To all of those interested...a genuine motorola EVR, (for "Electron video recording"), videoplayer is on sale on ebay. For those who don't know..an EVR is an early attempt to ue film to record tv signals with, using a flying spot scanner. VERY few are known to exist--and this one must have ben in the military domain at one time. I do NOT have the money right now--to go for it--or I would.


http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-1969-Motorola-CBS-TV-Teleplayer-Early-StudioVCR_W0QQitemZ320443582111QQcmdZViewItemQQptZ VCRs?hash=item4a9bed069f

WoW Very cool :yes:

I worked on the chroma circuits for this device, so here are a few notes:

I'm not familiar with that reel, and unfortunately it's monochrome. Whoever gets this should start a search for a color reel too.

some things I recall:
The color process used is interesting, involving a half-frequency chroma subcarrier and 1/4 frequency reference pilot added together and recorded on the "right" side of the film, with the luminance as a recognizable image on the "left" side. The monochrome programs have luminance on both left and right. I developed filters for the chroma and pilot that could be tuned to track phase within 1 degree with a frequency deviation (caused by scanning non-linearity) of as much as 10%.

The pushbuttons on this deck are mechanically coupled to the mechanism, and there is not much leverage available - takes a strong thumb to operate. The cartridge has a pop-up top that releases a stiff plastic leader into the mechanism. The leader is PUSHED into the film path and onto the take up reel by the rotation of the cartridge. This always works up to the point that the leader reaches the take up reel. The original design had frequent threading failures (the leader would trigger play mode but not get captured by the take-up fingers), which were fixed by moving the trigger point (where the leader trips the mechanism from threading mode to play mode, engaging the capstain) further around the take-up reel. This meant the fingers could miss once without triggering play mode, and make a capture on the second rev.

The film uses sync windows down the center between the two images. These are illuminated by a light pipe in the film gate. It was supposedly a smart idea to have continuously running film with no pull down mechanism or sprockets to tear. but it turned out that this center track was an extremely bad wear point. It took a combination of heavy silicone lubrication on the film and a special gate finish to prevent the sync track from wearing out. The chief mechanical engineer at Motorola got patents and an award from the zinc casting industry for his development of the finishing technique.

Despite what the ad says, it does not use X-ray technology. There may be an X-Ray warning for the flying spot tube, which uses a very-short-persistence violet-blue phosphor. Pickup is via a pair of matched lenses, plastic light pipes, and two ordinary 931-type photomultiplier tubes.

Very interesting. thanks for great info and stories, Wayne.
Was this unit made at the Franklin Park plant? Im assuming it was introduced in 1969, if so, how many years was this device in production? Im curious if it works as its another auction of the seller saying what its all about, how great it is but no comment on its operating status.

Very interesting. thanks for great info and stories, Wayne.
Was this unit made at the Franklin Park plant? Im assuming it was introduced in 1969, if so, how many years was this device in production? Im curious if it works as its another auction of the seller saying what its all about, how great it is but no comment on its operating status.

It was made for about 1 year in Motorola's Quincy, IL plant. IIRC, Mitsubishi got into the business also, doing their own player design. CBS never got the film production process under good control, and soon after, Sony brought out betamax, which was the final blow, since this film format couldn't be recorded at home.

Regarding the film, the master was recorded on high-contrast fine grain microfilm in an electron beam recorder in real time. The problem was that the film would outgas during the recording, gradually changing sensitivity and contrast. There had to be a complex program of changing the exposure level during the program.

Since the film has 60 frames per second, the recorder had to use a full frame store for interlace to progressive scan conversion. Easy to do today digitally, but at that time it required a room full of ultrasonic mercury delay lines. In addition, the video was modulated (or added to? not sure now) a 4xchroma CW, so the high contrast film could produce a better gray scale, like the half-tone dots in a newspaper image. These dots could be seen to some extent in the prints under high magnification. [Edit - I recall now that the beam was "spot wobbled" at this rate to make sure there were no visible scanning lines on the film. Any scan lines on the film would cause a moire' pattern due to the imperfectly matched scan lines in the player.]

Motorola licensed a company in London to set up the mastering process for foreign distribution. They continued the project longer than in the US, but eventually it succumbed to the competition of VCRs also.

Motorola blamed CBS for never getting the film process under control. We wanted the films to contain an AGC reference pulse at the top of the frame, but CBS refused.

Some of the demo/test films I recall:

10 minutes of a "Mission Impossible" episode (monochrome)

Excerpts of a classroom film on the sex life of grasshoppers (monochrome) - one of Peter Goldmark's favorites

A few feet of test stills for color:
Gilligan's Island (the Skipper and Gilligan in red and blue shirts). We discovered this at Motorola as filler at the end of a monochrome reel and proceeded on developing the color circuits ahead of time. When someone looked at the result, they noticed the shirt colors were reversed. We had missed the fact that the color phase was reversed on the film compared to NTSC. (This was done so it could be heterodyned back up to NTSC, which reversed the phase again. My design used direct demodulation and remodulation)
A red (or blue?) Chevy

Charlie Brown animated movie excerpt - color

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" excerpt - color

"Shoot / Don't Shoot" - a training film for police that was distributed along with cap pistols (don't recall if mono or color)

"Football bloopers" - color

Some sort of underwater nature footage - lots of fish - color

Motorola tried to sell Ford on using the system for a series of product videos for distribution to Ford dealers. There was some enthusiasm, but don't think this ever got beyond the proposal/demo stage.

Yeah-He never actually says if it works or not, which generally means it won't.

Its always nice to be able to hear some of the real stories about the development of a product. Thanks again.

As for the unit working, I emailed and asked the seller if it works. I got a response, a new one for the records: "We are selling it for someone who says it works, but the original owner is deceased and there is no power at the house where it is being stored so we can't test it"

I guess it takes a good imagination came up with that one. Sorry, for $350, I don't think Im asking much for someone to test it out.

Very interesting device. Here is another 1 on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-MOTOROLA-TELEPLAYER-EVR-REEL-VIDEO-PLAYBACK_W0QQitemZ220508671518QQcmdZViewItemQQptZV intage_Electronics_R2?hash=item3357574e1e

Wasn't Dr. Goldmark involved with that? Seems to me I've read his name in connection with the development of EVR.
Kevin