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Old 7th Oct 2020, 4:43 pm   #21
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

OK* what does TARIF expand to?
*no one really knows what OK expands to.
 
Old 7th Oct 2020, 5:03 pm   #22
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

I'm told that it was Television (variously Technical) Apparatus for the Rectification of Inferior Film- the BBC seemed to have a liking for pompous and stilted descriptions of technical arrangements and devices, another was VERA, most usually Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus (other interpretations are available from diverse sources including the colloquial Very Expensive Recording Apparatus....).

Come to think of it, the BBC is probably outdone in the "contrived acronym" stakes by the US military but that's outside forum scope.
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Old 7th Oct 2020, 5:28 pm   #23
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

https://youtu.be/dGG5kI4hOJg

I think I had another suggestion for 'VERA' in a very silly video I made for YouTube practically nobody watched!

(Contains a naughty word or two...)
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Old 7th Oct 2020, 6:31 pm   #24
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Verily Eclipsed Rival to Ampex?
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Old 7th Oct 2020, 7:53 pm   #25
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Not strictly relevant but, where I used to live in the 1970s, we could receive both Yorkshire and Tyne Tees Television. The adverts (or should that be 'commercials' ?) used to run seamlessly on Yorkshire but, on Tyne Tees, there was a white 'four-cornered' flash lasting perhaps less than a second between adverts. Maybe there were different companies supplying the film reels. Both Yorkshire and Tyne Tees were Trident Television companies.

I've seen another of these flashes but in the form of the Associated-Rediffusion 'star' logo. It always struck me as being rather Americanised.
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Old 7th Oct 2020, 10:53 pm   #26
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

The dots on Budgie looked a bit too digitised for the early 1970s, but I might be wrong.

I remember FAX one explaining what cue dots were. The Granada ones seem to be diagonal bands of black & white pixelated lines moving. I've seen others like a grid with the squares flashing from black to white.

Granada never seemed to bother with break bumpers, or anything other than a briefly blank screen between adverts. At least from the early 1980s onwards.
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Old 9th Oct 2020, 1:05 pm   #27
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

It's a source of amusement when a TV programme wants to show something that's supposed to be A Really Old Film it's prefaced with START, bleep, counting down. You know it's fake if it counts down to one - real films had a bleep at three then blank leader so the second projector's lamp could be opened up at the second cue dot. Of course three seconds of nothing on a modern TV show would be a disaster!
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 9:55 am   #28
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

A bit OT but remember the white square animation that played between adverts? This appeared to give the effect of a white frame on a black background growing from one side of the screen and was about 1 to 2 secs long?
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 4:19 pm   #29
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Quote:
Originally Posted by sexton_mallard View Post
A bit OT but remember the white square animation that played between adverts? This appeared to give the effect of a white frame on a black background growing from one side of the screen and was about 1 to 2 secs long?
It was an ITA/IBA requirement that the commercials had to be quite clearly separate from each other so the companies used to put a short section of black between each commercial to satisfy that requirement. Some companies put a short ‘optical’ rather than black ( the Rediffusion star, LWT moving white squares, Southern filling star etc). There was talk within the industry that these short animated opticals also allowed cheap TV receivers to stabilise some sort of black level if they didn’t have any sort of DC restoration or clamping - but the tv experts on this forum will know more about that than me. As the IBA morphed into the ITC and latterly Ofcom this mandated requirement has gone away so nowadays commercials generally simply cut to each other.

Telly is dominated by fads, I can easily foretell the day when some bright spark will reinvent the wheel and say ‘why don’t we put a short bit of black in between the ads’.
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 4:54 pm   #30
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Something that's always confused me is how the projectionists get the next reel at the right time. Does the dot assume a delay for reaction time? Was it just normal for there to be a break in sound and visual continuity? Did the editing make sure the reel always finished at a black-screen cut?
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 7:31 pm   #31
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Dutch commercials once used to be separated by either some sort of short spirograph like animation, or by the "Loekie de leeuw" animation (which roughly translates to Lou the lion).
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 10:04 pm   #32
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

I remember Channel 5 at one time used to have a set of five lines in the colours of their first logo flash in time between each advert. One one anniversary of them starting up these became candles. I might have some on tape somewhere.
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Old 12th Oct 2020, 1:08 am   #33
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Quote:
Originally Posted by red16v View Post

Telly is dominated by fads, I can easily foretell the day when some bright spark will reinvent the wheel and say ‘why don’t we put a short bit of black in between the ads’.
I'm sure the bean-counters could quote you $/frame why not.

We get the end credits laterally squashed to fit in a promo.

The one that really annoys me, are the morning American sit-coms like "Frasier", where the promo is a narrow strap at the bottom of the screen before the credits, but instead of a simple overlay, they find the need to squash the picture up to make room for it effectively changing the aspect ratio.
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Old 12th Oct 2020, 5:19 am   #34
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

We still get the black between ad's Downunder and that horrible squashed picture either vertically or horizontally depending on what they are doing.

Don't know why they still have credits, they usually flow past so fast nobody can read them. Noticed a couple of programs lately that give a weblink if you really want to see the credits.
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Old 12th Oct 2020, 8:35 am   #35
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

The next step logically is a QR code.
(I really shouldn't give them ideas, should I?)
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 10:46 pm   #36
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

This letter "P" appears appears after each break on Steph's Packed Lunch on Channel 4.
I have no idea what it denotes.

Click image for larger version

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Old 12th Nov 2020, 11:41 pm   #37
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Its to do with SKY and its "License" for pubs.
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 11:50 pm   #38
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

I thought the P stood for product placement, sometimes see it on drama and soaps, whereby branded products appear on screen in shots, so in days gone by cereal boxes would have the actual brand name covered, now the broadcasters can advertise but there are guidelines regulating this and the program has to have the letter P or PP on the intro.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 12:05 am   #39
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard_FM View Post
I remember Channel 5 at one time used to have a set of five lines in the colours of their first logo flash in time between each advert. One one anniversary of them starting up these became candles. I might have some on tape somewhere.
The coloured flash was a short series of graphics files, BMP from memory, loaded into a piece of kit called 'Logomotion' made by Leitch. Adverts were kept centrally on a huge tape-based LMS - ("Library Management System - It's a bit like a video Jukebox" we'd tell visitors.) and played out as real time serial-digital video to the Channel 5 Regional Video Servers (Tektronix Profile) for transmission.

The video was routed through the Logomotion which inserted the animated sequence of BMPs into the black at the start of each commercial as it was recorded onto the server. The master copy in the LMS was kept clean. All this was controlled by Probel automation that checked the Server's contents against the schedule, automatically ensuring all the required commercials were ready. Disk based video storage was still quite limited, commercials on server, programmes were on Digital Betacam tape and I think animated graphics -Opticals -were on laser disc of some description at that time.

I was looking at this thread a while back and went away to remind myself of the specification for Microvideo's cue dot generator. It said that it was switchable between BBC and IBA standards:

"IBA - right hand side with moving black and white stripes.
BBC - left hand side consisting of static stripes of white, black, white."

Going back further, I seem to remember an old cartoon where a Chief Projectionist is watching a film on the telly at home with his family. He startles them as he hollers "MOTOR!" as the first cue dot appears.

Is the P on Steph's Packed Lunch for 'Product Placement?' It doesn't seem to conform to OFCOM's standard.....

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-an...lacement-on-tv

Regards,

SR

Last edited by Stuart R; 13th Nov 2020 at 12:18 am. Reason: Opticals - the word I was looking for.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 12:39 am   #40
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Default Re: Television Advert 'Warning' Symbol

Quote:
Originally Posted by stacman View Post
I thought the P stood for product placement, sometimes see it on drama and soaps, whereby branded products appear on screen in shots, so in days gone by cereal boxes would have the actual brand name covered, now the broadcasters can advertise but there are guidelines regulating this and the program has to have the letter P or PP on the intro.

Ah, I forgot about that, thanks.
I wonder what percentage of the public know what it means, notice it, or generally give a damn?
It's as bad as those endless "Viewers are advised" warnings on TPTV, even Robin Hood and William Tell has them, and they were 1950s children's programmes.
Mind you, on second thoughts...

https://youtu.be/I-MB20Pl1H4

...you don't get that sort of thing on CBeebies
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