I was one of the developers of this machine! Thank you for showing me this again after all these years!

I purchased a surplus Cartrivision machine from Olson electronics in 1975 and got the machine to work once I found how to tap into the video section of my TV , no video ins or outs in those days. My friends thought I was crazy it would never work. I invited them over and played back a Star Trek in full color. They were begging me to build one for them. You called it a playback unit and it was a color recorder, player. No one noticed the skip field system.

Wow, thanks for also highlighting how many competing video/film formats there were for early movies at home. Amazing how large the unit's circuit boards are too. When I was growing up, I repaired my parent's VCR a couple times...and printed circuits had already miniaturized significantly.

Recording programs on a timer. Expensive for sure but amazing that it already excisted back then!

I remember my Aunt's neighbor having a video disk player in the early 80s. The disk was in a cartridge the size of a 33RPM record jacket.

Nice to see the face behind the name! Excellent video.

Just when I thought Techmoan could find even the most obscure recording format, you find this. I'd never heard about it. Oh, and Umatic ruled the waves for decades. Even had stereo audio.

Saw a demo of the AVCO cartivision at a JC Penny (or was it SEARS?) in 1972. The crowd was watching a replay of a football game. It was 11 years old!

Dammit, I am eagerly awaiting witnessing this beast in action! :D

Gotta love all those hand taped circuit boards. No EagleCAD back then.

I remember watching old episodes of columbo that would have been made mid 70s and a couple of wealthy peoples homes he visited " you know the ones, they were always the murderers" In one of those episodes he gets shown a video recorder and asks how it works " this becomes how he solves the case" anyway he's told it costs $1500, to which he replies.. oh no no no sir I couldn't afford one of those, I'm not even going to mention it to my wife

In 1987, I was helping a TV repairman move to another building and he gave me three video cassette systems. I no longer have them but it was a big thick cartridge that had 1/2 inch tape on them. Both the take-up reel and supply reel was on one side of the tape, on top of one another. On the other side of the cartridge was a loop of tape and a hole with hollow plastic piece for the video head. You had to insert the cartridge vertically in front of the system, close the cover and then slowly slide a bar from left to right which unscrewed the circular plastic piece so the video head could access the loop of tape that would be wrapped around it. The audio head and capstan/pinch roller access the tape on the side of the cartridge somewhere. The tapes lasted two hours. The picture quality wasn't too bad. The unit was made by Quasar VR1000 around the mid to late 1970's. I believe it was called the VX format. It was a very non-standard system. I used it a while and later got a vhs.

Motorola was good about ease of servicing. I was a technician for a local RCA and Motorola/Quasar dealership.

Wait.. there is a person attached to the talking hands? Weird.

The styling of the Motorola Teleplayer logo is still quite modern-looking to my eyes. I think they still use that italicised text.

Great video as always, i can't wait to see it working!

thanks for the overview/ teardown and great to see you in front of the camera.

In 2000, my college professor was telling us about her job in 1970 selling hearing aids.

I love how they represent the traces on the top of the board with silkscreen

I want to see that foil disc too! Fascinating stuff. Old hand laid out circuit boards are so very pleasing.

I came across the original day view demonstration of this machine a few days ago & now watching a tear downtown of it on databits a few days later.... That’s awesome! Having 2 20min recorded shows & switch between them on the fly was pretty neat for it’s time. Thnx

Very interesting and well presented:D

Nice new style of presentation you got there... keep it up!

Can I imagine lugging around a 55 pound player to watch a movie? Yes, I can. My 1941 Victor Animatophone model 40 weighs 50 pounds. The 10 inch auditorium-grade speaker is considerably lighter.

This was very informative. Love some of these formats.

I got 2 words to say,, absolutely incredible!!!

This same chassis was recycled for JVC's first U-MATIC deck. I know because I have it. It's about 80lbs or more. It nearly broke my PC chair when I first got it!

Great video. And jeez the host is handsome!

a pleasure to listen to as well as to watch :)

Oh god, I owned two different Cartrivision units. Cartrivision used a tape-saving method by recording every third field, then playing each field three times, called "skip-field", yielding an effective frame rate of 20fps. The tape is wrapped around about 120 degrees of the head disk, which spun at 1200 RPM (20 per second for 60 head hits per second) creating the characteristic helical slices. The tape ran at 3.8 IPS. If I wanted to record all 60 fields per second, I'd have to make sure that all three heads could record when I hit the record button (only head 1 recorded), and triple the tape speed. This method of tape conservation would end up being superseded by azimuth recording introduced with Beta and VHS, which essentially laid all 60 fields per second without the need for guard bands in a "shingled" way, allowing for overlap by way of slower tape speeds (LP and SLP/EP, Beta II and Beta III, anyone?). U-Matic did NOT use azimuth recording, where the tape runs at a constant speed of 3 3/4" IPS in NTSC. The cartridges came in two sizes, a smaller rectangular one which held up to 20-30 minutes' worth of tape, mainly for prerecorded material. The larger, more square-shaped cartridge came with up to 112 minutes' worth of tape. Black tapes would be either blank tapes or purchased prerecorded tapes. Red cartridges were rentals which could only play once before being required to be returned, where they had rewinders. They used different reel braking to accomplish this. It was also one of the earliest, if not THE earliest, format to offer multichannel sound. The audio would be either stereophonic or dual language. In the case of stereo sound, you'd use cables plugged into the back of the unit's electronic chassis, commonly called the "fish tank" or (possibly, but not sure) the header atop the fish tank that would go into the TV. For dual language, you would plug a dummy plug into the channel containing the language you weren't using, for example, if it offered a Spanish track. If the TV offered multichannel sound for the VTR, the fish tank A/V header and switches in the TV would allow you to access the two tracks accordingly. You could only record in monaural, and it used both tracks on the audio head. I so wish I could get one of these again. The output of these players is a bit funky, especially when you fed normal video into it; telecine was even funkier!

I have all of my family's old 8mm film reels. Not just late 70s and early 80s. But film reels from my grandparents when my Dad was a kid.

I'd like to see Motorola's prototype of the mini television. This is definitely interesting technology from the 70s. Look forward to seeing it work.

Exquisite video. I think you would be enthralled by a movie entitled "Auto Focus". Made in 2006, it stars Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. It is a biopic about Bob Crane, but only from right before he got the lead role in "Hogan's Heroes" till his death. A phenomenal filmI I would highly recommend for all, except children of course.

I only seen those at a hand-me-down stores but never knew anything about it!

A great video, excellent work.....just when you think you've seen all the old consumer tech something like this comes along.

Thanks for showing yourself..

I liked the historic flashback from the old times before I was born.

When my family first got a VHS VCR I thought it used film. Apparently there were systems that did..

I hope maybe Rick Thomas from Obsolete Video Services would love to talk about the CBS EVR soon.

I'm so envious of you....

Now I record 4K video with my Canon 90D. But better yet my 100.00 samsung still shoots fill HD video. We've come along way on video technology.

Wow, that machine is HUGE!

Wow nice !

"Smells like grandma's basement" haha, you got me. Nice video man, love it.

Des hatten meine Eltern auch damals. Cheers for uploading. Cu Toni

Thank you

Nintendo had a game called EVR Race, a game that was made in 1975, that does sort of based on EVR technology

This is such a hacky and brute force way to get home video I have to respect it

the Nordmende Colorvision could be useful now to transfer your old super/regular 8 films instead of shelling out close to $1000 plus to have them professionally done or buying that high end film scanner to do it. PS: is this the first time you ever put yourself fully into one of your videos?

Very intresing

One of the video machines looks too much like the PHILIPS NV1500 VCR, I hope you do manage to get it fixed some time.

You forget how complex these machines from the 70s were, and they were assembled and soldered together by hand, no wonder the cost so much.

You have the most soothing ASMR voice

boy we have come along way.

Using a CRT to create the spot in a flying spot camera. Interesting. That does allow for doing some tricks like scanning the same frame of film multiple times without having to stop the flow of the film (which is what makes projectors noisy.)

Super review for relict format.U-Matic still possible to find today in some studios even in working condition .Telefunken format was closest imho to later Laserdisc format.

I've got some vintage electronics I might be able to relate to for the smell. The technology for smell-a-vision is said to exist, but I'm guessing no one wants it for many reasons... News Anchor Woman: The FCC fined a TV news station in Oklahoma for airing an offensive odor. During a live news feed of a public works project they were covering, a driver of a horse manure truck lost control resulting in the truck turning over on its side spilling its gastly contents near the news crew who then covered the accident. Without realizing it, the news crew was filling their viewers' homes with a nauseating odor sparking many complaints. The driver of the manure truck was found to be unharmed, but he was drunk. Of course, who would want a dreaded fart bomb virus hitting their computer? Some kind of digital scent may in fact come to the Internet someday, and it will only be just a matter of time before some crazy teenager starts making thousands of computers pass gas.

nice electronic education

The RCA Holotape project did not use electron beam recording. This was instead being used by a separate project called the Capacitance Electronic Disc system. There is some false information online about this and both projects were in development at the same time so I can understand the confusion.

6:40 I see 2 VU meters to the right. Did it record in stereo sound?

I fixed two of the Nordmende (btw. the first d is not silent) Colorvision machines. They're engineered like tanks and have amazing picture quality. Better than those full HD Super 8 digitizers you can get from Aldi. Even better, they're RGB internally and thus can easily be modded to output RGB. (heck the internal signals' voltage levels pretty much conform to what SCART RGB expects). The circuitry for generating the raster is essentially half of a PONG arcade machine with the same 7400 series logic ICs. The machines didn't have much wrong with them. On one, someone has replaced a broken transistor in the vertical deflection with the wrong type - and then the op amp IC for syncing the film to the raster failed. On the other machine, the incandescent bulb for this exact circuit has burned a filter to not let enough light through to trigger the photo sensor, I replaced it with a bright enough white LED. And the CRT was in slightly crooked, resulting in extremely jittery picture. I don't think they're part of the format war (since you could just throw Super8 film at the wall for a fraction of the cost). I think they were used by TV broadcast studios to broadcast film images. Back in the 70s, portable video cameras sucked and portable VTRs either didn't exist or were ginormous beasts that nobody wanted to lug around, whereas Super8 cameras were small, convenient and had decent picture quality. News (as in footage) (and even commercials) back then were still shot on Super8, but the TV broadcasting studio would need a way to convert it to analog video. (and filming the screen sucks too - you get a bright spot in the middle, geometry issues, focus issues, the colors come out wrong and so on - the Nordmende Colorvision makes pretty much perfect transfers, you'd be surprised, if the Super8 material is good quality, you get very nearly DVD quality)

Why’s it need so much circuitry, and a crt, when it’s running essentially tiny film with an audio track on it?

what music has been used?

Bgm perfect!

song in the beginning?

Will you loan this to Techmoan?

Initially, Beta was only available in a monitor-equipped model. I can't remember the price offhand, just that the equivalent today was around $10,000!

this is good

Did you ever get any of the discs for this? Id love to see it in action aside from the archival footage.

You forgot to mention Philips VCR (But was never available in US)

With the Avco Cartrivision, it was included with a television! Don’t think Avco sold it as separate video player for your television!

I miss the Philips VCR system, same time as the U-MATIC. N1500

Sony U Matic FTW! PS, RCA used the name "Selectavision" on VCRs after CED failed. It was too good of a name to abandon!

You didn't say as much, but I'm certain that the Sony Umatic system is the one still in use. Great vid!

a good project for an electrical engineering student would be reverse engineering those boards, then recreate modern ones in surface mount format, you could do your whole course based off that unit.

I really want a link to that green wallpaper. I'm serious. I saw it and I just went "I have to add that to my rotating wallpapers!" Please, Databits, I NEED IT...

Maybe someone brought this up before, but at 13:05, you counted 6 screws that needed to be removed. However, at 13:16, you mentioned SEVEN screws. I re-watched the video from 13:05 and noticed you neglected to count the lower right screw.

Was the EVR's video quality better than Super 8 or the same

Was the Telefunken system eventually developed into LaserDisc?

so its a flying spot scanner from film?

ooo better quality

I'm thinking that the "Pilot" board could be some kind of pilot tone generator to ensure film/sound sync. Either that, or it's some kind of master control board. Not entirely sure which one though.

What no demonstration? I was really waiting for you dto do that. Ah well, too bad. Hope that you indeed find a movie to play on that thing. Nice sumup from the before VHS beta video2000 era.

What's the music you're using for this video? Keep up the good work, man!!!

Back in the mid70s I read an article of a small vcr/camera combo by an American company. I don't remember the name but it wasn't the majors it was a new company. It looked like the 8mm video system Sony developed.

Not read every comment . But the Pilot card . Some old super 8 with sound projectors they have Pilot to . sync audio you have on tape to play sync in to the film when you play it back . So its a Sync card so to say . If i remember it right :) ( if not said before) :)

We have lost something, we have lost the ability to repair modern tiny surface mount & or multiple layer board based electronics, it's fantastic to see those boards in this video, I would certainly like the opportunity to still buy certain big bulky electronics like home audio equipment for example but thinking about it logically how much of a market is there for big bulky through hole design electronics today? Most people are not interested, iit's a shame I think.

Text reads "Before V200", instead of "Before V2000"?

I want to see it play

Before plugging in, I suggest fixing the HV board as well can we get some pics of the damage

thank god for blu-rays

You should make a video about the odyssey

9:10 what a dent in the left corner of the device..!

I always find the quality of construction amazing in these vintage pieces of equipment. The considerations made by the makers to make them repairable. I didn't see any leaky capacitors although some might have gone.

You should make a video of replacing the caps in the meantime while you are searching for playable media

He shows himself!

Time to upgrade that thing with S-Video instead of RF.

Wasn't TED developed by DECCA UK? I know they had German help but the format belonged to DECCA. Either that or there was another Ted system with similar discs.

i dont understand why they couldnt just have the film projected.

What about Quasar Great Time Machine?