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Video Tape Recorder Unveiled 50 Years Ago
Argyle writes "50 years ago Ampex unveiled the first video tape recorder. TV Technology has an excellent story about the surprise launch of the video tape recorder, impacting almost every aspect of business, entertainment, and family life as we know it today. The enabler of the entire modern entertainment industry, the video tape recorder was was designed by only six men, Charles Ginsburg, Charles Anderson, Ray Dolby, Shelby Henderson, Alex Maxey, and Fred Pfost."
We had one of the first betamax videos when they came out. We had it for a couple of months ... during the world cup in Mexico my father sat up until 2am programming the thing to record every game. Then a few weeks later some ****ers broke into the house and stole the thing, along with all my father's world cup tapes. By that time VHS was taking over, and since we didn't know anyone who'd had a VHS stolen, we replaced those lovely DAT-like betamax tapes for the horror, the horror, of chewed VHS tape.
Tape rules, bring back the audio cassette (only this time clean yer heads and don't use anything bigger than a C60).
And yet you post and read /.? So much for making good use of all that extra time!
/. and posting your personal opinions is what does it for you, great! But don't look down your nose at other people just because they enjoy something you don't.
Really though, at different point in my life I have gone without TV, and I just don't get the whole "TV sucks" thing. Just like anything else, there are good shows, and there are bad shows. There is stupid stuff, and there is really enlightening stuff. Besides, some people need to just unwind sometimes.
I mean, I have been 10 years now without a car, and I could certainly make comments like "What I find constantly amazing is seeing otherwise intelligent people I know throwing away tens of thousands of dollars just so they can be fat and lazy and not have to walk to the store." By the same token I haven't gotten drunk in years and I could say "What I find constantly amazing is seeing otherwise intelligent people I know pay money to kill off brain cells." However, I realize that it is a gross oversimplification to even think that way.
People do what pleases them. If reading on
We may be at the end of an era, but beta and VHS won't give in without a fight, I'm a master control operator for our local NBC affiliate and we still have an odetics beta tape machine, purchased back in 94, twelve years and I look at that beast with such disdain because it is so freakin huge! and to do the same job that one digital server does for the commercials for our sister station. While other stations are upgrading to fully digital stations (i.e. news, operations, production, master control) we "cannot afford the upgrade". Beta because it is a better product that VHS has held it's own and will continue to serve a vital function to the media. Although the video that we record to analog went from analog to digital beemed thousands of miles into space and back to be prossesed from digital back to analog onto Beta tapes that shouldn't be run through the machine more than 50 times so that they maintain integrity. Tapes probably get run closer to 300+ times through our VTRs. I would like to see Beta scrapped, but while we are at it sattelite's are also on the decline due to network video servers which we are now pulling a show off of. As to the idea of throwing your TV out, for someone who watches 12 hours of it a day, I'd highly recommend it, of course if everyone stopped watching TV I'd have to find another job.
-You have been modded appropriately-
I have not RTFA but your post bring back the hard memories...
I had to go to work with 50lbs of recording machinery with another 20lbs of batteries in the snow...
Those darn 2" recorders were so very heavy.
Having said that, the current generation of camcorders and 5 megapixle cellphones don't know what they have in the palm of the hand.
At least I know.
There was a film a couple of years back about Hogan's Heroes' Bob Crane called "Auto Focus" starring Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. He was one of the first to use the new "portable" VTR from Sony for sex video's. I googled up this: http://crimemagazine.com/bobcrane.htm
Can we be so sure that the tape era is dead? In the remote sensing (satellite measured data) area the main storage method is still magnetic tape. It simply can store more data and is reliable for storing data long term. This point reminds me of the comment made by somebody in IBM a while back regarding writable cdroms and how they are not reliable in the long term (yet). Furthermore it is a bit of a concern when people store there digital photos on a medium that has yet to be truly tested in the long term. Current historians look at faded photos a hundred years old which still tell a story. Will a cdrom or dvd burned today be able to do the same in a hundred years.....