Home video recording from the late 60s

[Guest]

I recall that Steve Roberts once came across a man who had recorded The Space Pirates: Episode Two. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that or anything that I say following. I believe home video recorders were rare at the time due to their recent development and expense. Were they still rare in the mid-seventies? I'm wondering why home recordings of programmes such as Doomwatch or even the colour Doctor Who episodes have never surfaced.

[Guest]

Various formats starting with open reel, then cassette formats like the Philips 1500 were around from the late 60s onwards, but were unwieldy and expensive and not a general consumer item in any mass market sense. You'd have to be "rich" and a dedicated collector.

The arrival of Philips 1700 (able to record more than one hour) and soon also VHS and Beta finally pushed video recording into the mass market .. but not really before c1979 and even then it cost £20 for one 4 hour tape as a standard price - and bear in mind £20 then was worth a lot more than £20 today (when you can pick up 5 or 6 cassettes for £5!)

[univited guest]

Possibly the most famous find on a domestic format is the lost steptoes . Which were home recorded by one of the writers.

[Guest]

Thanks for the replies.

I live in hope for the return of Doomwatch (specifically Episode 10 of Season 3).

[William Martin]

for those interested.

the first domestic video available in the uk late circa 1963/64
405 line called the Wesgrove using 1/4" reel to reel audio tape

late 1965 the sony cv2000 405 line 1/2" reel to reel tape closly followed by a number of similar recorders all using same tape size

late 1967 sony cv2100 1/2" reel to reel 625 line again closly followed by other 625 line makes

late 1969/early 1970 Sony/Shibaden(Hitachi) colour 625 reel to reel 1/2", these are quite common as sony used their own colour system which was incompatable with the one adopted as standard, they thought their system would be adopted, so these were sold off relativly cheaply.

first cassettes phillips n1500 late 1973

see

www.hypernova.co.uk/total_rewind/

www.labguysworld.com/

[Kev]

Queen were featured from TOTP on a recent docu.

This was taped at home by a fan.

[Troy Walters]

From what I learnt, video machines were very scarce in the 60s to mid 70s in the domestic household, they were mainly used in schools/universities and industries. This is the case in Australia at least.

I'm a collector of vintage videos as some here would already know and am hunting for lost Countdown shows of the 70s 70scountdown.50megs.com/ , Countdown is Australia's Top Of The Pops. I've got quite a number of vintage machines including the Sony CV-2100 VTR and Philips N1500/N1700 machines.

In Australia prior to say 1978 some people did own video recorders which would of obviously been the rich but in some cases people who happen to be fascinated in the technology who save their pennies to buy one. From my searching around I've come across some early recordings of programs and the like.

The earliest tapes I have are some home recordings from 1971-73 period which was donated to me from a Queensland family who got themselves a portapack B&W EIAJ standard Sony reel-reel video recorder AV-3400 I think along with a vidicon tube video camera. On the tapes are their home videos and to my surprise and delight they did some televideo recordings of bits of programs off the telly by pointing their camera to the TV set and the pictures look good too. There was a 10-15 second recording of Basil Brush and a bit of a Bee Gees concert and some pop performances off a New Zealand music show.

I've also gotten from a Beatles fan a copy of a 1973/74 B&W reel-reel recording of a Channel 7 Beatles special and reel-reel recordings of bits of Paul McCartney & Wings stuff from late 1975 when they toured Australia which there was some news footage, some Mike Walsh Show footage, some Norman Gunston Show footage and to my delight some bits from lost episodes of Countdown ;D!!! Apparently the story was that a Beatles fan borrowed the school VTR and recorded the footage.

I've also come across B&W domestic recording of the 1976 ABBA special in Australia which one of my mates won off Ebay and I did a transfer of it which had original ads and everything. And also a colour reel-reel recording of Sammy Davis Junior concert and some footage of him on the Don Lane Show circa 1977.

Think in Australia those who did own a video recorder generally either owned a Philips N1500 or N1700 or a Umatic. I've got a stack of Philips LP VCR tapes with recordings dating from 1978 to the mid 80s and SP tapes with educational stuff from the mid 70s and some domestic recordings from 1977. And I'm in contact with a bloke who has VCR tapes with 1976 recordings on them of the Olympics. With Umatic VCRs, quite a number of TV show hosts bought them and recorded their own shows off them when they went to air like Daryl Somers with "Hey Hey It's Saturday" which some excerpts of some of his recordings from 1977-1980 period were shown in specials. Last year one of my mates got a hold some rare music footage from the mid 70s off Umatic which was some colour GTK footage of the band Skyhooks, a music video of Skyhooks from Countdown 1975 and some other clips and a 1978 Skyhooks Nightmoves concert. And one of my other mates got a bunch of Umatic tapes from someone which one of the tapes had a 1976 recording of Bandstand on it (Australian Bandstand that is). And another collector had a Umatic tape with 1979 recording of Countdown, well clips from the show with the commentary removed. And a few years ago one of my traders dubbed me a copy of a 1978 Countdown show that her cousin recorded when it originally aired.

Goes to show that quite a lot can turn up on these old tapes. Some people did own these machines so the tapes are worth getting a hold of!

Cheers
Troy

[Ben]

1963/4? So is it POSSIBLE (forget however unlikely - just the remote possibility makes me happy enough) that Doctor Who: The Feast of Steven may exist on video somewhere?

(I refuse to acknowledge that this episode has gone FOREVER. Just a 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of it existing is good enough for me, even if it never turns up.)

[Trevor Wells]

I can remember the Telcan shown on ATV news in the 60's it used high speed reel to reel audio tape and was made in Nottingham. They tried to sell it in the US and it didn't get produced.

[John G]

quarter inch reel videotape returned in the 1970s with the Akai portable. However some owners ruined their machines by thinking they could use standard quarter inch audio tape on it instead of the special formulation tape.

[Gareth R]

Guest-Ben said:

1963/4? So is it POSSIBLE (forget however unlikely - just the remote possibility makes me happy enough) that Doctor Who: The Feast of Steven may exist on video somewhere?

Yes, it's possible. Every single 60s episode of Doctor Who *could* have been recorded on a domestic system on its original transmission.

[Ben]

Guest-Gareth said:

Yes, it's possible. Every single 60s episode of Doctor Who *could* have been recorded on a domestic system on its original transmission.

Thank you - that's all I needed to know. I can live with it not existing in the archives, but I can't live knowing it (and the 107 other lost episodes) doesn't exist at all.

[RWels]

aussiebloke said:

On the tapes are their home videos and to my surprise and delight they did some televideo recordings of bits of programs off the telly by pointing their camera to the TV set and the pictures look good too.

I suppose in theory this could have been done with a super 8 or 8 mm camera and reel tape recorder for the audio. But again it would be for the really real fanatic people.
I sometimes hear of n1500 or n1700 tapes just thrown away...

[the univited guest]

I knew someone who did that with an epiosode of the baron . Filmed it on a 8mm camera and tape recorder
using advert breaks to change the film cassettes. It didnt look bad, but because the camera did not have an adjustable shutter the picture had a black bar on it.The picture was also quite blue as it had the wrong filter on the camera.

A waste of time really as the baron is very much in the archives . This also a problem with early home VCRs, everyone use to use them to record randall & hopkirk etc

[RWels]

Haha, someone actually did that? It's a neat trick anyway. And you can't tape over it so it won't get erased.
Futile perhaps in this case, but no-one could predict that at the time of course. It's a roulette.

I'm not a dr. Who expert but the chances are very slim depending on if there was a rerun before it was destroyed.

I've been told "out of the trees" may have survived because a home reel-to-reel recording by one of the actors had been found but no-one so far cared to examine it...