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-   -   Video formats war in Britain. (http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=270255)

Colly0410 03-19-2018 02:46 PM

Video formats war in Britain.
 
Here in Britain there was a 3 way video format war in the early 1980's. It was VHS v Betamax v V2000. They said Betamax & V2000 were better quality pictures than VHS, but VHS won in the end. The reason VHS won is because the big rental companies favoured them for some reason, & most British people rented their video's (& also TV's) back then. I've seen all 3 formats & couldn't tell the difference between them. The V2000 could be turned over like a cassette tape, it was 2 hours on each side IIRC. There were reports in the newspapers & magazines singing the praises of Betamax & V2000, but it didn't seem to make any difference to the VHS steamroller...

old_tv_nut 03-19-2018 05:44 PM

Although V2000 had extra features like noise-free tricks modes, its video bandwidth was limited by the use of color-under recording, just like VHS and Beta. None of these formats could be greatly superior to the others in terms of luminance resolution.

dieseljeep 03-19-2018 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut (Post 3197332)
Although V2000 had extra features like noise-free tricks modes, its video bandwidth was limited by the use of color-under recording, just like VHS and Beta. None of these formats could be greatly superior to the others in terms of luminance resolution.

Is the V2000 format the one that Panasonic was pushing under the Quasar name. I never seen one work and didn't bother to look at them, when they were available. :scratch2:

dieseljeep 03-21-2018 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dieseljeep (Post 3197340)
Is the V2000 format the one that Panasonic was pushing under the Quasar name. I never seen one work and didn't bother to look at them, when they were available. :scratch2:

I should've looked up the V2000 format before I entered this statement!
It was strictly a Philips European design.
The Quasar was some kind of a short-lived format. Mid-70's? V1000?

kf4rca 03-21-2018 09:29 AM

Have you ever heard of Cartrivision? It used a square cartridge with concentric hubs.

KentTeffeteller 03-25-2018 08:05 PM

Quasar (Matsushita owned by then)'s format was VX 1000. Just so you know.

KentTeffeteller 03-25-2018 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kf4rca (Post 3197367)
Have you ever heard of Cartrivision? It used a square cartridge with concentric hubs.

I have heard of Cartrivision. Very short lived format. Really was the first true home Video Recorder. Avco lost a bundle on it.

ppppenguin 03-26-2018 01:53 AM

There were several formats advertised as being home video formats well before it was really practical.

The Wesgrove and Telcan high speed lienar machines were advertised in the UK in the 1960s but never made it to market. I think they only just about worked and I know of no surviving examples. The Ampex 1" VR5xxx/7xxx series were tentatively offered as domestic formats despite being far to big and expensive.

dieseljeep 03-26-2018 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KentTeffeteller (Post 3197516)
Quasar (Matsushita owned by then)'s format was VX 1000. Just so you know.

Thanks for responding on this thread. I couldn't remember the exact number of the format.
IIRC, I was at a swap in Illinois and a seller had a box of cartridges for one of those units. Another buyer bought them. Back then I didn't care as I had no interest, but today I would look, to see what it was about.

Electronic M 03-26-2018 09:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dieseljeep (Post 3197340)
Is the V2000 format the one that Panasonic was pushing under the Quasar name. I never seen one work and didn't bother to look at them, when they were available. :scratch2:

I think the Quasar format was known as "The Great Time Machine".

ha1156w 03-27-2018 09:28 PM

Yes, that Quasar variant was known as the VX format. They were the only ones to sell a single model of machine for it. It had a neat design that allowed user-replaceable video drums. Cartrivision was a skip-field format that looked jerky for even minor scene motions, not to mention what garbage a sports field looked like. The media turned out to be perishable and there were warehouses of it in the mid-70's that were completely unusable as a result. I think it was the material they chose for pads in the cartridge? Somebody help me out here.....

Diverting us down the path of North American options, don't forget the odd Sanyo V-Cord (B/W) and V-Cord II (color), circa 1977. The tapes looked like 8-tracks with a flap on the side. They were inserted into the machine short-end first and the machine pulled from the long side. I understand they were more popular in Canada than in the US.

And somewhere in there is the Technicolor CVC format, a 1/4" portable video format that didn't get much traction. I've seen a few of their machines on second-hand markets going back to the late 80's but it seems nobody actually ever had a working example. Akai had a contender similar to CVC too, but it had even fewer sales. I've never seen one in the wild.

andy 03-28-2018 10:56 AM

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