Oldest Extant Off-Air VHS/Beta Tape You Have

[Mediafrog+]

Goodness knows some of these earlier videotape formats are not easy to find in the wild. I do, however, recall seeing a U-matic tape being among the various media sold at a local thrift store in Parma Heights that has since closed down.

The U-matic format, perhaps better known as 3/4 inch, was ubiquitous at TV stations in the 1970s and 80s as it was used for the original videotape “minicams” that replaced film cameras. Those used the big, bulky recorders that photogs carried as a large backpack or rolled around on a purpose-built cart. Combined with the camera and beltpack batteries plus other peripherals, it all was a lot to haul around. Although not specifically a videographer in those days, I still got to do that a number of times. Not fun, but it beat having to deal with film.

U-matic was never considered a home format, but it did also show up in educational settings, libraries, churches, and other situations where video would be shown to a group of people. Probably plenty of those machines still floating around out there, though the mechanics had a tendency to wear out or become misaligned, thus eating tapes.

At the Internet radio station I volunteer at, one colleague of mine brought a Quasar VX VCR and a tape to the house where the station is located because the station owner repairs computers and other electronics by trade.

VX is an extremely rare format to find these days, even more so than V-Cord. I think it was only made by Quasar/Motorola, so there was no price competition. VHS had all sorts of companies selling the format, which kept its cost competitive.

Akai VK might be even more rare than VX. The VK tapes can easily be mistaken for Betamax as the cassettes are very similar.

 

[chandler0201]

At the college TV station I worked at 20 years ago we still played Umatic tapes, as older episodes of shows were mastered to that format. After 50-60 plays the tapes really became degraded though. Sometime late 1990s the show mastering format switched over to MiniDV and SVHS. We had to manually switch out tapes to "program" that night's shows which could be quite tedious, especially in blocks of 4-6 hours at a time, also juggling the aforementioned 3 formats.

We also used to run advertising "stills" or title cards between shows where local businesses would pay for the air time, so to speak. That was run on an even older Commodore or Amiga system which had an ancient program on it which was the great grandfather of Powerpoint.

 

[kevtronics]

VX / Great Time Machine was notable for having only one video head. It makes up for it by spinning the head drum twice as fast as VHS or Beta, but this has the negative effect of increasing tape and head wear, and making it more prone to tape eating.

 

[chandler0201]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know which format had the best video quality of VHS, Beta, or VX?

I assume Umatic was better than those 3, but as others have stated, it wasn't designed for consumer use anyways.

 

[Mediafrog+]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know which format had the best video quality of VHS, Beta, or VX?

Back during the “Betamax-VHS War” days my professional video eye had Betamax with the better video quality. Somewhat better resolution and color reproduction. VHS in those days looked rather pastey in comparison. VHS did improve in later years, once it had vanquished Beta.

The Beta Hi-Fi audio standard was much better than VHS Hi-Fi. You can Google “Beta Hi-Fi versus VHS Hi-FI” for technical particulars. I can attest that Beta Hi-Fi had CD quality audio (I owned a Sony SL-5200.)

I have long thought that VHS won the format war due to Beta being pretty much a Sony only format. VHS had rigorous brand competition which held the price down, while with Beta you were forced to pay whatever Sony wanted. Consumers voted for price over quality, and VHS won. VHS also had the advantage of longer recording time.

I have never seen VX in person (few people have) so can’t comment there. I also vaguely recall seeing V-Cord in electronics stores but don’t remember what it looked like. Can’t remember if I ever came across Akai VK.

I assume Umatic was better than those 3, but as others have stated, it wasn't designed for consumer use anyways.

U-matic was much better than either Betamax or VHS, but greatly inferior to professional formats such as 2” or 1” at the time. But the 3/4” U-matic was a HUGE improvement over film.

Professional Beta formats that came out in the 1980s onward were a major upgrade from U-matic, and the Beta SP and SX updates improved quality further, along with the Digital Beta (DigiBeta) format.

 

[anotherguyTN]

Didn't Sanyo have Beta VCRs as well, at least in the beginning?

 

[crainbebo]

Yes, Sanyo made Beta VCRs ("Betacord"). And the belts didn't last long. Most of them will have worn out belts, and likely will eat tapes or not accept them without new belt replacements. That's why my Beta player is a Sony! I bought it used, an SL-3030 from 1984, on eBay for $68 in 2017 (I think). It works perfectly.

On Beta, you could only record 4.5 hours in Beta III on an L-750, or 5 on an L-830. VHS could record 6 or 8 hours. No wonder VHS won the war vs. Beta. 2 movies on a tape vs THREE? or FOUR?! How about two NFL postseason games back-to-back (3 hours each)?

 

[Mediafrog+]

On Beta, you could only record 4.5 hours in Beta III on an L-750, or 5 on an L-830. VHS could record 6 or 8 hours. No wonder VHS won the war vs. Beta. 2 movies on a tape vs THREE? or FOUR?! How about two NFL postseason games back-to-back (3 hours each)?

True, but the video quality on the slowest VHS speed (SLP) was absolutely brutal.🫣

 

[anotherguyTN]

And 8 hour VHS tapes would get eaten even by good quality VCRs at times. I had very few of them.

 

[TexasTom]

VX / Great Time Machine was notable for having only one video head. It makes up for it by spinning the head drum twice as fast as VHS or Beta, but this has the negative effect of increasing tape and head wear, and making it more prone to tape eating.

VX format was also a "skip field" format. Analog NTSC (and some digital formats) used interlaced video -- what this meant is that while a complete 525-line frame was broadcast approximately 30 times per second (I believe the actual number is 29.97, but let's go with 30 for convenience), each individual frame was split into two separate 262.5-line fields. A skip field system like VX just recorded one field per frame and then played that frame back twice, resulting in reduced vertical resolution as well as some stability problems on old analog TVs. Interestingly, skip field recording reappeared when the VCD (Video CD) format came along in the nineties, as well as for the ultra-long play mode on DVD recorders in the 2000s.

 

[TexasTom]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know which format had the best video quality of VHS, Beta, or VX?

I assume Umatic was better than those 3, but as others have stated, it wasn't designed for consumer use anyways.

VX was far worse than either Beta or VHS due to the fact that it was a skip field system (see my previous comment). Regarding VHS versus Beta, that was an extremely contentious subject among videophiles in the late seventies and well into the eighties (with the demise of Beta eventually making it a moot point).

General consensus at the time was that Beta had a slight edge on a mode-by-mode basis -- ie, Beta X1 would slightly outperform VHS SP, Beta X2 would slightly outperform VHS LP, and Beta X3 would outperform VHS SLP/EP. Since Beta X1 was deleted from most consumer Beta machines by the late seventies, that gave VHS a slight performance edge since the comparison was VHS SP versus Beta X2.

A further complication in all of this is that multispeed VCRs tended to compromise performance in the faster speed(s) unless extra heads were used to optimize performance at multiple speeds. Thus, a 2-head VHS VCR would probably not produce a better picture at SP when compared to Beta X2, but a 4-head VHS VCR would.

And, yes, U-matic would outperform both VHS and Beta for video quality. On the other hand, I don't think that there was ever any sort of "hi-fi" system for U-matic (ie, using FM modulation to record audio within the video tracks of the VCR), so once Beta and VHS hi-fi came along, those formats almost certainly did beat U-matic for audio quality. Mediafrog's comment aside, I never saw anything in any test reports (from Video Review and Video magazines) indicating that Beta hi-fi outperformed VHS hi-fi.

 

[Alan Smithee]

I have a working VX machine made in 1977 (I have 5 altogether, but only one works close enough to reliably) and it is NOT skip-field, it captures the full frame rate but does produce a large black area at the bottom of the screen which was likely cut off on CRTs. Here is a home video shot in Japan with a color camera processed for 60fps on YouTube, no telling how old it is:

Sanyo V-Cord WAS skip-field in its long-play mode, but not in the faster speed.

 

[crainbebo]

I've never found a Quasar VR-1000 let alone Great Time Machine tapes anywhere in Yakima or on my travels to eastern WA/west MT/etc. They are so hard to find. Even finding Betas at estate sales is like winning the lottery - just about everyone with a VCR here in Yakima had a VHS recorder.

Anyways, I hit an estate sale on Thursday of an optometrist who passed away. His house was one of the biggest I've seen. Over 4,000 square feet with several rooms upstairs, downstairs, and on the main floor. I'd say 15 rooms total. Definitely a treasure hunt, room to room. Also found several vintage People Magazines from the 1970s and 1980s, including one with First Lady Barbara Bush on the cover. Good stuff overall on the tapes.

Tape 1 - Bill Moyers: Amazing Grace, Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler and 11:05PM sign-off taped off KYVE/PBS on 12/4/1990 with a couple of pledge breaks; part of Seniors Speak Out, Write Right (GED course), and Adult Math (GED) taped off KYVE/PBS in November 1990 with promos; last 15 minutes of 'Beetlejuice' (1988) taped off KIMA/CBS on 10/30/1990 with commercials. Master HG T-120
Tape 2 - Part 2 of Baby M and several minutes of News 35 at 11 taped off KAPP/ABC on 5/23/1988 with commercials; partial broadcast of News 35 and some footage of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics taped off KAPP/ABC on 8/3/1984 with commercials (second-generation recording), rest of the tape is recorded static (memory counter keeps moving, probably from a previous recording after sign-off). Sony T-120
Tape 3 - 'The Sandpiper' (1965) copied from rental tape; after it runs out is the closing credits of Newhart and the 1990 edition of The Winston (the NASCAR all-star race), Wild Kingdom, ABC World News Sunday and part of Cousteau's North American Adventure taped off KAPP/ABC on 5/20/1990 with commercials, copied from the second VCR. Sony ES T-120
Tape 4 - Republican National Convention coverage (including Bush's acceptance speech) taped off KNDO/NBC on 8/18/1988 with commercials. Panasonic T-60 in LP (2 hours)
Tape 5 - Jukebox Saturday Night II taped off KYVE/PBS on 3/10/1990 with multiple pledge breaks; partial episode of Inside Edition and part of News 35's 5:30 Report taped off KAPP-35 circa October 1989 with commercials; part of 'Every Which Way But Loose' (1978) taped off KSTW-11 on 9/30/1989 with commercials. Kodak XHG T-120

I made a spectacular find downstairs - an early Monopoly game from the 1930s and a full game board/pieces for the game 'Finance and Fortune,' which was a predecessor to Monopoly...from 1936!! Money and pieces are still in there. Both composite and wooden, by the way.

 

[anotherguyTN]

VX format was also a "skip field" format. Analog NTSC (and some digital formats) used interlaced video -- what this meant is that while a complete 525-line frame was broadcast approximately 30 times per second (I believe the actual number is 29.97, but let's go with 30 for convenience), each individual frame was split into two separate 262.5-line fields. A skip field system like VX just recorded one field per frame and then played that frame back twice, resulting in reduced vertical resolution as well as some stability problems on old analog TVs. Interestingly, skip field recording reappeared when the VCD (Video CD) format came along in the nineties, as well as for the ultra-long play mode on DVD recorders in the 2000s.

Do you know what brand DVD recorders used skip field and at what speeds? I have some Magnavox and Toshiba DVD recorders, all of which were actually built by Funai. Would any of those use skip field recording?

 

[Jman8606]

I've never found a Quasar VR-1000 let alone Great Time Machine tapes anywhere in Yakima or on my travels to eastern WA/west MT/etc. They are so hard to find. Even finding Betas at estate sales is like winning the lottery - just about everyone with a VCR here in Yakima had a VHS recorder.

Anyways, I hit an estate sale on Thursday of an optometrist who passed away. His house was one of the biggest I've seen. Over 4,000 square feet with several rooms upstairs, downstairs, and on the main floor. I'd say 15 rooms total. Definitely a treasure hunt, room to room. Also found several vintage People Magazines from the 1970s and 1980s, including one with First Lady Barbara Bush on the cover. Good stuff overall on the tapes.

Tape 1 - Bill Moyers: Amazing Grace, Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler and 11:05PM sign-off taped off KYVE/PBS on 12/4/1990 with a couple of pledge breaks; part of Seniors Speak Out, Write Right (GED course), and Adult Math (GED) taped off KYVE/PBS in November 1990 with promos; last 15 minutes of 'Beetlejuice' (1988) taped off KIMA/CBS on 10/30/1990 with commercials. Master HG T-120
Tape 2 - Part 2 of Baby M and several minutes of News 35 at 11 taped off KAPP/ABC on 5/23/1988 with commercials; partial broadcast of News 35 and some footage of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics taped off KAPP/ABC on 8/3/1984 with commercials (second-generation recording), rest of the tape is recorded static (memory counter keeps moving, probably from a previous recording after sign-off). Sony T-120
Tape 3 - 'The Sandpiper' (1965) copied from rental tape; after it runs out is the closing credits of Newhart and the 1990 edition of The Winston (the NASCAR all-star race), Wild Kingdom, ABC World News Sunday and part of Cousteau's North American Adventure taped off KAPP/ABC on 5/20/1990 with commercials, copied from the second VCR. Sony ES T-120
Tape 4 - Republican National Convention coverage (including Bush's acceptance speech) taped off KNDO/NBC on 8/18/1988 with commercials. Panasonic T-60 in LP (2 hours)
Tape 5 - Jukebox Saturday Night II taped off KYVE/PBS on 3/10/1990 with multiple pledge breaks; partial episode of Inside Edition and part of News 35's 5:30 Report taped off KAPP-35 circa October 1989 with commercials; part of 'Every Which Way But Loose' (1978) taped off KSTW-11 on 9/30/1989 with commercials. Kodak XHG T-120

I made a spectacular find downstairs - an early Monopoly game from the 1930s and a full game board/pieces for the game 'Finance and Fortune,' which was a predecessor to Monopoly...from 1936!! Money and pieces are still in there. Both composite and wooden, by the way.

Wow those people must have berm big Bush fans between taping the RNC and saving the people magazine with Mrs. Bush

 

[pannoni1]

^
That Jukebox Saturday Night II recording means that he probably abhorred rock music for the most part, given that the artists featured were those, post-Swing, pre-Rock stars of the late 1940s/early 1950s, although I'd imagine he was a Big Band fanatic if there's board games from that era. The best I've done with recent vintage board game finds is Casino Yahtzee (1986) for $8 at an estate sale two weeks ago, part of a package deal that also included several Christmas ornaments, two strands of 25 C9 outdoor lights, and a 1987 Beatles Abbey Road CD, littered among a ton of country/easy listening albums. Despite being just 20 miles between two of the biggest cities, the house felt very rural and there was a 1970s-era gas pump on property. Interestingly, there were four copies of The Baltimore Sun from the same day in December 1999 (not New Year's Eve) among the items. It was the final day, and came the evening prior and got a peek into one of the rooms and noticed a 1990s-era Barbie coloring book, but I'd imagine due to the popularity of the movie, was sold early the next morning. Only one VHS tape was found but was part of that $8: a 1994 professionally recorded wedding from a Spanish PAL/SECAM nation.

 

[crainbebo]

There were LOTS and LOTS of classical and big band CDs/LPs there. Also a multi-tape VHS set on teaching how to dance 'swing style'. Patti Page was featured on the Jukebox Saturday Night recording.
The same sale also had a Yakima Sunday Herald from May 1935. Picked that up too.
In addition, there was a Panasonic *portable* VCR that I sadly did not pick up. I think it took large C or D-style batteries and had AC capability.

I am still keeping in touch with the man whose friend had all the satellite equipment and tapes. Later this month I will hopefully visit his garage and find out what other gems were recorded from that house. He said there was more SNL, also Mystery Science Theatre 3000, various movies and specials. Some of the tapes were very early TDK Super Avilyns with the black box (like these: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/BrYAAOSwPgFkWAFV/s-l1600.jpg), there were some T-90s and T-60s mixed in, and about 2-3 dozen Betas, mostly later 1980s. I am really hoping for some C-Band wild feeds and/or superstation/Denver recordings.

 

[Oldiesaholic]

I had a "Great Time Machine" as my first VCR. The tapes were the size of a phone book, and were $35-$40 each. It, like our first color TV spent more time in the shop than in the house. There weren't many experienced VCR repairmen, and I'd get it back, and it would work for a couple of weeks, then go out again. The picture would jitter then would go all horizontal crazy. Nobody could ever fix it right.

 

[chandler0201]

I had a "Great Time Machine" as my first VCR. The tapes were the size of a phone book, and were $35-$40 each. It, like our first color TV spent more time in the shop than in the house. There weren't many experienced VCR repairmen, and I'd get it back, and it would work for a couple of weeks, then go out again. The picture would jitter then would go all horizontal crazy. Nobody could ever fix it right.

Do you still have any of those Great Time Machine tapes? I ask because now there are at least 3-4 people that can convert them, when before I thought that was almost as rare as Cartrivision.

 

[kevtronics]

Do you know what brand DVD recorders used skip field and at what speeds? I have some Magnavox and Toshiba DVD recorders, all of which were actually built by Funai. Would any of those use skip field recording?

Maybe he's thinking of those which use 360x480 (or sometimes 352x480) resolution instead of the normal 720x480 (or 704x480) in the lowest bitrate mode. A lot of standard definition camcorders do that as well.