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Post by Adrian Gregg on Dec 4, 2008 9:46:06 GMT
 Hi, Ive been very busy the last few months packing up all my goodies to move interstate to find work, any work. Working in a Hardware store for the last year on less than 5 pounds an hour for 9 hours straight without any breaks hardly pays the rent!. Not when you only work 3 days a week it JUST scrapes in (if all i eat are 2 min noodles). So Im moving to sunny Quensland to try to find some kind of job, any job, I have loads of IT experance and have built many Digital cinemas including Australias very first purpose built one last year. But Alas I dont drive. so having an associate diploma in IT and a Restoration guy with "golden ears" I cant find work, not in NSW anyway. oh yes the bummer is I dont drive. eh! when did driving mean you were good at hardware software fault fixing I tell you.. ! so... Ive been scanning all my rarities so I can leave them with a friend in his lockup as I cant carry everything i own!. And I came across a article from 1965 that Ive always wondered about. Home Recording 405line in the UK on standard open reel tape. ok you had to build the rig first but. just maybe someone has some tapes. or this could be used to jog some memories and something may crop up. since buying this mag at a second hand bookshop in the late 80's I've always wondered If i would ever find any open reels with such a thing recorded onto. nope Ive played 10000's of tapes back just to check in the last 20 years and not found any sighn that anyone (in Australia at least) had built this. Up until recently (5 mins ago thanks Richard) I thought the Space Pirates and the Moon Landing "unplayable" tapes were recorded on such a device! here's the link for a ZIP file contains scan's or 2 mags about this. Ive severely "re-sised"them as the originals are at 130 megs. but here is a "readable" 10 meg version. Oh and yes my scanner is crap. it Blurs part of the image. rapidshare.com/files/170107714/VKR-500_Home_VTR.zip |
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Post by Brian Fretwell on Dec 4, 2008 17:08:41 GMT
This looks like one I seem to remember being offered in the TV Times as a prize. I think it reversed the tape every 10 minutes or so. Muriel Young said in the article that she could use it to record "girl thingy Cat Willum" about all it could do in one pass of the tape.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2008 19:01:06 GMT
Hopefully someone WILL have recorded some "girl thingy Cat Willum" in that way - and kept it. Some Five O Clock Club too, as that's near the top of the list of things i'd love to see again!
There is also a demo of an early reel to reel video recorder as demonstrated by Eamonn Andrews in 1966, where a live dance performance is subsequently played back on it. It's featured in an ABC show looking back over the company's first ten years. Someone here will probably know exactly which machine it was! Was it a Sony CV model?
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Post by Adrian Gregg on Dec 5, 2008 1:31:58 GMT
This one apparently could record 25-20 mins, without any change of direction (this is could not do "on the fly" )
again I think this (and have so for the last 20 years) is a field which should be looked into.
In the late 80's I used to buy "blank quater inch tape" from a 2nd hand bookshop in Sydney. they had masses of the stuff and sold it very cheaply. I mainly bought 4 inch (or were they 5 inch?) spools as I could record a half hour radio comedy on one side at 3-3/4IPS. I never bought any of the "big reels" untill I needed to record a evening's radio and found that ( I Always played back the tapes "to see what was on em") most of the tapes were Medical Lectures from the 60's from some Uni. but this "big spool" had a weird whine all the way though the tape. It wasn't a Bulk eraser sound, or "natural blank-ness" or any other "effect" due to the wiping of a tape. but from what I read later in the year when I picked up the scanned mag, I could just could have been one of these tapes. who knows.. I rubbed the bloody thing out!
so have a look at the scans. Its not remotely like anything you have been describing before and it COULD record 25-30 mins (longer with quad play tape) Its from 1965 and not 1970, I think It's a subject we should try to trace any owners of such a device!
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Post by William Martin on Dec 6, 2008 11:45:35 GMT
if it had multiple fixed heads it could slow down a bit and increase the recording time.
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Post by Adrian Gregg on Dec 7, 2008 6:29:42 GMT
yeh I think that was the next step in "primitive home recorders" about 66-67 if i remember what ive read in the old mags. but just after that it looks like the Sony type decks were getting popular and people seemed to give up "rolling their own"
Do you think if I started the post with:
THIS Deck recorded DR WHO and missing TOTP's Id get more feedback? ;->
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Post by Leroy B. Heidrick on Dec 27, 2008 3:23:36 GMT
The VKR 500 was made by Wesgrove Electrics Ltd. in Worcester England around 1964. The recorder was entirely transistorised and was constructed on a printed circuit board.The flywheel and capstan was belt driven by a 1/10 H.P. motor. The tape velocity was 7.5, 10, or 12.5 feet per second. It recorded on one half the width of 1/4 inch tape, this gave a maximum running time per reel of 60 mins. at the lowest speed using two passes of the tape. The VKR 500 weighs 28 lbs. and measures 11" x 7" x 20". The price was $392 for the kit or $492 completely assembled and tested. A video camera kit, the VC 303 was offered at $292. This information was taken from a sales brochure.
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Post by Peter Stirling on Dec 27, 2008 12:29:49 GMT
Thanks Leroy very interesting.
I have deleted my original post in the light of this more accurate info
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Post by lee jones on Dec 27, 2008 16:20:48 GMT
Can't be many of these in existance - either recordings or the machine to play the tapes on(!). Wonder if there were any more odd and obscure attempts at VCR recordings back then?
ljones
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Post by Peter Bradford on Dec 27, 2008 17:04:20 GMT
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Post by Leroy B. Heidrick on Dec 28, 2008 3:16:20 GMT
More information and pictures of the VKR 500 and other first generation video recorders can be found at www.labguysworld.com |
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Post by Greg H on Dec 29, 2008 17:43:38 GMT
Can't be many of these in existance - either recordings or the machine to play the tapes on(!). Wonder if there were any more odd and obscure attempts at VCR recordings back then? ljones IIRC there were several other woefully obscure video recorders knocking about in the 60s. I cant recall any model names for you at the moment, I will try and dig you out a link. I also have no ideas of sales figures for different units. Does anyone have any information on sales figures for different models of recorder in the 60s? That might make for an interesting read. |
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Post by John Smith on May 22, 2022 17:03:26 GMT
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Post by Peter Stirling on May 22, 2022 19:07:34 GMT
Wow! amazing, there are more survivors.
I think it was one of/ or the first domestic set to be able to record the TV signal direct without pointing a camera at the screen... and sound was recorded FM which was later used as 'HI FI sound' in VHS and Betamax.
But was probably before its time as at the time people could not envisage why they would want to record something they had just seen as it had no timer and you would probably want to be there if it was going round at 150 inches per second.
But as the missed Adrian Gregg implied in his post, without a Dr.Who or something recording there will probably not be a lot of interest.
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Post by markboulton on May 29, 2022 8:40:03 GMT
Unbe-smegging-lievable! Maybe the BFI should buy this? Mind you, I suspect any surviving recordings could be captured perfectly well by any standard 1/4" tape recorder, the sound sped up digitally and output as a signal, or indeed analysed in software. But still. This must surely be the best example left in existence of a piece of media history. |
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