RCA TK-41 VS TK-40, any difference

[Aussie Bloke]

Hi all.

Just wondering is there any major difference between a RCA TK-41 and the earlier TK-40, cos they look pretty much the same? And is there a difference in picture quality of a TK-41 to a TK-40?

Cheers
Troy

[Sandy G]

Troy- Look up "RCA TK-41" on Google & there's a whole bunch of sites relating to them. Apparently, the -41 was just a later version, but it must have been a honey as they were pretty much industry standard for years & years. Every time you saw a TV studio on a TV program, they always had a bunch of these hump-backed monsters roamin' around. Silver must have helped keep down the heat all those zillion tubes (valves to you, mate!) in one of 'em generated. -Sandy G.

[Dave A]

Troy,

One of the best sites is;

http://www.ev1.pair.com/colorTV/TVcams-in-action.html

belonging to Kris Trexler. That camera was a workhorse for RCA only because it's successor, the TK-42 was a dog. One IO and three vidicons for a color smear. Norelco had come out with the plumbicon (lead-oxide tube) and it's color killed anything RCA had. CBS in the mid-70's bought a boatload of Thomson plumbs and the color was spectacular.

The Astaire show you mention is not commercially available. It is restored and belongs to the UCLA Film Archives. I am not sure about the Eisenhower show. Lot's of others, though slightly later exist. Check Amazon.com for Judy Garland and The Bell Telephone Hour. Some early color from the 60's in those two.

[Aussie Bloke]

Hi Dave. Thanks for the link, I regularly visit Kris Trexler's site, yeah there looks to be some differences between the TK-40 and 41. As for picture quality, that I'm not sure of but I've heard that the TK-41C uses a filter prism which improves the picture quality a bit.

Speaking of TK-42 cameras, seeing they use a single orthicon for luminance along with the 3 vidicons for colour, when pointed to spotlights and other really bright objects are the halos black seeing it's one orthicon?

As for Fred Astaire show, that should be released on DVD, any chance of that happening? And has it ever been re-aired or excerpts of it been re-aired? Anyhow for a bit of fun I downloaded the quicktime video of that show from Kris's site and converted it to avi and ran it through Motion Perfect to get it up from 15fps to 60fps so I can get the live fluid motion feel of the clip and it worked quite well.

Now you mentioned there were other early video recordings around, any commercially available dating around 1958 and 1959? Also I'm really curious of seeing outdoor TK-40/41 broadcasts, if there's any commercially available I would love to get my hands on a DVD or VHS copy.

Cheers
Troy