Memories Of Video

Teletext was not only well before its time but it actually gained the obivious public benefits
like the Text Services (News , Listings etc) and Subtitles
...plus the commercial success of Oracle and Teletext Ltd Adverts
- well over half the Uk holidays were booked because of Teletext

But as this shows the means of signaling digitally (i.e gives you lots of addresses)
to everyone on the UK has many uses - and gave all sorts of ideas
- even about 15 years before PDC became a service!

Here is some more stories in the slide pack
https://www.smpte.org/sections/united-kingdom/events/untold-stories-teletext-celebrating-40-years-digital-broadcasting

But back to the video recorder topic
- does any one rembesr the Shibaden reel to reel recorders from about 1981/2

As listed here (last updated 2003) http://625.uk.com/pdc/#ITV

That IBA video I posted, showing VCR switching by Oracle, raises a few points. Firstly, I would have liked to have seen such trails done for real with some schools, to test out such equipment.

Were the VCRs in the demonstration just normal VCRs, 1977 standards, or specially built ones for the demonstration?

Also, one has to wonder if TV rental firms, such as Granada or Radio Rentals, would've shown an interest in funding further development. I say that as, this would've led to more people wanting VCRs, with suitable equipped TVs (fitted with Oracle VCR switching), and thus more rentals!

And, off topic, had this been developed further, as said in the video, this could've led to schools programmes being broadcast through the night, as opposed to during the daytime. Had that been the case, things like ITV Schools on 4 may never have existed.

The mistake many made with PDC was not setting the timer to the published start stop times. If you added any padding, then you'd destroy the algorithm that PDC relied upon. Using VideoPlus with PDC enabled was the way to ensure success!

When it worked, PDC was really good. I'd set the video to record something that was scheduled to air after a live sports event, which would inevitably overrun. PDC still caught the entire programme even though it aired however long it was later than the published schedule.

Of course if you were towards the back end of a tape and you hadn't bothered to check there was enough reccording time left before setting the recording, no amount of help was going to help you there if the tape ran out

They were the Philips N1500 machines as I mentioned back on page 1 of this thread.
They must have had some very simple modifications to take an external record active signal, rather than from the analogue clock on the front panel. As they had to be left in record and the tape laced up, it wasn't that complicated.
The biggest problem would remain the length of tape that these machines could support - you wouldn't be able to record the whole day's schools programmes overnight!

Here's Denis Norden with a half hour sales pitch for the N1500 in 1977

And I thank you for that otherwise there's no way TV Home would work!

When you had PDC, how did work if one programme got cancelled and replaced by another? For instance, an episode of Last of the summer wine wasn't able to be shown, so another episode was substituted.

So, I've just bought eleven tapes on eBay: (one listing of eight, the other three).

I don't know what's on them, except the fact they do have recordings on them; but the last three struck me for being branded as Sky (the first sleeve design from 1998) and Granada, (I assume it was something related to their TV Rental operations at the time).

Fascinating, never heard the "How switched on can you get?" slogan before. Found an advert here where that slogan is used, but wasn't for videos but for flogging mobile phones:
https://archive.org/stream/NewsUK1995UKEnglish/Nov%2023%201995%2C%20The%20Times%2C%20%2365432%2C%20UK%20%28en%29#page/n11/mode/2up (page 12, bottom right - URL seems to take you straight there)

Back in the days when it was a luxury to have 11hrs standby time and flip phones were an actual thing

I have a bunch of those Tesco tapes, bought them back in 2009... at the dying days of VHS.