Come inside auntie

[Sebastian Cobb]

Fontgasm

Edit: Fast forward three months and somebody's pinched it

how do you change the time?

[the]

how do you change the time?

You can't AFAIK - when you move about on Streetview (and this is true of anywhere), sometimes the image one step along is captured from a different point in time. That's what happened here - the pic from the entranceway is from Feb 2013, shuffle to the right and it's from May.

I've seen the same effect where a building suddenly gets demolished as you scoot past it.

[the]

Reasonably sure this is the former Studio 1, home of a lot of the TV ghosts that populate my subconscious.  Morecambe and Wise Christmas shows recorded here?  Dunno.

Sign on the door says Studio 4. This is Studio 1.

[Dex Sawash]

[tag] Quincy, M.E. struggles with homophone [/tag]

[buzby]

Maybe this link works : spaghetti for tea ?

Thats the patch room next door to the Central Apparatus Room on the third floor. The Central Apparatus Room is where all the audio/video feed switching took place, between the studios and VT department, and out to the Network Switching Centre at the Post Office Tower. Some of those thick coax cables and optical fibres in the frames probably head off to the NSC. There was also a Spur Central Apparatus Room (SCAR) which had it's own patch room in the lower ground floor of the News Centre annexe which managed all the fixed line and satellite feeds for news programmes..


Blue Peter and a load of CBBC sets in the Scenery Dock
BBC Canteen

[Twed]

Trying to find a system in a rack that might have my (old) code on. Unfortunately they would be that blue colour, which is the default after beige and raw metal.

[hamfist]

Trying to find a system in a rack that might have my (old) code on. Unfortunately they would be that blue colour, which is the default after beige and raw metal.

Some blue hardware in the Spur Patch Room buzby posted above

[buzby]

Some blue hardware in the Spur Patch Room buzby posted above

They are Bluebell Opticom BC100 subracks (actually the back side of them). They make electrical to optical interface converters and multiplexers for audio, video and IP, but the actual modules are installed in the other side of the rack. There's also a DELEC audio-to-IP intercom converter/switch in one of the racks, which was probably used to manage the talkback links between the studios and production galleries.

The lighting balcony in Studio TC3 where Tina Charles sang I Love To Love live for the Christmas 1976 edition of TOTP (it was recorded prior to the rest of the show and played in from VT)

[buzby]

Fontgasm

Edit: Fast forward three months and somebody's pinched it

Good old Stymie Black Italic

[the]

Good old Stymie Black Italic

Indeed. I always love it when you drive past a library or something out in the middle of nowhere that still has those plastic letters for signage.

Washington below it is the real beauty. Here's a post about it from TV graphics detective and recreator Dave Jeffery.

[Cuellar]

How many historic sex offenses have you found? My count is 3 so far!!!

[Sebastian Cobb]

Thats the patch room next door to the Central Apparatus Room on the third floor.

That looks like the Master Control Room to me. The Apparatus Room would hold the hardware feeding all the screens and buttons in MCR (and for one of that size I'd imagine it to be deafening).

[Norton Canes]

Marvellously unconvincing description of BBC2

BBC PARLIAMENT: DEMOCRACY INACTION

[Norton Canes]

How many historic sex offenses have you found? My count is 3 so far!!!

Currently hiding from John Nathan-Turner under a table

[buzby]

That looks like the Master Control Room to me. The Apparatus Room would hold the hardware feeding all the screens and buttons in MCR (and for one of that size I'd imagine it to be deafening).

The Central Appratus Room was it's historic name (the BBC never used the industry-standard MCR term, allegedy to avoid confusion with Manchester). It was later renamed the Central Communications Area when Satellite Ops, the International Control Room and the remote control desk for BBC Scotland were moved into there. Here's what the CAR looked like in 1964:

As it got modernised all the (by now not-so) heavy equipment got shifted into the distribution frame room next door.

Currently hiding from John Nathan-Turner under a table

Attempting to beat him off with the script for episode 2 of Timelash?

[Chollis]

Gonna give Sarah a call after work

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5096373,-0.2257612,2a,15y,174.71h,83.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQBXV-dxQZKyWWSB7Zc-b5w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[buzby]

Gonna give Sarah a call after work

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5096373,-0.2257612,2a,15y,174.71h,83.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQBXV-dxQZKyWWSB7Zc-b5w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Given it's in the Weather office, I hope that isn't Sarah Keith-Lucas' number. She appears to have some kind of weirdo stalker who has hundreds of screencaps of her on Flickr.

[link removed by request]

[hamfist]

Given it's in the Weather office, I hope that isn't Sarah Keith-Lucas' number. She appears to have some kind of weirdo stalker who has hundreds of screencaps of her on Flickr.

Possibly ! She's mentioned on this whiteboard

[BlodwynPig]

KITCHENS

[Twed]

Given it's in the Weather office, I hope that isn't Sarah Keith-Lucas' number. She appears to have some kind of weirdo stalker who has hundreds of screencaps of her on Flickr.

So that's what happened to Rob's Celebs.

This entire thing is a security nightmare.

[Ambient Sheep]

This is brilliant!

Seeing this...

Maybe this link works : spaghetti for tea ?

...I'm now trying to find the site of my favourite and possibly most (in)famous Peter's Mad Thought:

...With one swift flick of the wrist I could have taken the whole of the BBC's digital services off the air...

...but sadly I suspect it's inaccessible.  If my 16/17-year-old memory is correct it's just through this door -- the one marked Fire Exit with no white chevron pointing through it (you'll need to tilt the camera up, I can't get it to stop pointing at the floor for some reason).

The rack you can see is the near end of the one I was working on.  I was up the other end of it, about 12ft along it near the far end, and the power breaker was mounted on the wall opposite it (about 15ft along the left-hand wall through that doorway).

A bit miffed that I can actually wander through loads of other racks (including some with other bits of my ex-company's kit) but not the one I've told that story about for so many years...

[Ambient Sheep]

If you select floor 5 you get signs by the lifts that say "7", although on the floor itself by one of the doors it does actually say "5".

No wonder people used to say how they got lost in there.

[Twed]

Some blue hardware in the Spur Patch Room buzby posted above

Ah! Thanks. But no. I'm looking for a Polistream from "Screen". They might not make them anymore, they might not be blue anymore and they might not have my code on there anymore so it's a bit of a vain task. I appreciate the help!

[Pauline Walnuts]

https://goo.gl/maps/TStp5WXRU7t
You would they have more up to date equipment wouldn't you?

[buzby]

https://goo.gl/maps/TStp5WXRU7t
You would they have more up to date equipment wouldn't you?

That looks like it might be one of the sets from An Adventure In Space And Time - it was the last thing filmed at TV Centre (February 2013, the same month that the Streetview was taken) and there are calendars on the wall for January & February 1963. There's a load of gear in the corridor outside too.

It's a bit disappointing they didn't allow the Streetview camera into the BBC Club (4th floor). Has anyone else seen Tracy Island (though it doesn't appear to be the original one) and Gordon the Gopher with his little red Strat guitar?

Looking round this place gives me a real sense of ennui - seeing all the remaining staff squashed up into one office area and the mostly-empty stripped out buildings reminds me of when Marconi went bankrupt and a handful of us were kept on in one floor of the massive, empty ex-Plessey site in Edge Lane to finish work off for Ericcson, who had bought the company's assets in the resulting fire sale and were stripping out all the equipment out (right down the CAT5 cables in the desks) to take down the remaining ex-GEC site in Coventry.

All the office furniture had been sold off too, and we had to put hazard tape on the floor around our desks to tell the Polish blokes who where loading it up into arctic trailers overnight not to take our stuff away too.

[Twed]

edit glitch removal person go eat a cake slacker

[the]

Surprised this didn't get more attention:

The 7 Don'ts of Entertainment Development

Isn't this basically the Rosetta Stone of shit telly as we know it?

     

[Pauline Walnuts]

That looks like it might be one of the sets from An Adventure In Space And Time - it was the last thing filmed at TV Centre (February 2013, the same month that the Streetview was taken) and there are calendars on the wall for January & February 1963. There's a load of gear in the corridor outside too.

https://goo.gl/maps/PjGqSPvD8ow



Con-Firmed

Wait, that was Blake's 7 wasn't it?

[jobotic]

Am I meant to hear the thread title in Alan Bennett's voice?

[Twed]

Yes, mental!