Sports personality of the year - the trophy

[Yellowtriumph]

The Marconi Mk I was essentially an RCA design. The Mk II looked quite similar but was homegrown. The start of a dynasty of fine cameras. The Mk IV in particular sold in large numebrs across the world. The Mk VII was their first colour camera, 4 tube Plumbicon, which again had very good sales. the Mk VIII was the world's first colour camera with automatic registration. The Mk IX was from a company in decline and the Mk X never got beyond prototype. A sad end.

I always thought the MKIX was capable of very good pictures in the workshop or 'steady state' conditions like a presentation studio for example, but it seemed to require lots of fine tuning to keep the pictures in that 'tip top' condition. In a major production studio there simply wasn't the time or engineering effort to keep on top of them and as a result you can see some very un-flattering pictures from them in the occasional archive repeat nowadays.

We had lots of them and I'm afraid they weren't liked. The portable versions were little used due to their unreliability and were eventually replaced with the Sony BVP330P as they (luckily?) matched the colorimetry of the MKIX but of course were ultra reliant. I know Marconi sold lots of them, quite how I don't know perhaps because management thought the holy grail of no, or little, alignment outside of the automatics would result in cost reductions. I do not post simply to be critical - I was a fan, but the truth is they weren't liked around the ITV network. I used to work with the lady who designed the Mk VIII and IX automatics, a very pleasant and most professional engineer.