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The Forgotten Tale of Cartrivision's 1972 VCR
harrymcc writes: In 1972 -- years before Betamax and VHS -- a Silicon Valley startup called Cartrivision started selling VCRs built into color TVs. They offered movies for sale and rent -- everything from blockbusters to porn -- using an analog form of DRM, and also let you record broadcast TV. There was also an optional video camera. And it was a spectacular flop. Over at Fast Company, Ross Rubin tells the fascinating story of this ambitious failure.
using an analog form of DRM
So, that'd be "RM", then.
In case you're wondering, it was simply that only the rental store could rewind rental tapes (cartridges).
Not so much rights management as blanket functionality removal.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
In the history of technology, the first to develop a technology and attempt to bring it to market is usually not the one that is ultimately successful.
So it really is true ... all new technology must support porn.
From the first photography, to the first page-flip animations ... it's all porn, and always has been.
And yet humans still idiotically think they can curb such things, despite hundreds of thousands of years of evolution which says "humans are hardwired for sex".
All these isms which say porn bad, sex bad ... I figure they're mostly moronic because they completely ignore the fact that it's always been a part of humans, and isn't going to go away because your ism says so. In fact, if you ism wants it to go away, that's probably a sign your ism is crap.
If the first thing people do is say "in what way does this facilitate seeing boobies?", you're never going to get rid of it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The equivalent of $7,172 in 2015 dollars, skip frame 1:3 recording and no rewind. And they failed you say? Early bird gets the worm, second mouse gets the cheese.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Sportsvision (UHF) was killed by people hacking the signal it was not that hard to build your own tuner.
It later moved to cable and c-band.
I think "Sex makes the world go 'round" is a lot more reassuring than "Money makes the world go 'round".
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
One thing the article forgot to mention was that rental titles could not be rewound. You could pause, but not back up (much less watch it more than once during your rental period.)
Well Prima Cinema is apparently still in business where for $35000 + $500/rental you can see first-run movies at home. If you're a multi-millionaire apparently that's an ok price not to go to the cinema and hang out with the plebs. Really early adopter prices are hard to compare to "sane" price, because the whole point would be you had it first. And you did it because you had that much disposable cash.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I have heard it as pioneers get slaughtered settlers get rich.
It is funny but people forget just how much things have changed and how expensive a lot of things were back then.
Of course back in 1972 you may have gotten your tv for free, you didn't pay for internet, computers, smart phones, tablets, music subscriptions and so on. Over all I like today better than the good old days except that back then we could go to the moon.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And, really ... nobody has any sympathy for early adopters. Sure, they buy new tech and blaze the trail, and eventually the price comes down. But caring that someone was willing to spend thousands (if not tens of thousands) on new technology now has obsolete tech? No way.
Those guys who dropped $10K on plasma screen? Or any other piece of brand new tech? Nope, sorry ... can't even begin to care that the last time I saw any in a store they were being liquidated for $400 or so.
Early adopters get first look, and in a lot of ways help to determine what the rest of us get. But the premium they pay for that privilege also comes with the risk of getting burned.
In your example, if you're a multi-millionaire, paying those prices to watch first-run movies with your friends in your own private cinema? Well, that pretty much sounds like chump change.
If you have 10 of your buddies in your private theater is $50 each, which you'll happily pay to be able to show off to your buddies or not be in the cineplex. Got a theater big enough for 20 people? Well, at $25 each you're not spending all that much money.
By the time you can afford to play on that field, the incremental cost isn't that much, because you've spent way more on building the cinema, furnishing it, lighting it, and buying all that movie stuff your decorator got for you. $500 to see a first run movie in your own cinema? If you could afford the gear, the cost of that is nothing.
And, really, on the high end of home cinema ... one component costing $35K isn't really even that exceptional. By the time you're talking a home cinema with tiered seating, a bunch of high end seats, the floor lights and all the bells and whistles that people with money put into these things, the cost of the movie is nothing.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
To be fair, most "portable" video recording systems in the early 70's were skip frame.
The Ampex VR-6275, available in 1967 for $1495, was a 1 inch color video open reel recorder. Not skip-frame.
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at least one in every school district, often one in every junior or senior high school. easy to work with. decent picture, not VHS quality, might have been the cheapo vidicon camera.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
they are gathering in the trees, on the wires, watching. waiting. waiting for the critical number.
that's what about the birds.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I ordered two out of an ad in Popular Electronics. nice transformers, power supply, lots of good resistors and transistors to salvage. periodically I dip into my parts bins, and if I don't have a new resistor, I go back to the pulls from Cartrivison. often have the half-watt value, and none have tested out of tolerance. put the power supply section of my first into a cabinet, 3-voltage adjustable supply, and used that on the bench for years. had to sell it to get through my second college run and career change.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Ours was a Sanyo betamax machine in '82 or '83. The first movie we ever rented was Star Wars. For some reason we put it on at what must have been 11 or 12 at night, so I fell asleep right at Darth entrance. Never saw the whole movie until nearly a decade later.
Those guys who dropped $10K on plasma screen? Or any other piece of brand new tech? Nope, sorry ... can't even begin to care that the last time I saw any in a store they were being liquidated for $400 or so.
I Spent $3K on a plasma screen ~15 years ago, and it was a great TV for 10+ years: better color than LCD ever managed, no malfunctioning pixels ever, and that price over 10 years isn't bad at all. And it the time, a 42" screen one person could lift was a miracle.
So a couple years ago I replaced it: with a 60" plasma screen, for $3K. Terrific panel, very black blacks, no artifacts even with very fast action, still better color than any LCD screen. I'm sure it will be solid for 10 years as well. And I can lift it myself, which still amazes me,
By then, OLED will finally be consumer grade, and maybe I can get an 80"+ screen in that price range with perfect color.
Not everything expensive is high quality, but many high-quality things are expensive.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
To be fair, most "portable" video recording systems in the early 70's were skip frame.
I remember reading about the Cartrivision, and being willing to cut the limitations described some slack on the basis that it came out in 1972, which is *very* early on in terms of domestic videocassette recorders.
That was, until I'd remembered that the Philips N1500 also came out in 1972 and didn't have a lot of those limitations. It was the first model to support their flop "Video Cassette Recording (VCR)" format. In particular, it doesn't appear to have been skip frame. In fact, from what I've read, the N1500 appears to have been far closer in design and execution to later video formats like VHS and Betamax.
That's not to say it was perfect- apparently there were problems with the design of the reel-on-reel tape mechanism and feed, and later formats increased tape efficiency by removing the need for a guard band, amongst other improvements. Still, it looks to have been more advanced than Cartrivision.
Not only does the current article itself mention the N1500, but reading it more closely it actually makes basically the same points I made above about its technical superiority and closer resemblance to later machines!
In Cartrivision's defence, the OP's comment that it had "no rewind" is incorrect; the "no rewind" only applied to rental tapes used in domestic recorders; i.e. it was an anti-feature designed to ensure once-only viewing, but didn't apply to regular tapes.
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Thank you, you get it...
Lots of people have "media rooms", far fewer have a real home theater...
As in, a real theater with a real movie projector that shows what the cinemas show, a THX certified sound system, and a high end screen...
You know you're in the right house when there are two employees in the home theater, one to operate the projector and one to provide food and beverage service. At that point the cost for the movie is trivial...
Yes, but Prima Cinema is a very narrow market, but one that does exist.
That being said, you can also get the actual film reels if you have that much money, you just have to ask.
I saw Far and Away in a private home theater about 2 weeks before it hit the cinema back in 1992 at a private home theater. Complete with a 35mm projector operator and a food and beverage server.
People with that kind of money can get that, Prima Cinema is actually a step or two below it, for the "almost wealthy".
I remember how expensive VCRs were, even in the 80s. We had 1, but lord was it pricey! And I wasn't allowed to touch it!
Everything has gotten a lot cheaper, all things considered...
I recently purchased an el-cheapo TV... Polaroid (who knew they made TVs!)...
4k resolution, 55" screen size... $399 delivered to my door...
It isn't the best TV in the world, but that is a heck of a deal... (Thanks Nebraska Furniture Mart!)
The Ampex VR-6275, available in 1967 for $1495, was a 1 inch color video open reel recorder. Not skip-frame.
That works out to $10,667.14 in 2015 dollars.
thx certification haven't meant shit for over a decade now.
Edison didn't invent the light bulb -- he invented a way to make it cheaply (no platinum) and last longer.
The Edison light bulb could be wired in parallel. The single most significant step forward and the one most easily forgotten. Lights could now be individually controlled and the failure of a single bulb wouldn't plunge you into the dark.
The equivalent of $7,172 in 2015 dollars, skip frame 1:3 recording and no rewind.
Recordable tapes or purchased tapes could be rewound. Only rental tapes were blocked.
Is film even used anymore? AFAIK, movies are now distributed digitally. 35mm film is extremely expensive to produce and ship, and has a relatively short life span. And, it's not controllable, like a digital system is (talking DRM here).
Yeah, and wages were $2.00 an hour... Perspective.
Yes, many prints of 35mm film are made for every release.
Many theaters have not upgraded to digital projectors, they cost big bucks (for the kind that can project an imagine to a theater sized screen).
Also, backups are often done to 35mm film, since it is pretty well known how long it will last and how to store it, so even digitally produced movies often have a dozen or more 35mm prints made for salt mine storage.