Color video tape recorders (V.T.R.'s) in the '50 and '60's

[Telecolor 3007]

Let's talk about the color V.T.R.'s from the '50's and the '60's. 2" tape
Here is an "R.C.A." color V.T.R.: http://www.kingoftheroad.net/colorTV/TVtape1.html

[MRX37]

I had always wondered how TV stations showed reruns before the age of the VCR and DVD...

[andy]

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[3Guncolor]

Televeision stations had video tape starting in 1956 way before VCRs. Most classic video that was not on film was recorded on 2" quad. Nothing better then watching a spot break running on a Ampex ACR25. There are still a few "quad"s out there able to play the old tapes that have not yet been dubed to current formats. Quad was the longest running standard video tape format other then 3/4" 1956 to about 1985 some were used into the 90's. They were more or less only made by Ampex and RCA. Ampex invented the format and traded rights to RCA for recording color. There were different tape speeds and low and high band and very late in the game there was two channel sound added for stereo. The first few years of M-TV aired most of the music videos from ACR25 spot players. The best analog VTR ever made was the Ampex ATR1 it would play just about anything recorded on quad it could preroll in about 1 or 2 secs to full lock up.

[David Roper]

Originally Posted by MRX37

I had always wondered how TV stations showed reruns before the age of the VCR and DVD...

Those were on crappy 16mm film that the station threaded up on its film chain. Locally aired reruns always looked awful until at least the mid '80s.

[charliesheen]

im in dallas and have some old 2inch tape of my dad on a local tv show from the late 60s,anyone know of a place that can turn it into dvd or vhs?

[Dave A]

Give this place a try. I have talked to him and he sounds to be on top of it.

http://www.antiquevideo.com/

Dave A

[Telecolor 3007]

Hope I will make no problems to that guy who let me entered the tv station. At an Bucharest tv station they have 2 2" and 1" V.T.R.'s. I think they are all solid state. Unfortnley, the owner of the machines is going to tear them to spare parts (wonder what he is going to do with the spare parts). One of the 2 2" V.T.R.'s in an '70's Ampex.
What was the vertical defition of the image at the 2" color V.T.R.'s?

[bgadow]

I have a friend who has one of the early RCA monsters, among other things. I've never had the chance to see it. Over Christmas I'll see him and will have to ask if it is up and running right now.

[RVonse]

Does anyone know if those old tape machines worked the same way as the more modern VCR's with a rotating head?

It is also very interesting to me that they were recording in color even before they were broadcasting color.

[RVonse]

http://www.kingoftheroad.net/colorTV/TVtape1.html

It is also somewhat curious to me that these were supposedly color video tape machines, yet the monitors in the picture clearly appear to be monochrome. Were they monitoring their color recordings with black and white monitors?

I don't get it.

[Cadillac Kid]

I recently picked up a couple of Sony AV-3600 1/2 EIAJ RR video recorders. I came across this site while hunting information on these.

http://www.labguysworld.com/VTR_Catalog.htm

[Dave A]

Rvonse,

When the early 2" quad machines came out (and until the late 60's or so) the only color monitor available to stations was the 21" round-tube RCA TM-21x series of monitors and the same size from Conrac. Too big for direct installation. There would be a TM nearby on a switcher to monitor all the machines a station had. The B&W monitor was a confidence monitor only. It would tell you if you had a head clog on one of the heads.

Even without a color monitor, using the vectorscope and a waveform monitor mounted on each machine, the operator could set video levels on all four heads on the waveform and the color on the vectorscope with the color bar peaks hitting the appropriately marked color boxes on the graticule.

Because the tape may have been (and probably was) recorded on a different machine with a different head assembly, you had to set video play levels on all four heads plus a master video level. They all had their own charcteristics so no two head assemblies were equal. Record bias, playback bias, head wear, etc.

The networks would track what head was used to record a tape and all efforts were used to get that same head installed to play back tapes for the best playback to prevent "banding"...the obvious horizontal stripes from the four heads that can be seen on some poorly recorded or played tapes on different head assemblies.

If you were in a hurry setting up the tape, you would throw the TM to "blue only" and adjust the color phase (tint) so that the two center blue bars were equally bright and just adjust the video levels on the fly as it played.

If anyone has the RCA Broadcast News library, you can see an article on my old station WCEE-TV, Rockford, Il somewhere in the late '65 or early '66 editions. It was portrayed as a model station of the day. If you look closely at the photo of their quad machines, you can see a GE Portacolor used as a color monitor that was modified for direct video in. I guess they ran out of startup money.

Dave A