Trade Test Transmissions

[Grubhead]

Before most TV went 24 hour broadcasting, BBC 2 used to broadcast short films all in colour. Many were of a technical nature, such as TV Tube production, others were about design or paint.

How many of these films are still around. Plus where they put on for TV shops to show that BBC 2 was operating and in colour?
Which were your favourites?

[dave walsh]

Genevieve [London to Brighton Vintage Car Restoration film "Kenneth Moore Reach For The Sky" ..sort of early Quest] but you might be in the wrong section. We used to sit and wait for it coming on! What has promted your enquiry GH ?

Dave W

[Craig Sawyers]

There is a comprehensive list here http://www.testcardcircle.org.uk/ttcfatoz.html there was a lot of them! Far more than I can recall, and in the late 60's to mid 70's I was a TTCF junkie.

YouTube is your friend - there are lots of them there.

[Andrew2]

I used to love these 'Trade Test Colour Films' when I was an apprentice. Some of them were beautifully made.
There are three of them available on the BFI Bluray release of James Hill's 'Lunch Hour' film:

Sky Hook
Giuseppina
The Home-made Car

..all directed by James Hill. They look smashing in HD.

[ms660]

Atlantic Parks....Jerome!!

Lawrence.

[GMB]

I was also a fan of these films.

A friend and I actually traced the locations of where "Home made car" was filmed, by watching it endlessly and noting small clues from the background like which way the TV aerials pointed and the shape of the roads.

[Ted Kendall]

Crown of Glass - even if the glue has now gone off.

[Nuvistor]

There were not really trade test transmissions but to demonstrate colour TV to potential purchasers.
They were all excellent but when you have seen each a couple of times they just blurred into the background for many of us in the trade.
Excellent material for demonstration, a customer seeking the test card meant little but show them the demonstration film and they could gauge if they felt it was any good.

[Andrew2]

Originally Posted by Ted Kendall

Crown of Glass - even if the glue has now gone off.

One of my favourites. Also:

Evoluon
It's the tube that makes the Colour ('..a bluey green known as cyan')
Captive River ('build you dam where the river is narrowest')

ISTR one about electrical safety - 'Switch off, Isolate, Dump and Earth' - S.I.D.E

I'd happily pay for an HD set of these. Probably a fortune.

[Peter.N.]

We went to Evoluon a couple of times, having seen it on the test transmissions so may times I felt quite at home. Not there now, been turned into a conference centre or similar.

I think most of these are available on Youtube.

Peter

[Ted Kendall]

"I am the frog" - before Kermit...

Prospect for Plastics
Something Nice to Eat
there was one about paint as well - gorgeous colours.

[peter_scott]

Originally Posted by GMB

I was also a fan of these films.

A friend and I actually traced the locations of where "Home made car" was filmed, by watching it endlessly and noting small clues from the background like which way the TV aerials pointed and the shape of the roads.

It was unavailable for quite some time but I'm glad to say that there is now a good quality copy on YouTube again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdQ65uNWbvk

http://www.hvauctions.com/motor_Deta...oogle.co.uk%2F

The locations and the changes thereof are very interesting and little disappointing.
http://www.reelstreets.com/films/home-made-car-the/

Peter

[GMB]

By the time we got there an infill house had been built on the site of the garage.

We were also a little surprised that the locations that seem close in the film are actually not close at all.

[cheerfulcharlie]

I recall in the afternoons some people would stand in front of TV showrooms watching these films 'in colour' ..anyway one afternoon I was looking in a showroom at all the other goodies when two old ladies came along and stopped to look at the sets which this day were tuned to ITV showing an Edgar Wallace mystery (now on Talking Pictures) which was obviously in B/W, the TV sets were not grey scaled properly and were showing all sorts of pink and blue hues instead of grey and one old dear turned to the other and said "well I don't think much of this colour television malarkey do you...she should have a pink face and it's all blue"

[G8vsjDave]

Oh yes, the Trade test films were a big part of my early life working at the Rank Bush Murphy factory in Chiswick. The BBC2 trade tests were the only source of colour transmissions (BBC1 and ITV had not started on UHF at this time,) so every set in the place carried them.
One day the technical manager who ran RBM’s advanced TV lab had some important visitors who he wanted to show round the factory. Unfortunately, just before the tour was due to start, a trade test film began that might have caused a slight embarrassment to all. I can only guess there was references in the film to a rival company to our visitors. Anyway, the manager rang the BBC who immediately pulled the test film and replaced it with another. So if you have ever wondered why that trade test film was suddenly pulled after five minutes, and replaced with another, now you know.
The technical manager was Bernard Rogers who worked with Walter Bruch to develop the PAL colour system.

[Craig Sawyers]

Back in the early 70's I got a Saturday job at JG Windows in Newcastle - HiFi/TV's, Records, musical instruments and sheet music. Mark Knopfler bought his first guitar there.

I went out several time to help our TV installation guy. And it it really meant installation - a forest of internal controls that needed to be set up for dynamic convergence, colour registration, geometrical distortions etc. Why there were not preset by the manufacturer defeats me, but every one of them was awful right out of the box.

Other than the Sony Trinitron sets, which just worked perfectly right off.

Craig

[Panrock]

My first job after leaving school in 1969 was as a TA (technical assistant) at the BBC in Tel. Network Department. I mainly worked in NC2 (Network Control 2), which was where BBC2 was put together as a single service from the various programme sources.

During daytime, a large part of the job was putting out the Trade Test Films - and playing the music for the Test Card. We got to know every word of the Colour Receiver Installation Film by heart, and without any effort!

Steve

[TonyDuell]

Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers

I went out several time to help our TV installation guy. And it it really meant installation - a forest of internal controls that needed to be set up for dynamic convergence, colour registration, geometrical distortions etc. Why there were not preset by the manufacturer defeats me, but every one of them was awful right out of the box.

Other than the Sony Trinitron sets, which just worked perfectly right off.

The electron beams are deflected by magnetic fields -- any magnetic fields. That is a consequence of physics. It's both useful in TV sets (the deflection coils work ...) and a pain (the earth's magnetic field will affect the beams).

The latter is the problem in colour sets with a delta gun CRT (3 electron guns at the corners of a triangle). The CRT has to be set up in the place and orientation it is going to be used.

If you have the 3 electron guns in a horizontal line (Trinitron, and the PIL tubes that came a little later) then only the vertical component of the earth's field matters. So you can set up the CRT for the sort of area it's going to be used. And then it will be OK. You can carry the set about, turn it round, etc without problems. So those could be pre-set at the factory.

[AJSmith625]

It was common practice at Currys to do a quick set up - purity, static convergence & grey scale when the set was first installed. Then about two or three weeks later a field engineer was sent out to do a full set up after the set had settled in to its new home.
My favourite film was Birth of a Rainbow, all about Rainbow trout as in fish. Available on Youtube.

Alan.

[julie_m]

The one and only TV repair I did during my time at Uni (I was scared of tellies ..... heard too many horror stories ..... Probably old sets with mains EHT, as opposed to modern sets with energy-limited flyback EHT that's just bldy painful as opposed to instantly fatal, but I was young and impressionable. Anyway, the balance of the universe was restored when they got me working on gas ignition boards .....) was on a three-way hybrid set (valves, transistors and ICs on the same board!) that needed the convergence redoing afterwards. I used either a BBC micro or a ZX Spectrum (can't remember which but more probably a Beeb) as a test pattern generator, with a BASIC program that used FOR-NEXT loops and PLOT and DRAW commands to draw different patterns of lines depending which number key was pressed.

I managed to get a blinding picture on that set -- for about a week, until someone dropped it while trying to carry it from the bedroom to the kitchen or vice versa. Sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose .....