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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.
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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
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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.
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Practical Electronics | June | 2022
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