We had a Sony Trinitron that had an “empty” dial where the 2nd UHF tuner dial was. It was empty in that it only had dots in the display and no numbers, so it didn’t do anything whenever you switched the VHF dial to the “U” position. So it was “upgradable” to UHF, but was never of any use to us since UHF wasnt in use in Newcastle until 1986 when SBS started transmitting here.By then we had a VCR and a 2nd smaller TV that could both receive UHF.
Our Sony set was pretty common one for its time (late 70s/early 80s).
A few people I knew had this model too.
It looked like this
We also had a Tandy TRS-80 computer that also only worked on TVs with a VHF tuner (no SCART or VGA type option here). It had a switch to choose between a VHF 0 or VHF 1 output.
I couldn’t see any difference between VHF 0 or 1 with the computer.
As for UHF, we didn’t have an external UHF antenna installed until 1990, the only SBS I remember watching at my childhood home before then was on our 2nd smaller TV with rabbit ears, and the reception wasn’t very good with those,
My old Commodore computer and our first VCR also had output to Channel 0 or 1. I think i just used 0 because SBS had gone by then and i seem to recall using 1 copped some interference from Channel 2.
Ah yep, that makes sense, up here in Newcastle we only had VHF 3 and 5A in use, and only 2 FM radio stations.
I do recall VHF 1 and 2 interfered with each other.
And that VHF 6, 8 and 11 interfered with 7, 9, 10 and vice versa.
Which is why NBN got VHF 3 and WIN got VHF 4, because of the large number of Sydney VHF antennas that were still in use in Newcastle and Wollongong to get those channels,
It’d be great see anything else of interest to Media Spy from the EyewitnessTV VHS archives whenever you get the chance, if it’s not too much trouble of course!
[quote=“matlock, post:845, topic:137, full:true”]Oh my god the nostalgia hurts.
[/quote]Oh, I know! Takes me back to better times indeed.
[quote=“SydneyCityTV, post:844, topic:137, full:true”]
Great job with those clips. [/quote]Thanks. There’ll be more old content to come when time permits.
On 4KQ this morning as part of the regular 60s Sunday morning they played the theme music to The Dick Van Dyke Show, a show I can’t remember. It was stated that the program was unusual in Australia because it was one of the highest rated programs during the black and white era but was never played on FTA after colour TV began and it was never shown on Foxtel (apparently, it is available on Netflix). Seems unusual as many other B&W shows got re-runs after colour began with IIRC The Adams Family being shown by Nine in prime time. 4KQ is very Brisbane-focused so this may not apply Australia-wide.
It appears that David Lyle played an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show during his Golden Years of Television in 1988 on Nine. The Dick Van Dyke Show won numerous Emmy Awards, but the later The New Dick Van Dyke Show didn’t win any. Unfortunately the SMH preview cuts off most of the story:
and SBS as a sole UHF broadcaster ended when the digital TV retune occurred in metropolitan areas and Canberra when SBS moved to a VHF frequency (actually the old Channel 7 analogue frequency) on digital, so that meant those who couldn’t receive SBS on UHF in the past can now receive it without the need for a UHF aerial.
SBS had a transmitter in Exmouth on VHF channel 9 from at least 2008, and I’m fairly sure they subsequently had other VHF transmitters in regional areas before the digital switch off.
As well as a few low-power analogue transmitters, SBS was broadcast on high power VHF in a number of areas right from the introduction of digital TV to those regions such as
Upper Murray SBS7
Western Victoria SBS7
Hobart SBS9A
Manning River SBS9A
Broken Hill SBS12
Vision carrier frequencies varied, at least according to this sign-on from 1980/81.
VHF0 = 46.25Mhz.
UHF28 = 527.25Mhz.
UHF54 (Hyatt King’s Gate Tower) = 737.25Mhz.
That could be right about The Dick Van Dyke Show not appearing on TV post-colour conversion, but by the late 1970s we’d moved on to The New Dick Van Dyke Show, which was never as popular, but also there would have been heaps of US sitcoms and dramas from the 1950s and 1960s that would have been treated similarly by TV networks here that they never got shown again post-1975.
Likewise heaps of Australian shows produced in B&W were largely put into landfill when colour TV began as there was not deemed to be any future use for them. More than 500 B&W episodes of Number 96, one of the most significant shows of that era, were destroyed as they were not thought to be of any further use.
The Addams Family, which hadn’t been shown on Australian TV for about a decade, sort of came out of the woodwork as an afternoon show in the late 1980s and became something of a surprise hit, so Nine gave it a run in prime time. And with TV being the copycat machine that it is, Nine’s success also prompted Ten to dig out The Munsters at around the same time.
There doesn’t seem to have been a Foxtel channel suitable for this sort of thing either. Fox Classics had some B and W things but not many. TV1 even in its early days had more recent programming.
[/quote]Thanks. There’ll be more old content to come when time permits. 
