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It would be interesting for someone to compile a "genealogy" of
video and audio equipment manufacturers. As a former hardware dealer, we dealt
with a number of mostly US manufacturers that are no longer in existence, and
many were off-shoots from or combinations of other companies and individuals.
It's been interesting (and sometimes sad) to watch the transitions take place.
DPS was an excellent company to work with, and seemed to remain largely intact
after being acquired by Leitch who was also very supportive of their
customers. A similar situation with HEDCO (Hughes Electronic Devices Co.)
which was also acquired by Leitch. And the same story with Videotek. Then, all
were acquired by Harris.
There are many other "relationships" that evolved over the years and
individuals that continued to innovate for generations and through multiple
companies. Bill Hendershot is a prime example (pun intended) of someone who
left his mark on the industry many times. There certainly were others, and
remembering some of them makes me realize how long ago I started in this
business!
Don Norwood
Digitrak Communications, Inc.
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DPS was "Digital Processing Systems". They went back to the
1970s at least.
I worked at WBBH where they had a DPS Frame Sync. When I got to the
station in 1988, the DPS had already been replaced with a newer Harris
unit, but they still called it DPS. I have a photo from 1979 of a pretty
girl sitting next to the DPS.
I had folks at WBBH tell me stories of yanking cards out of the DPS
frame to "create" effects.
So, DPS had been around for awhile before the Amiga and they jumped
aboard the Video Toaster bandwagon.
They took advantage of an Amiga 200(0) feature. The 2000 had four ISA
slots that were unconnected to the computer's bus, but had power. (Can
explain why if interested) DPS built their cards to draw power from the
motherboard, but had serial data connections back to the Amiga's serial
port. With some cards, they had internal ribbon-cable interconnects to a
Video Toaster for S-Video to Composite, etc. Very clever.
Scott Thomas
That photo was taken by one of my bosses at WBBH. He gave me two
boxes of slides when I worked there and several years later (2005) I
finally got around to scanning them all. I think I've posted links to
them before, but I will again...
DPS History before...
The On Aug 26, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Don Norwood wrote:
When the 475/575 first came out, they were made by DPS (Digital
Processing Systems). At that time, the noise reduction feature was
standard. Then DPS was purchased by Leitch, and Leitch changed the
feature to an option. And then Leitch was bought by Harris.
Video image processing pioneer John D. Lowry was a principal in
Digital Video Systems, Inc., the company that originated the DPS
line of TBCs.
Lowry's most recent company makes note of that on its website:
"His
prior work includes system design in 1971 for the system at Image
Transform that was used to clean up and enhance the live
television pictures from the moon during the Apollo 16 and Apollo
17 missions.
At Digital
Video Systems in 1974, Lowry was one of the pioneers in digital
video, doing system design of digital time base correctors; frame
store TBC/synchronizers; test-signal generators; line-translation
scrambling; and satellite scrambling and encryption."
The scrambling/encryption work resulted in patents assigned to
Scientific Atlanta in the late 1980s.
Lowry and a colleague founded Lowry Digital Images in the LA area,
which was bought by DTS, the digital film sound format company,
and which was later sold to India-based Reliance, and is now
branded unde r the Reliance banner.
Lowry passed away just before he and his colleague were nominated
for an Academy award.
That's my Paul Harvey contribution for today.
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I am trying to figure out how to enable the noise reduction feature on
my dps-575. -Shai
I can't answer your question about the code to enable Noise Reduction, but I
can give you some historical background. When the 475/575 first came out,
they were made by DPS (Digital Processing Systems). At that time, the noise
reduction feature was standard. Then DPS was purchased by Leitch, and
Leitch changed the feature to an option. And then Leitch was bought by
Harris. Anyway, if you get one of the early units, you'll find that NR is
fully operational without any code. The NR function works very well on
these, and has the ability to adjust several parameters according to your
needs. I do hope that someone has the answer, because I have both versions
and could use the code for the newer units.
Don Norwood
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