Mystery roundie in movie "Ice Castles"

[Hawkwind]

Originally Posted by Indian Head

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...

[wa2ise]

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... As if it was a "quality of performance" reading.

[bgadow]

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?

[leadlike]

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?

[Indian Head]

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. It's not like they are all that scarce.

[NewVista]

Anachronisms: The bane of idiot Hollywood Set Decorators

[vinljnkie]

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.