Our history
INTERVIDEO was formed in 1977 after it’s founder, Trevor Nash, was shown a Phillips 1500 VCR. Although there were cumbersome ½” open reel black & white video recorders, this was the first “consumer” video machine – years before VHS was introduced!
Video was virtually unheard of at that time – and it proved impossible to raise finance from banks or normal lending sources. So, armed with a sketchy business plan and the deeds to his house, Nash eventually managed to raise sufficient finance from a moneylender. That was the beginning of Intervideo, now celebrating 30 years as one of the worlds major independent players in broadcast duplication and quality assessment.
The first contracts for the fledgling company came from Lord Grade’s ITC Entertainment, followed shortly afterwards by Thames Television. In the early days, the main work was transferring programmes from film or ¾” Umatic to Phillips 1500 for transmission in Africa and the Middle East. The Phillips format gave extremely good picture quality – far better that the VHS format which took the market by storm when marketed in volume 1978 - but was notoriously unreliable, so Intervideo helped establish the first “compatibility” standards in conjunction with Radio Rental Contracts. In fact it still has one of the original RRC Phillips 1500’s at its St John’s Wood facility in London.
By 1982 the 5 year old company was operating three 2” Quadruplex machines, a 1” B format and a 16mm flying spot telecine to archive material to 1”C format - and it still maintains 1” B and C format machines for archiving. There is one big difference, though – in 1982 all the technical staff wore white coats, whereas today dress code is much more informal!
Intervideo’s first standards converter was an AVS 6000, a very reliable unit despite being rather limited in bandwidth and interpolation capability.
Next came the legendary BBC/McMichael ACE standards converter, which set the benchmark that all the other manufacturers strove to equal or surpass. But it was a huge and power hungry beast. “The joke among chief engineers of the day was that the power surge they experienced when they switched on the ACE converter could dim the National Grid,” says Nash.
On it’s 30th anniversary, Intervideo took standards conversion to another level when it installed the Alchemist PhC – HD. This converter provides the most advanced options for up/down/cross conversion and compliments Intervideo’s High Definition and Standard Definition facilities.
Intervideo has also installed an HD Quality Assessment suite to keep pace with the growing number of programmes being produced in HD.
Intervideo has a proud history of giving young people – usually straight out of university – first class training in the technical areas and many “Intervideo Graduates” now hold senior positions within the TV industry.
One man who stayed, though, is Gerry Wade who joined as a trainee VT operator in 1986 and rose to become Intervideo’s technical director, solely responsible for planning and upgrading the facility to keep pace with the ever changing technology.
Another person to stay is Clare Russell, who joined as accounts assistant in 1995 and having been promoted to administration manager, is now responsible for the financial control and planning of the company.
The key to Intervideo’s success is attention to detail and service. “We never let our standards slip, no matter how demanding the clients are,” says Nash. “The company literature states ’30 years of excellence’ and that is something all of us who work at Intervideo are rightly proud of.”
