EEVblog - 2014-01-17
Ever wondered how they transmit your TV signal? David Kilpatrick from TXAustralia takes us on a detailed tour of the old decommissioned 10kW analog TV transmission system at the Artarmon facility in Sydney. It is still used to transmit digital TV. How it all works from the broadcaster video input to final transmission output up the 180m broadcast antenna. Plus some teardowns of the old equipment that's been used to transmit the Channel 7 TV signal in Sydney since 1981. Copper rigid coaxial lines, waveguides, filters, splitters, combiners, converters, transmission valve, power supplies and all the equipment necessary to transmit a 10kW analog or digital TV signal in a major city like Sydney. The end of Australian analog TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q_S0Fk3dyM Teardown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmyYYKFePz4 David is happy to answer technical questions on the forum: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-569-tour-of-an-analog-tv-transmission-facility/ EEVblog Main Web Site: http://www.eevblog.com EEVblog Amazon Store: http://astore.amazon.com/eevblogstore-20 Donations: http://www.eevblog.com/donations/ Projects: http://www.eevblog.com/projects/ Electronics Info Wiki: http://www.eevblog.com/wiki/
Big props to the company for letting you record in there and letting their employee show you around.
It is amazing how electronics were built to last for so long, yet today crap lasts for a year when the warranty expires and you buy a new one. What happened.... I am sure our engineers have only gotten better so it is not that. Oh let me guess...save costs.
I will tell you what happened. It went 100 times cheaper. Those thing s they are showing, they costed ABSOLUTELY ASTRONOMICAL amounts of money. Sure, they were built like a tank, because they costed like one. Today you can also get good stuff, but it's price is absolutely sky high.
Amazing. When I was younger, my dad was always arranging for me to visit these types of installations, but these days people are 2 jumpy. I can't even get my son into the server room at work!
@Joshua Rosen ours is an emergency stop button, only 15% are server grade drives, a jolt on a wd blue can screw up data on a RAID server
@Dragonfire Productions We had an emergency stop once. Our power failed catastrophically and despite having two UPSs the size of transport containers, they both blew up due to an idiotic wiring failure. It was literally like someone pulling the plug (only with a small bang and a bit of smoke from the UPSs). In the whole large data centre we only had a single piece of kit fail and that was a minor network switch. All the servers (mostly HP-UX servers but also including two IBM mainframes) and SAN recovered fine and the only lost data related to the transactions actually in progress during the failure.
I was amazed at how little was damaged. It still took us two days to turn everything back on though. Fortunately all our kit was server grade even if a lot of it was fairly old.
@Joshua Rosen i actually was asked to assemble a cache server with switches, routers and servers that literally have dust and rat crap on it 😂
@Dragonfire Productions I hope they pay you well but judging by their attitude to the hardware, I'm going to guess they don't. Don't forget to wear gloves.
@Dragonfire Productions GOOD GOD lol
High Voltage Porn! Great tour
I have to admit, my pulse quickened when he opened the doors to the power amplifier. He then raised the chimney that moves cooling air to the valve...
When he reached in and pulled that tube out of it's socket, I nearly lost it.
My god, the build quality...
I have visited a TV station (where they wouldn't let anyone near real RF) and a 50KW radio station (where they would let electronics students see some of the relic emergency, low power, back up equipment.) But I have never seen even good photographs of what real, live TV RF looks like. This is as close to being there as I will ever get. Thanks much.
The radio station's backup had an ancient, gigantic tube with a solid silver plate, and solid silver coil. The technician told the story that how there got to be solid silver parts was during WWII, when the government's policy required all major amounts of copper to be allocated to the war effort (even new US pennies were not copper), and these kind of parts fell under the rule. The government however had abundant silver, as backing for money. So radio broadcast equipment got allocated silver as a substitute (which was paid for in full, not a gift.)
The longer the videos the better. Thumbs up! Thanks
It's basically a complete dump of the raw video as it was shot, almost no editing.
@EEVblog This is just perfect, love it. Why to waste time for editing>> :)
Loved the security guard in the background at the end - "errrr...is he supposed to be taking that?"
i didn't understand any of this but i loved it! so cool
David Kilpatrick knows his Apples from his Pears. I am stunned at the condition, it looked brand new, every part of it was perfect. Great tour...
I was thinking the same
0:56:20 - NOT an LCD display - It's an Orange Gas-plasma display - those are absolutely beautiful!
those are rare displays now-a-days
What a fantastic video. I love how clean the place is.
Indeed!
Impressive, Dave! Your guest is extremely knowledgeable, as are you.
I never knew so much went into analog transmission.
Thanks! :)
David certainly know his stuff. He is answering tech questions over on the forum.
What's impressive to me is how clean everything is. No dust inside any of those cabinets. Did they clean it for you, or was that normal operating condition?
These rooms - like datacenters - are highly environmentally controlled. The air is filtered by the air conditioning system so there will simply be no dust to accumulate. It's not like a "clean room" but a lot cleaner than e.g. an office environment.
Been waiting for this one. I love powerful transmitters.
It's a series of tubes....
Thank you Mr. Jones, this was really cool! Analogue may have been shit, but it had charachter :)
Great vid, and what a nice + informative guy he is! Well done.
Yes David really knows his stuff and comes across very well.
Dave you have the best videos on YouTube about electronics! I have learned so much! This one is like porn for geeks! Thanks for all the hard work posting these! I think I heard that you are getting these if so I am so envious! Keep em coming!
1981. Looks like they were only just manufactured yesterday, beautiful :-)
I'd be pretty concerned when that guy casually bypassed all the interlocks and turned the amplifier on, even after he'd told me the entire transmitter had no power.
That is the reason why they cut off the connection between the old analog stuff and the main bus.
@LenP Yes but you always double check things like that. (Because if you're wrong about the power being disconnected, you could die).
@Alex C, oh, sorry. I misunderstood you. You are right... ;-)
I would take all of that in a heart beat and tear it apart!!!!!!
"Thats a huge rectifier", I've seen a huge rectifier before, a Siemens 25KA rectifier as big as four of those cabinets put together.
Phwoar, electronic porn! I love it ;-)
Like a kid in a candy store....
Awesome one of your best videos ever. Wish it had been a bit longer.
Love the guy checking what was going on at 1:01:07
I thought CIND meant Complex Intricate Nearly Demonic so at least he got Impedance right.
That was pretty sweet...I've always wondered what one of these plants look like in the cable industry as I work in the telephone industry and know CO's inside and out. Big differences between the two. So does this station only power the antenna or do you guys have cable too that runs underground to houses and such that it sends transmissions through too?
It is just a transmitter, no cable stuff.
That was really cool! Really looking forward to the teardown :)
Thank you. So amazing . More knowledge .
What about a "teardown month" for all of this? :)
Dave & Dave were fantastic! Amazing insight into the Commercial Dark Arts!
Amazing !
And all this is going to be destroyed...
Well, we can do nothing.
Hey, Dave, we want the transmitter teardown video !
...smell of the past! Best video ever!!!
If you could make a video of how a telephone exchange works and to see how the switch for mobile network works for a Telstra . I have been inside a Telstra telephone exchange and they are very impressive for a tour. They are racks of circuit boards. This would be something you would find very interesting and it would be an experence to see a Telstra exchange running before the NBN takes over the copper network.
+Sean Zappulla you can watch a lot of old videos here about AT&T and some of the old switches. I worked for AT&T when they still have N Carrier, Step by Step and CrossBar switches in operation. All of it was removed back the 1980's. I would have liked to work on them but I was a T-Carrier tech. It was fun to watch those old switches in operation, the new ESS machines don't have any moving parts.
WOW!!! WOW!!! WOW!!!!! THANKS DAVE!!!!
53:46 this looks a little sugestive :D
lol. I kept replaying that part. I couldn't stop laughing. xd
So clean it's like porn for people with OCD!
That was absolutely amazing, Dave !
Thank you so much for sharing this !
Amazing that there hardly seems to be a speck of dust in or on anything!
4:48 I love how that dial has already gone around fully!
I remember his first words: "Hey, hey!, Hang on!" :)
Good to see he is a nice guy!
(Tv transmitter teardown teaser (1:35)
Great video. It's a real pleasure to listen to someone who clearly knows what they are talking about and can explain it clearly.
David shure knows his stuff, thanks Dave for this great tour ! Really enjoyed it.
This is probably my favourite video of yours so far Dave. Thanks so much
47:02 looks like dalek technology
K7AGE - 2014-01-17
The 33 year old NEC transmitter looks brand new inside.
changedNikiWin - 2018-03-09
yee
Tested to Destruction - 2019-10-09
Nerdgasm lol
Herman Willems - 2019-12-21
Today here in Netherlands the only Analogue thing we have left is AM radio. FM is going to dissapear in a few years aswell. Analogue TV is already gone.
Reinoud Van Beek - 2020-01-17
@Herman Willems do you mean am?
Herman Willems - 2020-01-18
@Reinoud Van Beek Ja Amplitude Modulatie.