WEBVTT - Tracking Changes in Media: VCRs and CDs 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.840 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.759 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:18.759 How Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and I love 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:23.279 all Things tech. And this is part four of a 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:28.040 multi part episode arc about technology and media and how 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:31.880 the changes in technology change the very business of entertainment 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.519 as well as our relationship to entertainment. And in the 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:39.120 previous three episodes, I traced the origins of recorded media, 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.519 the birth of the radio, film, and television industries, and 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:46.520 the rise of the humble audio cassette. And we've seen 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:50.520 that entertainment was gradually transitioning from something you could only 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:53.280 experience in the moment, such as when a radio station 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:56.520 would play a song or a theater would show a film. 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:58.600 And now we're in an age in which you could 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:02.000 you could own a permanent record of some of those things. 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:05.000 Now I've covered music up through the cassette era, so 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:07.479 we're going to switch back over to television and film 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:10.760 a bit and the birth of the video cassette. Now, 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:14.920 one of the challenges in early television was how do 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:19.680 you broadcast a television program to a national market, most 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:24.800 broadcasts were done live, and that limited your your options. 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:28.959 The United States is a really big country, so if 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:31.360 you did broadcast a show live, let's say that you've 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:34.280 worked out all the technical details, you still have time 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.119 as a factor. Because the two coasts of the United 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.199 States are in time zones, there are three hours apart 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:43.400 from each other, so prime time for one coast isn't 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:47.560 prime time for the other coast. Also, you were limited 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.760 in transmission range, and in the days before massive cable 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:56.360 companies had connected different regions using cable and satellites, you 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.400 had limited options. So it would be better if you 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.040 could find a a to record a show and then 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:06.440 broadcast it at a different time slot for other markets. 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:08.880 And most shows were being shot in New York, so 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.280 if you wanted to have a show in New York 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:14.480 air in Los Angeles, it made more sense to record 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.680 the show in New York and then send that recording, 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:24.000 perhaps even via cable, out to broadcast stations in Los Angeles, 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.440 which would then broadcast it. So you still have to 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:29.480 figure out a way to record the show you were 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.440 actually doing, and recording a show was easier said than done. 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:38.120 Television cameras and monitor technology was best suited for live broadcast, 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:42.680 so you would use a camera to capture images, but 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.919 send that signal directly to a transmitter and blasted out 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:48.520 over radio waves, and then television sets all over the 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.720 region would pick up those transmissions and show the live 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.760 broadcast right then and there. Before the invention of videotape, 0:02:56.120 --> 0:03:00.440 one work around for this was the kinescope. This was 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:05.160 not an ideal solution. Basically, you would take a film camera, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:07.040 kind of like the ones you would use to shoot 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:10.200 a movie, and it was typically either a sixteen millimeter 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:13.480 or a thirty five millimeter film camera, and you would 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.720 put it behind a television monitor. You would point it 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:19.600 at the TV monitor, so you would be shooting a 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:23.520 program on television cameras, and the monitor would actually be 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.560 displaying the image live on it, and then you would 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.160 use a film camera to capture the image of that 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:32.920 which was on the monitor screen. So viewers at home, 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.440 at least outside the region that you're directly serving, would 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:39.440 actually be looking at a picture of a picture. It's 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:41.280 as if you were to play a YouTube video on 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.360 your computer and then you use your phone's camera to 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:48.680 stream that video to someone else. It's not ideal. One 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:50.240 other thing had to be done for this to work. 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:52.600 By the way, the cameras actually had to be synchronized 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:56.240 to the monitors scanning rate. So you might remember I've 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.680 talked about this in other episodes. Cathode ray tube monitors 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.600 paint screens line by line from the top to the bottom. 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:05.920 So they paint a horizontal line, they move down, they 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.360 paint the next horizontal line. Technically they could paint every 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:12.400 other line and then do a second frame where they're 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:14.560 doing the other lines. So you do the all the 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:16.480 oddlines first, then all the even lines. But you get 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.240 the idea. It's the sequence of painting lines. Now it's 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:23.240 done so quickly that our brains can't process this. We 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:27.440 just see unbroken moving images. We don't see a series 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.200 of lines being painted on a screen. But if you 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.200 have a film camera that isn't synchronized with the scanning rate, 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:38.039 then you can pick up an artifact. Typically we see 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.200 this as sort of a rolling horizontal line moving across 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.839 the television screen in regular cycles. If you've ever seen 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:49.560 any real cheap productions that especially like home videos or 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:51.599 something that are pointed at a TV screen and you 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.719 see this weird line scanning across the screen over and 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.160 over again. That's what we're seeing. You're seeing this, uh, 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.719 the scan line or representa of that scan line. Because 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:05.320 the cycle of the camera is different from the scan 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.880 cycle of the monitor. Synchronizing the film camera to the 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:13.719 monitor scanning rate eliminated that artifact. The pictures were still 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.320 not great. They were grainy, They left a lot to 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:18.640 be desired, They could be kind of dark, be hard 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.800 to see what's going on. New York citizens typically got 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.279 a pretty darn good image because so much television production 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.119 was happening in New York City. So if you happen 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:31.320 to live near New York, you were getting the live 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:34.320 broadcast version. You were not getting the kiniscope version. But 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.560 if you lived in a different time zone, chances are 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.800 you were watching a kiniscope of those programs, and that 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:45.640 was pretty common in the nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties. Sadly, 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:49.440 a lot of kinscopes of early television programs have since 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:54.360 been lost. There wasn't much thought given to preserving television programs. 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.719 Early on TV studios were more concerned with churning out 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.080 content than keeping the stuff that they had. Are He 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.200 made and most stuff would just be broadcast live as 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:06.559 it happened in its home region and then only used 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:09.800 for rebroadcast for other time zones. It wasn't used for 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.479 any kind of rebroadcast of the original program, and once 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:15.160 it was done, it was time to move on. So 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.560 there was no real thought to stuff like syndication, and 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.479 the idea of home theater wasn't a thing for a 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:24.920 couple of decades. No one was thinking about how can 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:29.160 I watch the stuff at home on demand? So there's 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:31.360 a ton of stuff that was shown that we know 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.279 about but that we have no known recordings of. Um. 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.880 This isn't just to the United States. That's happened in 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.160 other places as well. In the United Kingdom, the BBC 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:46.800 was actually famous for not holding on to stuff that 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:50.240 future generations thought of as being historically important, but at 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.200 the time no one was really thinking about that. Even 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:55.520 in the days of videotape, once that became a thing, 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:59.359 the BBC was known for saving money by taping over 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:03.279 old videotape. There are a lot of stories about different 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:07.360 shows that survived that fate simply by purchasing the tapes directly. 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.600 Monty Pythons Flying Circus is one of those, Eric Idol 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:13.600 actually spent the money to buy the original tapes so 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.320 that the BBC wouldn't tape over them anyway. There were 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:21.480 a few exceptions to the kinescope approach. In n the 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.120 sitcom I Love Lucy broke new ground by filming every 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:29.640 episode using three film cameras, the classic three camera set 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:34.080 up for sitcoms, and they used those instead of television cameras, 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:36.840 so they would have a live studio audience, but they 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:39.520 would be using film cameras to capture everything, and then 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:42.640 the film was used to produce the episode for broadcast 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:46.360 to all markets, which drastically improved the quality and the 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:51.320 production cost for the show. So it because it was 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.480 so expensive, it wasn't done for everything it was. I 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:57.480 Love Lucy was kind of an exception because it was 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:00.680 high enough in demand for to justify by the expense. 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.480 But in something else was also happening. A guy named 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.200 Charles Ginsburg was hard at work trying to come up 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:11.120 with an alternative solution to this problem. Ginsburg had just 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.400 started working for a company called Ampex. That's the same 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:18.720 company that was instrumental in developing multitrack recorders for recording studios. 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.160 That I mentioned in the previous episode. So Ginsburg was 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:27.160 working to make a practical video tape recorder or vt R. 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:29.800 And if you listen to my last episode about cassettes, 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.200 you heard me talking about magnetic tape and how it works. 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:35.840 So I'm not going to repeat all of that here. 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:39.760 If you have not heard that previous episode, I recommend 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.320 you go check it out first, as the process for 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.600 recording audio to magnetic tape is pretty similar to recording 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.200 video to tape. Now, obviously video carries with it a 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.480 lot more information than just audio, but the process is 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:58.400 pretty similar. But here's here's a real super fast cliffs 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:02.240 Notes version of this. An electrical impulse passes through an 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:06.360 electro magnet, which then generates a fluctuating magnetic field, and 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:11.120 that magnetic field then magnetizes some sort of medium, and 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.280 in the case of videotape, we're talking about a tape 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:18.680 coded with ferro magnetic particles. The ferro magnetic particles retain 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.040 their magnetic properties after they pass under the electro magnet, 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.640 so they maintain their magnetic orientation. You can think of 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:28.000 it like that. And then if you run the tape 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:32.200 through a player, the reed head reverses this process. It 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.160 induces an electric current to flow through the player, which 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.160 can then be used to regenerate the recorded video and audio. 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.960 Now Ginsburg hailed from San Francisco and he had studied 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.360 engineering in college and he had been working in the 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.640 radio industry since nineteen forty eight. He was mainly focused 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.959 on studio and transmitter engineering, but he got the call 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.560 from Ampex in nineteen fifty one to join their team 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.760 to work on this problem. In fact, the founder of 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:03.320 Ampex himself, Alexander M. Poniata, gave gave Ginsburg a call 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.719 to bring him over, and Poniatov hope Ginsburg would be 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:08.760 able to help the company come up with the means 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.959 to record broadcast quality television to videotape, and there have 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.480 been some experiments with this, but the results had not 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:22.679 been really marketable. Promising but not marketable. So Ginsburg led 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:27.200 a team to design a system. Ampex patented his design 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.040 in nine two, and that same year Ray Dolby, whose 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:33.559 name should sound familiar if you're into sound, if you've 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.719 heard about Dolby Sound, he joined the project. He was 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.640 nineteen years old at the time, and his time with 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:42.959 the project would get interrupted as he would be called 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.800 into military service for a few years uh and then 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.960 he would rejoin the project anyway. This again is not 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.000 to say that these are the first people to ever 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:53.880 work on this problem or even produce technology that could 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:59.120 do some form of video to tape. Shortly after World 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:01.520 War Two, engineers had been trying to find ways to 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:05.480 preserve television on magnetic tape. But the previous efforts used 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:10.440 audio tape recorders, and in order to store the same 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.800 amount of information of video as you would with audio, 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.400 you had to run the recorders much faster. You had 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:20.240 to dedicate a lot more tape to hold all that 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.520 extra information since you had video on top of audio, 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:26.040 which meant that you had to run these things at 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.520 incredible speeds to achieve a high frequency response suitable for 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.880 preserving television. And by incredible speeds, I mean the tape 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:36.080 would pass under the recording tape head at a speed 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:41.320 of around two hundred forty or about six meters per second. 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:44.719 At that speed, even a short program would need an 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:48.800 enormous amount of tape. And that was just one typical approach. 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.400 Being Crosby, he wanted to be able to tape essentially 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.440 a month's worth of shows in a single week. That 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:57.720 way he would work for a week and then have 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:00.320 the next three weeks off. Sounds like d ill, I 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:02.760 wish I could do that. I just I don't think 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:05.120 I can physically record that many episodes in a week 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.320 and then take another month off. But he worked with 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.520 Ampex to use audio tape recorders, and with his approach 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.320 Crosby's approach, they were actually running even faster. They were 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.120 running out of speed of three hundred sixty inches per second. 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:22.400 That's nine meters per second of film or rather tape, 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:27.280 not film, but man super fast. So Ginsberg's team comes 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:30.000 up with a solution, but it wasn't easy. According to 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.880 Ginsburg himself, the project took four years of research and 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:35.959 testing to come up with a viable way to get 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:39.520 around this problem, and along the way the project was 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:43.360 shelved twice. Rather than have the tape pass at this 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:48.320 incredible rate of speed over the recording head or under 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:52.960 the recording head, the idea was build a rotating recording head. 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.679 The head would spin as tape passed underneath, and it 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.840 would record tracks of information in arcs and such as 0:12:59.880 --> 0:13:03.320 a stom is called an arcuate recorder and That's a 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:06.240 word I had never encountered before I did the research 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:08.400 for this episode. In fact, the first time I saw 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.040 it printed, I thought perhaps I was looking at a 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.480 typo and what they meant to say was an accurate recorder. 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.040 But no, that meant they meant arquate, and that the 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:21.640 information was being recorded in arcs onto the tape um. 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:25.920 The recording head that Ginsburg's team built was actually the 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:29.559 initial one was actually three heads on a rotating drum, 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.120 and it would scan tape that was about two inches 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.360 in width or about five centimeters, and the tape would 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:39.280 move past the head at a relatively leisurely thirty inches 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.280 per second or seventy six point two centimeters per second, 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.720 which is still pretty fast, but nothing like the two 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.720 per second of the earlier method. What's more, the rotating 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:51.880 drums speed allowed Ginsburg to record the same amount of 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.720 information as he could if the tape were moving at 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:59.360 a blistering two thousand, five hundred inches per second. He 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:02.320 could cramp far more information onto a shorter length of 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:07.280 tape using this methodology. Still, this early prototype produced recordings that, 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:13.000 in Ginsberg's own words, produced and quote almost unrecognizable picture 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:17.040 end quote. The next prototype added another recording head, so 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:20.120 brought the total up to four on the drum, and 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:22.400 with some other technical changes that get a little too 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:24.920 complicated for me to go into in this episode. But 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.120 this version had its own problems and at this stage 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.240 the project was shelved. Technically, it was shelved for a 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:33.920 second time, and this happened around the summer of nineteen 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:37.440 fifty three, and the project would not officially start up 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:42.040 again in earnest until August nine. However, in that off time, 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.000 Ginsburg and others on his team would continue kind of 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.680 working on specific problems on the SLY and so they 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:50.960 were able to solve some of the issues. While the 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:56.280 project was officially no longer on the books, Ginsburg was 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.920 able to secure approval from management for a small number 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.400 of hours to be devoted to another prototype, and so 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:05.920 he and his team built a device that got the 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:09.680 name the Mark one. On September one, nineteen fifty four, 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:13.560 Ginsburg's team demonstrated the Mark one to executives and it 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.680 must have gone pretty well because Ampex authorized the project 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.520 to get back into full swing officially, and the major 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.000 change was how the information was being laid down on 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.760 the tape While the earlier prototypes were using that arquit approach, 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:29.360 in which each line of information moved in an arc 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:31.960 across the length of the tape, the new one laid 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.640 down the information in straight lines on the tape. Two 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:39.160 more years of refinements would follow until February ninety six. 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.840 That's when Ginsburg's team would give a new demo to 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:46.160 thirty Ampex executives, and in that demo, the team used 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.400 a new system, this one called the Mark four, to 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:53.920 record a video sequence live at the event. So they 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:58.200 shot video for a couple of minutes. Um they actually 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:00.440 set up a camera and shot video of the people 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.200 attending the meeting. Then they rewound the tape and they 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:05.480 fed it through the playback system, and according to Ginsburg, 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.080 at the conclusion of the playback, the whole room erupted 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.800 with a celebration, so it must have gone pretty darn well. 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:15.480 They followed that up with a demonstration of the Mark 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:19.360 four at the National Association of Broadcasters conference, and it 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.040 was a huge hit, and Ampex started to get orders 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:25.800 for its technology, which would change TV production and preservation 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:29.280 and lay the groundwork for home theaters. When we come back, 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:33.280 i'll talk more about that evolution and how the video 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.840 tape recorder made its transition to the video cassette recorder. 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:46.440 But first, let's take a quick break. So the video 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:51.120 tape recorder or VTR got real start in n S. 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:55.440 CBS would jump on board first, but other other networks 0:16:55.480 --> 0:17:00.200 would join suit, and for about two decades that's where 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:04.680 videotape lived. In the production side, it was very rare 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.320 to run into a consumer video tape machine. The systems 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.199 cost thousands of dollars when they first came out, like 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:15.520 fifty thou dollars uh, and that was well beyond the 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:19.280 reach of consumers. And the tape was also really expensive 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:21.480 and it was it was like three dollars a foot, 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:25.560 so it was prohibitively expensive for almost everyone. This was 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:29.399 not a consumer device, but a professional production machine. You 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:31.439 wouldn't have one in your own home unless you were 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:36.440 extravagantly wealthy and probably a little bit eccentric. So Ampex 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.879 would continue to improve its technology, but other companies also 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:42.800 got into the mix with their own video tape recorders, 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:46.040 and the quest for a consumer device would take a 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:50.280 little longer. You had different companies UH experimenting with different 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:54.879 widths of videotape, different styles of recording heads. Uh, So 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:56.919 you had a lot of different companies all trying to 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.919 become the industry leader and to top Ampex. Meanwhile, you 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.480 had a company out of the UK called the Nottingham 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.280 Electric Valve Company that marketed a device called the tail 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.560 Cam in the early nineteen sixties, and this was technically 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:16.000 the first, or at least one of the first home 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:20.520 video recording devices on record. This one was pretty limited. 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.000 It could only record about twenty minutes of video per tape, 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:26.560 and it was real to real tape. It was not 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:29.479 a cassette, so you actually had to mount reels on 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:32.080 this device like the old real to real audio recorders. 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.840 The quality of the recording wasn't terribly good. The device 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:37.680 itself was a bit of a chore to use, and 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.879 on top of it all, it was expensive. So Tellcan 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.240 didn't really seem much success and it would fade away, 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.920 it wouldn't get market support. According to the website Inventricity, 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.720 only two tell Can units are known to exist today. 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:56.200 One of them is in Nottingham and the other one 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:00.280 is in San Francisco. Ampex introduced a real to real 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:03.360 recorder in nineteen sixty three in the United States called 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.960 the Signature five, which used two inch tape, so it's 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.959 about five centimeters wide. The following year, Phillips would introduce 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.760 a different reel to reel video recorder meant for semi 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:16.600 professional use or what we might refer to as the 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.600 pro sumer market. It could only record in black and white, 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:22.720 and the tape of the reels measured one inch or 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:26.160 about two point five centimeters in width. And then Sony 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.960 introduced the CV twenty twenty, which was another reel to 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.480 reel video recorder that used half inch tape. And all 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.400 of these were expensive units and the real to real 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:38.840 nature meant they weren't very user friendly. You know, you 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.560 still had to feed the tape through the machine and 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:47.600 then uh, get it attached to the secondary reel and 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:50.840 then feed it, you know, play it from there. That 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:53.920 was not easy to do. So like the earlier tel Can, 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:57.480 they didn't get a widespread adoption among consumers. If you 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:02.160 were technically savvy and you had a whole bunch of cash, 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:06.320 then maybe you had one, but otherwise it probably passed 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.320 you by. The real to real format had a lot 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:12.959 of drawbacks because the tape, just like film could be 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.760 easily damaged by environmental forces. There was nothing protecting the 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:23.800 tape from stuff like dust or fingers or dogs, and 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.639 so you could very easily damage the tape and ruin 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.960 your recording. Companies were working on prototypes of a form 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.000 factor that would greatly simplify the use of a tape, 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:36.960 and one of those was Sony, which had started working 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:39.840 on video cassettes back in nineteen sixty nine and its 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:45.080 research and development department. In nine seventy, Sony, Panasonic, and 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:49.560 JVC arrived at an agreed upon standard for video cassettes, 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.040 ensuring that the different companies would create recording and playback 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:57.000 devices as well as cassettes that could work together across 0:20:57.119 --> 0:21:00.240 the different companies products. So if you bought a any 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:05.520 video cassette player, then you bought a cassette that was 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:08.199 made by j VC, you could be sure that the 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:13.159 two would work together. In Sony introduced the U Matic, 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:17.600 which is arguably the first video cassette recorder or VCR, 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:21.000 but the name VCR actually comes from a different device, 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:24.840 the Phillips Video Cassette Recorder. That one came out a 0:21:24.880 --> 0:21:28.720 couple of months after Sony's. It didn't seem much consumer success, 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.680 but lower budget television stations relied on it to record 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:36.199 broadcasts to video and in fact in TV production. The 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.719 you Matic would stick around until the nineteen nineties, so 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:43.680 while it didn't become a vague home device, it did 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:47.360 play a very important role in TV production behind the scenes. 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:51.200 A company called c t I introduced another cassette player 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:55.359 called the cartra Vision in nineteen seventy two. It became 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:58.840 the first company to offer pre recorded films for purchase 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:01.320 for the home. So this was the first time you 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:05.280 had a company not just produce a player, but also 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:10.840 make deals with production studios to get licensing for films 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:13.800 or television programs and then to offer them for sale. 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:16.840 So now people had the option to actually own a 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:21.000 copy of a film, making it possible to watch whenever 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:24.959 they wanted. It was a huge, huge deal, right. This 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:30.080 was a breakthrough in approach, but the cart Revision as 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:32.800 a format didn't last very long. It didn't take off, 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:37.840 so while the concept was important, the actual implementation didn't work. 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:41.879 All of those early devices were really expensive and that 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:45.919 contributed to their lack of tractions. So while we started 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:49.760 to see the promise of this technology, it wasn't quite 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:53.200 at the level where it could be commercially viable for 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:57.800 the home consumer. That changed in UH. Sony and j 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:00.440 VC had a little parting of the ways. Had worked 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:03.760 together to create the standard for you Matic, but now 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:08.399 Sony was looking to develop its own proprietary approach for 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:12.600 the home market UH, and so they were both trying 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:17.719 different proprietary approaches at the same time. Sony's version was 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:21.639 the Beta Max format, which was smaller than the u 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:24.399 Matic format. If you had a Pumatic cassette and a 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:26.920 Beta Max cassette side by side, you'd see the Beta 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:29.760 Max cassette was smaller, and it was able to produce 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:33.359 recordings of a comparable quality to you Matic. It wasn't 0:23:33.440 --> 0:23:35.960 quite as good, but it was pretty good. It's really close. 0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:39.600