Tape Oddities |
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This room contains some of the weirdest items, the odd ideas and evolutionary dead-ends that litter our story.
Sony
AG-C7 Betastack Beta's bizarre tape changer
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LVR
Although both Betamax and VHS were helical scan formats, like the professional machines of the day, some manufacturers were not yet convinced that this was the correct approach for domestic equipment. BASF and Toshiba were both experimenting with Linear Video Recording, or LVR, which would use stationary heads for greatly reduced complexity. This would naturally make the machines cheaper to make, as well as lighter, smaller and probably more reliable than their helical cousins.
To get around the problem of short playing time, due to the high speed necessary for linear recording, both systems used multiple tracks across the width of the tape. BASF used 72 parallel tracks, dropping to the next and reversing direction at each end of the tape. Toshiba's system used an endless loop of tape, lasting for a mere 24.5 seconds but with 300 tracks across it to give over two hours of playback. The track change occurred when the tape "join" passed the heads, just as with an 8-track audio cartridge.
This multi-track approach gave one extra benefit: random access. By skipping tracks the user could reach any point in the recording in a fraction of the time taken by a conventional helical machine, which had no alternative but to spool through to the required section. But conversely, it is difficult to build a noiseless track changing mechanism; probably because of this flaw more than anything else neither format got beyond the prototype stage.
KiddieCorder
One other miniature camcorder format is probably worth mentioning here, the Fisher-Price toy company's PXL system. This was aimed at children, and so was immediately christened "KiddieCorder".
The PXL-2000 appeared in the USA in 1987. It used an ordinary audio cassette to record black-and-white pictures, 11 minutes on a C90, using linear recording. Unfortunately, the pictures were poor and the sound worse, and with the matching monitor - which you had to use, since the output signal was not compatible with a standard TV - the price came to $250. A version went on sale in the UK, the PXL-3305, costing £125 for the camera alone. I would be curious to know how many were sold...
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