RCA Telecine on ebay - Videokarma.org TV - Video

rld-tv01 · #1 03-02-2022, 04:48 PM

Vintage RCA Telecine. I saw this on eBay today. It looks interesting. Anyone know anything about the technology this uses? It's too far from me to consider.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/18532113752...sAAOSwcB1iHrxZ

Electronic M · #2 03-02-2022, 05:11 PM

I'm no expert in the station end of TV, but it's probably the same as a conventional monochrome telecine only instead of single camera pickup tube they use 3 tubes and Dichloric Mirrors the way early color broadcast cameras did.

It's missing it's drive electronics so making it functional is more of a challenge...If it is really from 1953 that probably makes it one of the first such devices and maybe the oldest one surviving.

This is something the ETF should have...

Mi40793 · #3 03-04-2022, 03:13 PM

TK-25A film projector mechanism, and three photocells.

TK-25A is described on page 58 in Jan 1954 RCA Broadcast News
https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIV...ews/RCA-77.pdf

General Electric, DuMont, and Philco sold flying spot scanner film chains to broadcast stations starting in 1954. Dumont sold somewhere above 50 systems.

RCA quickly abandoned the TK-25 and produced many of the very successful TK-26 three vidicon color film camera. RCA also produced the TP-6 film projector used with the TK-26.

kf4rca · #4 03-06-2022, 07:52 AM

The earliest one I ever worked on was the 26 (at WCBD in 1975). There was a mod that converted the pickup tubes to separate mesh tubes that was supposed to give the image a flatter field.
We used it only for slides.

old_tv_nut · #5 03-06-2022, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kf4rca

The earliest one I ever worked on was the 26 (at WCBD in 1975). There was a mod that converted the pickup tubes to separate mesh tubes that was supposed to give the image a flatter field.
We used it only for slides.

Interesting. One thing that jumps out at me in vidicon telecine material compared to flying spot or CCD is the shading.

Mi40793 · #6 03-21-2022, 12:14 PM

RCA TK-26 had h+v shading controls as did any vidicon film camera. Vidicon beam alignment and optical path alignment of the multiplexer and projectors all affected shading. Maybe some folks just weren’t setting things up properly. It was possible go have a vidicon with problems. I had to reject RCA vidicons with problems in 70’s when factory folks retired.