Memories Of Video

The DVB "running status in EIT" system is so very very inferior to what PDC offers.
The main thing is that only one "programme" can be in air at one time,
...if you were itv say you may like to make the "programme to be recorded "as
The ad breaks before and after the programme including all internal breaks .
That means that the external ad breaks are in two programmes .

The BBC Still uses the scheme I got BBC presentation to agree as be the default
Viz
The symbol before the programme thus adding BBC branding ( days before the BBC blocks at front) and any "health warning" ...
the programme itself
The first junction item ... so that you always got the end if the programme plus " if you have been affected by " or a trailer for a relevant programme ,.

The BBC was also the only broadcaster in the world to send the stop recording signal...
and to use the prepare to record flag ( I,e go into record pause before the programme)

PDC allows four "label channels" so most of the time it did a flip between two label channels
But if a short programme -like the weather- came in three could be used ...

On the first day of BBC PDC we crashed the all the BARB loggers as they only expected a single channel at one time .... which was how C4 were working ,,,

And some did use some imagination. One CA in Wales used to make his live links "programmes" so they were recorded on his recorder at home !!!

Some videos wouldn't let you do that.
Every VCR I had access to required a stop time for the timer recording. You couldn't just tell it to start at 21:30 and record until the end of the tape regardless. Although that being said I suppose you could start a recording at 21:30 and tell it to stop, say, at 00:35, which would fill an SP E180.

In hindsight its slightly odd that you could set a recording to run for 24hrs when you were never going to be able to get a tape of that length, unless you were prepared to come back and swap it out for a new one every three/six/eight hours, though again I suppose some models would just carry on recording, most would decide when the initial tape ran out, that's all I'm doing, now go away.

An E1440 tape

Given the amount of TV Closedowns that are on YouTube, TV Ark and the likes, I wonder how many people who recorded films of a late evening just left the VCR running until the end of the tape, and then just tape over what they don’t need. But in a lot of cases chose not to.

This is certainly how I ended up with so much coverage of ITV Night Time in the early 90s on TV Whirl, from after films that were just started and left recording for the whole 3-4 hours of the tape (SP only). With most of the later hours on the tape then never getting recorded over again. Indeed its PDC and VideoPlus making setting VCR timers actually easy for non-technically minded people that meant the number of such recordings goes down the further into the late 90s you go.

Likely one of the reasons there's so many recordings of closedowns out there.

Our first VCR had a special red button on the front that recorded for exactly 30 minutes, something I didn't see in any of our later models.

Think I mentioned this before but a previous video we had you could change the station being recorded. While it was recording. Which was fun. I presume this was because it had an analogue tuner controlled by the buttons and there was nothing to override while recording, whereas the later models were presumably digital so you could stab the "channel up" button as much as you like and it would just ignore your stabs while recording.

Wish I knew what the model was, I can see it in my head but I couldn't tell you anything more than it looked like a video player with eight "inputs".

Most of the VCRs I've owned had some sort of similar feature, basically based on how many times you pressed the record button. I.E. press it once it will record till you stop it (or the tape runs out), press it twice it will record for 30 minutes, 3 times for 1 hour etc.

The system was one touch record.

Yes, basically the Leeds playout centre regions in the north, and WC TV. I don't think LNN ever had dynamic PDC ?

Other regions did carry a static PDC code, that basically told the VCR to revert to the manual timer settings, and NOT to expect any dynamic PDC signals. Confusingly this still lit the PDC pilot light on some VCRs