[mythtv-users] Old Cameras, was: "Generational" TV, was: OT: 3D TV

[Brian Wood]

On Tuesday 12 January 2010 11:51:35 pm David Brodbeck wrote:

> I find artifacts of old equipment like that pretty interesting, too.  I
> always notice the comet trails coming off bright objects on stuff from
> the tube camera era.

Ahh, but can you tell the difference between an iconoscope, an image orthicon, 
a vidicon, a plumbicon and a saticon? They all show different artifacts. The 
low-noise diode gun tubes that Ikegami used at one time in the HL-79s were 
great at minimizing "trails".

I wish you wouldn't refer to the "tube camera era" as if it were the 
"paleolithic" or the "neolithic" era", it wasn't that long ago :-) I still 
have an RCA 2" Image Orth on my shelf (still in the original factory 
container). It originally cost more than a medium sized house.

Chip cameras have their own artifacts, and IMHO they can't come close to the 
image quality of a properly set up Image Orthicon.

RCA even made some cameras that used 3 1" plumbicons for the color 
information, and a 2" image orth for the luminance channel, trying to minimize 
the faults and capitalize on the strengths of each.

The methods used to get a single-tube (or chip) camera to produce color are 
ingenious, though they produce very inferior images.

Panasonic once made a two-tube color camera, a real bear to set up.

Here's an interesting page:

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

A little more on topic, note that a 3D system was introduced in December 1945:

http://novia.net/~ereitan/rca-nbc_firsts.html