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The Fox Report Barry Fox’s technology column High drama, but low tech C ovid lockdown has changed the face of cinema by forcing the movie industry to embrace Pay Per View streaming of recent releases. Even though inexpensive HDMI-to-USB equipment is available for use with a PC, along with free open-source software to circumvent copy-protection and ‘rip’ the material to unprotected MP4 files, there has been no obvious explosion in piracy. Theatres and music venues have also found new paying audiences by streaming plays and concerts into homes, some for free at the height of the pandemic, but now for hard cash. Although the technology has been maturing, there are still painful reminders that arts folk generally know more about artistic production than selling content online. I signed up to stream a production by the Young Vic Theatre of the play Best of Enemies, a new play (https:// bit.ly/pe-jun22-boe) by James Graham (author of the TV play Quiz, which was about the ‘coughing major’ who won a million on a TV quiz show). Best of Enemies dramatises one of the first great TV debates, which took place in the US during the 1968 Presidential campaign between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. US viewers hugely enjoyed watching opinionated conservative commentator William F Buckley Jr. tangle very publicly with equally opinionated liberal author and arch-enemy Gore Vidal. Great, but… Let me say straight off that the Best of Enemies play is hugely entertaining and the Young Vic production excellent. The problem was the technical handling and viewer guidance for the ‘Best Seat in Your House’ streaming system used. Unlike most home-streamed events, the start time was fixed and there was no option to 10 re-view later. If a paying customer experienced any technical problems, there was no second chance to watch. This was made clear in advance: ‘The performance is being broadcast live, so please join on time – we don’t want you to miss anything! The performance will only be available to watch for the duration of the live broadcast’ warned the organisers. ‘If you have any problems with your broadcast please head to our FAQs page as a first step, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, we’re always here to help at boxoffice<at> youngvic.org’. But there was no helpline phone number to call. Click and join As recommended by a pre-show instruction email, I ‘clicked to join the broadcast’ half an hour ahead of time to check the connection. What I then got was a short, recorded loop from a Young Vic artistic guru who obviously already knew the play inside out so also knew how the actors would be moving round the theatre stage – unlike paying customers, who could have no advance idea what they would be seeing. The artistic gentleman enthusiastically told us that we had a choice of ten camera angles which we could switch between. What only became evident in hindsight was that until viewers had watched the play for a while and got a feel for the direction, they should play safe and choose the last camera option on the list, the ‘Directors Cut’; and only experiment with the nine other angles when they felt confident. Lacking this vital guidance ahead of time I wasted the early part of the play trying to reconcile the different camera angles with the continual, wide-ranging movement of the actors. Viewers should also have been talked through the other confusing options offered, such as Auto Quality and Unpin and Sound On. Technical faults During the play, the screen frequently and disconcertingly went briefly black. This was clearly quite different from data buffering and most likely caused by faulty camera switching on one or more of the views. There should have been flashed-up warnings telling people not to try and adjust anything. But there was no guidance. Feedback I raised all this with the Young Vic Theatre Management after the event. What I got back, after a reminder, was of little value: ‘I’d like to offer my sincerest apologies (etc etc etc) …about the difficulties you had with the streamed performance of Best of Enemies… Your feedback has already been passed on and taken into account for our next shows. As you no doubt know, our venture into streamed performances is a new one to us so any and all feedback is invaluable. I am sorry that you had a bad experience with our tech…Once again, I’d like to apologise for the difficulties you experienced and thank you for your patience with us while we take into account all the feedback available to us in order to make the live streams more streamlined.’ I’ve heard nothing further. No acknowledgement of the need for better customer guidance, no explanation of or apology for the technical glitches and certainly no chance to view the stream again without glitches and with the benefit of camera angle hindsight. Practical Electronics | June | 2022 In the mid-1920s, Charles Francis part in bringing television to the masses. Early Japanese TV Jenkins in the US and John Logie Baird And buried in JVC’s vaults there are Japan, May 1930: received picture using Kenjiro Takayanagi’s pioneering TV system. W ho invented television? Opinions differ, largely depending on the country where the question is asked and the company answering it. But the basics are generally agreed. In 1884 German Paul Nipkow proposed a spinning disc with a spiral track of holes that let light through to a photo sensor, to scan an image. GET LATES THE T COP Y OF TEACH OUR -IN SE RIES AVAIL AB NOW! LE in the UK tried to turn the Nipkow disc into a working TV system. Baird got further with the idea than Jenkins, but TV based on mechanical moving parts was always going to fail in the end. Starting in 1927, US inventor Philo Farnsworth patented an all-electronic scanning system. Russian emigree David Sarnoff and the Radio Corporation of America threw money at the idea and made it work – with the help of another Russian emigree, Vladimir Zworykin. Sarnoff bullied Farnsworth out of his patent rights – just as he would later do to Edwin Armstrong, inventor of FM radio. In April 1927 AT&T Bell Telephone Labs made headline news by sending all-electronic pictures by copper wire from Washington to New York. In the mid-1930s, Telefunken in Germany and EMI in the UK took the development of all-electronic television to new levels, with systems that used over 400 scanning lines and were then thought of as ‘high definition’. There is seldom any mention of Japan’s role in early television, but JVC, the Japan Victor Company, will tell you that Kenjiro Takayanagi (1899-1990) played a major and largely sidelined Order direct from Electron Publishing PRICE £8.99 (includes P&P to UK if ordered direct from us) pictures to prove it. Takayanagi started out as a teacher, then worked for the Japan Broadcasting Company and joined the Victor Company where he rose to the role of vice president. He used a mechanical Nipkow disk and a photoelectric tube in the transmitter, but electronic Braun cathode ray tube in the receiver. His first transmission, which used 40 scanning lines, was on 25 December 1926. In 1928 he sent and received an image of a person, again with 40 scanning lines at 14 frames/second. Takayanagi built an electronic television camera in 1933, shortly after Vladimir Zworykin in the US, and went on to make a 100-scanning-line, 20-frames-per-second system. More technology stories and images at: https://tekkiepix.com/stories Practical Electronics is delighted to be able to help promote Barry Fox’s project to preserve the visual history of preInternet electronics. Visit www.tekkiepix.com for fascinating stories and a chance to support this unique online collection. EE FR -ROM CD ELECTRONICS TEACH-IN 9 £8.99 FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF GET TESTING! 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You will receive the software for the PIC n’ Mix series of articles and the full Teach-In 2 book – Using PIC Microcontrollers – A practical introduction – in PDF format. Also included are Microchip’s MPLAB ICD 4 In-Circuit Debugger User’s Guide; MPLAB PICkit 4 In-Circuit Debugger Quick Start Guide; and MPLAB PICkit4 Debugger User’s Guide. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY: www.electronpublishing.com Practical Electronics | June | 2022 11