[720p/50p] BBC1 | transmitter warmup, startup and continuity | 18th November 1995 | Part 2 of 4

© BBC TELEVISION 1995

I would have been five years old when this was broadcast and I definitely remember around the ages of 5, 6 or 7 waking up early on Saturday mornings, going downstairs, switching the TV on and being greeted with the testcard!

Unfortunately, this clip has not been preserved perfectly! Even on an SVHS VCR with timebase corrector, this is the best result I could get! The original VCR that recorded this back in 1995 will have lost synchronisation among all the motors in its mechanism when the BBC1 transmitter at Crystal Palace shut down the previous night while it was still recording as there would have been no signal (including sync pulses) transmitted when the transmitter was off air. When it started up again, the VCR recording this back in 1995 was supposed to lock on to the new sync pulses from the transmitter, but clearly... it didn't!

I've done the best I can with this in my Panasonic VCR. My JVC could play it but with an even shakier picture, the Sanyo kept playing it but with tracking bars going up the screen every half a second and the Sharp just played it with a solid blue screen.

Transmitter warmup
BBC1 Test Card F with BBC1 GLITS tone
Pages from Ceefax (Level 2 teletext) with "muzak"
BBC1 virtual globe: opening announcement
BBC1 trailer: Just William
BBC1 clock (07:25am): BBC News
Weather forecast with Rob McElwee
BBC2 CBBC promo: Sunday mornings
Children's BBC ident
CBBC IVC (Simeon Courtie): SuperTed

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