I’ve split this into the Audio Visual section.

With radio studios in the UK there was a “Buy British” policy for both the BBC and IBA/ILR which persisted into the 1980s, but Garrard had folded by then as its then owners Plessey hadn’t invested in the company and had diverted its best staff to other defence/aerospace projects.

The British have actually made many achievements in AV technology but not taken them forward as it was seen as frivolous (I noticed this attitude myself even as late as the 1990s when I was briefly at University).

@kaza 515359 wrote:

Not sure how much I can agree with that, the taking them forward part that is, especially with the prevalence of the PAL system worldwide. Purely audio it is less, but still a fair amount of involvement with both early and current digital audio.

The Germans invented PAL, but worked closely with the BBC. Getting PAL television sets affordable across Europe was a joint effort of companies in NL / DE / DK / UK, with Phillips(NL) and Pye(UK) working together, as well as the EBU coordinating the efforts of the broadcasters. The famous PM5544 testcard was developed in DK rather than NL though (I didn’t realise this until recently!)

Lots of old boys here hoard and restore vintage TV sets as they were made in South London, Essex and Lowestoft.

PAL was developed by Walter Bruch at Telefunken in Germany. The format was unveiled in 1963, with the first broadcasts beginning in the United Kingdom and West Germany in 1967[1]—the one BBC channel initially using the broadcast standard was BBC2 which had been the first UK TV service to introduce “625-lines” in 1964. Telefunken PALcolor 708T was the first PAL commercial TV set. It was followed by Loewe S 920 & F 900.

PAL – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

about 4 weeks rather than 4 years,

UK – 1967-07-01 Wimbledon Tennis Championships

DE – 1967-07-25 special broadcast

[yt]B3Ci9MjybjA[/yt]

I did look for a youtube of the Tennis broadcast but could not find one…

Got a scan of a entire engineers notebook bookmarked somewhere from a then young German chap who was working with BBC Radio when they were exchanging audio content in 1977 using the EBU circuits for a classical music concert (all analogue in those days) and a Siemens/Halske “circuit ideas from 1971/1972 databook” (I was born in 1972) when colour telly was a new thing – its amazing how much even in my lifetime technology has progressed.

I used to work for a company making broadcast signal processing and distribution kit, and for the reasons you mention many European facilities in SECAM countries were also early adopters of component video but there was transcoding enroute to the TX site, often overseen by the telecoms companies who owned the TX sites. Especially in France any amount of this kit would go spectacularly wrong, and I got used to grown men ringing me up and actually bursting into tears when this happened, and I’d have to try and reassure them in my best French…

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been reading about “white space devices” on the vacated UHF TV channels and been wondering if its possible to hack the firmware and make the kit put out a DVB-T signal 😉

I have to still remember things like this even for my paid work (often you get these activities coordinators at the homes for the elderly who sing old cockney knees up songs and use wireless mics, but there is also a DVB-T coax network throughout the building for TV sets in residents’ rooms), and if any of this kit plays up folk tend to ask me if I can do anything to sort it out (I look after all the IT, telecoms and other kit found in these healthcare facilities)

the reallocations are EU-wide and this link contains the main documents for much of North Europe…

http://www.partyvibe.com/forums/sound-engineering/54299-eu-mcs-vocalists-aware-frequency.html