Broadcast Television Systems (BTS) was a joint venture between
Robert Bosch GmbH
Robert Bosch GmbH (; ), commonly known as Bosch and stylized as BOSCH, is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen, Germany. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 1886. Bosch is 9 ...
's
Fernseh Division and
Philips Broadcast in
Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
,
Netherlands, formed in 1986.
History
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 Salt Lake City. Also in 1991, BTS Latin America headed by Mario Castellanos 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
Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...
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 Grou
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. 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. In 2013 DFT moved from Weiterstadt to
Arheilgen-Darmstadt, Germany.
Grass Valley operated offices in the cities of all the former acquisitions:
*
Cergy,
France (Thomson World Headquarters)
*
Salt Lake City, Utah,
USA - from
TeleMation Inc.
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 colo ...
-
Bell and Howell - BTS
*
Beaverton, Oregon
Beaverton is a city in Washington County, in the U.S. state of Oregon with a small portion bordering Portland in the Tualatin Valley. The city is among the main cities that make up the Portland metropolitan area. Its population was 97,494 at the ...
, USA - from
Tektronix
*
Nevada City, California, USA - from Grass Valley Group
*
Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
,
Netherlands - from
Philips -
Norelco - BTS
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.
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. Grass Valley still maintains offices worldwide.
Grass Valley was sold to
Belden on February 6, 2014, Belden also owns Miranda.
Products
See:
*
Fernseh - for German-made products
*
TeleMation Inc.
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 colo ...
for SLC products.
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
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
-
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
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
,
Netherlands,
professional video camera products:
*EL-8020 B&W Studio 5 fixed lens
*LDK2 1970s Norelco
*LDH10 Norelco
*LDH20 Norelco
*LDH-0200 Studio Norelco
*LDK3 Studio PC-80 Norelco
*LDK4800 ? Triax repeter ? Camera ?
*LDK5 1971 Studio 3 tubes Philips
*LDK6 1982 Studio 3 tubes Norelco/BTS
*LDK9P BTS CCD 1993 HandHeld
*LDK10 BTS DPM CCD 1994
*LDK10P BTS DPM CCD 1994
*LDK11 1976 ENG Backpack Norelco
*LDK12 ENG
*LDK13 1971 ENG Backpack Norelco
*LDK14 1977 ENG 3 tubes Philips
[Archive photos H02](_blank)
/ref>
*LDK15 1974? ENG Norelco
Awards
*Outstanding Achievement in Technical/Engineering Development Awards from National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
**1966-1967 PLUMBICON TUBE - N.V. Philips -Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
**1987-1988 FGS 4000 computer animation system CGI- BTS -SLC, UT
**1991-1992 Triaxial cable Technology for Color Television Cameras -N.V. Philips -Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
**1992-1993 Prism Technology for Color Television Cameras -N.V. Philips -Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
**1993-1994 Controlled Edge Enhancement Utilizing Skin Hue KeyingBTS and Ikegami (Joint Award) -Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
**1997-1998 Development of a High Resolution Digital Film Scanner Eastman Kodak and Philips Germany. See Spirit DataCine
**2000-2001 Pioneering developments in shared video-data storage systems for use in television video servers - BTS/Philips/Thomson/ - SLC, UT
**2002-2003 Technology to simultaneously encode multiple video qualities and the corresponding metadata to enable real-time conformance and / or playout of the higher quality video (nominally broadcast) based on the decisions made using the lower quality proxies Montage. Philips and Thomson.
Photo gallery
File:TV-camera.jpg, BTS -Philips LDK 10
File:TV-camera-1.jpg, BTS -Philips LDK 10 from rear
File:BNC HDTV VTR-type B deck.jpg, BCH-1000 HDTV Type B VTR
File:BTS Quadra 444 Telecine.JPG, Quadra Telecine Film Deck
Image:SDC-2000 Spirit DataCine Telecine.JPG, Early SDC-2000 Spirit DataCine was made by BTS
File:Vbtsd1a.JPG, BTS D1 VTR DCR500
See also
* Fernseh
*TeleMation Inc.
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 colo ...
* Philips
*Robert Bosch GmbH
Robert Bosch GmbH (; ), commonly known as Bosch and stylized as BOSCH, is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen, Germany. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 1886. Bosch is 9 ...
* Norelco
* Grass Valley (company)
* Thomson SA
* Professional video camera
References
tmquest.com onBTS Productthefreelibrary.com On BTSthefreelibrary.com
On BTS, ABC'S KGO-TV Picks BTS Video Server to Go All Digital; Also Pilot Program For ABC-OWNED Stations
BTS Patents
electronics.zibb.com BTS Trademarksbusiness.highbeam.com
BC plans playback for disk-based server; its San Francisco O&O also plots Media Pool project. (owned-and-operated television station; BTS Broadcast Television Systems Inc. Media Pool server), Article from: Broadcasting & Cable , May 15, 1995 , McConnell, Chris
business.highbeam.com
New cable networks going digital. (includes related article on Game Show Network) Article from: Broadcasting & Cable , January 9, 1995 , McConnell, Chris
business.highbeam.com
Media Pool tests the tapeless waters. (BTS digital disk-based recorder), Article from: Broadcasting & Cable , July 18, 1994 , McConnell, Chris
KGO-TV picks BTS' Media Pool Video Server to provide all-digital system of the future. Las Vegas, Nev.--(Business Wire)--April 11, 1995—KGO-TV,
smpte.org
138th SMPTE Technical Conference Technical Papers Program, October 10–11, 1996, Los Angeles, Calif., Media Pool — Flexible Video Server Design for Television Broadcasting, by Charlie Bernstein1
BTS, System and method for enabling a data/video server]
trademarks.justia.com
Compositor I - Trademark Details
Compositor I By: BTS-Broadcast Television Systems, Inc.
emmyonline.tv
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Outstanding Achievement in Technical/Engineering Development Awards, BTS Broadcast Television Systems, Inc. To BTS in recognition of their engineering contribution in 3D computer graphic technology and for development of the FGS 4000 computer animation system.
MACH ONE - Trademark Details.
MACH ONE By: BTS-Broadcast Television Systems, Inc.
The History of Television, 1942 to 2000
By Albert Abramson, Christopher H. Sterling, Page 304]
trademarkia.com
PIXELERATOR, By: BTS-Broadcast Television Systems, Inc., High-Speed Rendering Computer Processor For Use In Computer Graphics Application.
broadcasting101.ws
BTS Logo
www.broadcasting101.ws
LDK91 Camera
broadcasting101.ws
LDK910 camera
broadcasting101.ws
LDK-9000
www.broadcasting101.ws
BTS OB Van
List of BTS cameras
LDK614
XQ3427B Plumbicon camera tube.
tvcameramuseum.org
LDK 6
LDH 200
LDK 11
LDK 12
LDK 13
LDK 14
LDK 15
LDK 2
LDK 25
tvcameramuseum.org
LDK 26
LDK 3
LDK 44
LDK 54
PC 60
* vcameramuseum.orgLDK 54
tvcameramuseum.org
List of cameras
EL 8000 cam
External links
BTS Awards Page 8 and 11Thomson Grassvalley CamerasThe Museum of the Broadcast TV cameraBTS/Thomson/Grass valley Hi-res Photo Archive
*Cameras:
EL-8020
PC-70
PC-72
PCP-90
LDH-1
LDK-5
LDK-6
LDK-300
LDK-6200
{{Video storage formats
Electronics companies of the Netherlands
Philips
Film and video technology
Cameras
Video storage
Film production
Technicolor SA