If there's anyone with a cartrivision VCR, I would be happy to pay you to copy off a tape. Please eMail me, even if your machine isn't working. Maybe I'll fix it for you in the process. For those not familiar with the Cartrivision, it was a big square tape that had coaxial reels. Most machines were built in to large color TV consoles of the early 70s. Admiral, Wards Airline, and Packard-Bell all had them available.

Thanks for any help or info!

Charles
[email protected]

Good Luck Charles, I bought one from Olson when they first became available. I was in my teens and everyone thought I was crazy, how can those two big boxes record color TV, you threw your money away. My big problem was no consumer TV had video outputs, when I would try to tap into it I did not have a buffer and messed up the luminesience. I found a small B/W Sony monitor that had a wide enough bandwidth to pass color. You should have seen my friends faces watching Star Trek in color and I could never make them understand how I got color from a B/W tv set. No one noticed the skip field, I think they were more amazed that this large noisey machine really worked. Several folks asked me to build one for them but by then Olson had sold out.

Weren't they made in like 1972 or somesuch ? Rotsa ruck findin' an intact one now...

Would this thing play it?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7626270193

Weren't they made in like 1972 or somesuch ? Rotsa ruck findin' an intact one now...

There are several collectors that have working machines. I think they were made in 1972 and sold by Olson in 1974-1975 $150 plus $50.00 for the B/W camera. They were the ultimate in tech geek back then. One of the first things you looked for was someone with a U-Matic machine with some porno to dub to cartrivision. (or so I was told:)

I love u-matic

I think I saw them in an Olson catalog about 1978, for about US$300 including some tapes. I know it was more than I could handle saving up. In September 1979, I found a used Betamax one-hour VCR for $320, much easier to use than making the Cartrivision deck work, but that could have been a fun project.

IMHO, Cartrivision was just a slight bit ahead of it's time. Had they given the tech another year or two to make it a full field VCR, it'd have had staying power, esp with lower cost that some revisions could have hopefully done...

Oddly, the rental model was almost the same as Netflix...

I think I saw such a unit recently in a Packard Bell givin away on Let's Make A Deal.
That is a neat show. Monty Hall is pretty cool.

A good idea...
Maybe you are already doing this... While you are finding a machine to play the tape and working on repairing the machine you have, perhaps you could speak to your grandmother and all others to try to remember all that was recorded. Hopefully you get it ready to show soon enough but this could be the next best thing to seeing and hearing the tape.
It is a great thing for you to try to get this done for your family as well as for yourself.
John