Broadcast Television Systems (BTS) was a joint venture between Robert Bosch GmbH's Fernseh Division and Philips Broadcast in Breda, Netherlands, formed in 1986.
Philips had been in the broadcast market for many years with a line of PC- and LDK- Norelco professional video cameras and other video products. By the 1980s, the Norelco name was dropped in favour of Philips. Robert Bosch GmbH's Fernseh Division also had a long history going back to the early days of television (1929).
BTS's North America headquarters was at first located in Salt Lake City, Utah. This was later moved to Simi Valley, California, in 1991, later returning to Salt Lake City. Also in 1991, BTS Latin America entered into an agreement to provide Televisa SA of Mexico what was believed to be until that time, the largest equipment sale in history.
In 1995 Philips Electronics North America Corp. fully acquired BTS Inc., renaming it Philips Broadcast-Philips Digital Video Systems. The BTS Inc.'s Darmstadt factory in Germany was near the Darmstadt Train Station and European Space Operations Centre this was later moved a short distance to Weiterstadt, Germany.
In March 2001, Philips' broadcast video division was sold to Thomson SA, the current owner; the division was called Thomson Multimedia. In 2002, the French electronics giant Thomson SA also acquired the Grass Valley Group from Terry Gooding of San Diego, CA, USA. Grass Valley, Inc., the Thomson, Grass Valley, a Thomson Brand is headquartered in Nevada City, California.
The Thomson Film Division, located in Weiterstadt, including the product line of Spirit DataCine, Bones Work station and LUTher 3D Color Space converter, was sold to Parter Capital Group. The sale was made public on Sept. 9, 2008 and completed on Dec. 1, 2008. The new headquarters is in Weiterstadt, in the former Bosch Fernseh - BTS factory. Parter Capital Group will continue to have worldwide offices to support products from Weiterstadt, Germany. [1] [2] The new name of the company is Digital Film Technology. On October 1, 2012 Precision Mechatronics and DFT were acquired by Prasad Corp, part of Prasad Studios. [3] [4] In 2013 DFT moved from Weiterstadt to Arheilgen-Darmstadt, Germany.
Grass Valley operated offices in the cities of all the former acquisitions:
After the financial crisis of 2008, Thomson became upside-down in its financial covenants and was forced by its creditors to divest itself of Grass Valley and other manufacturing entities. On January 29, 2009, Thomson announced that they were putting the Grass Valley division up for sale. [5]
In 2010, the Grass Valley business unit, not including the head-end and transmission businesses, was acquired by private equity firm Francisco Partners and resumed operating as an independent company on January 1, 2011. [6] Grass Valley still maintains offices worldwide. [7]
Grass Valley was sold to Belden on February 6, 2014, Belden also owns Miranda. [8]
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Philips invented the plumbicon pick up video camera tube in 1965; almost all of their color cameras used this award-winning tube. Starting with the LDK 90 camera, Philips used their Frame transfer CCD - Charge-coupled device. Philips' patented Dynamic Pixel Management (DPM) FT-17 CCD technology won awards and was first used in the 1994 LDK10 and LDK10p camera.
Philips-BTS product from Breda, Netherlands, professional video camera products:
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Philips early VTRs:
Telecine is the process of transferring film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in this post-production process.
A professional video camera is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images. Originally developed for use in television studios or with outside broadcast trucks, they are now also used for music videos, direct-to-video movies, corporate and educational videos, wedding videos, among other uses. Since the 2000s, most professional video cameras are digital professional video cameras.
Grass Valley is a manufacturer of television production and broadcasting equipment. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, it was formed by the March 2014 merger of the original Grass Valley with Miranda Technologies, which were both acquired by American networking company Belden in 2014 and 2012, respectively. In February 2018, owners Belden merged Grass Valley with newly-acquired Snell Advanced Media. On July 2, 2020, Grass Valley announced the completion of its acquisition by private equity firm Black Dragon Capital from Belden Inc.
Broadcast engineering is the field of electrical engineering, and now to some extent computer engineering and information technology, which deals with radio and television broadcasting. Audio engineering and RF engineering are also essential parts of broadcast engineering, being their own subsets of electrical engineering.
HD-MAC was a broadcast television standard proposed by the European Commission in 1986, as part of Eureka 95 project. It belongs to the MAC - Multiplexed Analogue Components standard family. It is an early attempt by the EEC to provide High-definition television (HDTV) in Europe. It is a complex mix of analogue signal, multiplexed with digital sound, and assistance data for decoding (DATV). The video signal was encoded with a modified D2-MAC encoder.
1–inch type B VTR is a reel-to-reel analog recording video tape format developed by the Bosch Fernseh division of Bosch in Germany in 1976. The magnetic tape format became the broadcasting standard in continental Europe, but adoption was limited in the United States and United Kingdom, where the Type C videotape VTR met with greater success.
Philips Norelco is the American brand name for electric shavers and other personal care products made by the Consumer Lifestyle division of Philips.
The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards are presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), while the separate Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards are given by its sister organization the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS).
Sony HDVS is a range of high-definition video equipment developed in the 1980s to support an early analog high-definition television system thought to be the broadcast television systems that would be in use today. The line included professional video cameras, video monitors and linear video editing systems.
A flying-spot scanner (FSS) uses a scanning source of a spot of light, such as a high-resolution, high-light-output, low-persistence cathode ray tube (CRT), to scan an image. Usually the image to be scanned is on photographic film, such as motion picture film, or a slide or photographic plate. The output of the scanner is usually a television signal.
TeleMation Inc. was a company specializing in products for the television industry, post-production and film industry, located in Salt Lake City, Utah. TeleMation started with a line of black-and-white video equipment, and later manufactured color video products. Lyle Keys was the founder and president of TeleMation, Inc., started in the late 1960s. Early equipment was for the B&W broadcast, cable television, and CCTV market.
The Fernseh AG television company was registered in Berlin on July 3, 1929, by John Logie Baird, Robert Bosch, Zeiss Ikon and D.S. Loewe as partners. John Baird owned Baird Television Ltd. in London, Zeiss Ikon was a camera company in Dresden, D.S. Loewe owned a company in Berlin and Robert Bosch owned a company, Robert Bosch GmbH, in Stuttgart. with an initial capital of 100,000 Reichsmark. Fernseh AG did research and manufacturing of television equipment.
A virtual telecine is a piece of video equipment that can play back data files in real time. The colorist-video operator controls the virtual telecine like a normal telecine, although without controls like focus and framing. The data files can be from a Spirit DataCine, motion picture film scanner, CGI animation computer, or an Acquisition professional video camera. The normal input data file standard is DPX. The output of data files are often used in digital intermediate post-production using a film recorder for film-out. The control room for the virtual telecine is called the color suite.
A film chain or film island is a television – professional video camera with one or more projectors aligned into the photographic lens of the camera. With two or more projectors a system of front-surface mirrors that can pop-up are used in a multiplexer. These mirrors switch different projectors into the camera lens. The camera could be fed live to air for broadcasting through a vision mixer or recorded to a VTR for post-production or later broadcast. In most TV use this has been replaced by a telecine.
D6 HDTV VTR is SMPTE videocassette standard. A D6 VTR can record and playback HDTV video uncompressed. The only D6 VTR product is the Philips, now Thomson's Grass Valley's Media Recorder, model DCR 6024, also called the D6 Voodoo VTR. The VTR was a joint project between Philips Digital Video Systems of Germany and Toshiba in Japan. The tape deck module was designed and made by Philips in Weiterstadt, Germany, and the digital processor module designed and made by Toshiba. Since there is no data compression, after 20 tape copies of multi generations there is no noticeable loss of quality. As a very high-end, costly system about 70 were sold to high-end post houses from about 2000 to 2005. The VTR had a data record option. The data module could record and play back 2k DPX files at 6 frames per second over a HIPPI connection. The VTR came in a data only model, or with a switch module, so the record deck could be used for both video and data recording. The tape deck was also sold stand alone as a giga bit recorder to record and playback raw data. Toshiba made the video tape for the VTR. The high price of the video tape limited the use of the VTR.
Amperex Electronic Corporation was a manufacturer of vacuum tubes and semiconductors.
Spirit DataCine is a telecine and a motion picture film scanner. This device is able to transfer 16mm and 35mm motion picture film to NTSC or PAL television standards or one of many High-definition television standards. With the data transfer option a Spirit DataCine can output DPX data files. The image pick up device is a solid state charge-coupled device. This eliminated the need for glass vacuum tube CRTs used on older telecines. The units can transfer negative film, primetime, intermediate film and print film, stock. One option is a Super 8 gate for the transfer of Super 8 mm film. With a sound pick up option, optical 16mm and 35mm sound can be reproduced, also 16mm magnetic strip sound. The unit can operate stand alone or be controlled by a scene by scene color corrector. Ken Burns created The Civil War, a short documentary film included in the DVD release, on how he used the Spirit DataCine to transfer and remaster this film. The operator of the unit is called a Colorist or Colorist Assistant. The Spirit DataCine has become the standard for high-end real-time film transfer and scanning. Over 370 units are used in post-production facilities around the world. Most current film productions are transferred on Spirit DataCines for Television, Digital television, Cable television, Satellite television, Direct-to-video, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, pay-per-view, In-flight entertainment, Stock footage, Dailies, Film preservation, digital intermediate and digital cinema. The Spirit DataCine is made by DFT Digital Film Technology GmbH in Darmstadt, Germany.
Electronovision was a process used by producer and entrepreneur H. William "Bill" Sargent, Jr. to produce a handful of motion pictures, theatrical plays, and specials in the 1960s and early 1970s using a high-resolution videotape process for production, later transferred to film via kinescope for theatrical release.
The 60th Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards was held on January 8, 2009 at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. CEO of Verizon Communications, Ivan Seidenberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award
The four-tube television camera, intended for color television studio use, was first developed by RCA in the early 1960s. In this camera, in addition to the usual complement of three tubes for the red, green and blue images, a fourth tube was included to provide luminance detail of a scene. With such a camera, a sharp black and white picture was always assured, as it was not necessary to combine signals from the three colour tubes to provide the luminance detail.
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