Back in the 1960s, before BBC-TV became BBC-1, the Channel Islands received their BBC programmes from the Les Platons transmitter, which basically rebroadcast the West of England programmes from North Hessary Tor.
However, I've come across what may have been a unique opt-out on Thursday, May 2nd, 1963 when BBC-TV covered The Muratti Vase, the Channel Islands Football Final. This coverage (live second half 4.10 - 5pm with half an hour of recorded highlights at 6.25] was only carried by Les Platons.
Can any Islanders on the Forum recall any other BBC CI opt-outs in monochrome days?
As a matter of interest, this football final was also carried on the West Home Service, which uniquely split its transmissions, using 285 (and Les Platons VHF) for the match and 206 and all other VHF for the normal programme.
AIUI with modern UHF relay transmitters it would require significant re-engineering to do an opt out because the equipment installed is a transposer which simply shifts the frequencies and spits it back out rather than taking it back to baseband video, which would be necessary to switch to a local opt out source, and passing it on to a conventional transmitter.
I mention that just as an idle thought on whether VHF relays operated in a similar manner and whether such re-engineering was required to enable these opt outs.
Remember that in the 1960's The Home Service was regional on both FM and AM so opt outs were fairly easily achievable. The SW had several dotted around the week.
Out of interest Tony, where did you find this info?
Forget Monochrome days, I don't recall a Channel Islands opt out on BBC until the 1990s when they established a BBC News service here. Even then it's still only a sub-opt.
Les Platons was fed via a rather complicated VHF/SHF route and so the TX input would have been straight video/audio. I'd assume that as a manned site it would have had its own Monoscope for generating local test card or apology captions.
My guess is that the OB scanner was fed straight to the transmitter with the rebroadcast feed as a source on the scanner's vision mixer. The scanner was probably overplugged into circuit during the test card period between 2.25 and 3.00 (Cricket began at 3 and the Football started before network cricket ended). The scanner would have stayed 'live' to play out the recorded highlights (from a mobile VTR) before being unplugged at some suitable point during a junction afterwards.
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The radio point seems to have been missed. Of course the West Home Service opted out regularly, but this is the only occasion I have come across when a different programme was carried on the
two medium wavelengths
(285 & 206) since they normal operated in parallel. Equally I have never found any other record of Les Platons VHF opting out
on its own
.
AIUI with modern UHF relay transmitters it would require significant re-engineering to do an opt out because the equipment installed is a transposer which simply shifts the frequencies and spits it back out rather than taking it back to baseband video, which would be necessary to switch to a local opt out source, and passing it on to a conventional transmitter.
I mention that just as an idle thought on whether VHF relays operated in a similar manner and whether such re-engineering was required to enable these opt outs.
I suspect that the Channel Islands transmitters were (and are) real transmitters rather than relay-type transposers - and will have had baseband inputs. (ISTR that the Channel Islands weren't relays, but used off-site off-air reception arrays and microwave circuits to reach the transmitter?)
Prior to the current Channel Islands sub-opt during the 1830 bulletins, there used to be a very basic single-camera 2128 opt-out (very basic) which came from the converted garage next to the IBA transmitter.
ISTR that this was running in the early 90s - and probably before. At one point there was a TBU at TV Centre that allowed Jersey to dial in to hear NC1 regional talkback to hear the opt-out and opt-in/back calls.
Prior to the current Channel Islands sub-opt during the 1830 bulletins, there used to be a very basic single-camera 2128 opt-out (very basic) which came from the converted garage next to the IBA transmitter.
