Channel 4 UK - NTL Test card from 1995

NTL Test card for Channel 4. Recorded from 1995 - the tape was used to record a film and was left to run out overnight.

I'm not a testcard anorak BTW just thought I'd put this up for TV historical purposes and those who do like them.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Channel4UK
• Channel
• Four
• C4
• 4
• 1995
• NTL
• Testcard
• test
• card
• UK

[cwilliams1976]

When the programme ended on Fridays LWT left the programme running a few seconds longer before displaying their endcap. 

[cwilliams1976]

@tsangari Thames produced it at lunchtime but this was recorded so that the different regional companies could show the recorded programme at different times in this instance, as some showed it at 5.10pm and some at 6pm. Also, when LWT showed Home and Away on Fridays, LWT could show the programme at the same time as Thames from the same point and carried on at 5.15pm from the same point that Thames had left off.

[cwilliams1976]

@northernanorak Also, ORACLE could not transmit any regional pages on ITV because TV-am was a national service so the data bridges could not transmit regionalised teletext pages at the time. ITV did carry Channel 4's unitary signal so yes it would make sense for that to happen; if ITV companies were on strike they were unable to insert commercial breaks into Channel 4's output and so either BT or the IBA could send Channel 4's output straight to the transmitters in that case.

[cwilliams1976]

@northernanorak Similarly, in Wales, it would have been the case for S4C as well to differentiate between output from the transmitter site and S4C's output in Cardiff.

[cwilliams1976]

No. ITV test cards had IBA written as the IBA had control over ITV's transmitters and also in the 1970s the individual testcards on ITV had the ITV regional company next to the IBA's initials.

[tsangari]

@northernanorak That is uttetly correct. You're also right about the Thames/LWT switch. That used to happen bang-on 17:15:00. Thames used to sign out gracefully, as loads of You Tube video's show, with LWT blasting onto the screens. When Home & Away used to be on at 17:10, you'd see the screen flick a noise bar at 17:15, but the programme would be undisturbed. I used to wonder who actually used to broadcast Home & Away for the network.

Carlton and LWT shared the same broadcasting facilities.

[northernanorak]

@tsangari That makes sense - in the early days of C4 (until 1993) each ITV company sold the adverts separately, so the C4 feed passed through Granada, Yorkshire, Ulster etc so they could drop in their regional ads. Until 9.25 was when TV-AM was on air, and they sold their own ads (as a separate franchise), so 9.25 was when the regional companies were switched into the circuit to their transmitters.

In London there was a similar switch on C4 when the ITV feed was switched from Thames to LWT

[tsangari]

@northernanorak I do remember that at bang-on 09:25 the feed would switch. The test tone changed too from 440 Hz to 1kHz.

[caseybellafc]

It Would Simply Display This: IBA

[northernanorak]

@tsangari the ITV version of this just said IBA.

Incidentally there were two versions of this card - there was a version that didn't have the white lines above and below the text. The tramlines indicate that this card is coming from C4 presentation rather than being generated at the local transmitter site.