Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave A
Steve K,
I stand corrected...Steve D, save me.
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Being in the production end of things and not so much in engineering I can only comment on my personal observations.
All I know is that the shows mentioned, Peter Pan (1960), Bell Telephone Hour and Dean Martin and all videotape productions at this time were products of 50's & 60's era videotape technology. And no matter how you slice it the tape looked like crap compared to most live and film color telecasts of the same era on all the networks. So many of the technical steps required to transmit a color video tape program from coast to coast as previously posted here by others, only helped to detract from already dubious recorded color quality. Add to the fact that these early color shows were edited by using a razor blade and finally after a couple of generations were loaded on a videotape machine. "Looks ok leaving here" was the standard answer from reasonably bored and complacent technicians at the various monitoring sites watching the banding and jump cut edits roll by. This at a time RCA was trying to convince the public that color TV was natural "living color. At KTLA, where I worked in the 60's & 70's they did go the extra mile in quality control. And hours were spent setting up and maintaining our TK-41's, video tape and film chain equipment. This may seem biased, but I certainly saw a difference in our color transmissions, even, up to a point, KTLA's color video tape broadcasts compared to the network color broadcasts. Slowly by the late 60's early 70's as technology improved and the networks and stations upgraded to the latest equipment the quality of all color transmissions by broadcasters was greatly improved. Even NBC Burbank finally and reluctantly gave up their TK-41's.
-Steve D.