30-08-2023, 04:00 PM
Now if you could read the tapes without a player, as is possible with pressed audio discs?
Is the idea that somehow this is better quality than the player's video out followed by a digitiser? Though I imagine that is possible, but you'd need good heads and existing analogue servo loop working unless it can control the drum and capstan. Then there is tape tension on old worn machines. I was involved in service / repair of N1500, N1700, EIAJ reel, EIAJ cartridge, U-matic, VHS and Betamax in the late 1970s. I suppose if you had an EIAJ 1/2" tape and only a mono player this system could digitise the colour. Some EIAJ player/recorders could even take a retrofit adaptor. I think the carrier was moved to about 800 kHz, no matter if PAL or NTSC, which is why there were Monitors with 4.433 NTSC, which is what you got playing NTSC tapes on PAL EIAJ or VHS. Maybe Betamax and U-Matic too, but I don't remember.
I'd not have thought it could manage any format the player can't play?
I think Betamax drives and cassettes were being used for multitrack digital audio by the time the BBC Domesday started. They made the PCM look like a video signal. Sort of NiCAM without any video. Perhaps would have been a better choice than Laserdisc.
Off topic but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project
Seems to have been started before affordable technology existed. Anyone expert in 1982-1984 surely knew it was a daft decision due to cost and issues with laser disc. I saw laserdisc not long after launch (1978), maybe in 1979 and thought it was doomed. A worse decision than restarting 405 line in 1946 rather than work on 625 line.
One of the first products to be made available to the public on CD-ROM was the Grolier Academic Encyclopedia, presented at the Microsoft CD-ROM Conference in March 1986. You can still buy a brand new USB drive and read 1985 CDs on Mac, Windows and Linux.
Also reminds me of DAB. Now turned off in Ireland, I think, since May 2001 and Lidl still regularly selling DAB radios here (Currys do too).
Is the idea that somehow this is better quality than the player's video out followed by a digitiser? Though I imagine that is possible, but you'd need good heads and existing analogue servo loop working unless it can control the drum and capstan. Then there is tape tension on old worn machines. I was involved in service / repair of N1500, N1700, EIAJ reel, EIAJ cartridge, U-matic, VHS and Betamax in the late 1970s. I suppose if you had an EIAJ 1/2" tape and only a mono player this system could digitise the colour. Some EIAJ player/recorders could even take a retrofit adaptor. I think the carrier was moved to about 800 kHz, no matter if PAL or NTSC, which is why there were Monitors with 4.433 NTSC, which is what you got playing NTSC tapes on PAL EIAJ or VHS. Maybe Betamax and U-Matic too, but I don't remember.
I'd not have thought it could manage any format the player can't play?
I think Betamax drives and cassettes were being used for multitrack digital audio by the time the BBC Domesday started. They made the PCM look like a video signal. Sort of NiCAM without any video. Perhaps would have been a better choice than Laserdisc.
Off topic but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project
Seems to have been started before affordable technology existed. Anyone expert in 1982-1984 surely knew it was a daft decision due to cost and issues with laser disc. I saw laserdisc not long after launch (1978), maybe in 1979 and thought it was doomed. A worse decision than restarting 405 line in 1946 rather than work on 625 line.
One of the first products to be made available to the public on CD-ROM was the Grolier Academic Encyclopedia, presented at the Microsoft CD-ROM Conference in March 1986. You can still buy a brand new USB drive and read 1985 CDs on Mac, Windows and Linux.
Also reminds me of DAB. Now turned off in Ireland, I think, since May 2001 and Lidl still regularly selling DAB radios here (Currys do too).
