I was at Lime Grove on the night that this was recorded. As an Engineer working there at the time, some of my fellow Engineers had brought it that TV to watch the switch off BUT the guys at Crystal Palace switched the Transmitter off halfway though the film that night. We rang up the Duty Engineer and asked them to switch it back on. They did, would not happen now!. We then told BBC Presentation that we had a TV. So the 405 switch off would have gone un-noticed if it were not for Engineers!
The UK tv services organised the switchover from 405 lines to 625 lines so well, that when the 405 line broadcasts finally closed, only about twelve people phoned in to say that they could not get any tv service. It took the UK twenty-one years to complete the switch.
Because when analogue was switched off everyone was watching digital my friend's and my family had all switched to digital long before analogue was switch off Analogue only had 5 channel's as far as I remember digital had hundreds and my nans digital tv even had hd channels digital was way better What I think was only a small amount of people complained because only TV enthusiasts had analogue I had a small analogue TV but I used it only to play Xbox games after the switch over before the switch over it only had 5 channel's
Excellent. I remember watching 405 line from Winter Hill in ~ '84 on a dual standard Sony set. I still get stupidly excited when I see Band I or III aerials. Still some around London.
@@debranchelowtone The first one was when the BBC switched over from Baird's mechanical TV broadcasts to the then new electrical 405-Line system in 1936. The Baird system only had 30 lines!
@@gunier.j.kintgenanimations The second Baird system had 240 lines and was used alongside Marconi 405 line system until this last one was chosen. I got a mechanical replica with 32 line system, this is interesting to see how it worked.
One thing I miss about pre-24 hour television is that nice warm cosy goodnight message to viewers. The same used to happen on radio I understand some years ago as referred to by Kenny Everett on some tapes I have. Thank you for uploading.
Rather ironic the pictures are of a Baird rather than an EMI who originally developed system we were watching all those years. 405 still lives on in garden sheds and workshops thanks to standard converters like the Aurora and Hedghog to name but a few.
The story behind this clip: a 1938 Baird TV was restored and brought into the BBC Lime Grove Studios maintenance room on the last day of BBC broadcasting 405 line signals in London. A camera was set up and the image of the receiver picking up an actual over the air signal was trunked to the Continuity Control at BBC Television Centre where it was actually broadcast just before the close down on the last day. The hand reaching in at the end of the clip is mine as I switch off the set!
Dont forget that when you watch TH-cam, it's often 400-odd lines or less ... especially if you watch it in the default presentation rather than full screen.
Breakfast was there then, the announcer says "back for Breakfast" The transmitters were switched off over night, but at Lime Grove we had the ability to put them back on if the CAR staff at TVC did not turn up in the morning. Never happened, but we did turn them on by accident!
I've got this on VHS somewhere (recorded with the aid of crocodile clips!). As I remember the ITV signal went off that morning, during Engineering Announcements.
I've been debating on building some sort of "steampunk" style cabinet and propping a small flatscreen inside of it. Imagine watching a DVD on a screen in a semi-Victorian style cabinet.
Fascinating, I even didn't realize they actually still transmitted 405 line as late as 1985. I remember 1985 well though will only 3 TV channels and some of the time only 2 as BBC2 only transmitted some of the time. No breakfast TV either or nighttime TV, we would have to wait until around 9am for TV to start and it would end not long after midnight.
to replicate what this would look like, you can take an image, shift the hue by 180 degrees, and then superimpose a fine grid of lines over it. take the fine lines, invert them, then superimpose them over the normal image, and mix them together. half the lines will have the inverted color signal, while the other half will not. if you look at this, it will look grayscale because the color is canceled out.
In the USA, all full-power stations will go digital on 19 February 2009, but LPTV (Low Power) and CA ("Class A", low power with interference protection rights) stations can retain analog broadcasting, which explains why all the digital TV sets and converters sold here all have analog pass-through tuners. We have 2,100 LPTV stations, about 600 Class A stations and 4,700 low power TV repeaters (serving rural areas) in the USA.
Yeah, and last year (at the time of writing this comment) on July 13, 2021, LPTV was killed off, with class A shutting down in 2015. It wasn't until January 10th of 2022 that some repeaters in alaska were shut off, due to the cold asf temperatures, and the fact that the FCC was okay with that until January 10th. Only 2 analog stations still exist in the U.S.A. at the time of this comment, because those stations got accepted to broadcast in analog for a few more years.
wow... didn't realise 405 ran till '85. I love this vid... being behind the scenes of a mostly forgotten (if anyone even saw it in the 1st place) televison history moment. I really shouldn't watch it tho... when the announcer signs off for the night, it makes me cry normally (not sure why, think I'm broke) never mind if it's the end of something... at least he didn't mention "our friends on radio4 who will be with you, throughout the night"
I can't believe they were still transmitting on VHF 405 lines as late as 1985. When colourwas introduced back in the late 60's. Transmissions switched to UHF 625 line, althoughI suppose old VHF signals continued for a while longer, for those still using old B/W405 line sets. Is that Ian McCaskill doing the weather forcast? His image looks as foggyas the cold weather he is predicting.
@@justanotheryoutubechannel Hardly "for years afterwards". the BBC switched over to all-625 production in January 1968, converting the programmes down to 405 on transmission. ITV followed a year later. From 1969 onwards, all programmes were being made in 625, with conversion down to 405 for those with older sets or who lived in areas where UHF coverage hadn't yet reached.
@@billjones7932 Only some of them, no more a nightmare than single-standard TVs. Some dual-standard TVs were great to repair, like most of Thorn's TVs.
Remember this actual night. Was very ill from food poisoning after a new years day house party and had to stay in bed for 2 days lol. Serious is was that long ago! :)
They were already having problems in densely populated areas, with Yorkshire TV stations interfering with Manchester or Merseyside for example. Also you can fit far more stations into the UHF spectrum. When 405 sets were standard, there were usually only two channels or 3 at most. VHF was still used in many areas of Australia for example, until fairly recently but these also went to UHF as the number of channels increased. Australia is now completely digital.
The 405 line system used very narrow 5 MHz channel limits. PAL 625 line is either 7 or 8 MHz, meaning a narrower television band unless you also use the 88-108 MHz band (Australia and Russia did this). The 405 line system allowed for up to three nationwide television networks (however with the decision to broadcast BBC 2 in 625 lines on UHF only, the free VHF allocations were used for gap-filling relay stations). System I VHF, as used in Ireland and South Africa, only allowed for two incomplete VHF networks, needing gap filling relays on UHF. If the UK had replaced 405 line VHF with 625 line PAL VHF only one complete network would have been possible (because all of the UHF allocations were already filled), and every viewer would have needed a new aerial and most would have needed new televisions as well. A few companies did make sets with the Irish VHF band (so they could sell the same set in the UK and in Ireland) but it wasn't anything close to a majority.
And in the UK they used 8MHz channels so the video signal had a higher bandwidth. Great for broadcast but bad for VCRs (Videos) as the difference from OTA to tape was greater than in the US. I saw it in £ondon in 1984. S-VHS was probably a blessing for the UK.
8 MHz was the entire channel width, or spacing - including the sound (even the NICAM) and the VSB. Though it _did_ mean the video bandwifth was wider (6 MHz, I think) under our system I than the B and G used in the rest of (western) Europe. (As you say, less in US too, though not that much: fewer lines [525], but more times a second - the _line_ frequencies were very similar.)
Without a suitable signal being put in - providing the TV will power up and is in working order (valves die after a while after all) you get nothing but snow. There are standards converters available now that will allow these sets to display TV pictures.
End of an era (yet so few people knew about it), I wonder the BBC will also say goodbye to Analogue (for each separate region because the different regions are switched off between 2008-2013) for the Digital Switchover and in many years time the end of 576i for HDTV. Britain seems to be slow for the Digital Switchover, despite been one of the first countries to use Digital TV, everyone I know now has digital, I have had it for 8 years.
Now I have an old camera and I am thinking about putting the camera near the TV so I can record the last analog television broadcast at my grandpa's house since it is the last TV in Grandpa's house to have analog. Remember, I'll put it on TH-cam 2/18/09.
I didn't know they still had 405-line broadcasting as late as 1985! So did they send out a 405-line version of 625-line broadcasts for people who only had old TVs?
Yes, a 625-line signal was sent out from their studios, but at 405-line transmitters it would be passed through a 625-405 line converter, whose output then fed the input of the transmitter equipment.
We used to have B/W BBC1 from N. Hessary tor here in Devon our set went to my sisters room with the band 1 X aerial on the washing line mast outside in the garden, they put onscreen message about the service ending on there for months , we had a new colour set in the lounge with 3 channels it, was mind blowing I recall
And in a virtual museum there are a lot of DUAL system color television receivers of the end of the 60th years. I thought they supported NTSC-A on VHF and PAL-I on UHF?
I'm not sure what "NTSC-A" or "PAL-I" are/were. "405 lines" was system A (405 interlaced lines, 50 fields/25 frames per second, positive AM sound and vision, sound below vision); UK transmitted system A on VHF, no colour, until the 1985 date this clip is about. (I think Ireland may have broadcast system A on UHF.) Systems B, G, and I are all 625 interlaced lines (576 actual picture), 50/25 per second, AM video, FM sound ( _above_ the video); I had sound 6 MHz above video, the others 5.5. You could use whatever colour encoding you liked. UK used system I with PAL colour, on UHF only (simulcasting two of the channels with what was on system A on VHF); most of the rest of western Europe used PAL colour on systems B and G on both VHF and UHF, (The only difference between B and G was channel spacing, and video banwidth; most sets used common circuitry.) France used SECAM colour, but still "625 lines" (and until some point also 819 lines, monchrome only - latterly squeezed into the same channels, though initially much wider as you'd expect; the narrow ones looked very smeary!).
Why didn't they let it run for a few more minutes until the carrier signal cut out and it went into snow forever? That would have been the REAL end of 405!
I agree, I wanted to see the carrier go off too. though I'm not sure it would have been snow: system A used positive modulation, unlike the negative all the others (I think possibly excluding 819 - not sure about 525) used. so maybe it had.
In some markets, the digital change has already taken place, but at least one channel must remain broadcasting analog in that market (for emergency information) until 12 June. Still, there will be utterly clueless people who will ignore the announcements and will be calling TV stations on 13 June to complain that their TV's don't work,
It would be nice if even a handful of stations around the country gave NTSC the send off the BBC gave 405. And if they do I hope to see at least a couple here on TH-cam, please! :-)
My father used to take old wooden TV cabinets and turn them into dressers! If I had the time & money, I'd take an old TV cabinet and rig up a small flatscreen inside of it.
@fuzzybearish I heard about those weird allocations one of which is believe it or not a target for DXers over F2 propagation during solar cycle peaks. Your channel 0 has a video frequency around 40 MHz making it an excellent one to shoot for in reference to TV DXers in North America along with possibly even Europe and Asia. I do know that the Toowoomba channel 0 transmitter has been reported over F2 most likely because of its odd video frequency compared to most TV standards.
Nice old telly. Australia did experiment with 405 lines and the Australian government even looked at 525 lines.But We went with 625 lines for the start of tv in 1956 and colour officially in 1975. PAL Colour was tested on air in 1968 on ATV in Melbourne. No national anthem anymore from Aussie TV as its 24 hours now. Australia has some weird channel arrangements We have a Channel 0 ,Channel 5A and Channel 9A.
I know what in The UNITED KINGDOM in the late 50th, the beginning of the 60th years was a colour television by NTSC-A 405 lines on VHF band, positive video and AM of sound. The United Kingdom became the second country in the world where there was a color television available to citizens. And in the 50th years there were on sale color television receivers for this standart? In 1964 switch on PAL-I 625 lines, negative video, FM of sound, only UHF band. Yours faithfully. Paul.
They did experiment with colour on 405 - both NTSC and PAL, possibly even SECAM - but only trial; broadcasts never became standard, and I don't think sets were ever available. When we started colour officially, it was only in the UHF system I (625) channels, using PAL.
Sorry but in 1985 we had 4 channels (4 opened in Nov82). Breakfast time on BBC1, and Good Morning britain TV-AM had already started. Surely you remember the early saga with TV-AM not making a profit with David frost, Robert Key and Anna Ford on board! The rest sounds alright!
the current going through the magnetic yoke coils that direct the beam to scan t across the screen fades, along with the focusing current (which makes the dot spread out).
625 *IS NOT PAL*; PAL (phase, alternate line) refers to the colour-encoding system. You could have NTSC colour on 625 lines, or PAL on 525 (I think Brazil did). I don't _think_ 720 or 1080 have ever used PAL colour coding - I think they've always been digital-only. ("NTSC" stands for "national" [USA of course!] television standards committee", and thus _does_ refer to both the line/field frequency [525/30] _and_ the colour system, as they specified both; PAL is strictly only the colour system, though vast numbers of people _think_ it means 625/50.)
I could say you're a bit sad knowing all this 'pointless' info about 405 line tv to be fair, but I'm not that shallow minded as I have an interest in all things like this myself. I knowingly related it to a particular exact time in my life long ago, that was all. :)
405-line was low-resolution, VHF signals used originally for UK broadcasts. They were effectively rendered obsolete with the advent of higher-resolution (and later colour) 625-line broadcasts in the 1960s, and were stopped in the early Eighties. 625-line is being phased out over the next four years, being replaced by digital signals (which actually use less lines, go figure!)
625 line has 575 active lines ( including two half lines ). Digital only needs the active lines, but only full lines, this makes 576 lines. So digital SD was just the same.
"405" wasn't _that_ low-resolution (in fact it was described as high when it started, which it was compared to 220 etc., and certainly compared to 30!); I remember being perfectly content with it. (A lot of what is on youTube is that or less!) As the other responder has explained, digital SD - 576i in former "625" regions - uses the same number of lines as "625", it just doesn't have to encode the ones during "field flyback". By now (2022), of course, even SD is seen as "old hat" and is under attack, by the HD, 4X, 8X, ... enthusiasts.
Depends how you "try". There are no broadcast signals that these sets can receive. There are no native sources of system A standard video (unless you get hold of a 405-standard camera that still works). But, if you use a converter (like the Aurora one mentioned), that can take a (say) "625"-line signal and convert it to "405", _and_ modulate it onto a VHF carrier (for very good safety reasons, most such sets had the only external connection the aerial socket - no direct video in), then it would still display; the switch-off of the broadcasts didn't destroy the sets. (There are penty of clips on youTube showing exactly that - modern signals converted to the old standard and thus to something the old set can display.) If you somehow managed to get a "625" signal into such a set that _hadn't_ been converted to "405", the picture would break up into diagonal stripes, as the line frequency is too different. (I don't think even a US "525" signal would be within the adjustment range.)
The figures were estimated to be about 17,000 sets in use by 1984. Sometimes they were used as secondary sets or because they had no interest in colour TV, but mainly because 405 line signals on VHF were much more robust than the 625 line signals on UHF, even by 405 switch-off there were, and still are, remote areas which are outside of the reach of the 625 analogue and now Freeview signals. But, often, 405 could be received perfectly in those areas. We're talking proper isolated areas, like the middle of the Pennines, the Borders, Highlands, mountainous Wales, North Yorkshire Moors. When 405 was switched off, most of those areas lost TV altogether. Some did get UHF relays erected a few years afterwards but some remained so out of reach that the next possibility of TV wouldn't come until 1989, with the launch of $ky.
Aidan Lunn Wow, that many 405 sets in the mid 1980's? Perhaps it shows that the roll out of 625 line was poorly planned because BBC 2 was un available in certain remote areas, meaning the infrastructure should be right first.
The cost of doing so determined the roll-out of 625. Generally, we're talking about £10million per transmitter, currency converted to decimal and taking inflation into account, total cost. So they rolled out 625/colour in pretty much the same way as BBC1 and ITV on 405, most populous areas first covered by main transmitters, least populous last, then fill in the gaps. As the new transmitter technology gets cheaper and better over the rollout period, which for 625 took over 20 years to closely match 405 coverage, it becomes more cost effective to open relays. Their thinking was the ratio of cost of transmitter : how many potential eyeballs. The more viewers there were, the more they could justify the cost of opening a new transmitter network and the more the effort and cost would pay off over time.
CHris Henniker This figure given does not distinguish between VHF single band TV's, and those that were able to receive both VHF and UHF (not sure if it they stretched the 405 line image on a 625 tube) as no data was ever recorded at the time. I had a dual receive TV, but I was young and the only time I ever saw it in use was when there was a power-cut and we used it on a car battery, but we knocked it over tripping in the dark breaking the back panel off so the TV I was supposed to be allowed to have when my parents felt I was old enough, was destroyed. Sad really, I had to wait many years before another TV cam my way. It was a mess of warn out valves and I found out later it was a known fire risk due to the poor construction inside. Just as well it was a terrible picture that I couldn't stop rolling and the whole thing got so hot too. Despite only being about 9 or 10 then there is one thing I do recall being mentioned at the time, and reading about later, with no funding to put into the VHF relays maintenance parts were not replaced when they broke down instead they were repaired manually, right down to the final component. As the UHF to VHF conversion equipment was getting old and less reliable they became incapable of repair, several relay station were replaced with cameras pointed at UHF TV's. Judging by the lack of complaints, it's doubtful if anyone really noticed, or were even actually watching VHF any more by this time. Closing down VHF, did save enough money in electricity costs, maintenance cost and other fees to build more transmitters later on.
It relates to those using just 405-line TVs, not dual standard ones (as they were UHF capable, they were counted as UHF sets - the standards switching was frequently problematic and so many TV engineers took great pleasure in ripping out the 405 circuitry once it was no longer needed). There's no such thing as a "625 tube" or a "405 tube" - the tube will display whatever line timebase you feed into it, a CRT doesn't have "pixels" - the closest you come to pixels in a CRT are phosphor dots in the shadowmask, and even they are only in colour CRTs. B&W CRTs don't need pixels or phosphor dots or anything of the ilk. Valve TVs will and do get very hot, that was normal, the valves do contain heater elements after all, to make the cathode inside the valve get hot so it can start emitting electrons. If it was a fire risk, it must have been a late 60s Bush, Pye or Ekco, despite popular belief, valve TVs were usually not a fire risk - the most fire-like thing you'd usually get out of them would be a puff of smoke. As for the reputation of valves, they are nowhere near as bad as many people think either. Most of the 405-line sets I've restored to working order in my collection are still running most of the exact same valves they left the factory with! TV dealers used to earn commission from the valve manufacturers for every valve they sold, so they invented this elaborate lie that valves were unreliable, so they could sell more valves and thus earn commission. thus the repairman used to repair the actual fault, then charge the customer or the accounts department of the rental company if it was a rented set, for the cost of the component that caused the fault *and* the price of new valves. The funding was there - it's the lack of parts that did it in for 405. Only in the Irish Republic did optical conversion happen as result of a converter breakdown. The electronic 625-405 converters in the UK were kept in use right until the end of 405. The reason for the poor picture on the Baird pre-war set in the above video was because the CRT was clapped out and the CRTs of that period were non-aluminised. The BBC's converters (Pye CO6/509s) were subsequently very reliable and even today can be got going with the minimum of maintenance - they were of a digital design, built by Pye, from 1969. The ITA continued with the use of the Pye CO6/501 analogue electronic converters, that were designed by the BBC and made by Pye in about 1963/64, so 625-line BBC2 material could be broadcast on 405-line BBC1. I think the figure was about 60,000 405-line sets in use, mostly by people who lived in isolated spots that were beyond the reach of 625 transmissions - VHF signals being far more robust than UHF ones. In fact, when the 405-line service closed in the Borders, the BBC and the ITA received hundreds of complaints, because there were so many isolated spots there that could only receive the 405-line service, the 625-line relay building programme at that time hadn't reached the population coverage that 405 had, some people would have to forego TV for a year at least!
Everything is relative. "405" was claimed to be high definition when it started, and was, compared to what else was around at the time (it wasn't _that_ far before that *30* lines was in use!).
@@devonguy02 PAL to be pedantic is the Colour system. In Brazil they used 525 line/60 HZ with PAL. ( System M I think) 625 lines I believe was developed by Phillips. PAL is German though, but that's just the Colour system
As Martin Hughes says, strictly PAL refers to the colour system, not the line/frame standard. But yes, system B/G/I used "625 lines" (actually 576 actual picture lines), 25 times a second, and US/NTSC used "525" (480 actual I think) lines, but 30 (later 29.97) times a second. So Europe had somewhat more vertical resolution, but at a lower refresh rate. The actual line frequencies come out very close! The PAL _colour_ system _is_ superior - mainly suffers far less from hue errors (most PAL sets didn't have a hue control, only a saturation one) - although the shortcomings of NTSC colour were much less apparent at UHF anyway, which is the only place the UK ever had colour beyond early experiments; however, it probably helped in the European countries that did have colour on VHF.
405 lines was Pal l British television standard, Germany had 625 lines Pal B/G, France was on the was wird 819 lines Secam L Plus, Who was HD television long time before all other countries.
Ghosting or multipath reception is when a reflected signal arrives at the aerial then reciever with the same information a millisecond after the first lot, causing this effect, basically, so you gat the main image and then a shadow of it eg a ghost image
I saw someone upload a recording of a sign-off from this station circa the 1980s. The sign-off would play the national anthem after it displays the time, exactly like this minus the message about cutting 405-line transmission.
I was at Lime Grove on the night that this was recorded. As an Engineer working there at the time, some of my fellow Engineers had brought it that TV to watch the switch off BUT the guys at Crystal Palace switched the Transmitter off halfway though the film that night. We rang up the Duty Engineer and asked them to switch it back on. They did, would not happen now!.
We then told BBC Presentation that we had a TV.
So the 405 switch off would have gone un-noticed if it were not for Engineers!
umm, that probably would have been done now.
The UK tv services organised the switchover from 405 lines to 625 lines so well, that when the 405 line broadcasts finally closed, only about twelve people phoned in to say that they could not get any tv service. It took the UK twenty-one years to complete the switch.
If only they had that much patience with the digital switchover
What a way to end 405 line television. At analogue closedown we could not even say goodbye, nothing. Thank you for putting this on TH-cam.
I love how 405-line transmission was given a send-off whilst analogue is just switched off without fanfare (it was in Lancashire, anyway).
Because when analogue was switched off everyone was watching digital my friend's and my family had all switched to digital long before analogue was switch off
Analogue only had 5 channel's as far as I remember digital had hundreds and my nans digital tv even had hd channels digital was way better
What I think was only a small amount of people complained because only TV enthusiasts had analogue
I had a small analogue TV but I used it only to play Xbox games after the switch over before the switch over it only had 5 channel's
@@sh-ig9fm There's no apostrophe in 'channels'.
Some smaller US channels gave a proper sendoff
@@CrankCase08 there can be, but I agree not there 🙂
@@kaboomgamer333 Indeed. I vaguely remember one of the few news stations in Wyoming giving a sendoff for analogue.
Excellent. I remember watching 405 line from Winter Hill in ~ '84 on a dual standard Sony set. I still get stupidly excited when I see Band I or III aerials. Still some around London.
They could reuse those band III aerials for digital (DAB) radio though
Super clip. Interesting to hear that high-definition has since been redefined as standard definition.
And several times before too.
@@debranchelowtone The first one was when the BBC switched over from Baird's mechanical TV broadcasts to the then new electrical 405-Line system in 1936. The Baird system only had 30 lines!
@@gunier.j.kintgenanimations The second Baird system had 240 lines and was used alongside Marconi 405 line system until this last one was chosen.
I got a mechanical replica with 32 line system, this is interesting to see how it worked.
Absolutely stunning! I was wowed from start to finish!
Wakefulpanda is that sarcasm?
One thing I miss about pre-24 hour television is that nice warm cosy goodnight message to viewers. The same used to happen on radio I understand some years ago as referred to by Kenny Everett on some tapes I have. Thank you for uploading.
Rather ironic the pictures are of a Baird rather than an EMI who originally developed system we were watching all those years. 405 still lives on in garden sheds and workshops thanks to standard converters like the Aurora and Hedghog to name but a few.
This is the last 405 broadcast from 1985 shown on a TV manufactured in 1938. Hope that helps.
I heard David Miles on Radio 4 yesterday. Still going strong after 30 years...
and Keith Martin left BBC tv continuity much earlier than David.... and ventured to similar pastures elsewhere - do google if you wish:)
The story behind this clip: a 1938 Baird TV was restored and brought into the BBC Lime Grove Studios maintenance room on the last day of BBC broadcasting 405 line signals in London.
A camera was set up and the image of the receiver picking up an actual over the air signal was trunked to the Continuity Control at BBC Television Centre where it was actually broadcast just before the close down on the last day.
The hand reaching in at the end of the clip is mine as I switch off the set!
Terry Harvey you bloody scared at me 4:29
What was the other hand? Very 80s shirt btw ;)
3:12 I can't wait to watch some more "High-definition viewing" tomorrow lol
ha!
Dont forget that when you watch TH-cam, it's often 400-odd lines or less ... especially if you watch it in the default presentation rather than full screen.
Many thanks for posting this, I missed the close-down myself so its good to see what it was like. I miss 405 line Band 1 & 3
Breakfast was there then, the announcer says "back for Breakfast"
The transmitters were switched off over night, but at Lime Grove we had the ability to put them back on if the CAR staff at TVC did not turn up in the morning. Never happened, but we did turn them on by accident!
I've got this on VHS somewhere (recorded with the aid of crocodile clips!). As I remember the ITV signal went off that morning, during Engineering Announcements.
I've been debating on building some sort of "steampunk" style cabinet and propping a small flatscreen inside of it. Imagine watching a DVD on a screen in a semi-Victorian style cabinet.
Fascinating, I even didn't realize they actually still transmitted 405 line as late as 1985. I remember 1985 well though will only 3 TV channels and some of the time only 2 as BBC2 only transmitted some of the time. No breakfast TV either or nighttime TV, we would have to wait until around 9am for TV to start and it would end not long after midnight.
Blimey, that waving arm at the end scared the bejesus out of me!
?
@@carlosmpsenyorcapitacollon6977 Watch the clipto the end!
to replicate what this would look like, you can take an image, shift the hue by 180 degrees, and then superimpose a fine grid of lines over it. take the fine lines, invert them, then superimpose them over the normal image, and mix them together. half the lines will have the inverted color signal, while the other half will not. if you look at this, it will look grayscale because the color is canceled out.
Welcome to the exciting world of Crap-O-Vision!
In the USA, all full-power stations will go digital on 19 February 2009, but LPTV (Low Power) and CA ("Class A", low power with interference protection rights) stations can retain analog broadcasting, which explains why all the digital TV sets and converters sold here all have analog pass-through tuners. We have 2,100 LPTV stations, about 600 Class A stations and 4,700 low power TV repeaters (serving rural areas) in the USA.
Yeah, and last year (at the time of writing this comment) on July 13, 2021, LPTV was killed off, with class A shutting down in 2015. It wasn't until January 10th of 2022 that some repeaters in alaska were shut off, due to the cold asf temperatures, and the fact that the FCC was okay with that until January 10th. Only 2 analog stations still exist in the U.S.A. at the time of this comment, because those stations got accepted to broadcast in analog for a few more years.
wow... didn't realise 405 ran till '85.
I love this vid... being behind the scenes of a mostly forgotten (if anyone even saw it in the 1st place) televison history moment.
I really shouldn't watch it tho... when the announcer signs off for the night, it makes me cry normally (not sure why, think I'm broke) never mind if it's the end of something... at least he didn't mention "our friends on radio4 who will be with you, throughout the night"
Not sure if they would have been, actually; R4 wasn't always 24h. I think it changed about the same date, give or take a few years.
Just think - about 20 years later, 625-line would be considered Standard Definition.
"Standard Definition." is whatever the legacy technology is, in the three-technology model.
I can't believe they were still transmitting on VHF 405 lines as late as 1985. When colourwas introduced back in the late 60's. Transmissions switched to UHF 625 line, althoughI suppose old VHF signals continued for a while longer, for those still using old B/W405 line sets. Is that Ian McCaskill doing the weather forcast? His image looks as foggyas the cold weather he is predicting.
Gary Dunn I know right? They switched to colour 625 lines, but kept filming shows in 405 lines for years afterwards.
they had dual standard tv's a nightmare to repair
@@justanotheryoutubechannel Hardly "for years afterwards". the BBC switched over to all-625 production in January 1968, converting the programmes down to 405 on transmission. ITV followed a year later.
From 1969 onwards, all programmes were being made in 625, with conversion down to 405 for those with older sets or who lived in areas where UHF coverage hadn't yet reached.
@@billjones7932 Only some of them, no more a nightmare than single-standard TVs. Some dual-standard TVs were great to repair, like most of Thorn's TVs.
Good sound quality, though.
@stvsafiria We haven't had VHF for TV at all since 1985, so it starts at channel 21 now :P
I'm sorry to see 405 lines go.
my left ear is crying
CAUGHT YOU
SAVAGE
LEFT EAR SPAM COMMENTS ARE GETTING REPETITIVE AND UNDERRATED
My left ear enjoyed this
CAUGHT YOU IN ACTION MISSING THE JOKE!
r/woooosh
Only BBC 1 & ITV were the only 405 line TV channels. If one wanted to watch BBC 2 one had to own a 625 line TV set.
Remember this actual night. Was very ill from food poisoning after a new years day house party and had to stay in bed for 2 days lol. Serious is was that long ago! :)
This digital encoding from 2007 is inferior to the 405-line television. Why didn't they use the VHF spectrum for PAL afterwards?
j7ndominica0 Maybe to avoid interference from distant stations during Sporadic E or F2.
They were already having problems in densely populated areas, with Yorkshire TV stations interfering with Manchester or Merseyside for example. Also you can fit far more stations into the UHF spectrum. When 405 sets were standard, there were usually only two channels or 3 at most.
VHF was still used in many areas of Australia for example, until fairly recently but these also went to UHF as the number of channels increased.
Australia is now completely digital.
3 channels was sufficient, we not have 80 channels of repeats and terrible filler tv
The 405 line system used very narrow 5 MHz channel limits. PAL 625 line is either 7 or 8 MHz, meaning a narrower television band unless you also use the 88-108 MHz band (Australia and Russia did this). The 405 line system allowed for up to three nationwide television networks (however with the decision to broadcast BBC 2 in 625 lines on UHF only, the free VHF allocations were used for gap-filling relay stations). System I VHF, as used in Ireland and South Africa, only allowed for two incomplete VHF networks, needing gap filling relays on UHF. If the UK had replaced 405 line VHF with 625 line PAL VHF only one complete network would have been possible (because all of the UHF allocations were already filled), and every viewer would have needed a new aerial and most would have needed new televisions as well. A few companies did make sets with the Irish VHF band (so they could sell the same set in the UK and in Ireland) but it wasn't anything close to a majority.
Fantastic find! Although, I had to admit, the hands nearly startled me to death.
And in the UK they used 8MHz channels so the video signal had a higher bandwidth. Great for broadcast but bad for VCRs (Videos) as the difference from OTA to tape was greater than in the US. I saw it in £ondon in 1984. S-VHS was probably a blessing for the UK.
8 MHz was the entire channel width, or spacing - including the sound (even the NICAM) and the VSB. Though it _did_ mean the video bandwifth was wider (6 MHz, I think) under our system I than the B and G used in the rest of (western) Europe. (As you say, less in US too, though not that much: fewer lines [525], but more times a second - the _line_ frequencies were very similar.)
Amazing 405 lines was used for almost half a century really.
And it was February 1985 when that mirror globe ident was finally retired forever as well.
I do rather miss it!
625 is actually pretty good for most things, unless you really want to see someone's bogies up their flippin nose in full HD
Old-style weather maps instead of green screen maps. Awesome. I remember those things.
"Sorry about the F in fog" ...
Without a suitable signal being put in - providing the TV will power up and is in working order (valves die after a while after all) you get nothing but snow. There are standards converters available now that will allow these sets to display TV pictures.
End of an era (yet so few people knew about it), I wonder the BBC will also say goodbye to Analogue (for each separate region because the different regions are switched off between 2008-2013) for the Digital Switchover and in many years time the end of 576i for HDTV.
Britain seems to be slow for the Digital Switchover, despite been one of the first countries to use Digital TV, everyone I know now has digital, I have had it for 8 years.
I use to find the hand at the end of the clip scary, but now I have overcome my fear (kind of, still scared of some analogue TV closedowns).
Now I have an old camera and I am thinking about putting the camera near the TV so I can record the last analog television broadcast at my grandpa's house since it is the last TV in Grandpa's house to have analog. Remember, I'll put it on TH-cam 2/18/09.
I didn't know they still had 405-line broadcasting as late as 1985! So did they send out a 405-line version of 625-line broadcasts for people who only had old TVs?
Yes, a 625-line signal was sent out from their studios, but at 405-line transmitters it would be passed through a 625-405 line converter, whose output then fed the input of the transmitter equipment.
We used to have B/W BBC1 from N. Hessary tor here in Devon our set went to my sisters room with the band 1 X aerial on the washing line mast outside in the garden, they put onscreen message about the service ending on there for months , we had a new colour set in the lounge with 3 channels it, was mind blowing I recall
And in a virtual museum there are a lot of DUAL system color television receivers of the end of the 60th years.
I thought they supported NTSC-A on VHF and PAL-I on UHF?
I'm not sure what "NTSC-A" or "PAL-I" are/were. "405 lines" was system A (405 interlaced lines, 50 fields/25 frames per second, positive AM sound and vision, sound below vision); UK transmitted system A on VHF, no colour, until the 1985 date this clip is about. (I think Ireland may have broadcast system A on UHF.) Systems B, G, and I are all 625 interlaced lines (576 actual picture), 50/25 per second, AM video, FM sound ( _above_ the video); I had sound 6 MHz above video, the others 5.5. You could use whatever colour encoding you liked. UK used system I with PAL colour, on UHF only (simulcasting two of the channels with what was on system A on VHF); most of the rest of western Europe used PAL colour on systems B and G on both VHF and UHF, (The only difference between B and G was channel spacing, and video banwidth; most sets used common circuitry.) France used SECAM colour, but still "625 lines" (and until some point also 819 lines, monchrome only - latterly squeezed into the same channels, though initially much wider as you'd expect; the narrow ones looked very smeary!).
thanks for sharing
Why didn't they let it run for a few more minutes until the carrier signal cut out and it went into snow forever? That would have been the REAL end of 405!
I agree, I wanted to see the carrier go off too. though I'm not sure it would have been snow: system A used positive modulation, unlike the negative all the others (I think possibly excluding 819 - not sure about 525) used. so maybe it had.
now for people like me in the US, the digital transition was the equivalent of this, except not at good.
We had one of those too, when "625" (actually 576i) analogue went off.
Part 1: BTS recording of a 405-Line TV showing the Final Sign-Off of BBC 1.
In some markets, the digital change has already taken place, but at least one channel must remain broadcasting analog in that market (for emergency information) until 12 June. Still, there will be utterly clueless people who will ignore the announcements and will be calling TV stations on 13 June to complain that their TV's don't work,
My right ear really enjoyed that.
Did any of the ITV regions warn viewers about the VHF shut down back in 1985?
It would be nice if even a handful of stations around the country gave NTSC the send off the BBC gave 405. And if they do I hope to see at least a couple here on TH-cam, please! :-)
Ian always did, that was also the days of real maps!
I really enjoyed this. The BBC great concept...
My left ear feels lonely...
NOT ASHAMED!
Miss those days when the TV and radio stations would shut off after midnight.
Very interesting!
My father used to take old wooden TV cabinets and turn them into dressers! If I had the time & money, I'd take an old TV cabinet and rig up a small flatscreen inside of it.
in great britain they are switching to DVB (digital video brocasting)
3:21 Taken from Gabby's Dollhouse 50th anniversary (1997) / Bluey 50th Anniversary (2004)
You're still using a Nipkow disc? Let me know if you pick up any DuMont signals! ;-)
(from 4:30 onwards) A very fitting end to a chapter of TV history
actually the changeover will be happening on June 12,2009
@fuzzybearish I heard about those weird allocations one of which is believe it or not a target for DXers over F2 propagation during solar cycle peaks. Your channel 0 has a video frequency around 40 MHz making it an excellent one to shoot for in reference to TV DXers in North America along with possibly even Europe and Asia. I do know that the Toowoomba channel 0 transmitter has been reported over F2 most likely because of its odd video frequency compared to most TV standards.
i'll have to set each video recorder in the house going and record the shutdown of all of the analog tv stations
i like the way your tv tunrs off
Go Terry!
They did the same in Germany, too :(
Nice old telly. Australia did experiment with 405 lines and the Australian government even looked at 525 lines.But We went with 625 lines for the start of tv in 1956 and colour officially in 1975. PAL Colour was tested on air in 1968 on ATV in Melbourne.
No national anthem anymore from Aussie TV as its 24 hours now.
Australia has some weird channel arrangements We have a Channel 0 ,Channel 5A and Channel 9A.
I remember encountering channel 0 on a visit to Melbourne from New Zealand back in 1979.
Nope it would be PAL (Phased Amplitude Line Modulation) in the UK and NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) in the US
NTSC equals "Never Twice The Same Colour"
@@zl2ady1 SECAM "something essentially contrary to the American method" then "peace at last" 🙂
Probably, if I can find it!
I wish 405 would return
He used the phrase 'High Definiton' way back then....foreshadowing of the future, maybe? :)
for 625 line system
I know what in The UNITED KINGDOM in the late 50th, the beginning of the 60th years was a colour television by NTSC-A 405 lines on VHF band, positive video and AM of sound. The United Kingdom became the second country in the world where there was a color television available to citizens.
And in the 50th years there were on sale color television receivers for this standart?
In 1964 switch on PAL-I 625 lines, negative video, FM of sound, only UHF band.
Yours faithfully. Paul.
They did experiment with colour on 405 - both NTSC and PAL, possibly even SECAM - but only trial; broadcasts never became standard, and I don't think sets were ever available. When we started colour officially, it was only in the UHF system I (625) channels, using PAL.
Sorry but in 1985 we had 4 channels (4 opened in Nov82). Breakfast time on BBC1, and Good Morning britain TV-AM had already started. Surely you remember the early saga with TV-AM not making a profit with David frost, Robert Key and Anna Ford on board! The rest sounds alright!
unfortunately, here it is impossible to place links, I would provide many examples.
WTF is happening at the end?
the current going through the magnetic yoke coils that direct the beam to scan t across the screen fades, along with the focusing current (which makes the dot spread out).
So basically, the TV turning off.
No. No. No. SQUIDWARD!
40 K people still watch in black & white in the UK.
America also had a painful disappearance of NTSC TV forced on the public, but it lives on in gadgets. I won't install wide digital, nor pay TV.
Does every one think they will eventually phrase out the 625 line pal system in favour for the 720 or 1,080 line pal system?
625 *IS NOT PAL*; PAL (phase, alternate line) refers to the colour-encoding system. You could have NTSC colour on 625 lines, or PAL on 525 (I think Brazil did). I don't _think_ 720 or 1080 have ever used PAL colour coding - I think they've always been digital-only.
("NTSC" stands for "national" [USA of course!] television standards committee", and thus _does_ refer to both the line/field frequency [525/30] _and_ the colour system, as they specified both; PAL is strictly only the colour system, though vast numbers of people _think_ it means 625/50.)
I think I might just do that...
I could say you're a bit sad knowing all this 'pointless' info about 405 line tv to be fair, but I'm not that shallow minded as I have an interest in all things like this myself. I knowingly related it to a particular exact time in my life long ago, that was all. :)
I love Radio
405-line was low-resolution, VHF signals used originally for UK broadcasts. They were effectively rendered obsolete with the advent of higher-resolution (and later colour) 625-line broadcasts in the 1960s, and were stopped in the early Eighties. 625-line is being phased out over the next four years, being replaced by digital signals (which actually use less lines, go figure!)
625 line has 575 active lines ( including two half lines ). Digital only needs the active lines, but only full lines, this makes 576 lines. So digital SD was just the same.
"405" wasn't _that_ low-resolution (in fact it was described as high when it started, which it was compared to 220 etc., and certainly compared to 30!); I remember being perfectly content with it. (A lot of what is on youTube is that or less!)
As the other responder has explained, digital SD - 576i in former "625" regions - uses the same number of lines as "625", it just doesn't have to encode the ones during "field flyback".
By now (2022), of course, even SD is seen as "old hat" and is under attack, by the HD, 4X, 8X, ... enthusiasts.
What happens if I try to display something in one of the tv nowadays?
Static
You need an Aurora converter.
Depends how you "try". There are no broadcast signals that these sets can receive. There are no native sources of system A standard video (unless you get hold of a 405-standard camera that still works). But, if you use a converter (like the Aurora one mentioned), that can take a (say) "625"-line signal and convert it to "405", _and_ modulate it onto a VHF carrier (for very good safety reasons, most such sets had the only external connection the aerial socket - no direct video in), then it would still display; the switch-off of the broadcasts didn't destroy the sets. (There are penty of clips on youTube showing exactly that - modern signals converted to the old standard and thus to something the old set can display.)
If you somehow managed to get a "625" signal into such a set that _hadn't_ been converted to "405", the picture would break up into diagonal stripes, as the line frequency is too different. (I don't think even a US "525" signal would be within the adjustment range.)
but in analogue system I, not all the lines are visible.
so, this was the 1938 movie receive on tv? ( 0:31 )
potato TVs so lucky we have 720 to 4k sets now and big screens
Great video such a shame
I have the same model of TV.
Who had a 405 line set in the 1980's?
The figures were estimated to be about 17,000 sets in use by 1984. Sometimes they were used as secondary sets or because they had no interest in colour TV, but mainly because 405 line signals on VHF were much more robust than the 625 line signals on UHF, even by 405 switch-off there were, and still are, remote areas which are outside of the reach of the 625 analogue and now Freeview signals. But, often, 405 could be received perfectly in those areas. We're talking proper isolated areas, like the middle of the Pennines, the Borders, Highlands, mountainous Wales, North Yorkshire Moors. When 405 was switched off, most of those areas lost TV altogether. Some did get UHF relays erected a few years afterwards but some remained so out of reach that the next possibility of TV wouldn't come until 1989, with the launch of $ky.
Aidan Lunn Wow, that many 405 sets in the mid 1980's? Perhaps it shows that the roll out of 625 line was poorly planned because BBC 2 was un available in certain remote areas, meaning the infrastructure should be right first.
The cost of doing so determined the roll-out of 625. Generally, we're talking about £10million per transmitter, currency converted to decimal and taking inflation into account, total cost. So they rolled out 625/colour in pretty much the same way as BBC1 and ITV on 405, most populous areas first covered by main transmitters, least populous last, then fill in the gaps. As the new transmitter technology gets cheaper and better over the rollout period, which for 625 took over 20 years to closely match 405 coverage, it becomes more cost effective to open relays. Their thinking was the ratio of cost of transmitter : how many potential eyeballs. The more viewers there were, the more they could justify the cost of opening a new transmitter network and the more the effort and cost would pay off over time.
CHris Henniker This figure given does not distinguish between VHF single band TV's, and those that were able to receive both VHF and UHF (not sure if it they stretched the 405 line image on a 625 tube) as no data was ever recorded at the time. I had a dual receive TV, but I was young and the only time I ever saw it in use was when there was a power-cut and we used it on a car battery, but we knocked it over tripping in the dark breaking the back panel off so the TV I was supposed to be allowed to have when my parents felt I was old enough, was destroyed. Sad really, I had to wait many years before another TV cam my way. It was a mess of warn out valves and I found out later it was a known fire risk due to the poor construction inside. Just as well it was a terrible picture that I couldn't stop rolling and the whole thing got so hot too.
Despite only being about 9 or 10 then there is one thing I do recall being mentioned at the time, and reading about later, with no funding to put into the VHF relays maintenance parts were not replaced when they broke down instead they were repaired manually, right down to the final component. As the UHF to VHF conversion equipment was getting old and less reliable they became incapable of repair, several relay station were replaced with cameras pointed at UHF TV's. Judging by the lack of complaints, it's doubtful if anyone really noticed, or were even actually watching VHF any more by this time. Closing down VHF, did save enough money in electricity costs, maintenance cost and other fees to build more transmitters later on.
It relates to those using just 405-line TVs, not dual standard ones (as they were UHF capable, they were counted as UHF sets - the standards switching was frequently problematic and so many TV engineers took great pleasure in ripping out the 405 circuitry once it was no longer needed).
There's no such thing as a "625 tube" or a "405 tube" - the tube will display whatever line timebase you feed into it, a CRT doesn't have "pixels" - the closest you come to pixels in a CRT are phosphor dots in the shadowmask, and even they are only in colour CRTs. B&W CRTs don't need pixels or phosphor dots or anything of the ilk.
Valve TVs will and do get very hot, that was normal, the valves do contain heater elements after all, to make the cathode inside the valve get hot so it can start emitting electrons. If it was a fire risk, it must have been a late 60s Bush, Pye or Ekco, despite popular belief, valve TVs were usually not a fire risk - the most fire-like thing you'd usually get out of them would be a puff of smoke. As for the reputation of valves, they are nowhere near as bad as many people think either. Most of the 405-line sets I've restored to working order in my collection are still running most of the exact same valves they left the factory with! TV dealers used to earn commission from the valve manufacturers for every valve they sold, so they invented this elaborate lie that valves were unreliable, so they could sell more valves and thus earn commission. thus the repairman used to repair the actual fault, then charge the customer or the accounts department of the rental company if it was a rented set, for the cost of the component that caused the fault *and* the price of new valves.
The funding was there - it's the lack of parts that did it in for 405.
Only in the Irish Republic did optical conversion happen as result of a converter breakdown. The electronic 625-405 converters in the UK were kept in use right until the end of 405. The reason for the poor picture on the Baird pre-war set in the above video was because the CRT was clapped out and the CRTs of that period were non-aluminised.
The BBC's converters (Pye CO6/509s) were subsequently very reliable and even today can be got going with the minimum of maintenance - they were of a digital design, built by Pye, from 1969. The ITA continued with the use of the Pye CO6/501 analogue electronic converters, that were designed by the BBC and made by Pye in about 1963/64, so 625-line BBC2 material could be broadcast on 405-line BBC1.
I think the figure was about 60,000 405-line sets in use, mostly by people who lived in isolated spots that were beyond the reach of 625 transmissions - VHF signals being far more robust than UHF ones. In fact, when the 405-line service closed in the Borders, the BBC and the ITA received hundreds of complaints, because there were so many isolated spots there that could only receive the 405-line service, the 625-line relay building programme at that time hadn't reached the population coverage that 405 had, some people would have to forego TV for a year at least!
That's my TV but it's simular to that.
Instead of the National Anthem, nowadays at the close of tramsmission the BBC play The Internationale. (Or they would if the could).
high definition viewing? really
625 lines
Everything is relative. "405" was claimed to be high definition when it started, and was, compared to what else was around at the time (it wasn't _that_ far before that *30* lines was in use!).
it was the color television receiver of A system 405 lines NTSC?
System A, "405 lines", only ever used by UK and EI, never (apart from a brief period of experimentation) had colour, either NTSC or PAL (or SECAM).
Is it true the PAL has a higher resolution than NTSC in the United States?
Yes it was the phaze alternation system which was German as all good things are lol
@@devonguy02 PAL to be pedantic is the Colour system. In Brazil they used 525 line/60 HZ with PAL. ( System M I think)
625 lines I believe was developed by Phillips. PAL is German though, but that's just the Colour system
As Martin Hughes says, strictly PAL refers to the colour system, not the line/frame standard. But yes, system B/G/I used "625 lines" (actually 576 actual picture lines), 25 times a second, and US/NTSC used "525" (480 actual I think) lines, but 30 (later 29.97) times a second. So Europe had somewhat more vertical resolution, but at a lower refresh rate. The actual line frequencies come out very close!
The PAL _colour_ system _is_ superior - mainly suffers far less from hue errors (most PAL sets didn't have a hue control, only a saturation one) - although the shortcomings of NTSC colour were much less apparent at UHF anyway, which is the only place the UK ever had colour beyond early experiments; however, it probably helped in the European countries that did have colour on VHF.
405 lines was Pal l British television standard, Germany had 625 lines Pal B/G, France was on the was wird 819 lines Secam L Plus, Who was HD television long time before all other countries.
whats ghosting???
Ghosting or multipath reception is when a reflected signal arrives at the aerial then reciever with the same information a millisecond after the first lot, causing this effect, basically, so you gat the main image and then a shadow of it eg a ghost image
I watched the Spot! That's if the power was on..
BBC would cut off 11pm? and that was it, watching the spot diminish to black.
69Phuket R.I.P 405 line TV 1935-1985 😭😭😭😭😢
2:21
Analog TV to Digital TV switch off
Why the national anthem at the end?
I saw someone upload a recording of a sign-off from this station circa the 1980s. The sign-off would play the national anthem after it displays the time, exactly like this minus the message about cutting 405-line transmission.
They used to play the national anthem every night at shutdown, up until the nineties when bbc1 went to 24 hours a day
thanks
So the US wasn't the only place that did that. That's interesting.
Jorge Pais And in Spain till 2001.