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Channel 4 - 80s themed brand elements today

Ahead of episode 1 of ‘It’s A Sin’ (January 2021)

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JO
johnnyboy Founding member
Markymark posted:
Whataday posted:
Markymark posted:
It looked utter crap. Grey background, and faux noise added. The quality of 80s PAL analogue was excellent, way better than whoever thought degrading the quality would be a good idea.


I think you're missing the point. It's meant to look old.


I'm not missing the point at all, the real clock in 1982 looked crisper and better than the recreation.
The main artefact of the era was missing, cross colour strobe.

Am I the only person left that was alive back then!?


PAL analogue gave a very good TV picture assuming you lived in a strong reception area.

I remember when I got onDigital for the first time and being disappointed by how drained out the colours were.

And then when I got Sky HD, I remember telling the installer that I thought the detail was amazing and the colours were as vivid as the old TV signals.

Perhaps I am in a minority of one here.
AndrewPSSP and Markymark gave kudos
IS
Inspector Sands
johnnyboy posted:

PAL analogue gave a very good TV picture assuming you lived in a strong reception area.

I remember when I got onDigital for the first time and being disappointed by how drained out the colours were.

And then when I got Sky HD, I remember telling the installer that I thought the detail was amazing and the colours were as vivid as the old TV signals.

The colours were very drained.... until you switched the box to output RGB and then they were a lot better. I had both in the early 2000s and there wasn't any difference between the picture quality of Sky or Ondigital.

Though a housemate of mine at the time had one of the early TVs with a digital tuner, but that seemed to be just an Ondigital box in the set without the ON branding... and seemed to be wired in in composite rather than RGB as the pictures weren't that great
BR
Brekkie
Just under 2m last night for It's a Sin. Possibly the lower end of expections - I was thinking 2-3m.



I guess with it being available as a boxset it'll now fall week on week. Ironic really that in their battle with Netflix and networks releasing dramas as boxset after episode 1 surely all they do is leave viewers who'd return the next week looking for something to watch on Netflix instead - and they probably lose them for the night, not just the hour.
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MA
Markymark
Inspector Sands posted:
johnnyboy posted:

PAL analogue gave a very good TV picture assuming you lived in a strong reception area.

I remember when I got onDigital for the first time and being disappointed by how drained out the colours were.

And then when I got Sky HD, I remember telling the installer that I thought the detail was amazing and the colours were as vivid as the old TV signals.

The colours were very drained.... until you switched the box to output RGB and then they were a lot better. I had both in the early 2000s and there wasn't any difference between the picture quality of Sky or Ondigital.

Though a housemate of mine at the time had one of the early TVs with a digital tuner, but that seemed to be just an Ondigital box in the set without the ON branding... and seemed to be wired in in composite rather than RGB as the pictures weren't that great


One of the first images I saw when I fired up my RGB connected Sky box to my Widescreen telly was the Weather forecast on BBC News 24. It looked absolutely stunning. Then the presenter made a sharp movement, and a whole new set of artefacts to get used to arrived!
AndrewPSSP and Roger Darthwell gave kudos
MA
Markymark
Inspector Sands posted:
johnnyboy posted:

PAL analogue gave a very good TV picture assuming you lived in a strong reception area.

I remember when I got onDigital for the first time and being disappointed by how drained out the colours were.

And then when I got Sky HD, I remember telling the installer that I thought the detail was amazing and the colours were as vivid as the old TV signals.

The colours were very drained.... until you switched the box to output RGB and then they were a lot better. I had both in the early 2000s and there wasn't any difference between the picture quality of Sky or Ondigital.



Yes. I had my Sky box looped through the OnDigital box, and you could quite cleanly switch between the two using the AV toggle button on the OnD remote.

Slightly higher saturation on the OnD box, but nothing significant
MA
Markymark
Whataday posted:
dbl posted:
Interesting convo on the continuity style today





I'm not sure I agree. 80's Channel 4 continuity could be just as pompous as what we've seen today.


Having watched the compilation 'channel4squares1' kindly provided, it felt like the CAs don't really know how to talk slowly !
It didn't sound very natural.

They should have got Bill Bingham or Paul Coia back. (BBC 2 got David Allen back for similar nostalgia pres a few years ago)
VM
VMPhil
Markymark posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
johnnyboy posted:

PAL analogue gave a very good TV picture assuming you lived in a strong reception area.

I remember when I got onDigital for the first time and being disappointed by how drained out the colours were.

And then when I got Sky HD, I remember telling the installer that I thought the detail was amazing and the colours were as vivid as the old TV signals.

The colours were very drained.... until you switched the box to output RGB and then they were a lot better. I had both in the early 2000s and there wasn't any difference between the picture quality of Sky or Ondigital.



Yes. I had my Sky box looped through the OnDigital box, and you could quite cleanly switch between the two using the AV toggle button on the OnD remote.

Slightly higher saturation on the OnD box, but nothing significant

This all reminds me of the time when I was a kid (sorry if this makes you feel old) and had pretty much memorised the Telewest digital interface. I was at a relative's and did the usual geeky thing of fixing the stretchyvision on the widescreen TV by changing the format from 4:3 cut out to 16:9, and changing the output from composite to RGB (I could tell the difference even then). However it turned out that the TV didn't seem to like the RGB mode for some reason, and I had to own up to messing with the settings the next time I went round Embarassed At least it taught me not to mess with other people's stuff no matter how 'wrong' I thought the set up was…
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HC
Hatton Cross
Markymark posted:


They should have got Bill Bingham or Paul Coia back. (BBC 2 got David Allen back for similar nostalgia pres a few years ago)

Stands up and applaudes

Thank you. Exactly. That was the only weak link the the nostalgia fest yesterday.
Could not understand why the old voices didn't make a re-appearance. And if they didn't want to do live anno's, pre record them.
Paul Coia and Veronica Hinks are still around, and I'm sure Keith still does the odd announcing duty on BBC Two every now and then, so it's not like the original team have fell off the face of the earth.
AndrewPSSP, Markymark and Roger Darthwell gave kudos
FL
Flux
Hatton Cross posted:
Markymark posted:


They should have got Bill Bingham or Paul Coia back. (BBC 2 got David Allen back for similar nostalgia pres a few years ago)

Stands up and applaudes

Thank you. Exactly. That was the only weak link the the nostalgia fest yesterday.
Could not understand why the old voices didn't make a re-appearance. And if they didn't want to do live anno's, pre record them.
Paul Coia and Veronica Hinks are still around, and I'm sure Keith still does the odd announcing duty on BBC Two every now and then, so it's not like the original team have fell off the face of the earth.


It’s because they were only trying to set a mood. It wasn’t an experiment in authenticity, or a celebration of the channel’s past. It was just a little (brilliant) touch to build to the premiere of the show, and I doubt much thought was given to it past “let’s make it feel 80s and reuse 1980s animations as idents”. I agree it would be different if it was done to celebrate an anniversary where old announcers and voices from the past are more likely to make a reappearance.
MK
Mr Kite
It was a little bit of a celebration of the channels past, at least.
PF
PFML84
VMPhil posted:
... I had to own up to messing with the settings the next time I went round Embarassed At least it taught me not to mess with other people's stuff no matter how 'wrong' I thought the set up was…


I am known amongst my friends and family for "correcting" their set-ups when I had visited their houses and noticed they didn't have the optimal settings for their TV. I thought I was doing them a favour, considering one of them was watching Sky HD through a SCART connection and not HDMI. I couldn't believe they had their system set up that way by a Sky engineer and they left it that way and they didn't notice the difference!
MA
Markymark
VMPhil posted:
Markymark posted:
Inspector Sands posted:

The colours were very drained.... until you switched the box to output RGB and then they were a lot better. I had both in the early 2000s and there wasn't any difference between the picture quality of Sky or Ondigital.



Yes. I had my Sky box looped through the OnDigital box, and you could quite cleanly switch between the two using the AV toggle button on the OnD remote.

Slightly higher saturation on the OnD box, but nothing significant

This all reminds me of the time when I was a kid (sorry if this makes you feel old) and had pretty much memorised the Telewest digital interface. I was at a relative's and did the usual geeky thing of fixing the stretchyvision on the widescreen TV by changing the format from 4:3 cut out to 16:9, and changing the output from composite to RGB (I could tell the difference even then). However it turned out that the TV didn't seem to like the RGB mode for some reason, and I had to own up to messing with the settings the next time I went round Embarassed At least it taught me not to mess with other people's stuff no matter how 'wrong' I thought the set up was…


Something that really annoyed me were tellies where the four channels were not tuned in, in the correct order.

About 25 years ago, myself and some friends were staying in a pub in Wales for the weekend, to do some mountain hiking.

The Friday night, after about 10pm we found ourselves alone in the lounge bar. I picked up the remote to find something to watch, and discovered that the 4 channels were completely in the wrong order.

I set about retuning them to their correct positions.

Next day, was Grand National day, we'd been for a hike, and entered the pub about 10 mins before the race was due to start. The bar was packed, and everyone in there was bizarrely watching an old b/w film on S4C. One of my friends clocked what had probably happened before I did, rapidly turned us all around, and we headed elsewhere very swiftly !

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