A small selection from the hundreds of YouTube hosted testcard transmissions. The BBC version is quite possibly the most important piece of post-war British graphic design. They seem to combine nostgalgia for childhoods lost mixed with the irony of posting essentially still images (albeit with super soundtracks) on a website dedicated to the dissemination of video.
Some international test cards too:
And one for Channel M in Manchester that features Frank Sidebottom:
You might think it strange that Test Cards, used when TV stations closed down for the evening (or even – incredible to think of now – during the day) have become YouTube fetishes. It’s even stranger that some test card enthusiasts are making recreations of test cards, what you might call Test Card dummies
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