Amusing acronym

Robert Billing

Well I only spent 9 months in the TV industry and that all in 1972, but at least with video recorders of the time (RCA TKR70 or something like that) one had an O-scope of sorts which showed IIRC a polar plot which showed where the colors were. During the setup which had to be done for each tape, and each tape therefore had about a minute of color bars recorded on the beginning, one could twiddle a knob on the recorder to adjust the phase of the play back color signal so all the colors showed up (more or less) where they should be. The "right places" were shown by little boxes drawn on the face plate of the O-scope. The color bar signal would make a "fuzzy ball" for each color on the scope and turning the knob would cause them to rotate around the center of the display. Sometimes you couldn't get them all in the boxes but usually close. Of course, if one was in a hurry to get a tape mounted this was a step which frequently got pbutted over. If one was in a bad mood, one could rotate the "fuzz balls" completely wrong. If I had skipped the step, I would sometimes wait until the tape started playing and then twiddle the knob so the picture on the monitor "looked good". I once did this not realizing the monitor was bad and I was told that the picture which went out on the air was quite horrid indeed :-) The joys of NTSC...

Chris AN GETTO$;DUMP;RUN,ALGOL,TAPE $$