I'm watching the Rages first edition of countdown now from 21st September 1980, and toward the end of George Benson's "Give me the night", and through to the start of Martha and the Muffins "Echo Beach" the sound was skipping, with the picture jerking around. I hope this was just my reception, not Media hub messing up, can anyone please confirm. Thanks

Hmmmm,

It must be your reception as I am sure mine had no sound problems or skipping...

I noticed a brief sound dip (no sound) when lead singer Martha from Martha & The Muffins was speaking.

This was about ten minutes in, the near end of George Benson's video went all jerky, and they were severl quick dropouts in the sound through to the start of Echo Beach. I was taping, and also watching it live, so yeah, I was really P'Oed when it happened.

It's looking like a reception problem on my side. Incredible, when thinking my reception has been good the last few weeks, I guess there is always the Murphy Law factor to these things. Digital reception in Sydney has always been a hit and miss mess, I live about 25-30k from the CBD. Analog wasn't the best, but it least it didn't skip and mess up like digital. :(

It was a funny old episode, but I mostly enjoyed it. Where else would you get David Bowie, Kate Bush, John Farnham, The Korgis and James Freud on one show?

It captured that musical diversity Countdown was known for very well - although I was somewhat perplexed as to why it chose to air an old Hush song at the end of the show - didn't seem to be any particular reason for it.

Nice seeing the Time Warp played as well - Rocky Horror was massively popular here in Adelaide - particularly at the Chelsea cinema were that film seemed to be shown forever - with audiences wearing fishnet stockings to match!

Pat do you remember the Time Warp being done on the Young Talent Time show? Minus the transvestitism of course.

Yes Mark, Digital TV can be f@#ked sometimes. I have a small digital TV in my bedroom and when I turn it on, it takes about 5 minutes to get a signal and pixelates and you always have to play around with the airiel. P i s s e s me off and I have tried all types of airials and I find the cheapier ones work the best, well slight improvement.

@Kyron

Sadly I never saw the YTT team do the Time Warp - I'm sure it would have been......interesting.

I did however get to see them sing several Village People songs such as Can't Stop the Music, etc. I'm not ashamed to say I used to watch YTT quite regularly back in the day - mainly the late 70's/early to mid 80's period of course.

One assumes the YTT music conductor would have looked at Countdown every week to see which songs the Talent Team could use the following week - wonder if he taped them and still has the tapes? One could only wish!

I asked my wife who is, sorry was a massive follower of YTT, and she says is the only reason she knows so many 80's songs! She definitely confirmed that they did infact do a version of Time Warp, albeit much more tamer. AND.... may even have it on video tape somewhere at her mother's house, but finding it maybe another thing.....

I know this is getting way off topic - sorry Jason! - but in regards to YTT there are over 200 episodes of the show missing from the archives.

This is mainly from around 1975 - 79...and is documented in the YTT doco of a few years ago - 'Young Talent Time Tells All'.

Anyone who has any from this era on tape are encouraged to let the appropriate people know about it as they are valuable from a historical perspective. The same goes for any Countdowns from 1974 - 79 of course.

It's always around Retro season that I'm reminded of what a tragedy it is that so many of these classic shows were wiped, but as many from here and other sites have suggested, there are tons of old videotapes out there waiting to be discovered with untold riches hidden among them.....

I still have my stereo betamax machine if anyone comes across any betamax tapes they'd like me to check or dub off :-)

Please please and again please do not use stereo Betamax machines on pre-1980s tapes, stero Betamax's cannot read the older mono tapes properly. The stereo track on the tape occupies the exact same space as the formats original mono track and while the machine can pick up the mono track the sound comes though incredibly muffled and/or buried in hiss. The later models with stereo also have trouble tracking tapes from the old top loading machines.

An example:
http://www.wolfgame.org/files/v/Video_0418-1453(CVBS).mpg

Which is why I also have a Sanyo VTC-5005 machine :)

As soon as I heard about mediahub I knew what was on the way.

Mediahub is the result of the Howard government stacking the ABC board with right wing ninnies who are convinced that privatisation and 'contracting out' are solutions to problems. They only make things worse.

If mediahub were a person I wouldn't trust him to sit the right way round on a toilet seat.