[QuadList] Servo Modes

Trevor videovault at sky.com
Fri Aug 24 10:23:02 CDT 2012


I was at an ITV network TV station with around 6 million viewers and yes we
started live to air with TCR100's
I think it fair to say TC100's are not as reliable as the ACR25
RCA did not have good digital TBC
The RCA Pinch roller less Capstan had its problems as did the cassette
design

Everything could have been sorted except for misinformation "pinch roller's
do not go wrong"
"The cassette box is not in circuit once the tape has threaded", were the
main themes of misinformation

When the engineer Bill ..... who's name will come to me turned and spoke the
truth
Changing Pinch roller capstan assemblies and rejecting new ones RCA sent
and showing how to diagnosed faulty cassettes then they could have continued
to be live

Alas by that time the decision was not to go live but to copy breaks to tape
and they were never used again live on air

I do not blame engineers the misinformation came from the top of RCA
Never went ACR25 they were replaced by BCN 100 and then Panasonic marc
machines D3 decks

TrevorB
UK Member 







-----Original Message-----
From: quadlist-bounces at quadvideotapegroup.com
[mailto:quadlist-bounces at quadvideotapegroup.com] On Behalf Of Dennis Degan
Sent: 24 August 2012 15:07
To: Quad List
Subject: Re: [QuadList] Servo Modes



		On Aug 24, 2012, at 12:50 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:

 > Also related to a similar thread we (an independent station with no
network spot support) ran our only ACR direct to air for many years.  
It was something us techs were very proud of.

		I say:

	Not to throw cold water on it Wayne, but I don't know of a single TV
station that DIDN'T run their cart machines live to air.  Only networks
would do this (with the notable exception of NBC).  At the network level,
where more money is at stake, reliability is of much higher priority than
operator convenience.  Not only would CBS and ABC cut their commercials into
the program masters, they would run two copies of the commercial-inserted
program on the air simultaneously to  
enable quick switching in case of a failure of the on-air tape.   
Again, no local TV station I'm aware of did this.

		Wayne also said:

 > So......speaking of proud....it is absolutely amazing what engineers did
30 to 40 years ago with no  operating systems to take advantage of. Three
developments to think about are the above fast lock VTR's; the Chyron and
the ADO. I think most of this using massive TTL logic?  Someone can back me
up here but I think the ADO had a 200 Amp 5 volt supply to run all those
chips. The Chyron and ACR (logic
bay) even did all this with wire wrap on the chips (I think).

		I offer:

	Wire wrap is very reliable.  Obviously, if the equipment was being
built today, wire wrap would probably not be used because the method was
more labor-intensive than others.  But it did have its advantages.

			Dennis Degan, Video Editor-Consultant-Knowledge Bank
					     NBC Today Show, New York





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