[720p/50p] Channel 4 | closedown with NICAM stereo test broadcasts | 6th March 1990
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- čas přidán 30. 09. 2023
- © CHANNEL FOUR TELEVISION 1990
A slightly late way to mark 4,700 subscribers! If you're after the IBA NICAM stereo tests, they're from 15:30 to 35:35.
Unfortunately this was recorded on a plain old mono VCR (so we don't hear sound channel 2) as NICAM stereo VCRs were still very expensive and geographical NICAM stereo coverage was still quite underdeveloped as only a few transmitters in the country were broadcasting IBA (ITV/C4) NICAM stereo at this time. (For the BBC, the only NICAM stereo transmitter they had at this time was Crystal Palace, until they started to re-engineer transmitters for NICAM starting in late 1990/early 1991).
It took until around 1994/95 for all ITV and Channel 4 transmitters to be converted. It took until 2002(!) for the BBC to convert all their transmitters to NICAM. Given Digital Terrestrial was established and well on its way to overtaking analogue TV by then, one wonders what was the point of the BBC continuing to re-engineer analogue transmitters for NICAM when other forms of digital stereo sound (of a different coding system from NICAM) were available on Digital Terrestrial, cable and satellite from late 1998?
End of The True Glory
C4 slide: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush
C4 trailer: Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
C4 clock (01:47am): closing announcement
C4 closedown ident
Black and silence
IBA:CH4 ETP-1 test card with EBU stereo tone
Black and silence
IBA Channel 4 NICAM dual language tests
Black and silence
IBA:CH4 ETP-1 test card with EBU stereo tone (it stayed on this for another 40 minutes until the end of the tape).
Not sure if this (Nicam Dual sound) was ever used in the UK, but in Hong Kong and Singapore, Nicam Dual Sound was extensively used by the local broadcasters, usually for programmes with multiple sound track options (for example : English/Cantonese, Mandarin/Korean).
I remember sawing a video on CZcams where at one point, TVB used the Nicam facility to provide ads in dual language (English/Cantonese) on their English channel TVB Pearl.
Also, during a short period after the analogue TV switch off in Singapore (where analogue switch off captions were shown), whenever there was a scheduled programme providing multiple languages option on the digital TV equivalent of the former analogue TV channel (in this case, Mandarin/Korean), the Nicam facility on the broadcaster will automatically switched from Stereo mode to Dual mode, despite the switchover caption. I guess probably because the audio was simply muted on the playout system when they moved from regular programming to the switchover caption.
All of them have become the thing of past - the analogue TV signals had been shut down in Singapore on 2 Jan 2019 and Hong Kong on 1 December 2020. The broadcasters in Singapore and Hong Kong still uses HE-AAC and AC3 respectively to provide bilingual audio, when available.
The IBA never used NICAM dual channel bilingual mode in the UK, only stereo mode all the time, with both channels reproducing mono by summing up the two together on non stereo material. The IBA shied away from mode switching between mono and stereo modes within NICAM digital sound as it was much easier to leave it in stereo all the time, even though not everything broadcast was stereo, and it wasn't. This was explained in a episode of IBA Engineering Announcements.
Disappointing we can't hear the other side of the stereo tests, but not much that can be done about that of course. Not that I think Channel 4 ever used the dual language capability anyway.
15:30
Hayden Wood announcing.
And IBA Engineering Announcements presenter Adrian Good voicing the NICAM test broadcast.
Because it was produced by the IBA so Channel 4 stayed up on air especially for the tests.@@antster1983
@@christopherwilliams2093 The transmitters was control by the IBA, This has nothing to do with Channel 4, Once sign off for the Evening, The IBA took control, these Dual Nicam tests was coming from Crystal Palace.
Channel 4 transmitted the IBA's Engineering Announcements in exactly the same vain.@@scottpeacock5492