Simi Valley Fine-Tunes Its TV Image : City Council: Video repair plan aims to help correct sound and picture problems that plague broadcasts of meetings.

Simi Valley city leaders believe they’ve finally fixed their image problem--the one that gave them green skin and blue hair.

For years, residents who have watched City Council meetings each Monday on cable television have complained about the picture and sound quality.

They’ve griped about an annoying hum throughout the meetings. The colors were out of kilter. And sometimes the images were so dim and fuzzy that they couldn’t tell which council member was talking.

Councilman Bill Davis said his wife, irritated by the poor reception, videotaped several council meetings at home “so I could see how bad it was. It was just not a good picture.”

Councilwoman Judy Mikels said her husband “refused to watch it because the hum drives him crazy.”

She added: “The comment I hear most is that it’s like a really bad home video.”

Early this year, council members were about to spend at least $23,000 on three new top-grade, high-tech cameras to correct the problem when they learned that Comcast, the local cable company, bore at least part of the blame.

Last week, with the cable problems corrected, the council settled on a less ambitious video repair plan costing less than $12,000.

Mayor Greg Stratton said Simi Valley viewers should notice a difference beginning this summer.

“They ought to be able to recognize us, anyway,” he said.

Meetings of the City Council and the Simi Valley Unified School District board are televised via City Hall’s three remote-control cameras, purchased in 1986.

City staff members determined in November that the cameras, which use outdated tube technology, needed costly repairs. Council members told them instead to consider buying new units.

Among their other drawbacks, the tube models require more intensive lighting. But when the spotlights are turned up to improve the picture quality, council members complain about the heat and glare.

On Dec. 29, four vendors brought their modern, broadcast-quality cameras, ranging in price between $23,000 and $34,000, to the council chambers for a demonstration.

The results were less than stunning.

“We took the existing wires and put some spiffy new cameras on,” said Stratton, who attended the showing. “And you couldn’t tell much difference. The color was better, but the people were still fuzzy.”

The city hired a broadcast consultant, who traced some of the problems to Comcast.

The company has installed a new modulator, which transmits the signal, said Greg Mackney, general manager of the cable company, which has about 26,000 subscribers in Simi Valley.

“We also replaced some cable that had been damaged outside the building,” he said. “Apparently, it got hit during some type of construction.”

Mackney said his office had received few complaints about the quality of council meeting broadcasts.

He denied that the company had put off making repairs while the city hires a broadcast consultant. “It definitely wasn’t dragging our feet,” Mackney said.

Comcast’s repairs eliminated the hum and improved the picture quality somewhat, city officials said.

To complete the video overhaul, the council last week voted to buy three new cameras and one new lens. The city will also upgrade two of its present lenses.

The new cameras are “single-chip” models that are less expensive than the “three-chip” units that vendors demonstrated last year.

They should be installed within the next three months. Council members say the result should be a better image--and fewer angry viewers.

“If I didn’t hear a lot of complaints, then I wouldn’t care if people said, ‘Your hair is green,’ ” Mikels said. “But if people aren’t watching because there’s some discomfort level in watching, then it’s important to spend the money and resolve the issue.”