time. It looks like the line that went down was between YTV and the transmitter(s)*.


The circuit out of LWT was either a mistake, or some sort of work around, with the output going down to LWT and then back up to the transmitters.


*of which they had more than one, so either they lost everything out of their building or everyone saw the captions even if they weren't watching the transmitter that went faulty (which presumably is the one they can watch off air at Leeds - Emley Moor?)

Here's a You Tube video of the night LWT's pres mixer died (We've discussed it in here too, Bluecortina gave us a lot of detail).

You can see the video and syncs fail, and then 30 seconds later the IBA caption cut in (note the audio was unaffected). Then it looks as if LWT patched the VTR directly to Tx to restore things, but then we end up with the end cap until the next event is manually patched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yODNh-ky-Fc

I notice after the endcap goes off, a VT clock appears for another PYCR episode, I wonder if PYCR was one of those shows where they'd put two episodes on a single reel of tape? Presumably to save on tape costs & storage.

Was the output line to CP on the MCR matrix, or was it a manual overplugging required?
I assume the audio to CP was an analogue line rather than SIS in 1981, which would have made it difficult to keep both correct when there was a major panic on.

I think the 30 seconds of black thing applied when the transmitters were fully staffed, if there was 30 seconds of black the IBA would take back control and put up an apology - usually applied around strikes etc.

I suspect the YTV example was the circuit from YTV to the transmitters failing. My assumption was that the LWT bars was the incoming network feed to YTV being patched directly to the transmitters in error.

I think ( and I remember seeing it all happen on the night) it was over plugging because there were periods of no sync ( the IBA caption made multiple appearances) It also affected LWT’s output to the ITV network ( which is how I knew something had failed, I was watching on Southern when PYCR failed, so I switched over to LWT to see what was going on) As I say bluecortina gave us some details a few months ago, if someone can dig up the thread again ?

It was actually posted in this very thread:
https://tvforum.uk/forums/post1112979#post-1112979

In hindsight to have one vision mixer doing both the network feed and local output wasn't very resiliant.
I can understand why the later solution was built around two desks.
It must have been a fun night for all those involved.

The YTV fault looks like a simple switching error or fault at the Leeds BT switching centre.

LWT. Complete failure of the CDL transmission desk and integrated MCR switching desk. Some great people on that night, cool heads among the engineers and presentation staff. Subsequent rebuild in the early 80’s was a changeover to custom built GV kit, but, the main network switcher feeding KRS3 remained on CDL - parts of which were retained to give extra resilience and the network switchers liked the ‘feel’ of the faders on the CDL panel.

Another breakdown just occurred on BBC ALBA during TRNSMT all thanks to me channel hopping. Picture froze and broke during the programme.

I assume BBC ALBA is not doing very well lately then