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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 เม.ย. 2017
- In prehistoric days, studios used gigantic VCR's to create video programs using gigantic tapes. In this video, we look at the 3/4" U-Matic system which began in the late 1960's. It survived as a television studio format up until at least 2009 and might still be surviving today!
The databits channel is pleased to provide you with the best in new tech, vintage and oddity gadgets, media formats, repair projects, electronic experiments and restorations of thrift store finds. There are also many "how to" and instructional titles. The goal is to search through garage sales, antique malls and resale shops for gadgets you didn't know existed, electronic toys you had as a kid, stereo or turntables your parents used or a film projector your school used to teach you valuable lessons. Typically we produce one video a week with several trips to a thrift store per month. Sometimes, through research, an item is searched for on ebay and purchased for review. A list of some of the most popular items watched here on the channel are: record cutting on various materials, DLP television repairs, VCR's, Camcorders, turntables, record players, records, car reviews and dictation equipment.
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I used to repair these. My company sent me to Sony school, in New Jersey, in the late 80s. The big silver spinning part is the 'upper drum assembly', contains the tiny video heads that do the actual recording. When I would replace them, I'd turn the old one into an ashtray, give away to friends that still smoked.
It's amazing the detail inside these machines. Everything is so precise. I respect this type of equipment more than the digital age we live in now.
I feel so old. I was a video tech in the 80s and repaired the play only version of this unit (VP 5000) hundreds of times. I got flashbacks looking inside that. The units are build strong too. One time I backed into one with my pick-up truck. I was dented but still worked.
Haha, nice! there's a fly on your logo...can you fix that?
I used to help with the family business and we used to convert U-matic tapes to DVD, required 2 people to move the damn player.
Scott T how is to age ? Im born on 1984
You are not old. You are better.
Kenny S technology becomes old, not you, manufacturers make things become obsolete,so you have to buy them a new product. 🙂
The U-Matic was actually used from 1971 to 2009 (where it was widely replaced by current digital videotape formats and tapeless digital formats). Believe it or not, the U-Matic was widely used on EPKs and in TV channels in Israel, which is now 46 years old (in 2017).
This broadcasting vcr deck was absolutely built like a tank!!!
They were.. in the late 80’s our local public access channel had a set of 3 in the remote truck. The remote would connect to the cross feed box.. was really awesome then. It was all equipment racked though. They were fun to play with as a teen ager. Lol
They did have timecode built in on the machines.
When I was in high school, I learned to edit on a VO9800/VO9850 with an RM450 remote. Those machines are built really well and virtually indestructible. This particular model doesn't do machine to machine editing because it doesn't have variable jog/search. It's only one speed. That's what the VO5800 is for. The main function of this deck is to independently playback or record and to roughly dub some audio. You also forgot to mention that the lower front panel pulls out. There are is a slot for an optional time code card. 5800/5850 have it too I believe. They might even have some configuration buttons.
I believe your Star Wars cassette is manufactured by 3M. We used to use 3M VHS cassettes that looked unbranded, yet had the type and duration stamped onto it in much the same way. Great quality cassettes!
probably still being used in 09 because TV stations are typically extremely slow to update their hardware.
I would agree with your assessment.
In Israel the U-Matic machines was in use until 2014 and the Betacams until this day...
LOL we have only one channel that broadcasting in HD and all the others are in 4:3 SDTV
Doesn't surprise me the slightest!
Bet they were using 16mm telecine units into the end of the 90's!
The main reason is the price.
OMG, a VO-5600. I also have one of those holding up a couple of turntables! Back in the 80s, I used to hang out at a small independent video house, and used to use the editing siblings of this deck with an RM-440. All the sounds of those machines loading, unloading, fast forwarding through the bars and tone remind me of the all nighters that made me decide I'd rather do camera work than edit! I can still hear that little servo "groan" when you first power it on, which I'm surprised I didn't hear in this video. All part of that Sony U-Matic charm! Those were indeed workhorses. I also remember the EPK's, because we used to reuse them for editing, being the low budget cheap skates we were! (I would always keep the bars and tone and start recording after that.) Never did do that for a living. I think it was just one or two summers, but it left an impression!
I have the playback-only model VP-5000, in the same case. It was so big and heavy my local UPS driver refused to deliver it, I had to go pick it up. They also managed to bash in the back left corner. Pounded it back into shape with a hammer, replaced all the belts, cleaned and lubricated it, and it plays perfectly. Rubber Renue worked great on the pinch roller, the belt kit I bought came with a new tire.
I'm stunned that EPKs were still being issued on U-Matic as late as 2009. I've worked in professional network television since 1996 and I've never had to use U-Matic.
It was rarely used for broadcast except for low-budget stations and some newsgathering situations. Most commonly it was used for internal viewing and offline editing purposes.
mindblowing stuff!
ベータカムやSUPER VHS が有利でしょう。😊
Look at Panasonic D2. Those cassettes were YUGE!!!
Oh dear. Feeling very old. I started my career editing on a 5800/5850 system with an RM440 controller in 1976. We upgraded to Hi8 after Umatic, then DVCam until moving to XDCam. In the 80's all our commercials were run off 2" cartridge machines. They used 2" video tape in a cassette that was about the size of a fireplace brick. Much thicker than the 3/4" umatic cassette but not as long. The 5800's were real workhorses and the mechanism that wrapped the tape around the head was almost failsafe. They rarely broke down and we serviced them annually with new belts, guides and pinch rollers. The umatic machine was known as a "3/4 wrap" machine because the tape was wrapped 3/4 of the way around the head. VHS and beta were hAlf wrap machines. If you look closely, you can see that the carriage (chop chop train track) move the carousel around the tape head at a slightly downhill angle. Also the head is tilted slightly off axis as well. That allows the spinning head to contact and write the video information on the tape diagonally this getting mor information onto the tape in each pass. The audio tracks and control tracks were recorded linearly on the edge of the tape. The video head switches off just before crossing the audio track so it didn't interfere. The leader of the tape in the cassette ate each end was clear. So as you mentioned, when the tape reached the end, the light shone through the clear leader, hit a light sensor and stopped the motor before the machine tore the tape out of the takeup reel. This tech was carried over to VHS, and beta. The 8m and dvcam used a metallic leader that hit a magnetic sensor to shut the rewind and ff motors off. I have lots of great memories of the old 5800 series and the 6800 and 9800 series that followed. We still keep one of each machine tuned up and ready at the station for use with archival footage. If you want some real fun, hunt down an d Ampex AVR 2 machine. It was a quad he'd machine that used a vacuume to bend the 2" tape around a cylindrical drum with four spinning heads at the end. Thanks for posting!
I restore 2" quad machines (Ampex) from VR-1000 to the ACR-25. I think the best Quad machine was the AVR-1. I worked in tape ever since it was invented. Gee im old
At the time that unit hit the market, I worked for an A/V rental firm which supplied equipment for trade shows and various other functions. I remember lugging these and Sony ProFeel monitors around in road cases to set up at these events. I don't think we ever had a mechanical issue with one of these VO 5600's in all the time I worked there. They were very popular at trade show displays due to the auto repeat functionality included.
They were very heavy !!! LOL
I used to work in a public access TV playback station back in 2004-05 and they were still using these things to play some shows. (they were also using VHS, DVD, DVCPRO, and MINI-DV)
I remember as a kid in the 80s watching cartoons, very rarely but once in a while someone at the studio would put the wrong tape in and the wrong show would start, then stop and you'd get a blank screen for a minute while they scrambled to put the right tape in lol
I've been working in TV since 2001 and we used to have a couple of these stashed away, I've never seen them working, we used D9 by JVC, Betacam SP from Sony, later on around 2003 we had DV and Mini DV by Sony and now we only use computers. We still have a few DVs for backup and a few Betacam SPs for really old footage back in the archive. We don't fix them anymore if they break down so I think their days are numbered.
Watching this in 2022 because I'm actually using 3/4 decks at this very moment...
Analog isn't quite dead - yet!
I own this unit as I did a great deal of editing between '90 and '92. Not sure why I am still keeping it but I can attest it is built like a bank safe. The one thing I kept waiting for you to mention is that this unit must weigh over 50 pounds. I just fired it up and it still works. Sony over engineered many of these early units (I have SuperBeta and Super VHS rack mount units) and they are all still solid.
Holy crap, that thing is monstrous!
Hahah tbays a toy compared the what I worked on. Google "AMPEX 2" VR-2000"
THAT was a beast weighing in at almost 1900lbs and needed and air compressor for the video head air bearings
@@rty1955 databits needs to get one to show us!!!
@@adamkatt IF you can find thrm any more. I still restore them and there are far kess peiole who remember how to operate then either
Google 2' quad video tape machines
I love everything about vhs and you definitely got a great find. D-VHS is another great machine. I'm a huge physical collector of all format and I love to collect all kinds of stuff, keep dishing wonderful content.
Anch'io sono e sono sempre stato un grande appassionato del VHS
I used to do a lot of video editing on Sony 800 series U=Matic machines as well as 1 inch and 2 inch V. T. R. s.
That set is awesome... and that pause mode is so clear with just two video pickup-heads. :-)
Great video. Cool technology. It was neat to see the inside of the VCR when the tape was inserted and played. It's amazing all the stuff they crammed in there to make it work.
Pro video decks are works of art and masterpieces of precision engineering. Shame they're being scrapped. Unlike consumer junk, they're designed for longevity and regular maintenance.
Ampex tapes were from the mid 1970's era when Dupont was still trying to work out their formula on making tape ribbon last, and those tapes are prone to SSS (sticky shed syndrome). The binder breaks down quickly and the tape glues to itself. The solution to this is to get a labratory oven (tabletop unit) with a thermometer or a food dehydrator and bake the tapes slowly to dry out the binder, and this will give you 1-2 days maximum to archive the tape before it reverts back to its previous form. You can do this as many times as you want to, but you generally want to not have to do it so many times in order to preserve the tape.
This particular Umatic (Lo-Band) was 220 lines. 330 lines was the Umatic SP.
Yes, this appears to be the case.
Old TV station memories........
I bet!
RF OUT is not a modulator for channel 3/4 like you find on other VCRs. It is the amplified signal direct from the video heads. This would be connected to a timebase corrector (TBC) for dropout compensation (DOC). The TBC buffers video from the VTR and emits it using an internal or external master sync. This gets rid of the variance from tape stretch, etc.. and allows playback to be in sync with live cameras, other VTRs, etc.. so that A-B transitions can be done. If there is a defect on the tape, the RF signal will drop out and DOC will know to stop sampling into the buffer. Whatever data was in the buffer from the previous line or frame will fill in the missing video.
Brings back memories. I used these in video production
Brings me back. Used a couple racks of these in my first job in the industry as a part-time master control operator for a cable company back in the 90's when I was in college. Good video. Only thing I wished you'd show is the VU meters moving (maybe in a PIP window) when videos were being played. Later I was fortunate to use some 9800 series decks for news editing, those were sweet. They had bigger buttons and a robust rubber-grip jog/shuttle wheel on the right side for accurately cueing up video, and were controlled by an edit control panel.
While I'm getting my nostalgia on, can you do a video about the Betacam SP decks, such as the massive (but beautiful with all those buttons and knobs - I still geek out over all that complexity today!) Sony PVW-2800 recorder/player? Betacam SP (not to be confused with consumer Betamax) came a little later than U-Matic (we always just called it "three-quarter inch", never "U-Matic") and blew 3/4-inch out of the water in picture quality, because the video signal was component (splitting up the brightness and two channels of color information). I remember it looked pretty amazing for a standard-def analog format, until Digital Betacam ("Digi-Beta") came along, then "the rest is history".
believe it or not, here in central America we are still in NTSC land, still have over the air vhf and uhf, and still use u-matic SP on occasion, mostly for backing up old tapes, and was used for mastering news stories well up until 2005. u-matic SP is a big step up from regular u-matic in terms of video quality, and even had dolby-c. the quality was second to betacam sp, which was second to dvcam.
Still in analog land? I'm so sorry to hear that.
They should cherish it while it lasts. They won't be able to go travel in their cars and expect the signal to stay consistent while moving!
Wow that u-matic tape has high quality!
2009 wow that looks surreal seeing such recent movies on tape i wonder if they are still used today by some countries.
as far as I know many TV stations still have them for the case that they want to show some archived material which wasn't yet digitized. In this case they will digitize it before showing it.
Approved for use only inside of Tom Brokaw's house. Glad you found a beige enough device to play them on!
The remote switch is for the sony RM series edit controllers. the 440 and 450 were the most common and you could do both frame accurate assemble and insert editing with timecode on the tape. Those things were pretty durable too, everyone I've ever seen has had buttons bent, broken, or completely missing. Countless number of news stories were edited with those and with working under deadline, editors tended to get pretty mad when decks started malfunctioning.
The RM 450 was 2 frame accurate and if you viewed more than 2 edit previews the accuracy slipped. These decks were work horses. As long as the tension arms were maintained and video record heads were kept clean they ran 24/7. In Canada, 3/4" was commonly used for broadcast news editing and for community channel editing and playback from early 80's until late 90's when betacam then digital formats took over. Still have them for dubbing. betacam is still popular for archive footage.
Worked with these types of machines for years. Local commercial production. Not this particular model. But Sony Umatic SP. Frame accuracy was give or take 2 frames either way.
"Audio Limiter" is not automatic gain control used in lieu of proper gain settings. It is simply, a limiter, usually about -20db. When the incoming signal is too hot and sounds distorted at any volume the limiter is used to bring things back down to normal.
Very high quality machine, yes Uge!!
Haha high quality? As compared to what nn
16:35 The color bars are very clean including red and purple. According to Wikipedia U-Matic have trouble reproducing the color red and red images are noisier. But that's not the case in your video. The red appears very clean. The visual search is also clean despite it only have two heads.
I left TV news in 2012 to work as a full time freelancer, but at the time I left the station I worked for still had one of these hooked up in our feed room. It was connected to the video routing system, and was used for ingesting old archival material, when needed, into our editing server. I only ever used it a couple times, but based on the number of archive tapes we had in this format, it seems the station only ever used it for news gathering operations for a very short period between 16mm film and BetaCam.
Nice work:) thank you
Thanks for watching it.
I used to use a 5600 just like this (and a few VO-5850s in an editing suite with RM-440 controller) when I volunteered at the cable access TV station in my town back in the 90s. As you mentioned, the quality of 3/4" U-Matic was actually quite good, definitely passing muster for broadcast quality video in its era. The video was much sharper & cleaner looking than grungy ol' VHS or BII/BIII-speed Betamax :)
BI was broadcast quality though, except you did not get much time on the tapes with that speed.
I remember that i worked with the 5630 (the improved version of the 5600 that you got) and we use them for Cut-to-cut editing until 2014! After then when we switched to HD I went to the equipment store for taking one of those machines to my home sadly I saw that this piece of history was gone... That was sad :(
My dad had quite a few of these in his office for course material for the college library/distance learning.
In the UK these were know as Low band Umatic and were never used for broadcast work.The news people used Umatic High band that was similar but "broacast Quality"and 5 times the price of Lowband.We used to shoot on a portable umatic(lownband) VO4800 and edit on a VO5800 to VO5850(editing machine)both controlled by the RM440.Lowband was also used for off line editing instead of tying up 1inch C format machines.Edit lists were created by the editor and assistant editors would conform(work from the low band tape and edit on C format)this kept the time on expensive C format to a minimum.
it's brand new! great!
I used a few of these at a public access channel to do some video editing (home made music videos) great for editing
Agreed! In 88 or 89 I got to work with one of these machines in a studio. Never imagined I'd own one some day!
Gee look at that thing! Amazing
Thanks Andre! I made it myself. Haha!
databits Hahahaha, you're the best!
I used to own one of these! That thing was a beast!! I think mine had a few more features but I had no tapes to play on it. :-(
How weird !!! Ponyo in that format!!! How interesting
Those U-Matic machines were the last iteration of the format, previous to that ones were even bigger, heavier units, as you may have noticed, that 5600 can be rack mounted, it was designed as a reliable workhorse, the other format used in Pro applications was the Betacam, Betacam SP and Digital, same form factor as the 5600 but different technology, this one was a 3/4 in tape and Betacam used a 1/2 in tape on a cassette very similar to it's home bro, the Betamax (the similarity ends there).
Panasonic and JVC had also editing units on 3/4.
good review
I worked on the U-Matic VCR's in the 80's for the US Army civil service. They were a great quality machine for the standard def. years.
I used to be a creative director for an advertising agency. I supervised the production of television commercials. When I started out in the early 1980's some TV stations were actually using 2 inch video. Later these same stations used 1 inch, 3/4 U-Matic, and then, Professional Betamax. A modest post production studio in the late 1990's, before computer editing, was about a $500,000 proposition. It made television advertising too expensive for some advertisers. The video recorders back then cost about $75,000 average. You can get them today for about $50. Not bad if you have material to view and a means to repair the equipment. Best thing is to call local stations and ask to speak to the in-house guy who fixes their equipment to see if he moonlights.
Hey Charles! Thanks for sharing your story, and for the tip!
@Charles Ludwig - I think you mean Betacam SP (or SX or Digital Betacam), not a Betamax.
amazing they still used that format until 2009 !
I used these back in my broadcast days, the more feature 5800 and the bigger BVU series. Those are the biggest.
I have hundreds of those cassettes to transfer to MPEG this summer. The TV station I work for was using those until the DV, then HD tapeless. I have exactly the same VO-5600. Sadly it doesn't work. Found another in the back of the most dirty, humid closet. Surprise... still works perfectly!
I remember my old school had one of these machines well into 90s to be able show the official licensed documentary movies from BBC
I like this format. Remember my old good days at TV Editing with Beta tapes - Editing was a pleasure with rewinding and winding In-Out points. Actualy back then the editing was fast with these units :) We do not have Umatic, but the same deal with Beta`s :)
I worked in a CD factory in 2000 or 2001 that used DAT and UMATIC in order to transfer the data into the laser beam recorder machine that produced the glass CD masters. (After that it was processed into a nickel master that actually went into the injection molding machines) I forget how it went, but I think the oldest machine had umatic. I forget if that one was audio only or if it also did data disks, but the control program for it was written in gwbasic and it had been used since probably the 80s or the early 90s at least.
Very good video quality for it to only have 2 heads
I looked this up because in a 1971 interview between Jim Morrison and Ben Fong-Torres they are discussing the future of film and video cassettes come up.....it had to have been this original Sony technology they were referring to though it had not yet made any commercial impact. Fascinating predictions.
As crazy as it might seem. I did an ebay search for the UR-01 part just for kicks and... yes, there are a couple of persons selling a spare power supply for a specific model of an ancient U-Matic machine!
A few years ago I a few worn out studio video-tape machine that didn't even switch on, so I stripped them for any recyclable metals & materials. One was a UHF machine (JVC, I think), but the others were a pair of Sony Betamax machines that looked very much like this machine but of course the mechanism was more elaborate & the front panels had more controls on them (Dolby, etc.), plus they'd managed to cram a few more circuit-boards inside!
Haha. That is the small one. Type 5 without a control knob. Only thing lower was a player only. This was the type that was in the station manager's office.
I had the broadcast version of this -- the BVU-800 editor. But I didn't use it much. Just to play out/transfer some home recordings from the mid 70's. Unfortunately the tapes and recorder are long gone.
I own 5 of these machines, all working and still have around 500 tapes1 Yes I worked in television and own around 20 different format machines. If you like, I'd be happy to list them..!
Please do,I would love that
Nice, I have sn older one for these at home but I've not tested it yet... I need to get on that.
I notice this generation of U-matic machines are very similar in form factor to Betacam SP machines (I recently purchased a Beta SP player, which gives amazing results as although it's analogue, it is component, so you see quality that would not have come across over the OTA broadcast).
Wow, that's basically almost DVD quality video on VHS tapes.
ive encountered a U-Matic machine that was bottom on a rack. they're interesting to look at just by itself
one of the neat things about U-matic was that the reels rotated in opposite directions instead of the same direction
The color bars at the head are for you to adjust colors, contrast and brightness of your display.
To adjust the proper colors, hold up a deep blue filter in front of one eye a d adjust the tint or hue controls on your display so the cyan & magenta bars (3rs bars from the left and right) are of the same brilliance. There should also be b&w bars on the lower right just barely visable. Adjust the contrast so the black bar just disapears on the screen and adjust brightness just so the light bar is barely visable. There your all set
There are four digital tape formats, D-1, D-2, DCT and D6 which all took much larger cassettes than U-Matic.
>trailers for movies made this millennium
>u-matic
wot
FTW
Well some places still needed 'em!
I'm surprised too to see a EPK released on 3/4" tape that recently! By then, everything was starting to be sent digitally as video files via satellite via Pathfire or other services....
U-Matic was still in use into the late 2000's. I have a U-MATIC tape of Eminem music videos. Studio cuts.
The tv effects are called moiré. Its caused by the scanning of the electron beam on the phosphor. Its because the scanning isn’t perfect. Its there all the time but really apparent with a camera or patterns the have horizontal and vertical lines. Like black and white patterns on clothes.
The Umatic wasn't a broadcast format... Quality was not high enough! At the beginning, Umatic was originally designed for the consumer market, but nobody wanted it. TV stations found use for it for news gathering. At that point, Umatig gained a huge success! At the beginning of the 80's, the Highband (or BVU) was released. This was the first Broadcast quality video cassette recorder. The old Umatic (low band) isn't compatible with the BVU signals. Later (Betacam was already widely in use) they brought the Umatic SP, wich is just as good as Betacam SP, but still composite. These machines were build right throug the 90's! and still perform really well... The last machines (VO-9800 and VO-9850 Are compatible with all Umatic standards, Low band, High band/BVU and SP.
My understanding is that Low, High and SP bands apply in PAL countries, but in NTSC they had only Low and SP, missing out High Band.
Yea low band was for domestic use and off line copies and viewing copies. but Hi Band was broadcast quality
So, we were getting just 330 lines. Half the promised 625 in PAL countries 🧐
An S-VHS could deliver 400 lines and they came out in 1987.
10:46 "okay its not really that big, but its pretty big" hahah
I have the VO-5850, it's quite a machine.
This format is still pretty good considering it was around since 1970’s
Designed a control system for one of these back in the day.
When this player was broadcast quality it only had to handle 280 lines of resolution because of broadcast limitations and television limitations. This machine was umatic and not umatic sp. So it was only 280 vertical lines of resolution. What acually made this broadcast quatlity was it's s/n ratio. Much, much better than Beta or VHS.
Those were great machines by SD standards. I was a dj at an fm/am/tv combo back in the 90s. We would have (sent to us) music videos from record companies that were on umatic. 99% of the time, they were stereo. Since they ran st 3 3/4 ips, the sound was pretty decent (not as good as AFM VCRS, of course.)
I worked m-f 6 - midnight. A couple times i sat up in the tv section dubbing these to vhs hifi stereo cassettes to keep. Lookong back, I'm glad i gave up the sleep hours to do this. Later I burned them to dvds. Great fun to watch them.
Great story Scott, thanks for sharing!
I've got a VO-5850- SONY VMATIC from a closed studio here in Burbank, California and was wondering if there is still a market to sell these units?
What I would do for a direct to DVD recording of that Ponyo press kit using my Magnavox recorder.
I had one of those at work for years. Hi band Umatic wasn't really broadcast standard though
Yeah, technically it was an industrial format. Used primarily in news gathering, advertising, education, music videos (in MTV's heyday in the 80s)... and even early CD mastering and the occasional data backup. It was a very versatile format and far more reliable than VHS and other consumer junk. These old U-matics r00l! They're built like tanks and run rock solid. I have an old JVC 8250 editing deck from '84(ish) and a newer Sony VO-9600 that accepts the U-matic SP format.
Expo 92 used a lot of this umatic tapes as well as betacam so It's very usual and expensive to fix it, sure they have around 3000 tapes and most of them are betacam and umatic
There is no jog dial, but you can do it with another operation👍
Ah yes u-matic. Had fun with them recently at work. Tapes were bad though, sticky tape syndrome.
I have been in broadcasting since 1960 and many post facilities in NY. No one I ever knew, besides cable companies uses these for broadcast. U-magic was a commercial (not broadcast) machine. Notice lack of XLR audio connections. No "tv studios" used the tv monitor connection. That connextions was yesterdays HDMI port. We used them to send copies or shorr clips off to advertising agencies. We would also make visually coded cassettes so producers could used them to pick out edit points for quad or 1" online edits.
I own over 200 movies on u-matic 3m tapes. Direct from 35mm film and in stereo
any older tapes need to be baked before playback.
I restore broadcast video tape machines (2" & 1")
From my understanding, Betacam and it's variants (like Digi, SP and SX) absolutely slaughtered the other high-band broadcast video formats
@@VoyageOne1 they were only used for ENG stuff, never for productions
@@rty1955 What was the reason? Did Betacam lack of quality for high end production usage?
@@martinmannik reason for what?
@@rty1955 Reason for using Beta variants only for ENG stuff.
I thought it was interesting that some of those units on eBay were quite affordable. I've been recording local weather coverage of tornadic storms, and that would certainly make my DVD transfers look much better. I record those onto VHS as power glitches (like those during thunderstorms) won't prevent the entire recording from being trashed like burning video onto DVD would. As far as I know, a power glitch that happens while you are recording (burning) on a video DVD recordable is a bad thing. I don't think the recording is retrievable at least on consumer recorder or computers. Also, if the VCR ends up resetting after a power glitch, you just simply hit record to continue recording. I have an ATSC tuner that records to a USB stick, but those recording usually get corrupted during a power failure too. Of course, I could just get an UPS...
Ahhh man i wanted to see all the jedi action!
At 3:15 there should be somebody yelling: hey dont touch my settings
This is like having Blu-Ray in 1991
I really like the way the external topology (is that the right word?), of the power switch has been designed. Looks like it would be really difficult to "accidentally" swith off this machine. I suppose that's quite important when it comes to real-world use. Yes! Real-world use included TV stations using this machine to play and broadcast pre-recorded tapes. You certainly do not want some ham-fisted, accident-prone individual "accidentally" switching this thing off. No Sir !!!
The Microwave Of VHS When I Studuied Media In The 90´s i wORKED With These
Got a U-matic tape from a house we were disposing trash from... did not know what it was. Should have looked for the recorder in retrospect.
I just found a bunch of these tapes... I wonder if they have value or use?
Skew is like tracking on A VHS tape
Ive got 3 of these players VO5800, 5850, and a 7600. Prolapsed a disc lifting these monsters!
I used a forklift. :D Sorry to hear about your injury!