PC
I'm assuming this is being shown now to mark a '25th anniversary' of sorts, rather than for any practical reason?
GE
It does have a purpose - the BBC will be using the slots later next month. In the meantime, it's some nice free material to use for testing the transmission chain.
thegeek
Founding member
I'm assuming this is being shown now to mark a '25th anniversary' of sorts, rather than for any practical reason?
It does have a purpose - the BBC will be using the slots later next month. In the meantime, it's some nice free material to use for testing the transmission chain.
RI
It does have a purpose - the BBC will be using the slots later next month. In the meantime, it's some nice free material to use for testing the transmission chain.
What test transmission is it?
I'm assuming this is being shown now to mark a '25th anniversary' of sorts, rather than for any practical reason?
It does have a purpose - the BBC will be using the slots later next month. In the meantime, it's some nice free material to use for testing the transmission chain.
What test transmission is it?
PC
It does have a purpose - the BBC will be using the slots later next month. In the meantime, it's some nice free material to use for testing the transmission chain.
Thanks for that - yes, it's a lovely sequence... Great music choice as well with Aphex.
I'm assuming this is being shown now to mark a '25th anniversary' of sorts, rather than for any practical reason?
It does have a purpose - the BBC will be using the slots later next month. In the meantime, it's some nice free material to use for testing the transmission chain.
Thanks for that - yes, it's a lovely sequence... Great music choice as well with Aphex.
GE
thegeek
Founding member
This seems like a good place to post this test transmission which went out in the early 90s.
It was originally posted on Vimeo with this description:
It was reposted to YouTube where the comments say that it was more likely a PALplus test than anything to do with BBC Select.
It was originally posted on Vimeo with this description:
Quote:
This video is beautifully odd and needs explaining.
Sometime in the early 1990s - I forget quite when - I stumbled across this late one night on BBC2. It was playing on a loop, and I was mesmerised. I knew it was inherently cool, so I recorded it on a VHS tape I had to hand on my mum's already quite aged VCR.
Several years back I found out what the hell it was - BBC Engineering were testing analogue scrambling of terrestrial signals for the short-lived (1992-1994) BBC Select. The scrambling was very similar to what was used by Sky for analogue satellite transmissions, but needed modifying for terrestrial where there was the possibility of ghosting and things. Back then things couldn't be hidden off the EPG - if you were testing something, you were doing it out in the wild, and curious teenagers could watch what you were doing. This curious teenager stumbled across the signals being broadcast without scrambling.
Anyway, I found the tape in the attic, and knew what I had to do - hook the VCR back up (first time in about 7 years) and dump it onto my hard drive recorder, so that I could share my nerdiest thing ever with other nerds. YAY!
Sometime in the early 1990s - I forget quite when - I stumbled across this late one night on BBC2. It was playing on a loop, and I was mesmerised. I knew it was inherently cool, so I recorded it on a VHS tape I had to hand on my mum's already quite aged VCR.
Several years back I found out what the hell it was - BBC Engineering were testing analogue scrambling of terrestrial signals for the short-lived (1992-1994) BBC Select. The scrambling was very similar to what was used by Sky for analogue satellite transmissions, but needed modifying for terrestrial where there was the possibility of ghosting and things. Back then things couldn't be hidden off the EPG - if you were testing something, you were doing it out in the wild, and curious teenagers could watch what you were doing. This curious teenager stumbled across the signals being broadcast without scrambling.
Anyway, I found the tape in the attic, and knew what I had to do - hook the VCR back up (first time in about 7 years) and dump it onto my hard drive recorder, so that I could share my nerdiest thing ever with other nerds. YAY!
It was reposted to YouTube where the comments say that it was more likely a PALplus test than anything to do with BBC Select.
BA
The mention of "Camera Mode" in the video and on the PALplus Wikipedia article leads me to think that it is a PALplus test.
NG
noggin
Founding member
Yep. Looks like 16:9 test transmissions not BBC Select. The bulk of that video appears to be 16:9 letterbox - though it's not really possible to tell whether there is any PALplus helper (which was black with high levels of subcarrier encoded with some extra detail information - if you turned up your brightness you could see coloured patches of picture information)
The BBC didn't ever broadcast PALplus as even a formal trial service (C4 did, and I think YTV may have done as well) They did try some other PAL modifications - but not sure if these are relevant to this. It could just be they were evaluating PALplus.
BBC Select was 4:3 and used line-shuffle Videocrypt, along with some spectrum mangling on the audio. I used to love the BBC Select music and ident for some reason...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uisMEnYM2nM
If you go to about 7'00" in on that YouTube clip you'll see and hear how the BBC Select encryption worked. (It had to shuffle lines around rather than cutting them in half and rotating them. The latter would have caused any ghosting to have been chopped up and appear all over the place - and would have been far more noticable) You can also see the data used to control the encryption at the top of frame.
By the way - I think the clip posted earlier on in the thread is shot around Ealing - where the BBC's Television Film Studios were based...
The BBC didn't ever broadcast PALplus as even a formal trial service (C4 did, and I think YTV may have done as well) They did try some other PAL modifications - but not sure if these are relevant to this. It could just be they were evaluating PALplus.
BBC Select was 4:3 and used line-shuffle Videocrypt, along with some spectrum mangling on the audio. I used to love the BBC Select music and ident for some reason...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uisMEnYM2nM
If you go to about 7'00" in on that YouTube clip you'll see and hear how the BBC Select encryption worked. (It had to shuffle lines around rather than cutting them in half and rotating them. The latter would have caused any ghosting to have been chopped up and appear all over the place - and would have been far more noticable) You can also see the data used to control the encryption at the top of frame.
By the way - I think the clip posted earlier on in the thread is shot around Ealing - where the BBC's Television Film Studios were based...