11 Dec
2012
11 Dec
'12
3:08 p.m.
"Fairly hard to believe?" Believe it
<grin>!
The tape dates from 1976. It's black and white and was distributed on
U-Matic. While not in the best of condition, I've dubbed it off as an
MPEG 4 for preservation purposes. It may not tell you anything new but
it certainly has novelty value. Oh, and its definitely the same system.
B&W reel to reel goes WAYBACK. I first used it in 1968, and that was with
obsolete equipment.
Sony CV series portable systems gave way to Sony AV series by about 1970.
I have a battery-opearated AV series machien and camera. Uses 4" (or s)
spools of tape and runs of a dryfit lead-acid batery. Yo ucan paly back
throughte electronic viewfinder of the camera which is a tiny monochrome
CRT.
There is a nast design bug in thsi unti, though,. The head beam imoutned
on a disk on top of the main motor spidnle. Siad disk is fixed ot the
psinde by a nut. And it's right-ahnd thread. Problem is, it normalyl tuns
in the directio nto _loosen_ the nut. If it coems loose, the head tips
are wrecked by hittine the edges of the slot i nthe starionary head drum.
Please don't ask how I foudn that out. I also discovered that Betamax
head tips can be fitted to the beam and got to work, but it's a right
fiddle to set up.
U-Matic (cassette) came out about 1971
Quasar VX? home cassette units came out about 1976
Philips N1500 around 1972? IIRC that was one of the first home cassete
systems
Betamax and VHS came out about 1977.
"First"??!? depends on whether you mean prototypes (about 1971) or retail
"Best" prob'ly Beta, but that isn't what decides what ends up
dominating
Philisps V2000 a little later. Technically the best of the lot, but it
came out too late. Pity, those machines are wonderfully designed and built.
the market (cf. 3" V 3.5" diskettes)
How long before DVD and BluRry are gone?
The sooner the better :-)
-tony