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The term kinescope originally referred to a type of early video camera tube.
Today the term more commonly refers to a kinescope recording (kine for short; also known as a telerecording in the UK). In this sense, a kinescope is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a television monitor. Alternatively, it can refer to the equipment used for this procedure: basically a 16 mm or 35 mm movie camera mounted in front of a TV monitor, specially synchronized to the monitor's scanning rate.
In 1947, Kodak introduced the Eastman Television Recording Camera, in cooperation with DuMont Laboratories, Inc. and NBC, for recording images from a television screen. Even though their quality left much to be desired, kinescopes were initially the only way to nationally broadcast the live performances of early television from New York or other originating cities to stations not connected to the network, or to repeat a broadcast for stations in different time zones. Television programs of all types, from prestigious dramas to regular news shows, were handled in this manner. By the mid-1950s, the use of this crude and expensive method of time shifting meant that the television industry's film consumption surpassed that of all of the Hollywood studios combined.*
In 1951, the stars of I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, decided to shoot their show directly onto 35 mm film using the three-camera ECAM system, instead of broadcasting it live. As an article in American Cinematographer explained,
- In the beginning there was a very definite reason for the decision of Desilu Productions to put I Love Lucy on film instead of doing it live and having kinescope recordings carry it to affiliate outlets of the network. The company was not satisfied with the quality of kinescopes. It saw that film, produced especially for television, was the only means of insuring top quality pictures on the home receiver as well as insuring a flawless show.
The program director of the short-lived DuMont Television Network, James Caddigan, devised an interesting but somewhat impractical alternative: the Electronicam. In this system, all the studio TV cameras had built-in 35 mm film cameras which shared the same optical path. An Electronicam "editor" threw switches to mark the film footage electronically, to code the camera shots called by the director; the corresponding film segments from the various cameras then were combined by a film editor to duplicate the live program.
As new technologies for storing video became available, kinescopes slowly began to fade in importance: In 1951, singer Bing Crosby's company Bing Crosby Enterprises made the first experimental magnetic video recordings; however, the poor picture quality and very high tape speed meant it would be of limited use. By 1953, with the coaxial cable that carried network programs across the country complete, CBS and NBC instituted a "hot kinescope" process which recorded shows onto film in Los Angeles as they were fed over the coaxial cable, then processed the film in time for the repeat airing on the West Coast three hours later. In 1956, Ampex introduced the first commercial Quadruplex videotape recorder, which was followed in 1958 by a color model.
The networks continued to make kinescopes of their daytime dramas available as late as 1969 for their smaller network affiliates that did not yet have videotape capability but wished to time shift the network programming. Many episodes from the 1960s survive only through kinescope copies. The last 16 mm kinescope copies of television programs were made up to the late 1970s, as video tape recorders became more affordable.
For information on the use of kinescope recordings in Britain see Telerecording.
A kinescope image looks less fluid than an original live or videotaped program, because normal film has only 24 frames per second, as opposed to the 60 or 50 half-frames or fields used by video. Some kinescopes filmed the television pictures at the same frame rate of 25 or 30 full frames per second, resulting in more faithful picture quality than those that recorded at 24 frames per second.
In recent years, the BBC has introduced a video process called VidFIRE, which can restore kinescope recordings to their original appearance by interpolating video fields between the film frames.
External links
"Kinescope"