I'm the very young guy in the blue shirt. My first real job after university. I was the guy who travelled around all ITV companies installing, testing and troubleshooting the NICAM system as we rolled it out. It was the first "digital" system and saved the ITV companies an absolute fortune as they could (and did) cancel all the analogue audio circuits from BT and put the audio down the existing video cable. Funny to see my boss being interviewed !

When the IBA did an actual test broadcast of Engineering Announcements in NICAM Digital Stereo, sending a stereo feed up to Emley Moor near Huddersfield West Yorkshire and to Crystal Palace in London, the Emley Moor feed was tardy with constant crackle and drop out to analogue mono sound, but the Crystal Palace feed was perfect and flawless.

I remember being very excited by this upgrade. I somehow managed to convince my Dad to swap our TV rental from Visionhire for a Nicam set. Shame it had puny speakers though.

Totally fascinating, it'a a shame the NICAM system can't be used in some way still

@paulmarson

8 жыл бұрын

+digitalmediafan I loved watching these ad a kid, can remember the tech spec for nicam as if it was my date of birth ! lol Really miss this kind of show giving us an inside view and details about the tech thats going on

@andrewsmith2757

4 жыл бұрын

@@paulmarson - It was called NICAM 728. I don't know if this helps.

@andrewsmith2757

4 жыл бұрын

We have digital sound anyway now with all digital TV services. It's not the NICAM format but it sounds fine to me.

@brettogden6104

4 жыл бұрын

It's a very inefficient digital system. Back in the early 90s it was too expensive to have very complex digital decompression chips and memory in people's TVs (MP3 style) so that's why the data rate is 728kbps whereas today we could do similar with 64kbps using MP3 . It was fun working with the Danish manufacturer getting this all working

@andrewsmith2757

4 жыл бұрын

@@brettogden6104 - What sounds better? NICAM 728 or the stereo audio we have today with digital TV (DVB)?

Nicam stereo was a good stereo sound system for analogue TV, and sounded pretty good.

Everything about this video is disgusting! But it's still of a certain historical value. Also we learn about the British...

@paulmarson

8 жыл бұрын

+wassollderscheiss33 why is it disgusting ??

@andrewsmith2757

4 жыл бұрын

Why is it disgusting? What a weird comment to make. There's always one. 🙄