Restoration begins on Ed Reitan's CTC-7

[Kevin Kuehn]

Those screen shots are astonishing! I assume we hobbyists are probably in the minority to experience such a high level of picture quality on these old roundy set's. Short of a studio monitor, there was never any OTA source material that could rival our modern video sources we have available today.

[benman94]

Originally Posted by Kevin Kuehn

Those screen shots are astonishing! I assume we hobbyists are probably in the minority to experience such a high level of picture quality on these old roundy set's. Short of a studio monitor, there was never any OTA source material that could rival our modern video sources we have available today.

I don't think there were any video sources circa 1958, aside from a dedicated color bar generator, that could produce an image that good. Tape was noisy, the cameras themselves were noisy, the film chain cameras were very noisy from what I've been told, etc

My father was thrilled when Laserdisc, and then DVD, finally came out. We truly are seeing these sets with an image quality that never could have been achieved prior to about 20 or 30 years ago.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by benman94

I don't think there were any video sources circa 1958, aside from a dedicated color bar generator, that could produce an image that good. Tape was noisy, the cameras themselves were noisy, the film chain cameras were very noisy from what I've been told, etc

Film chains were the least noisy, because a lot of light could be poured into the vidicon pickup tubes. Image orthicons had a noise floor due to beam current noise (basic quantum electron-count noise). The live-camera noise problem wasn't solved until the Plumbicon tube came along in the 60's.

[benman94]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

Film chains were the least noisy, because a lot of light could be poured into the vidicon pickup tubes. Image orthicons had a noise floor due to beam current noise (basic quantum electron-count noise). The live-camera noise problem wasn't solved until the Plumbicon tube came along in the 60's.

I should qualify my statement a bit: the film chains were very noisy compared to the Cintel flying spot scanners that were used in the 80s and 90s to master for tape/LD and eventually DVD.

Now I do remember one of my Uncles saying that there was an issue with the TK-26s and TK-27s, and while they looked good, they weren't perfect, and they certainly weren't as good as the color flying spot scanners that were available in the mid-50s and early 60s (I think GE made one, among others). I can't for the life of me remember what their particular gripe was though...

[Kevin Kuehn]

I can only imagine how tedious it must have been editing commercials into film program material back in those early days. It would be fascinating to me if someone could start a thread on how that was all accomplished. Or maybe there is a thread and I'm not aware of it.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by benman94

I should qualify my statement a bit: the film chains were very noisy compared to the Cintel flying spot scanners that were used in the 80s and 90s to master for tape/LD and eventually DVD.

Now I do remember one of my Uncles saying that there was an issue with the TK-26s and TK-27s, and while they looked good, they weren't perfect, and they certainly weren't as good as the color flying spot scanners that were available in the mid-50s and early 60s (I think GE made one, among others). I can't for the life of me remember what their particular gripe was though...

Yes, the flying spot scanners were much cleaner than the vidicon chains, not only in noise, but in shading. DVDs of film series that were transferred using a vidicon chain (e.g., Rocky and Bullwinkle) have bad shading and bad grayscale tracking.

I think I recall some postings somewhere with gripes about the TK-27 actually being worse than the TK-26 in some ways.

One of the problems for color with the vidicon chains is that the vidicons have a built-in gamma correction characteristic, so it is before any color correction matrix (if the camera even had one). This resulted in dull muddy greens compared to reds and blues. The color rendition of the Cintels etc. was much better. The dynamic range (contrast range) of the vidicon chains was also worse than the Cintel, with muddy shadows in general. At one time, Kodak sold a low-contrast movie print film specifically for TV use. The prints looked washed out to the eye, but it got the shadows bright enough that the sensor could see them well. The fog was then removed by turning down the black level in the video amp. Plumbicon live cameras used a similar technique: they had tube faceplate lighting that raised the shadows in order to reduce motion lag, and the resulting fog was removed by adjusting the clamping level to reset the blacks.