By C. Robert Paulson, Television Microtime, Inc.
The modern-day Japanese made television receiver with a Sony Trinitron picture tube is the world's finest time base corrector. Connected directly to the output of a low-cost cassette or open-reel VTR, the receiver's fast-acting lock up circuits track the sync and subcarrier frequencies from the VTR, and mask head switch point skew tension errors of many microseconds. Just about the only problem the receiver can't handle is the inability of the VTR to track an improperly recorded interchanged tape.
Substitute an older, marginally maintained receiver, or even a new unit with long time constant AFC circuits designed for fringe area reception, and the picture changes. There's flagwaving at the top of the picture, perhaps vertical jumpiness, and the color may not lock up. Precisely the same picture chaos results in a teleproduction application, when an attempt is made to mix the VTR output with a camera locked to it through even t~ most expensive of proc amps. Assemble or insert editing of tape segments into a second generation edited master has also been impossible, and even second generation dubs of continuous tape recordings lose all of the first generation's color freshness and pick up almost intolerable noise and jitter.