Link started as an industrial camera manufacturer but soon moved into broadcast equipment when the BBC approached it to develop a successor to the commercially successful
EMI 2001, when EMI's own design for the 2001's successor, the 2005, failed to meet expected standards when launched around 1975. The poor performance of this camera, considering its development cost, led to EMI exiting the broadcast camera industry. A similar fate befell Link around 10–15 years later upon the release of the Link 130 (further down this page).
Type 100 The Link-NEC 100 was the companion camera to the Type 130 and designed in conjunction with NEC. It had a triax interface unit and could be used stand alone, via a radio link or with a CCU via triax cable. it shared a common architecture with the 130 by using the same 18mm tubes and both where fully automatic for set-up and used the same CCU (
camera control unit), OCP (operational control unit) and MSU (master setup unit).
Type 110/111 The 110 was Link's first attempt at a colour broadcast camera and around 200 cameras were manufactured. Styling was based on the
EMI 2001 colour camera but at an economical price, including what some claim to be a very flimsy casing that was not of rugged design. The camera consisted of a closed body and an internal lens from a range of manufacturers, like the EMI 2001, leading to similar claims that the design was "boxy". The camera was capable of both studio and outside broadcast use and at the BBC found its way into TC6, TC8 and several presentation studios at
Television Centre,
BBC Lime Grove,
BBC Bristol,
BBC Cardiff, the
Open University studio in Milton Keynes,
BBC Wood Norton Training Centre and onto several BBC outside broadcast vehicles. ITV company
Thames Television also used the camera at their Euston Road studios from around 1979, replacing their Marconi MkVIIs (with RCA TK-47s at Teddington a few years later replacing the EMI 2001s there). The 110 was seen as a good, cheap, modern option which was lightweight and easier to carry compared to the much older and heavier EMI 2001 camera. The Link 111 was a low-cost version of the Link 110 with a reduced feature set. In the
Video Yearbook for 1977 the Link 111 is listed at £12,000 less tubes & lens.
Type 125 The Link 125 camera was purchased in quantity by the BBC and deployed to most of the studios at Television Centre,
Pebble Mill in Birmingham and
Broadcasting House, Belfast as well as several other BBC studios. It was also the camera of choice at
Limehouse Television. In addition,
ITV company
Television South (TVS) used the model in its
Maidstone studios, which were still in use by those studios when they were sold as an independent studio facility following the loss of TVS's franchise at the end of 1992. The 125 was a well-thought-out and well-built studio and OB camera developed from the Link 120 portable camera system. It also contained a comprehensive
communications system and used a camera control unit (CCU) based around the 110 but was updated with auto black, white, iris and centering functions. The BBC preferred to use a mid-range Schneider-Kreuznach lens as it gave good zoom angles. Some believed it produced one of the best images for a pickup tube camera; others believed it could never match the quality of the EMI 2001. Many BBC users felt that the image was soft and not easy to focus. It also produced an unusual image effect that formed the shape of a 'teardrop' in the centre of the image. The Link 125 was the most successful of all of Link cameras. It is believed the last studio to use them was BBC Pebble Mill, which decommissioned the last four in 1994 from the news studio, having upgraded to Sony BVP-375's and Ikegami HL-55's a few years before. These cameras have become collectable vintage items.
Type 130 The 130 was designed in the mid-1980s as a high-tech modern camera with aspirations of quality and high-tech design through the use of microprocessors for full auto setup. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that there were several hardware and/or software errors made during the design and manufacture of this model, which seriously affected the manufacturer's reputation with its broadcast customer base, in much the same way the EMI 2005 had done around 15 years earlier. This was compounded by competition from high-quality camera systems from Japanese manufacturers including Sony,
Ikegami and Hitachi and by the Dutch manufacturer
Philips. Also at this time
RCA had started to use
CCDs in its cameras, which produced what was considered a superior picture to the then-prevailing technology of camera pickup tubes, which necessitated not as many regular adjustments in their setup procedures. In the mid-1980s, the BBC was designing the Type 6 scanner and had chosen the Link 100 and 130, and had several camera channels for testing. Prototypes had been sent to broadcasters in Israel, Sweden and Australia. The BBC Link 130 cameras were initially installed in
Elstree Studio A and at BBC Wood Norton along with some NEC MNC-100 lightweight cameras. They had been in development for a few years and the idea was to use Studio A Elstree and BBC Glasgow (which received the first batch) as test beds to try to make them work, but they proved to be very unreliable. John Wardle, Head of BBC Engineering, stated that 42 Link 130s were ordered but it is believed only 11 production units were delivered. The trial showed the camera suffered from poor design and many software bugs (that would leave the camera's automatic lineup software switched on and the cue light happening to cause picture interference). The BBC engineering department felt that these faults wouldn't be fixed quickly and the order for Television Centre was cancelled and TVC was fitted with
Thomson1531 cameras. As a result, this act allegedly caused the final collapse of Link, which was declared bankrupt. UEI Group then briefly purchased the company, after investing many hundreds of thousands of pounds in the development of the camera only for the poor design not being rectified in the design or prototype stages giving Link a poor reputation after several technically and commercially successful models. The company then transferred to the ownership of Quantel. There are several units in private collections and, until the early 2000s, several casings were to be seen at the
National Science and Media Museum in Bradford as part of a public display. ==Studio equipment==