'54 CONRAC monitor

[bgadow]

I could understand tv stations or maybe ABC using roundies into the 70s but it would sure seem that RCA would make sure NBC always got the latest & the greatest. Maybe there use of those old sets says something about their quality-and about the quality of what RCA was producing in the 70s!

I could swear I have seen studio shots on tv from the early 80s, either SNL or the Tonight Show, & they had Japanese-Sony, I think-monitors. I would think this would set Sarnoff spinning in his grave! This was before the GE buyout, by the way.

Tv stations or broadcasting facilities will quite often hold onto old equipment and run it into the ground because management does not want to spend
money on new equipment.There are certain areas where you need the
latest modern equipment,such as cameras and the color monitors that
are needed to set up or "chip" the cameras.These are the areas where you
will find modern equipment.In less critical areas of the facility you will find
the older equipment still chugging along.We still have alot of the Conrac
SNA series B&W monitors running.These are a transistor design going back
to 1974.No one makes crt's for these anymore,so we send out the old ones
to Scotty at Hawkeye to have them rebuilt.The plan is to eventually replace
all of these with Sony or Ikegami LCD monitors,but that will cost money.
It is rumored that yearly bonuses given to CBS management will be bigger if they spend minimal money.So of course they are going to do anything they
can to hardly spend any money.I'm sure this is how it is at other big
companies too.
Regards,
Swanson

[Steve Hoffman]

I agree. Those old monitors were there at NBC because they still worked and they were "fixed assets" that were paid for 14 years before.

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by Steve Hoffman

I agree. Those old monitors were there at NBC because they still worked and they were "fixed assets" that were paid for 14 years before.

Good point Steve & Swanson. We used the roundie monitors at KTLA well into the 70's. And even when we replaced the roundies with rectangular color monitors , we kept a roundie installed for reference. This,because when we did a tight shot of a subject, person or product, we wanted to be sure it was not cut off at the corners when viewed on a round screen color set. After all, there were still millions of roundie color sets in homes.

-Steve D.

[Sandy G]

I STILL THINK I've seen COLOR CRTs from the 1950s that were the same shape as the B&W CRTs of the day-NOT the distinctive "Roundie" shape we all know & love. And I believe I've seen 'em as studio monitors-pictures, OK, but still. They may have been superimposed, but I don't believe they were. Am I dreaming, or Nutz ? -Sandy G.

[Telecolor 3007]

On the pic put by old_tv_nut a guy "playes" with some buttons. Are those buttons use for adjusting the colors?

[3Guncolor]

Most places that have been around awhile end up moving older pieces around if they still work to less inportant places. I have some monitors in service that are around 25 years old for checking if something is working or not we even have one with a HD down converter hooked up to it for HD. Sometimes its a matter of pride to see how long the techs can keep a piece working. That can backfire as managment knows they don't need to spend $ on new equipment. On a side note I had a round monitor with a 21FJP22A setup next to a Sony 32" for fun and the pic was almost as good. The monitor I want to fix someday had a 25VCMP22 Cromacolor Zenith Tube in it, that old thing had a killer picture.

[Steve Hoffman]

The thing about "moving older pieces around if they still work to less inportant places" is of course quite logical, but at NBC Color City, the big window that showed master control was a very important place. Not only did they judge picture quality there (to a certain extent) but it was on display for anyone who walked by to look in. That included the tours, etc. I mean, in 1974 the first thing you saw at NBC other than the hallways full of people was two really old 21" roundies, heh. That always tickled me. They might have been proud of 'em. Probably were.

FWIW (and that's not much!) I took the NBC tour at Rocky Center back in the early 70's and recall seeing what I remember to be Curtis Mathes monitors in the control room...not sure if this was their master control room or what, but it had live feed displayed.

[Telecolor 3007]

I wonder what had happened to those old beatifoul monitors. I hope they didn't end in the junk yard.
Talking about old things. A reporter from TVR (The Romaninan State Televsion) use an "Sony" Betacam from the '80's!

Until recently, lots of American TV news used a version of Betacam for their in the field reporting. There are several Beta standards, some for broadcast, others for industry (training tapes etc) and of course the consumer version.

Yes,that is betacam SX,still in use at CBS NY and
other networks for news gathering.
We are now switching over to a new format
by Sony called XDCAM.It records the video data
to a rewritable disc that is about the same size as
a DVD.The disc usually lives in a cartridge and looks
a little bit like the old JAZ drive cartridge.The laser
in use is the new blue-violet laser.So far it works
very well but the technology is still very new.
Regards,
Swanson

[old_tv_nut]

Those are knobs used to adjust the image orthicon operating voltages and magnetic fields. Image orthicons were very finicky, and adjusting them was apparently as much art as science. I have heard it said that NBC Burbank did a much better job of aligning the cameras than NBC New York, and that would seem to be confirmed by the relative quality of existing videos.

[Steve Hoffman]

I agree. The stuff from Color City in Burbank always looks better. The NY cameras are always mis-matched looking, picture wise..

[colortrakker]

Next time you watch an old Saturday Night Live, you'll see the differences. Sometimes they're tremendous. And they were like that into the '80s. I agree Burbank was much more consistent from camera to camera, if not from show to show. Some shows looked a lot sharper than others, unless they lost something in remastering.