I've just come from a (nameless) forum notable for being the habitat of the ignorant and profane which has reminded me it was forty years ago this month that the last 405-line transmitter was turned off. Who remembers the last time they saw a 405 transmission? In my case, it'd have been the late 70s.
(those from 625-line only countries need not comment).
The last 405 transmission I saw was in the transmitter hall at Burnhope not long before it was shutdown, the same night we had a tour of Pontop Pike also. Never saw any CH5 pictures I remember the pictures on a Peto Scott monitor at Burnhope were pretty grim. The staff admitted that quality of the transmissions weren’t great but the silvering low emission CRT and hum on the off air monitor made it look even worse.
I’ve mentioned this before but unlike the Pontop site Burnhope was still manned, I was told they occasionally used to switch off the audio and wait for a call from City Road in Newcastle. There was apparently one old gentleman who used to ring City Road the moment audio was lost, eventually they gave him the direct number for Burnhope.
Was it really 40 years ago 😱.
John.
It would have been the mid 1970's for me. I recon I stopped selling second hand 405 only sets around 1975 while still at school. As dual standard sets were becoming common and cheap as the shops binned them in favour of single standard sets and colour.
I think one of the last 405 sets I sold was the Ferguson courier with the controls on the top. The last person I knew with a 405 only set was my grandfather who had a Dynatron from 1959 still in daily use until he went colour in 74/75. By then 405 was seen as very old fashioned around here.
The dual standard sets I had were usually "converted" to 625 by disconnecting the system switch in some way and fixing it in the 625 position. The VHF aerial socket being removed or blanked off.
@slidertogrid The Last time I saw 405 Line Television was on our old Thorn 981 Chassis Portable Television which had been supplied by DER was back in 1981. As a kid watching 405 lines in the 1960's , The picture quality on BBC1 Ch2 Transmissions from Holme Moss was far better compared to the ITV Granada Ch9 Transmissions from Winter Hill . During this time we moved twice around different parts of Manchester .Watching 405 TV on different Rented Tv Sets ( RBM and Thorn ) and loft and Outside Aerials, but no matter where we lived in Manchester, ITV Ch9 Transmissions were Grainier compared to BBC1 Ch2.
@lyons-denntlworld-com Never had a problem with grainy pictures on Winter Hill ch 9 unless the set or aerial were faulty. We did have problems with ghosting in some areas though, could be ch 2 or ch 9 or even both. The big mills and chimneys caused problems.
The last time I saw a 405 line transmission must have been in the 1970’s probably around the middle of the decade.
Frank
We could get BBC1 on Channel 5 On almost no aerial. A short length of wire poked in the aerial socket would do. ITV which I think may have been channel 8 was a bit grey and flat by comparison and needed at least a small aerial. What the signals were like later on as shutdown approached I don't know. I have heard pictures on 405 degraded towards the end as the equipment aged.
St. Hilary in 1984/85 on a HMV 1400, HTV West and BBC 1 West. I remember once during the Points West opt some random letters were being keyed on to the picture, looked like a cat on a keyboard, they were not present on UHF from Mendip. I guess the equipment might have been being tested in order to warn people that 405 was going off soon and they would need a new TV. I still have the 1400 which is working, here is an off air picture (not mine) advising viewers in Wales of the impending closure.
1977 when our dual-standard monochrome set was replaced with a singe-standard colour set although we'd stopped watching 405-lines regularly when the main push buttons on the dual-standard set were converted from 405 to 625 a couple of years earlier. It was still possible to watch 405-line programmes on the spare push buttons but little reason to do so. I remember during a dense fog I was able to tune a French 819-line transmission on a spare 405-line button, actually two 405-line pictures side-by-side but no audio. I think it was on Band III?
@mfd70 Close down caption complete with impulse interference. At least most cars by the 1960’s had suppressors fitted, there were still old hair dryers etc that could cause the problem.
Frank
That's interference from arcing power line insulators. Very prevalent in regional areas in Oz in the 60s and 70s where Band 1 channels were often received over huge distances. And 11kV power lines were nearby!
You'll notice that almost all Oz TVs from the 60's have some form of noise gated sync. And extensive IF trapping to reject strong signals on adjacent channels in the crowded VHF bands.
@slidertogrid Indeed - with the BBC transmitter just across the A1 it was no surprise. Our ITV (Anglia) was on Ch. 11 (Mendlesham) and consequently it was just one click on the tuner: in the earliest days of TV in our part of the world, first it was BBC on Ch. 4 from Sutton Coldfield and then when ITV came along, initially it was on Ch. 8 from Lichfield. I have a big tin-box pre-amp that belonged to my great-aunt and uncle.
@irob2345 The 405 system was positive video so noise produced white spots on the screen, the sync was usually not affected unless it was that bad it wiped out the sync pulse. Noise gated sync was not normally used, fringe area sets did have flywheel sync which I understand is not the same.
Most 405 line TV’s used a white spot limiter which just kept the dots the same intensity as any other white area but could still be seen, a few inverted the spots to black to make them less noticeable.
In Europe with 625 negative mod on the VHF bands the spot could upset just the sync just like Australia so noise gate circuits could use an ECH84 valve.
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0843.htm
When the UK went to UHF 625 with negative mod the problem rarely occurred on the UHF frequencies. We did at least make flywheel sync and some form of gated AGC standard instead of direct sync and mean level AGC. Some manufacturers, RBM, even included black level clamp.
Frank
An image taken on a Kodak Instamatic 126 camera on 01/01/85, on Tyne Tees Television Channel 8.
The set was a 23" Ferguson 3655 1400chassis model.
