Rca Tk-41

[John Hafer]

W.B.

I have seen those photos from NBC and the captions indicate they upgraded their telecine rooms in 1976.

RCA indroduced their 4-tube TK-27 color film camera in 1965 and then replaced it with an improved 3-tube version, the TK-28 in 1972. The TK-28 was a much improved version film camera and by looking at the pictures, and by the date the room upgrades were made, these look like these were TK-28 cameras, even though the caption says they were TK-27 cameras.

The TK-27 had a large camera module mounted on the top front of the cabinet that was visible, where as the TK-28 had a small one or non at all.

Telling which stations used either GE PE-240 or RCA TK-27 film chains was easy! I lived in Boston in the mid 60's and it was easy to tell who had what by just watching some films on their stations.

WBZ-TV ch. 4 and then WKBG-TV ch. 56 had TK-27s while WNAC-TV ch.7 and WSBK-TV ch.38 had GE PE-240s'. WJAR-TV ch. 10 Providence also had TK-27s.

I also lived in Syracuse, and and WSYR-TV ch. 3 went with TK-27s, while WHEN-TV ch. 5 and then WNYS-TV ch. 9 went with the GE color film chains.

The hard part was trying to see the difference between the older RCA TK-26 and the GE PE-240 cameras for both had great pictures.

I read in several sites were the TK-42 and TK-27 cameras just did not live up to the expectations they had hoped, and that RCA later replaced them with the TK-44 (live) and TK-28 (film) cameras which from what I read, were excellent cameras.

Just my comments. Maybe someone else has some better information.