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Topic: Anyone here familiar with Cartrivision?
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 09-19-2007 02:21 PM
I don't think I've ever seen a RCA reel to reel quad machine, at least not one in service. I've got a feeling that the one in the museum at Bradford may have been a RCA of some sort; Dick? If it was it was not the early type with the spools arranged vertically, but the sale sort of layout as Ampex used. Apmex machines were far more common here, but when I went to the then new LWT (London Weekend Television) studios on the South Bank, basically next door to the National Film Theatre, in the early '70s they had two of the RCA cartridge machines with the belt arrangement on the front for selecting the carts; that was the only place I ever saw one of these. They also had one of the Ampex instant replay type disk recorders, something else I only saw once.
I used to work for the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority), and they had their own television service at one time, distributing four or five of their own channels, plus relaying the three broadcast ones which existed in this country at that time, over a Post Office RF cable distribution system. This was in black and white, and was unusual in that while it was 625 lines it was VHF; normal broadcast television here has always been UHF for 625 lines, though the old 405 line system was VHF. They had a studio centre in South London, and used Ampex quad machines, VR2000 I think, though I only ever saw them once, and it was a long time ago, but they ran them in the seldom-used half speed format, with narrow heads. I don't know of anybody else who used that format.
Soon after VHS tape came in they gave up the cable system, converted one studio to colour and the other to a tape duplicating facility, and distributed programmes on tape alongside the 16mm prints sent out from their large film library. They used the then very new 1" 'C' format when they went colour. This was when the 'B' and 'C' formats were still fighting it out to become the new broadcast standard.
The man who runs Quadruplex Park seems to have three interests in life, lions, God and video recorders, which somehow seems to be an unusual combination.
I did get to see the two 'big' machines; in 1972 the BBC had several exibitions in London for their 50th year. One of these was a technical one at Mullard House, not far from the University of London. Mullard made valves and picture tubes, and I think became part of Philips. One of the exhibits there was a new Ampex AVR1.
I once had to collect some film prints from a facilities house in London which had a pair of IVC 9000 2" helical machines, something else that I never saw anywhere else.
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 09-21-2007 10:35 AM
The Ampex AVR-1 was an incredible machine, the all-vacuum, capstan free transport also formed the basis of the ACR-25 dual-transport spot playback machine. It was fascinating the way it worked, the tape getting sucked into air columns for speed control (using a vacuum servo system, I was in charge of replacing the column sensor lamps), and the head-wheel guard curving up to hold the tape against the heads. The lock-up time on the machines was for all intents and purposes instant as opposed to at least 5 seconds for the RCA quads. Genius. In fact, the station I was working for at the time took delivery of one of the first ACRs, they had bought it right off the floor of the NAB convention. A few weeks later, they got a call from RCA, offering them TWO of the vastly inferior TCR-100s, if they would box up the ACR and send it to them so they could tear it down and see how it worked. They declined, wisely.
CBS still has a couple of AVR-3s, the successor to the AV-1, set up in NY for transfer of archive material, of which there is a ton of. The vast majority of the old stuff plays back beautifully after a scraping and dry-web cleaning to remove loose oxide. Mark G. remembers correctly about the old head panels and interchange problems with the VR-1000 and 2000 series. About three years ago, they finally removed the last VR-2000s that were still on the master routing switcher and playback-to-air capable. They tossed out no fewer then twenty old-series head panels that they still had hanging around for just such problems, as in the old days the engineers had to note which head panel was on which machine for which recording. Starting with the AVR-1, he head panels auto-optimized, which solved a lot of such screwing around.
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Do I need some kind of doubler or scaler to really enjoy LD's?
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