I presume this is what they used to show films on TV back in the day?

http://cgi.ebay.com/RCA-275-VINTAGE-TELEVISION-16mm-TV-PROJECTOR_W0QQitemZ190152442062QQihZ009QQcategoryZ 29833QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Definitely some sort of film chain... RCA made a lot of them in order to show filmed TV shows (Lucy, et al), in the pre-videotape days. I hope someone else will ring in on this.

Charles

That has to be one heave ^&TCH!


polaraman

That is the projection half of a Telecine. Generally those RCA Telecines consisted of a projector like that one, and a camera that pointed into the lens of the projector, and the two units sat side by side. Modern telecine units are contained all in one unit instead of two separate pieces. Back in the days before videotape or "television tape" recording was a common practice, equipment existed that recorded the video images onto film. This was called a kineoscope recording. Basically this consisted of a 16mm film camera that was focused on a video monitor and recorded the tv image and sound onto the film. Therefore tv stations had these telecine units to playback previously recorded content, such as syndicated programming, news pieces, commercials, etc. to air via the telecine machines.

The station I worked for for some reason called it a Film Chain or Film Island. One island had two 16mm projectors and a slide unit. The other Island had one 35mm one 16mm and a slide unit. All RCA equipment. They used them live on the air untill the late 90's.

"chain" because it included everything needed from end to end to turn film into TV signals; "island" because it stood in the middle of the floor so you could get at all the pieces.

Besides kinescope recordings, it was used to broadcast locally made news films before the days of camcorders, and also possibly 16 mm prints of syndicated TV shows and old movies. Some facilities could do 35 mm (I think mostly networks). If it was built to handle the real old nitrate prints, it wouldn't be an island, but would have a separate fireproof projection room.

*sniffle* oh the good old days

I still remember changing a hot blown projecter bulb during the "Brady Bunch" those were the days... We did get some film on 35mm mostly spots at that time they would be played once and recorded on the ACR25 2" qaud spot recorder now that thing was a work of art. I would really like to see one of those running again. Now it's all boring servers.