Cutting video records?!

[displacedsnail]

Hello trolls, I was kicking around eBay on this lazy Sunday morning and came across quite the curious machine - the 1965 MVR model VDR-210CF-1 Machtronics VIDEODISC RECORDER. Apparently it worked quite like a record lathe, but recorded up to 20 seconds of video onto aluminum records that could then be immediately replayed, specially made for CBS for use in sports broadcasts in the 60s. I've never heard of such a thing!

Check it out at the link below.

https://ebay.us/m/XcpXVX

[emorritt]

This didn't cut a groove, but was a magnetic recording device that made freeze-frame and "instant playback" possible.

[displacedsnail]

Ah, thank you for the clarification. For the life of me, I couldn't quite figure out what I was looking at. But then I remembered the PXL-2000, which records video onto audio cassettes, and I was like, "Could this be a lathe of some kind!? Could there be video on record?"

[emorritt]

RCA's "Selectavision" did actually cut video signals in a disc, but since video bandwidth is several megahertz, the process encoded video as a capacitance type signal and the copies were pressed in PVC mixed with carbon that made the disc conductive. It was played back by a stylus that would suffer wear, the discs suffered wear and if dust particles became embedded in the disc, it would render it unplayable. The whole process was problematic and didn't last long.

[pentlandsound]

There was a very brief run of 7-inch records a few years ago, which yielded a few minutes of lo-fi video on one side, the other side being a more conventional sound-only cut. Special equipment - I think built around the Raspberry Pi - was required to interpret and display the video signals.

https://www.discogs.com/label/1830708-Vinyl-Video

[displacedsnail]

Wow, very interesting - it gets me thinking, if I were to cut an audio rip from a PXL cassette, could it translate to video on disc? Figuring out the correct speed could be a little iffy (the PXL runs cassettes at about 18x speed), but might be a fun diversion for a quiet day.