Early days of NICAM Stereo

NG

noggin Founding member 28 October 2017 12:45am

james-2001 posted:

Still, a badly interpolated picture on some shows looks better than the film effect that's been slapped on them in my opinion.

Very few shows now have a 'film effect slapped on them' - as it's against the UK wide tech standards to convert 50i to 25p in post. Almost al 'film look' shows shot in HD will have been shot 25p intentionally from the outset, rather than having something 'slapped on them'.

And I've yet to see any 50i->25p->50p process that is in any way watchable at a consumer price point. At least the 50i->25p will have hopefully been done to a reasonable quality... I've yet to see a 25p->50p conversion in a telly that is.

RT

Run_Telecine 28 October 2017 11:34am

[quote="UKnews" pid="1084359"]

noggin posted:

(*If I get a stereo feed from an event to work with I'll do my best to make sure it gets to the listeners in stereo, even if that ends up being defeated along the way. A few months ago a colleague and I went to put a musician on air who was going to play part of a piece during the interview. We carefully rigged a stereo mic setup, made sure it was a stereo link back and warned the studio to select the relevant source in stereo. That message failed to get to the person on the desk who had the channel monoed until the last 30 seconds - all that work for almost nothing!)

Part of the limitation of how Sound is mixed for News is due to the limitations of the kit. Basic News satellite trucks will have cheap Blackmagic sound/mixers which mix sources of embedded audio on SDI Video, plus an analogue audio input - but they can't pan/mono the audio, so it's fixed until it gets back to the studio end. Often the Sound will be panned left and mono'd, as that's the channel that the reporter's mic is on. Indeed, on the rare occasion that a stereo feed is being sent back, the Sound Op needs to know to put the channel into Stereo mode on the desk. Rarely, they might have 2 mics on location, sent over 2 legs and then mono'd on TX - difficult for the Sound mixer to adjust levels there, though.

TT

ttt 6 November 2017 2:29am

RJG posted:

Markymark posted:

Riaz posted:

So, the IBA didn't like it when their programme contractors were ahead of them with technology!

The origin of pseudo stereo circuits is lost in time. I can believe that such a concept was not on the radar of the IBA which was brought up on mono audio, but I'm surprised that the BBC with their longstanding presence in radio broadcasting had not dabbled about with them.

You might argue the IBA were as passionate about stereo broadcasting as the Beeb. In 1973 they imposed
upon the ILR contractors the requirement to be in stereo. At that time no BBC local radio station was in stereo (and wouldn't start to be until the early 80s) and BBC national radio was restricted to only the main bulk of England.

ILR being in stereo accelerated the Beeb's roll out (some areas were enabled for BBC stereo just days before an ILR station would launch there, a positive effect of competition !) The Beeb themselves were world beaters
using PCM audio for the distribution of the national stations to the transmitters. Compressors and processors were not allowed to be used on FM broadcasts, and so the transmitted quality of UK FM radio in the 70s and 80s exceeded that of any other domestic audio source, and incredibly was of a higher technical standard than anything (FM or digital) we have today.

Interestingly, Radio Borders, which opened in 1990, received a sustaining overnight feed from MAX a.m., Radio Forth's medium wave oldies station. It was in mono. As was the network chart show on Sundays. Receivers still indicated a stereo signal was being broadcast but the audio was pure mono. That situation lasted quite a considerable time.

The same situation existed at Radio Tees/TFM, which took programmes from Metro from the takeover in 1986. For quite a number of years (this was still ongoing in 1992 that I'm aware of) the sustaining feed (which, in the early days of the takeover ran for 10 hours per day, from 7pm to 5am) was mono only, despite both Metro and Tees being stereo stations. This continued into the '90s where Metro, TFM and GNR all simulcast from 2am to 5am.

TT

ttt 6 November 2017 2:35am

Riaz posted:

noggin posted:

The TX-series (along with most Ferguson sets) were a bit of a joke in the UK broadcast community. Everyone in that industry seemed to buy Sony or Philips sets.

I have owned / repaired several TX100s and my feelings towards them are mixed. They are not as reliable or technically advanced as Sony and Philips sets but the upside is that they are designed in a way where they are quite easy to repair. I never understood why SCART or video sockets were not fitted as standard to the TX100 and required an aftermarket PCB. Stereo versions had audio in DIN sockets as standard.

Mitsubishi sets were very reliable and there was once a company which converted them into monitors. It's not clear when the first Mitsubishi stereo sets were first available but Japanese manufacturers seemed to slightly lag behind European manufacturers when it came to stereo sets and very few models predate the public launch of NICAM or were not fitted with a NICAM decoder. The Sony Profeel was an exception.

I found that the Ferguson sets were tough and reliable (and easy to repair), although years behind the Japanese in terms of technology. There's a reason the rental firms used them. The JVC-manufactured VCRs were much better than a lot of the competition as well.

Toward the end (1989?) they sold TX100s (and TX90s) in Dixons under the Logik brand. These seemed to be a bit thrown together and suffered from sound problems (caused by poor power supply regulation IIRC) but the image quality was noticeably superior to the Philips set I owned, despite the latter being one of the all-singing all-dancing "FSQ" models (and what pieces of junk they turned out to be -- I ended up relegating my overpriced piece of rubbish to the bedroom after only four years and the tube still didn't last the course).

Philips though, mentioned in the same sentence as Sony? Don't make me laugh. The tubes were horrendous, going dim within 3 or 4 years in many cases. Shockingly poor. I was a Philips purchaser at the time, but looking back I wish I hadn't been. Their VCRs were crap, and the audio gear wasn't much better with cassette decks which failed early due to very cheap plastic components which Philips stopped supplying parts for years before the natural end of service life. The one thing they did get right were the CD players which were much more solid than the Japanese Sony-based designs.

I always liked Mitsubishi. Some of their designs (VCRs in particular) lagged behind some other Japanese manufacturers in terms of reliability but they were just so damned innovative (rather similar to Sharp in that regard). Shame they stopped selling in Europe so early.

Last edited by ttt on 6 November 2017 2:58am - 7 times in total

NG

noggin Founding member 6 November 2017 11:46am

ttt posted:

Philips though, mentioned in the same sentence as Sony? Don't make me laugh. The tubes were horrendous, going dim within 3 or 4 years in many cases. Shockingly poor.

In the 80s I always thought Philips tubes and Sony tubes had different phosphor primaries. Philips sets vs Sony sets, when properly lined up, used to have nicer, more natural, fleshtones.

The Philips 14" sets in the mid-to-late 80s (and the sister computer monitors like the CM8833 and 8533) always looked pretty good to me.

IS

Inspector Sands 6 November 2017 12:13pm

Run_Telecine posted:

Part of the limitation of how Sound is mixed for News is due to the limitations of the kit. Basic News satellite trucks will have cheap Blackmagic sound/mixers which mix sources of embedded audio on SDI Video, plus an analogue audio input - but they can't pan/mono the audio, so it's fixed until it gets back to the studio end. Often the Sound will be panned left and mono'd, as that's the channel that the reporter's mic is on. Indeed, on the rare occasion that a stereo feed is being sent back, the Sound Op needs to know to put the channel into Stereo mode on the desk.

It's not really a limitation of the kit as much as split track being the convention. Mixing everything in stereo would be possible but just isn't any good if the footage needs reusing, revoicing etc.

NG

noggin Founding member 6 November 2017 3:25pm

Inspector Sands posted:

Run_Telecine posted:

Part of the limitation of how Sound is mixed for News is due to the limitations of the kit. Basic News satellite trucks will have cheap Blackmagic sound/mixers which mix sources of embedded audio on SDI Video, plus an analogue audio input - but they can't pan/mono the audio, so it's fixed until it gets back to the studio end. Often the Sound will be panned left and mono'd, as that's the channel that the reporter's mic is on. Indeed, on the rare occasion that a stereo feed is being sent back, the Sound Op needs to know to put the channel into Stereo mode on the desk.

It's not really a limitation of the kit as much as split track being the convention. Mixing everything in stereo would be possible but just isn't any good if the footage needs reusing, revoicing etc.

That was the case when we were limited to 2-track audio - but these days we aren't. However the reality is that apart from stereo music added in an edit - there is no real source of 'real' stereo. Next to nobody in news captures stereo effects AFAIK. (Some dilligent regional news engineers might so I won't say 'nobody')

You'd need more than two audio tracks to do what news currently do but in stereo. (i.e. separate tracks for Sync and VO - to allow a very quick clean effects replay)

(September 2017)