G'day.

I've came across a mystery roundie colour TV set in the classic movie Ice Castles which looks a bit like a CTC-9 or 10. The video of this scene can be viewed here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW7lRvvZg68&feature=related starting at 4:37. It looks a bit like a 9 or 10 modified into a monitor with an analog meter below the speaker and below what I assume direct A/V leads going into the set.

I was wondering if anyone could identify this TV set whether it's an actual TV monitor or a TV made to look like a fictitious monitor prop?

It looks an awful lot like a test jig used to service a Color TV chassis on the bench.

The meter on the front would be to monitor the high voltage.

Film from 1978 ?

Film from 1978 ?
Yes that's the one!

It looks an awful lot like a test jig used to service a Color TV chassis on the bench.

The meter on the front would be to monitor the high voltage.

Right you are! Looks like an early Telematic - RCA added the meter later.

Cheers,

It looks an awful lot like a test jig used to service a Color TV chassis on the bench.

The meter on the front would be to monitor the high voltage.
You can also see the inter-chassis cabling just below and to the left of the HV (EHT) meter.

It is an RCA test jig, you can also see the HV meter which is a dead giveaway. I believe I have one in one of my buildings.

It is a fake tv

Looks to me like they put the image on the 'screen' artificially, i.e. blue sceen.

That seems like a really odd choice for that movie-out of all the things they could have grabbed, why snatch that one? I had a similiar unit which seemed to be based on an -11. I think mine had the meter at the top of the "control panel", although it was added on later. (an upgrade kit that RCA sold-I don't think it was that important until later years when higher voltage sets started coming in for servicing and due to xray issues it was important to have the level adjusted correctly)

miniman-they matted out the screen, which was the standard practice for many years. Between flicker from the screen and the typically low film ASA, filming straight from the screen was a poor choice. It's not until the 80s that you see things like flicker-free screen filming (I think you know what I'm trying to express). In which case, they have managed to sync the camera shutter to the refresh rate of the screen. There is more to this subject, a lot more, but those are the basics of what we are seeing in this movie.

Why a test jig? Probably lighter. No chassis, and the picture tube was probably removed and a piece of color-keyed cardboard stuck in its place.

Well understand this, that it was not meant to be a "consumer looking" TV as this was in a "studio" commercial atmosphere and it was being portrayed as a studio monitor. This was the best they could do at that time.

They went looking for a prop, and that is what they found. Remember that movie studios were originally very antagonistic to TV, and the people working on the film probably knew next to nothing about real TV studio equipment. Strange and inaccurate depictions of TV exist in most early movies that have TV incidental to the plot. Even if the film people knew better, there was no need to be realistic, as it was irrelevant to the plot and the movie audience didn't know what it should look like anyway.

Edit: I looked up the date of Ice Castles - 1978. Didn't realize it was that late. The film crew certainly knew what a real monitor looked like by then, but obviously used the most expedient prop.

Doesn't seem as bad as the tv series "American Dreams" using a Philco Predicta as a studio monitor on "Bandstand."

As for TV sets used in TV studios, well, in the lobby of the NBC network in New York City they had an RCA TV set playing whatever was being piped for public consumption over the NBC network.

TV stations do keep around a TV set so they can quickly see that the transmitter is in fact working. The transmitter is usually several miles from the studio.

Doesn't seem as bad as the tv series "American Dreams" using a Philco Predicta as a studio monitor on "Bandstand."

How about "Down With Love"? The Philco Predicta in Catcher Blocks apartment was one of those reproductions from a few years ago. He would have had a roundie anyway...

Come to think of it, if I was the prop guy in that Ice Castles movie, I would have rigged the meter to change readings, say an intermediate reading that then goes down when the ice skater falls on her rear... :D As if it was a "quality of performance" reading.

When I was a Cub Scout (very early 80s) we visited the local TV station during the MDA Telethon, and got the "10 cent" tour. They had a regular, everyday TV hanging up high near the news set, maybe a Magnavox? It was off at the time but what caught my attention is that the click-stop tuner was set on the competing station. Guess that let them sneak a peak at the competition in the middle of the newscast?

I saw the Down With Love Predicta as well. Another minor tv thing that kinda ticked me off in the movie: at the end credits, the main characters are featured on some sort of colorcast, but the matted screen image is a standard 4:3 screen instead of a roundie matte! How much more obscure and off topic is that?

Somewhere around here, we have an old "Radio & Television" magazine from the 1950s with a cool color cover photo of a television control booth. It appears recently retrofitted with color equipment, one of the "monitors" being a commercially available color receiver.

A commercial tv isn't a bad idea for a monitor to see how the picture will play at home, but regarding the Predicta, I can't imagine the engineer opting for such a relatively unreliable and difficult-to-repair model. And we LOVE Predictas here!

It's a shame that Down With Love begins so authentically with the original 20th Century-Fox CinemaScope banner, and then that "new" Predicta shows up. :sigh: It's not like they are all that scarce.

Anachronisms: The bane of idiot Hollywood Set Decorators :nono:

Having been a master control operator at a local independent tv station here in NH for several years I can speak to my experience. The only real tv we had in the station was in the lobby waiting room that constantly showed our station. In master control what we had was a monitor that showed our signal from the tower so if there were any transmitter problems we would know about it right away. We would also use it to check video levels and tint of the broadcasted picture. We had scopes that we would set levels by but even tho the scopes would say we were good the pic over the air sometimes would look too saturated or would have a color shift. It was never a good thing to get a call from the station manager with a complaint that an advertiser wasn't happy with how their commercial looked over the air.