@ARC Tech-109, thanks for the info!
- So, in the US, BVU meant just pro connectors and maybe a slight bump in luma carrier, but otherwise not much different from the original low-band. Then when SP came out, it was "SP" without "BVU", for example VO-9800 is just Umatic-SP.
- But in Europe the introduction of BVU coincided with high-band? If not, did high-band machines have a special label? Googling... Ah, it seems that high band machines were labeled "Umatic H". So, in Europe BVUs could be either a regular low-band, or "H" or "SP".
I want to make a timeline to make it clearer.
Regarding its usage by stations, here is a Texas
KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection. Incredibly, they do not allow to search by media type or by camera type or other technical stuff, but they display the media type per clip. So, starting from late 1976 through 1986 all of their news clips were Umatic. The link above shows the last 16mm clip about a robbery, and the next one, with the Carter and Ford debate, is the first Umatic clip, at least the first in this collection.
Here is the
direct link to the Carter and Ford debate. It is soft, and really no better than standard VHS. it seems that they did not use a TBC when they were digitizing it, considering the skewing on the top. Also, I thought that on Umatic, head-switching noise is not visible. But color-wise it looks ok.
This one has horrible green cast on the edges of objects, and of course other colors spill over too, like red.
For comparison,
one of the last 16mm clips. "You like to be an object?" - Huh.