Don't leave batteries in your kit

[ppppenguin]

The Broadcast Engineering Museum was recently given an early Philips VLP "LaserDisc" player. https://www.rewindmuseum.com/philipslaserdisc.htm

You may just be able to recognise the PP3 battery that I extracted from the remote control.

We all know that we shouldn't leave batteries in kit that's in storage but I can be as guilty as anyone. If I don't remove them completely, I'll put them in a plastic bag to leave with the kit.

Along with the LaserDisc player the same kind donor gave us a CED disc player with several discs, an N1500 VCR (the original one with mechanical clock) and an N1702.

I know these are not strictly broadcast kit but they are an important part of the history of TV. None of the video disc formats (nor the EVR film cartridge system) were very successful. Wrong products at the wrong time. The N1500 was a ground breaking product that led to the ubiquitous VHS. As always Philips went their own way and lost. Their V2000 system was technically good but couldn't compete against VHS which was then well entrenched.

For all the Betamax enthusiasts, this system did compete effectively with VHS for a while, especially in the USA. It also gave rise to the various BetaCam professional video cassette systems which dominated the broadcast world until the demise of tape as a medium.

[Mike Watterson]

The V2000 was too late. The demo was early enough, but then maybe volume manufacture of the piezo wobbling heads defeated them.
Betamax was originally superior in many ways to VHS (later there was the Jet Drive), but even by 1979 it was obvious to us in a video facilities / service company that VHS would win. Even Betamax was an also-ran by the time V2000 reached the market.

I remember seeing LaserDisc in a Belfast shop after reading about it and thinking it was a dead end and unlikely to succeed. Amazingly I encountered one in Element 12 used for training on the PC we were upgrading computers in mid 1990s. So I saw it twice ever.

I remember well servicing N1500 and N1700. The N1500 was like a mad Meccano set even compared to the Japanese EIAJ portable reel to reel machines. They tended to need a service if set down too hard, so the local Teacher Training College had them on big wheeled tables with "Do not remove" stickers.

[Mike Watterson]

I saw the maddest Akai colour reel to reel in the BBC in the 1970s (just before I moved to the place mentioned above). Someone suggested it for news instead of 16mm film. It used 1/4″ tape and was "toy quality", no good for news. Amazingly later someone did make a toy video recorder that used regular audio cassettes. It was staggeringly low resolution mono video played back in a window that made the Akai 1/4" look good.

The last blast of VHS was a digital version. Unlike digital version of 8mm tape it never took off. I've never seen one. The last analogue 8mm is amazingly good, better than early VHS-C camcorders, and Sony's Digital 8 is surprisingly good. I still have one that for many years was not just good to digitise analogue 8mm via Firewire, but was better than any ordinary retail analogue video capture for PC via the external input. My first home movies in 1980 used a S/H portable EIAJ and camera. Maybe a JVC. I had it till 1989 and had one spool of ex-computer tape as well as official tape. Some content was copied to VHS in 1983.

[Richard_FM]

I saw the maddest Akai colour reel to reel in the BBC in the 1970s (just before I moved to the place mentioned above). Someone suggested it for news instead of 16mm film. It used 1/4″ tape and was "toy quality", no good for news. Amazingly later someone did make a toy video recorder that used regular audio cassettes. It was staggeringly low resolution mono video played back in a window that made the Akai 1/4" look good.

Sounds like the Fisher-Price PXL2000, which I remember being demonstrated on Tomorrow's World, only one track was used for the picture, as the other recorded sound.

I'm not sure if it was sold in the UK.

[Refugee]

That one is so rotten that the brand name has rotted off.

[Mike Watterson]

Yes, Fisher Price PXL2000.

It used to be that alkaline batteries, including Duracell, didn't leak, ever. I suspect now that the bottom seal is poor and the spring causes it to fail eventually. I've had dozens of gadgets and remotes with corrosion and furry Duracells, and others. One radio had rotted PCB tracks. All alkaline.

[DrStrangelove]

I remember well servicing N1500 and N1700. The N1500 was like a mad Meccano set even compared to the Japanese EIAJ portable reel to reel machines. They tended to need a service if set down too hard, so the local Teacher Training College had them on big wheeled tables with "Do not remove" stickers.

I spent 4 years maintaining N1500 machines in the QA dept at 3M Gorseinon.

Never did get the dropout counters to correlate. 

Dear dead days beyond recall.

Used to get some early "interesting" tapes from various contacts in ITV.

In the 80s anything coming in was bulk erased, the spoilsports.

On the leaky battery front: shedloads of Thandar kit removed from the lab & put into "The Instrument Store" the hottest room available.

All the Duracell had leaked & written off the kit: Varta C cells, on the other had, hadn't leaked, and some still had enough charge to operate the instrument.

[Mike Watterson]

I buy Varta when I can, but locally hardly anyone sells them. Occasionally Lidl have bulk packs of Varta. I find the Lidl and Aldi batteries OK, but there is now reduced range and at the checkout they have Duracell now. The "Simply Duracell" seem to be lower capacity.