BBC TWO old programmes, old pres?

So - did this GNAT thing output a plain clock which was then superimposed over a slide separately, or did it combine the clock with the background image internally? If the latter, how easily could the background image be changed? Would the hardware have supported there being a few options to choose between?

The GNAT was an update of the electronic clock technology, developed around 1989 to be ready for the 1991 new look. The previous electronic clocks of the 1980s were only capable of basic hands and looked a bit jagged...

The GNAT generated properly anti-aliased hands and stored a single frame for the background image. Should not have been all that difficult to change, as it was designed for flexibility - but would be great to see that sort of operation of the generator in action.

It was capable of more options than the BBC used. Support for different hand shapes and second hand movement - such as a continuous sweep or old mechanical clock judder - and the hands were able to cast shadows. I think the only limitation was the still background. But they could, effectively, have created almost any clock face they wanted with the combination of custom image and available options for the hands.

English regions originally had laser discs too, and the same IPK Logogens as network that added the BBC East, BBC North West etc. logos over the clean idents. They were controlled by a custom (IPK again I think) laser disc controller that had cue buttons for the various BBC One and BBC Two idents.

Most regions only used a couple of BBC Two idents, and used the spare capacity on the disc to record opening titles etc. Certainly Look East in the early-to-mid 90s had all their titles on Laser. (They'd pre-record the opening titles, using Laser, and then use Laser live for the ident)

Vera was introduced as the laser disc players were obsolete and beginning to die, and sources of blank discs were beginning to be an issue. Also new regions were appearing, and it wasn't possible to get laser disc players for them.

BBC National News also introduced the laser discs to play titles (and backings) for the cut-glass corporate blue One/Six/Nine bulletins (in some cases two discs were slaved to do proper key and fill in sync), and continued to use them for titles well into the 00s. They were finally retired when Stingray was introduced for a while (the era when there was a complex key reveal off the titles), though it was then replaced by a standard server clip after a later relaunch.

Yes - I remember seeing GNAT proudly demonstrated at IBC, with all sorts of clock backgrounds and hands demo-ed, including a faux grandfather clock. Very nicely designed solution - with very clean output.

Thanks noggin, I think memory confusing me a bit with VERA and Laserdisc getting mixed up along the way... But yes, I do remember seeing the same type of control panel in Bristol and NC1/2 for the symbols.

By the way clock fans, there's a VERY VERY close mock of what the Caopeira clock actually looked like in flash on the MHP Private Parts...

You can read more about the GNAT on the original Engineering Design Information sheet [pdf], some information about its history on Richard Russell's pages on bbceng.info, and download a Windows screensaver based on it.

The box itself looks like this:

and there are dip switches inside to enable or disable each of the elements: the background, the dial, and each of the hands. This one had a balloon background and also let you turn on the 'South East' legend.



And in case anyone's wondering what a LaserDisc player looks like:


I once did a brief BNCS development course, where we controlled one of these: one button would switch your matrix output to the LD player, jump to a particular timecode, and start playing. ISTR the disc we had to play with was BBC Two idents.

(And I'll never forgive the colleague who once found a LaserDisc in a cupboard in TVC which, according to the label, had some sort of emergency broadcast material on it, but didn't find anything to play it on. I suspect it was probably the generic BBC ident that was only ever seen on the day Diana died, but we'll never know..)

I once had the pleasure of meeting Richard Russell at the BFBS site he mentions on his website pointed to above. This 'stuff' was pretty new then and we asked him about the BBC 2 orangey/stripey animated logo that appeared to have a fault with it. IIRC correctly after the =2= completely finished animating, a slight white/grey glitch appeared on the screen, again IIRC, it was a few microseconds long and one TV line in height (think - about a cm or so) towards the bottom LHS side of the screen. Richard said, with a big smile, that it was a glitch in the programming, but I'm sure he said he didn't feel inclined to correct it. I get the impression it was a bit of light hearted devilment. When I see mock ups of the logo on youtube etc, I look for the glitch to see if it is genuine or not! I must ask him about it again on his website one day.

Ahhah, this is all most interesting. That BBC Two idents on a laserdisc thing probably explains the off air recordings of full clean BBC2 idents with no logo mystery. Must have been just a convenient source to playout.

Yes. Wonder if someone's actually got the laser disk for those idents in tact somewhere. Certainly, it's a shame no one has a better quality capture of Silk and some of the others in full.

There were (still are?) some very high quality captures including the BBC logo uploaded to MHP that looked like they had come straight from the source, so hopefully someone has.

These must be the ones that BBC2 aired after closedown one night in 1991.

Must be a few knocking about, years ago I was once offered BBC Leeds (I think) old player and discs but price was too much, IIRC the disks also had regional news titles on them as mentioned before. Regret not getting them now.