405 lines was Pal l British television standard, Germany had 625 lines Pal B/G, France was on the was wird 819 lines Secam L Plus, Who was HD television long time before all other countries.
Rather ironic the pictures are of a Baird rather than an EMI who originally developed system we were watching all those years. 405 still lives on in garden sheds and workshops thanks to standard converters like the Aurora and Hedghog to name but a few.
This is "part 2" of the clip - recoded from the 625 line broadcast, which was indeed colour; the 405-line monochrome set (from 1938!) appeared _in_ the clip (working, showing itself!) at one point. If you look out "part 1" of the clip, that is taken looking at the old set throughout, and is indeed not in colour (what's on its screen; the video of the set itself is).
@@reynirheidbergstefansson2343 I think the system A ("405") colour trials tried all three colour systems - NTSC, SECAM, and PAL - but those were back in the 1960s; yes, the decision was made to abandon it, so 405 was B/W only for most of its run. (Because they hadn't settled on which colour system to use - and finally decided not to use any - I don't think any 405 colour sets were ever sold to the public.)
@@reynirheidbergstefansson2343 Including working out the necessary colour subcarrier frequencies to work with 405/25! I expect PAL-A would have worked very well - but since we already had 625 in position (and the rest of Europe was staying with that, in fact _only_ using that) and operating in parallel, and the _majority_ of 405 sets in use were old ones, the decision (not to go with colour on system A) is understandable.
Yes. Before broadcasting went 24 hour, stations used to play the national anthem at closedown. Not unique to UK - I'm pretty sure most USA astations did too, and I think many other nations. (Obviously, US stations played the spanner, not GSTQ!)
I actually miss that. Something that is gone that was so ubiquitous. But I looked forward to it, so after the signal was shut off, I could turn the antenna and try to see if I could catch anything far away going off the air.
The story behind this clip: a 1938 Baird TV was restored and brought into the BBC Lime Grove Studios maintenance room on the last day of BBC broadcasting 405 line signals in London. A camera was set up and the image of the receiver picking up an actual over the air signal was trunked to the Continuity Control at BBC Television Centre where it was actually broadcast just before the close down on the last day. The hand reaching in at the end of the clip is mine as I switch off the set!
Excellent. I remember watching 405 line from Winter Hill in ~ '84 on a dual standard Sony set. I still get stupidly excited when I see Band I or III aerials. Still some around London.
Depends how you "try". There are no broadcast signals that these sets can receive. There are no native sources of system A standard video (unless you get hold of a 405-standard camera that still works). But, if you use a converter (like the Aurora one mentioned), that can take a (say) "625"-line signal and convert it to "405", _and_ modulate it onto a VHF carrier (for very good safety reasons, most such sets had the only external connection the aerial socket - no direct video in), then it would still display; the switch-off of the broadcasts didn't destroy the sets. (There are penty of clips on youTube showing exactly that - modern signals converted to the old standard and thus to something the old set can display.) If you somehow managed to get a "625" signal into such a set that _hadn't_ been converted to "405", the picture would break up into diagonal stripes, as the line frequency is too different. (I don't think even a US "525" signal would be within the adjustment range.)
Why didn't they let it run for a few more minutes until the carrier signal cut out and it went into snow forever? That would have been the REAL end of 405!
I agree, I wanted to see the carrier go off too. though I'm not sure it would have been snow: system A used positive modulation, unlike the negative all the others (I think possibly excluding 819 - not sure about 525) used. so maybe it had.
I didn't know they still had 405-line broadcasting as late as 1985! So did they send out a 405-line version of 625-line broadcasts for people who only had old TVs?
Yes, a 625-line signal was sent out from their studios, but at 405-line transmitters it would be passed through a 625-405 line converter, whose output then fed the input of the transmitter equipment.
We used to have B/W BBC1 from N. Hessary tor here in Devon our set went to my sisters room with the band 1 X aerial on the washing line mast outside in the garden, they put onscreen message about the service ending on there for months , we had a new colour set in the lounge with 3 channels it, was mind blowing I recall
If anybody is chuckling over the "high definition" part, let me remind you of those technically horrible portable DVD players about 7-8" with 480x234 screen definition which you found in any electronic store very few years ago (in fact there are some models still on the market, but they are past their heyday). I cringe so much whenever I see one I, well, even despise customers able to buy such junk. I don't exactly know how it exactly translated into analog, but guess that's under 300 lines, right?
I have to say, The DVD player I OWN (Yes still own) does tonnes better in quality than this 1985 recording of TV showing an image of itself, but hey maybe I was lucky or maybe I just have a lower sense of quality I dont know, but I will give you one thing, DVD's are still better than Netflix, Amazon Prime and all those various other service due to the fact that I could watch a film with no internet and no tv
BilisNegra Nah, it was High-Definition for the day. Back in 1936, 405 lines was a big improvement over the highest resolution Baird-Mechanical TVs which ran at 240 lines. Of course, by the 50’s it was lower than the competition, the original NTSC came around with 525 lines and everyone else had higher resolution TVs than the UK, and the French even had a 819-line HD system which was just mental. And the 625-line service that was replacing the old 405-line service was very high resolution for the 1980’s, where the wasn’t really anything better, excluding Japan’s MUSE HD system, and would’ve been a big jump for the people who’d been using 405-line TV since the 30’s.
My mummy and daddy bought me one for my birthday in 2017 and I took it on holiday and it was very good because you could watch it on the loo. They're meant for up close and personal use like that, like watching stuff on a smartphone. The TV set in this video, on the other hand, would have spent its working life serving an entire living room. Oh yes and DVDiscmans double as nifty CD Discmans too.
@@ItsRickysChannelSHORTS I can't watch my mate's band on Netflix or Amazon Prime but I can hard-drive a bunch of RU-vid clips of her in action and burn them to DVD. Then again I can watch her in action on a Smart TV with a RU-vid app, but it's still a good idea to hard-drive good stuff in case it ever gets deleted.
I mean, it kind of does the job, and on such a small screen the difference in resolution would hardly be noticeable. Note that this video was most likely captured in under 300 lines of resolution (the quality difference is indistinguishable between the 360p and 240p modes here on RU-vid)! 576i PAL still holds up very well.
I can't believe they were still transmitting on VHF 405 lines as late as 1985. When colourwas introduced back in the late 60's. Transmissions switched to UHF 625 line, althoughI suppose old VHF signals continued for a while longer, for those still using old B/W405 line sets. Is that Ian McCaskill doing the weather forcast? His image looks as foggyas the cold weather he is predicting.
@@justanotheryoutubechannel Hardly "for years afterwards". the BBC switched over to all-625 production in January 1968, converting the programmes down to 405 on transmission. ITV followed a year later. From 1969 onwards, all programmes were being made in 625, with conversion down to 405 for those with older sets or who lived in areas where UHF coverage hadn't yet reached.
@@billjones7932 Only some of them, no more a nightmare than single-standard TVs. Some dual-standard TVs were great to repair, like most of Thorn's TVs.
I saw someone upload a recording of a sign-off from this station circa the 1980s. The sign-off would play the national anthem after it displays the time, exactly like this minus the message about cutting 405-line transmission.
the current going through the magnetic yoke coils that direct the beam to scan t across the screen fades, along with the focusing current (which makes the dot spread out).
Dont forget that when you watch RU-vid, it's often 400-odd lines or less ... especially if you watch it in the default presentation rather than full screen.
They were already having problems in densely populated areas, with Yorkshire TV stations interfering with Manchester or Merseyside for example. Also you can fit far more stations into the UHF spectrum. When 405 sets were standard, there were usually only two channels or 3 at most. VHF was still used in many areas of Australia for example, until fairly recently but these also went to UHF as the number of channels increased. Australia is now completely digital.
The 405 line system used very narrow 5 MHz channel limits. PAL 625 line is either 7 or 8 MHz, meaning a narrower television band unless you also use the 88-108 MHz band (Australia and Russia did this). The 405 line system allowed for up to three nationwide television networks (however with the decision to broadcast BBC 2 in 625 lines on UHF only, the free VHF allocations were used for gap-filling relay stations). System I VHF, as used in Ireland and South Africa, only allowed for two incomplete VHF networks, needing gap filling relays on UHF. If the UK had replaced 405 line VHF with 625 line PAL VHF only one complete network would have been possible (because all of the UHF allocations were already filled), and every viewer would have needed a new aerial and most would have needed new televisions as well. A few companies did make sets with the Irish VHF band (so they could sell the same set in the UK and in Ireland) but it wasn't anything close to a majority.
The figures were estimated to be about 17,000 sets in use by 1984. Sometimes they were used as secondary sets or because they had no interest in colour TV, but mainly because 405 line signals on VHF were much more robust than the 625 line signals on UHF, even by 405 switch-off there were, and still are, remote areas which are outside of the reach of the 625 analogue and now Freeview signals. But, often, 405 could be received perfectly in those areas. We're talking proper isolated areas, like the middle of the Pennines, the Borders, Highlands, mountainous Wales, North Yorkshire Moors. When 405 was switched off, most of those areas lost TV altogether. Some did get UHF relays erected a few years afterwards but some remained so out of reach that the next possibility of TV wouldn't come until 1989, with the launch of $ky.
Aidan Lunn Wow, that many 405 sets in the mid 1980's? Perhaps it shows that the roll out of 625 line was poorly planned because BBC 2 was un available in certain remote areas, meaning the infrastructure should be right first.
The cost of doing so determined the roll-out of 625. Generally, we're talking about £10million per transmitter, currency converted to decimal and taking inflation into account, total cost. So they rolled out 625/colour in pretty much the same way as BBC1 and ITV on 405, most populous areas first covered by main transmitters, least populous last, then fill in the gaps. As the new transmitter technology gets cheaper and better over the rollout period, which for 625 took over 20 years to closely match 405 coverage, it becomes more cost effective to open relays. Their thinking was the ratio of cost of transmitter : how many potential eyeballs. The more viewers there were, the more they could justify the cost of opening a new transmitter network and the more the effort and cost would pay off over time.
CHris Henniker This figure given does not distinguish between VHF single band TV's, and those that were able to receive both VHF and UHF (not sure if it they stretched the 405 line image on a 625 tube) as no data was ever recorded at the time. I had a dual receive TV, but I was young and the only time I ever saw it in use was when there was a power-cut and we used it on a car battery, but we knocked it over tripping in the dark breaking the back panel off so the TV I was supposed to be allowed to have when my parents felt I was old enough, was destroyed. Sad really, I had to wait many years before another TV cam my way. It was a mess of warn out valves and I found out later it was a known fire risk due to the poor construction inside. Just as well it was a terrible picture that I couldn't stop rolling and the whole thing got so hot too. Despite only being about 9 or 10 then there is one thing I do recall being mentioned at the time, and reading about later, with no funding to put into the VHF relays maintenance parts were not replaced when they broke down instead they were repaired manually, right down to the final component. As the UHF to VHF conversion equipment was getting old and less reliable they became incapable of repair, several relay station were replaced with cameras pointed at UHF TV's. Judging by the lack of complaints, it's doubtful if anyone really noticed, or were even actually watching VHF any more by this time. Closing down VHF, did save enough money in electricity costs, maintenance cost and other fees to build more transmitters later on.
It relates to those using just 405-line TVs, not dual standard ones (as they were UHF capable, they were counted as UHF sets - the standards switching was frequently problematic and so many TV engineers took great pleasure in ripping out the 405 circuitry once it was no longer needed). There's no such thing as a "625 tube" or a "405 tube" - the tube will display whatever line timebase you feed into it, a CRT doesn't have "pixels" - the closest you come to pixels in a CRT are phosphor dots in the shadowmask, and even they are only in colour CRTs. B&W CRTs don't need pixels or phosphor dots or anything of the ilk. Valve TVs will and do get very hot, that was normal, the valves do contain heater elements after all, to make the cathode inside the valve get hot so it can start emitting electrons. If it was a fire risk, it must have been a late 60s Bush, Pye or Ekco, despite popular belief, valve TVs were usually not a fire risk - the most fire-like thing you'd usually get out of them would be a puff of smoke. As for the reputation of valves, they are nowhere near as bad as many people think either. Most of the 405-line sets I've restored to working order in my collection are still running most of the exact same valves they left the factory with! TV dealers used to earn commission from the valve manufacturers for every valve they sold, so they invented this elaborate lie that valves were unreliable, so they could sell more valves and thus earn commission. thus the repairman used to repair the actual fault, then charge the customer or the accounts department of the rental company if it was a rented set, for the cost of the component that caused the fault *and* the price of new valves. The funding was there - it's the lack of parts that did it in for 405. Only in the Irish Republic did optical conversion happen as result of a converter breakdown. The electronic 625-405 converters in the UK were kept in use right until the end of 405. The reason for the poor picture on the Baird pre-war set in the above video was because the CRT was clapped out and the CRTs of that period were non-aluminised. The BBC's converters (Pye CO6/509s) were subsequently very reliable and even today can be got going with the minimum of maintenance - they were of a digital design, built by Pye, from 1969. The ITA continued with the use of the Pye CO6/501 analogue electronic converters, that were designed by the BBC and made by Pye in about 1963/64, so 625-line BBC2 material could be broadcast on 405-line BBC1. I think the figure was about 60,000 405-line sets in use, mostly by people who lived in isolated spots that were beyond the reach of 625 transmissions - VHF signals being far more robust than UHF ones. In fact, when the 405-line service closed in the Borders, the BBC and the ITA received hundreds of complaints, because there were so many isolated spots there that could only receive the 405-line service, the 625-line relay building programme at that time hadn't reached the population coverage that 405 had, some people would have to forego TV for a year at least!
Aidan Lunn It used to be B *Broadcasting* C in early days but turned into B *Bullshit* C long time ago, probably around the hippie "revolution" and remained since.
VHF Band 1 Channel 1 from the Crystal Palace transmitter. On UHF TV sets, it was on preset button 1. On VHF TV sets, it didn't have this, you switched to the frequency rather than the preset button for this station.
@@aidanlunn7441 In 1985, most TV sets (UHF in UK, UHF and VHF in the rest of Europe) used continuous tuning - usually four (in UK) buttons, each of which you tuned to the individual channels, and they stayed there (the "presets" you referred to). Old VHF-only sets tended to use a "turret tuner" - often on the side of the set - which clunked through the dozen or so channels (on bands I, III, and sometimes a few for cable systems), physically switching in different components - sometimes with a fine turning control too. As Mark says, Channel 1 VHF in UK was 41.5 MHz audio and 45 video. Channel 1, though never any of the others, was originally full both sidebands, though I think it became VSB like all the others.
