Obscure equipment I can say my TV License was spent on

Steve in Pudsey · Fri 21 Nov, 2008 18.43

The Bradford museum certainly has one of the mechanical models - the stripey 2 IIRC

Bvsh Hovse · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 02.08

Kingswood Warren usually get out the model globe and the big (probably about 10U) silver COW crate whenever they have an open day. I was surprised how small the model was, the globe inside is smaller than a tennis ball - it is a heck of a lot smaller than the COW.

The other place I've seen a COW crate on my travels is the first bay you come to inside the big Red Bee server room in Broadcast Centre. They also have a matching clock crate from the same era in the rack and a monitor at the top so you can see them. It was all switched off when I visited so I don't know if it was in working order or not though.

marksi · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 09.37

I sent a big pile of laserdiscs full of idents and an accompanying player to the BBC archive which is located at the Ulster Folk and Transport museum at Cultra outside Belfast. So while I don't think it's currently available to the public, it at least has not been skipped.

Gavin Scott · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 09.54

marksi wrote:I sent a big pile of laserdiscs full of idents and an accompanying player to the BBC archive which is located at the Ulster Folk and Transport museum at Cultra outside Belfast. So while I don't think it's currently available to the public, it at least has not been skipped.

Which idents were on the discs? Did you manage to dub any off in super-duper quality?

marksi · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 12.34

Gavin Scott wrote:
marksi wrote:I sent a big pile of laserdiscs full of idents and an accompanying player to the BBC archive which is located at the Ulster Folk and Transport museum at Cultra outside Belfast. So while I don't think it's currently available to the public, it at least has not been skipped.
Which idents were on the discs? Did you manage to dub any off in super-duper quality?

There was the 1991 globe and 2s, some Christmas stuff and some Inside Ulster news titles. We have all of that stuff on digibeta anyway.

Gavin Scott · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 12.52

nodnirG kraM wrote:Didn't laserdisc only support 440 lines? Super-duper-er than VHS I suppose though!

200 more than VHS!

I remember the domestic models being on sale - and I seem to recall some of the movie titles were about £70 to buy. An astonishing sum back then.

Funnily enough, at the time I couldn't see how anyone would want a playback only device, feeling that one would tire of these movies very quickly and have to keep buying.

I maintained that view throughout most of DVDs lifetime - and only purchased a player two years ago.

For a tech head I feel like such a luddite.

Gavin Scott · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 13.24

nodnirG kraM wrote:I had the same view of DVD when it appeared, having spent many years ignoring laserdisc as a medium altogether (who wants to get up mid-way through a film to change discs anyway). It was only in about 2001 that I finally accepted D-VHS was never going to do what I hoped it would; bit the bullet and bought a DVD drive. Not a player, note - a drive! It wasn't till 2004 that I actually bought a domestic DVD player.

As much as I dislike tape, I dislike optical discs more, and never thought they'd appear mainstream as a recording medium. How wrong I was.

I wouldn't say you and I were wrong. Right at the time, at any rate.

Its taken until now for DVD recording to be mainstream - but I still have concerns about the ruggedness of the discs. Unless they're lacquer coated (as in store-bought pre-recorded) I just can't stop scratching them. Rubbish!

I still have about 200 VHS tapes, with recordings which date back to 1979 (Morecambe and Wise Christmas special is my "Tape 1"), with all of the continuity and commercials intact. Oh I'm sure they would be of interest to TV Ark etc, but it would be a fairly massive job going through them. Some of them were dumped in a damp garage for half a decade, but those I retrieved still play ok - especially on an S-VHS deck I acquired some years ago.

How long do I have before they de-magnetise do you think?

Sput · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 17.46

Until I get to your place with my giant magnet.

Mwahahahaha.

Bvsh Hovse · Mon 24 Nov, 2008 19.40

nodnirG kraM wrote:Didn't laserdisc only support 440 lines? Super-duper-er than VHS I suppose though!

But it's 440 lines of digitised composite PAL so you get a clean softer picture with a PAL footprint instead of a sharper picture with macroblocking on the modern digital compressed formats. Someone tried to convince me a few years back this made Laserdisc better than DVD, and judging by the laserdisc page on wikipedia he's not the only one with those views.

Inspector Sands · Tue 02 Dec, 2008 13.28

nodnirG kraM wrote:Don't get me wrong, I'm nowhere near the DVD camp, let alone a member. How does Laserdisc cope with high-octane moments in movies? Does it turn vision into a pixelated mush as is seen on so many DVDs?

And how does it deal with gradients? Is it 8-bit colour like DVD?

I must know these answers!!

Laserdisc was an analogue format, therefore wouldn't be affected by fast movement which is a problem associated with MPEG encoding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisc# ... sc_vs._DVD should answer your questions

I know that the BBC used specially a souped up Laserdisc system for playing out their various bits, but does anyone know the technical specs of them?

I did have a play with one of the players in TV Centre once (long after it ceased to be used)... the thing wouldn't play a steady picture, presumably it was full of dust.

Inspector Sands · Tue 02 Dec, 2008 13.45

nodnirG kraM wrote:So what happened when the end of the disc was reached? Did the symbol fade to black and then fade back in, or was there a jump as the laser returned to the beginning?

You mean with the looped globe?

That was long before my time I'm afraid, I assume that they just had to make sure they re-cued it before a junction