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A PORTABLE COLOR RECORDER

Newest type of helical-scan video tape machine has been colorized

By JOE ROIZEN*

RECORDING COLOR TELEVISION SIGNALS on magnetic tape has been practical since 1958 when the first compatible color broadcast recorders went into service. These transverse studio machines use four heads which rotate at right angles to tape travel (see Fig. 1). The machines also contain very complex circuitry and time-base correction devices. The circuits are necessary to achieve studio-quality NTSC playbacks that meet FCC specifications for on-the-air transmission; such VTR’s (video tape recorders) range in price from $40,000 to $100,000. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here comes TV for everybody

The whole country, and not just a few metropolitan centers, will enjoy television when new ultra-high-frequency stations go on the air.

IF YOUR home is outside the TV areas today, it is almost sure to be inside one within a few years. If you now can get only one or two stations, you’ll have a wider choice pretty soon.

Right now a total of 108 television stations are on the air. They all use waves from four to 18 feet long in the very-high-frequency range, called VHF. In the VHF range, only a few hundred stations can be fitted without interfering with each other. Read the rest of this entry »

TV MIRRORS “SEE” ONLY ONE COLOR

IF YOU would like a mirror that reflects your favorite color and no other, the men to see are the color-television specialists of the Westinghouse Research Laboratories. By depositing ultrathin layers of metallic compounds on clear glass they are able to produce mirrors that reflect only one color—either red, green or blue.
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Two-for-One Camera
TELEVISION’S fascinating forward march resulted in another development recently when Du Mont Laboratories, Inc., Clifton, N. J., announced the Electronicam, an amazing new two-for-one camera which enables standard black-and-white TV programs to be broadcast while a high-quality film of the same program is simultaneously recorded in black-and-white or color. The system will adapt to all film types and sizes, including wide screen, and is expected to result in greatly lowered film and production costs.

Television in Three Dimensions

A DEVICE which can produce a 360 degree picture by television through a stereoscope scanner has been invented by Leslie Gould, a radio engineer of Bridgeport, Connecticut. With Mr. Gould’s television system it is possible to televise a boxing match, a play, an orchestra, or any other spectacle whose scene of action can be compressed into a reasonable space.
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TOTS Try Toys

Before trying to sell a new product toy maker Oliver Garfield (Toy Development Co.) tests child reactions to them.

Garfield and physicist Arthur Pinker-ton assemble Geniac, a toy electronic brain that flashes replies to queries.

TV WHIZ KID

Steve Allen, 13, with color TV he designed and built. Atherton, Calif., boy has been an electrical prodigy since the age of two.

Steve, whose color set was among first 100 in San Francisco area, made over $1000 last year repairing sets in his neighborhood.

PORTABLE TELEVISION

A 31-pound set steals a march on the industry

The gentleman shown above luxuriously sprawled in his bathtub is enjoying the newest thing in television—a portable set. (He also is risking electrocution because either a radio or TV set can kill a wet bather if he so much as touches it.) His set, made by the Sentinel Radio Corporation, has a small collapsible antenna, a 7-inch screen, and sells for $206.90 complete. It is easily transportable (below), needs only a socket with alternating current to operate both indoors and out, provides excellent reception which is comparable to that of much more expensive receivers. However at the rate Sentinel is turning out its sets (4,000 a month), it will be some time before the customers can walk into the store and buy them without delay. Another portable set, made by the Pilot Radio Corporation, has a tiny 3-inch screen, sells for only $99.50.

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TV Goes to the CONVENTIONS

ACCORDING to estimates, about 60 million people, or 40 percent of the nation’s population, will watch the political conventions this summer on more than 16 million TV sets. The largest concentration of television equipment ever assembled will beam the convention to the nation. These four pages of drawings show how it will be done. One entire wing of Chicago’s Amphitheatre will be given over to television and radio studios and equipment. Read the rest of this entry »

LOOK AND LISTEN

Toshiba revs up LVR

A new video-cassette recorder with one-third the parts of conventional helical-scan VCR’s was demonstrated by Toshiba at Chicago’s summer Consumer Electronics Show. The prototype machine (photo) differs in appearance from the deck Toshiba may begin marketing in a year or so— perhaps at half the price of today’s more mechanically complex machines.
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Sidewalk Chats Are Televised
Passers-by in New-York City recently were interviewed on their tastes in television programs, while experimenters at sight-and-sound receivers watched them and heard their comments. A television camera was set up on the sidewalk for the experiment. N. B. C. engineers called the test the first scheduled outdoor program in their current series of experimental television broadcasts from the tower of the Empire State Building.

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Portable VCR’s

—new lightwights tape off the air or on the go Go-anywhere machines have convenience features that make recording easy

By JOHN FREE

Miniaturization, the inevitable in consumer electronics, has already caught up with portable video-cassette recorders (VCR’s) introduced just last year [PS, Nov. 78]. Lightweight portables from RCA and Akai are some five pounds lighter and about 45 percent smaller than previous models. New color TV cameras with advanced integrated circuitry are about half the weight of last year’s models.
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TV Set Has Chairside Control
This new RCA Victor projection-type television set features a remote-control box that lets you adjust brightness and contrast without leaving your chair. Usually available in the past only as custom equipment, the unit, with its connecting cord, permits continual adjustment of these controls from up to 25 feet from the set.