My analogue rambling

[davemurgtroyd]

I installed my first multisatellite (13E & 19E) multiroom (4 rooms) analogue system on my house jsut after Sky analogue launched (late 1989). I used two "twin" lnbs (the original definition for two separate outputs of horizontal and vertical polarisations) feeding Global Mini Magics ( 2 input 4 output multiswitches) and outputs from them fed via 22kHz switches to 4 receivers - each having full access to all channels on both satellites. I moved the system to a friends house in 2000 when iwent to Sky digital and finally removed it when Astra 1 analogue finally turned off (two years ago) and everything with the exception of one lnb (which I replace 4 years ago) was still working and dish apart from nuts and bolts was rust free after 24 years use 24/7.

On the topic of VCRs I still have in the loft VHS, Betamax, Video 2000 and a reel to reel video recorder all I believe still working. I also have a CED videodisc, VHD videodisc and Laserdisc players. The only domestic audio or video formats since the 1960s that I cannot play are the Elcaset (audio cassettes twice the size of compact cassettes using 1/4" tape), Philips video cassettes and Minidisks.

 

[Vipersan]

On the topic of VCRs I still have in the loft VHS, Betamax, Video 2000 and a reel to reel video recorder all I believe still working. I also have a CED videodisc, VHD videodisc and Laserdisc players. The only domestic audio or video formats since the 1960s that I cannot play are the Elcaset (audio cassettes twice the size of compact cassettes using 1/4" tape), Philips video cassettes and Minidisks.

Yep ..
Still have a working Betamax somewhere ...and a partially working Philips 2000 ..
And somewhere buried in my loft ..
A modified Philips 1500 ...
Yep ..the original 8 track styleee ...2 video reels stacked vertically in a plastic case .
Maximum recording time was 60 minutes per tape ..but the mod brought it in line with the later Philips 1700 ...which allowed a gob smacking 2 hours..
The first VCR I believe and filled that gap between reel 2 reel VR and Betamax.
Is it still working ?
Gawd knows ...but like CH had a lot of My Ahem Adult stuff on it ...
back when hair darn there was fashionable.. ;)
Oh 2 B in my twenties again ..
I might have the strength to dig it out..
lol

Video Cassette Recording - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Captain Jack]

Well, my parents still use a VCR (VHS!) to record their stuff from TV. Maybe I should buy them a Freeview recorder of some sort....

 

[Vipersan]

Well, my parents still use a VCR (VHS!) to record their stuff from TV. Maybe I should buy them a Freeview recorder of some sort....

One of the reasons I keep a few working VCRs of different formats is to be able to offer a tape to disc service to my customers..
Though I suspect this service has a finite lifespan..
I have fewer and fewer requests these days.
rgds
VS

 

[2cvbloke]

I still have my Sony SL-F1UB betamax kit, last time I tried using it, the Tuner-Timer Unit was having issues staying powered up, so couldn't keep it running...

Still have loads of tapes that I bought with it too, a lot of them probably disintegrating, as I know I had to clean the heads a number of times when trying some of them...

 

[Pride Of Cucamonga]

We moved to Finland in 1992 and I remember seeing the last few terrestrial SECAM transmissions from Estonia but now I had a multistandard TV so it was in colour. It wasn't too long after the breakup of the Soviet Union and Estonia switched to PAL. .

Why did much of eastern europe switch to PAL after fall of communism? Wouldn't it have required a massive upgrade programme for existing TVs?

 

[william-1]

I still have a Sony SLV-E730 VCR + a hundred + VHS tapes some pre recorded some made by me from WDR when RockPalast used to broadcast live Rock Music at weekends with the top US & UK bands,
I have copied most of what I want onto DVD but getting less used these days I strip the VCR down every now & then to clean the heads it is as good now as when I bought it from Dixons in mid 90's
Playback with TDK Super Avilyn HS, JVC EHG ect is trouble free.

 

[timo_w2s]

Why did much of eastern europe switch to PAL after fall of communism? Wouldn't it have required a massive upgrade programme for existing TVs?

I honestly don't know the real answer but maybe they wanted to distance themselves from Russia and move towards Western Europe? More choice in decent PAL audio/video equipment from Europe? In Estonia they also switched their FM from 65.8-74.0MHz to 87.5-108MHz at around the same time. For a while there was dual illumination in both bands.

 

[Analoguesat]

If amnyone discovers they have ANY pre 1977 Top Of The Pops on any of these old tapes please let me know - many shows were wiped and I know some folk who would be very interested in recovering any missing shows (Or even individual performances) that might turn up. Tapes would of course be returned after copying.

In fact if you find you have any early 70s BBC or ITV shows on them let me know - I can do some investigations to see if its missing from the archives. Yes its unlikely but you never know what might still be out there on ancient old tapes!

 

[Fisty McB]

I honestly don't know the real answer but maybe they wanted to distance themselves from Russia and move towards Western Europe? More choice in decent PAL audio/video equipment from Europe? In Estonia they also switched their FM from 65.8-74.0MHz to 87.5-108MHz at around the same time. For a while there was dual illumination in both bands.

It wasn't just those countries that were behind the Iron Curtain that started switching from SECAM to PAL in the 90's, Greece did too as did numerous countries in Asia & Africa. Why this was the case I'm not so sure. I know that video editing in SECAM is more complex than that of PAL - prior to their DSO, French TV stations had PAL equipped studios with the conversion to SECAM taking place before the pictures went into the transmission chains. If I was to take an assumption why these conversions happened in Eastern Europe at least, I'd reckon that in those countries where SECAM studio & transmission equipment was possibly reaching end-of-life, it was easier & cheaper for them to convert to PAL at the time (especially when many of these countries would not generally have been in a strong financial state) and that authorities & engineers were banking on many viewers either having multi-standard TV's, colour standard converters or were still using B/W sets where a change of colour system wouldn't affect them (though I think there was one country that moved from SECAM D/K to PAL B/G so with sound subcarrier shifts it could cause some problems for receivers not able to handle it) - it's reasonably well documented about those in Warsaw Pact countries (and Albania) going to great lengths to receive TV from the west, not to mention that Yugoslavia & Romania had used PAL from the start as well.

 

[Pride Of Cucamonga]

I read that Eastern bloc countries deliberately used a different audio subcarrier to the west, but with one exception - East Germany - where TVs were fully compatible (in black and white) with Western broadcasts - and that's what most people watched. Was modifying the audio subcarrier on e.g. Polish TVs relatively straightforward?

Map of West German TV coverage in East
Deutscher Fernsehfunk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Fisty McB]

It wasn't just the former DDR that West German television and other western television television stations could penetrate, signals from West Berlin could get into parts of western Poland as well. Austrian TV signals from ORF could quite handily spread into Hungary, Czechoslovakia & the modern day Slovenia too, especially where many people in these countries have a reasonable grasp of the German language.

The former Yugoslavia was nominally a Socialist Republic, but wasn't under the Soviet sphere of influence and its media had a bit more freedom to work with compared to those in Warsaw Pact countries, indeed local newspapers printed schedules from ORF and RAI stations!

In Albania, trying to receive RAI TV from across the Adriatic Sea was often attempted and very possible, the authorities there often jammed incoming Italian signals that were receivable in Tirana particularly during news reports.

I wonder if it was possible in Estonia, Tallinn in particular, to receive YLE TV broadcasts from Finland? Geography suggests this should have been very possible and AFAIK the Finnish & Estonian languages have somewhat of a mutual intelligibility between them?

Edit: I think when Poland moved from SECAM to PAL they didn't shift their audio subcarriers thus remained D/K until their ATO in 2013.

 

[timo_w2s]

I wonder if it was possible in Estonia, Tallinn in particular, to receive YLE TV broadcasts from Finland? Geography suggests this should have been very possible and AFAIK the Finnish & Estonian languages have somewhat of a mutual intelligibility between them?

Yes, it was possible to get Finnish TV on the coast in Estonia and was very popular. I still read on Estonian forums of people picking up the Finnish multiplexes but I think now that there are plenty of Estonian channels on offer the demand for Finnish TV might have dropped a little. In the early days of Estonian DTV they carried a few Finnish channels. I think cable TV still does.

On the other side of the water, over here almost all properties in Helsinki with a terrestrial TV aerial had a Band I antenna pointing at Estonia in the 80s. I was never quite sure how many people actually watched the Estonian transmissions but it certainly seemed like they were installed as standard by installers. These days there aren't many left as there is no TV in Band I any more (perhaps still a bit more common than the old Band III aerials in the UK) but you do see a few newer UHF aerials pointing at Estonia put up by Estonians living here or people like me who want it just because it's there. You can get the national ETV on cable here but you need to pay for it.

 

[Captain Jack]

Band I is still in use in Russia. Channel One (ORT/Pervyi Kanal) is on er... channel 1 and channel 5 is used for Rossiya 1/RTR. I am guessing the eastern parts of Finland can get that - it's in SECAM D/K.

 

[timo_w2s]

Band I is still in use in Russia. Channel One (ORT/Pervyi Kanal) is on er... channel 1 and channel 5 is used for Rossiya 1/RTR. I am guessing the eastern parts of Finland can get that - it's in SECAM D/K.

I would assume so too, especially on the south eastern border and the very northern parts. However, our cottage in southern Lapland is close to the Russian border but there's not much on the other side in that part of Russia except trees. Perhaps not too surprisingly I've not managed to get any Russian TV or FM transmissions in that area. Mind you, there's not much Finnish TV or radio activity either. ;) We get a "Freeview Light" type service for TV and just a few national/regional FM stations.

 

[Pride Of Cucamonga]

Interesting about Yugoslavia newspapers having listings for RAI etc. Yugoslavia used BG audio subcarrier so, like East Germany, TVs there could pick up WEstern broadcasts without modification. Imagine for this reason alone WEstern TV was far more popular than in the rest of Eastern Bloc (where DK was standard).

Any thoughts on how difficult it would have been for a typical Polish household to modify their TV to be compatible with both DK and BG?

 

[Captain Jack]

DK and BG refer to sound subcarrier frequencies, so picture would still be fine - just no audio. Depends on TV - some had adjustable audio frequency parameters, so could easily switch between them but not all.

 

[PaulR]

I can remember reading in Practical TV (decades ago!) about adjusting tuning slugs to change audio IF. Never did it myself though.

 

[Pride Of Cucamonga]

DK and BG refer to sound subcarrier frequencies, so picture would still be fine - just no audio. Depends on TV - some had adjustable audio frequency parameters, so could easily switch between them but not all.

I doubt many TVs sold in the Eastern Bloc had adjustable audio as DK was a deliberate policy to censor Western broadcasts.

 

[Fisty McB]

Interesting about Yugoslavia newspapers having listings for RAI etc. Yugoslavia used BG audio subcarrier so, like East Germany, TVs there could pick up WEstern broadcasts without modification. Imagine for this reason alone WEstern TV was far more popular than in the rest of Eastern Bloc (where DK was standard).

Any thoughts on how difficult it would have been for a typical Polish household to modify their TV to be compatible with both DK and BG?

It also (sort of) went the other way as well. In Yugoslavia there was a TV channel for the Italian speaking minority in Koper-Caprodistra in Slovenia. For much of the 70's and 80's it was unofficially relayed across Italy, including Rome, because many in Italy had little choice in channels other than RAI (though the Swiss RSI and Tele Monte Carlo were similarly 'relayed') and TV K-C defied most Eastern European stations of the time by not being stiflingly boring.

There is a story that goes around that because the Yugoslavs introduced PAL in the early 70's, including TV K-Cs transmissions, and that colour TV had not yet been introduced into Italy, so many Italians had bought PAL TVs to watch K-C that it forced the government there to settle officially on PAL for Italian TV transmissions at a time they were strongly considering SECAM instead. How true this is, I'm not sure.

The channel still exists today, but now back to its more humble roots as a local broadcaster.