Cartrivision question (1 Viewer)

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Cartrivision (introduced in 1972) was, from what I understand, the first attempt to bring pre-recorded motion pictures to home video, which, unfortunately failed. I also read that there were red cartridges, which were only available by mail-order-rental. They also could not be rewound on the home Cartrivision system; meaning they could only be rewound by returning them to the retailer.

My question is, did they only release motion pictures on red cartridges, or did they also release them on the rewoundable black ones as well?

 

[schan1269]

Cartrivision...The first studio attempt at..."You'll never own it."Glad it failed.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

So how about my question?

 

[schan1269]

I guess the "intent of no" was too subtle.Movies were only red, ergo..."you'll never own it".A grand total of 311 titles were released. Because of the "we are idiots and didn't bother to get a climate controlled warehouse", it is likely that the full 200 rental(of which 165 were movies) was only 100.The warehouse mold issue destroyed everything that just sat there that was never rented. My uncle worked at a store in Bloomington, IN that serviced these. He had(probably still has it) the rewinding machine.He and my aunt(That worked in the RCA plant) had electronic relics as trinkets in their homes.

 

[Neil Brock]

I briefly dealt with the format around 25 years ago when I got connected with a man who had a machine and recorded a bunch of stuff. No TV shows unfortunately but he did have some rare sporting events that exist nowhere else. As with many who started in the dawn of the collecting hobby, he focused mainly on movies, which as we know are readily available. Meanwhile, those short-run, 2-inch videotaped sitcoms we'll never have a chance at seeing again, if they even still exist.

 

[Jack P]

What rare sports events are we talking about? I have seen some Cartridgevision recordings surface from 1973 that came from a New York area recorder. His contributions consisted of Game 7 of the 1973 NBA Finals, the 1973 Mets Old Timers Day, most of Game 1 of the 1973 NLCS (Mets-Reds) and partials of individual games of the 73 World Series (which does not exist complete in the MLB Vault).

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Neil, speaking of the dawn of the collecting hobby, I wonder if any movies shown on television were recorded on the Kinescopes and EIAJ-1 formats, as well? I'd imagine there are a lot of films recorded off of television from those points in time, as well as early in the history of Home Video (Late 1970's). Trading for them would be one of the best ways to get rare movie logos.

I say this as a original-logo pursuit myself. For example, I saw a little bit of a 1980 HBO airing of Rocky II from YouTube with the 1975 United Artists logo (Blue Flower T with the Words "A Transamerica Company" underneath), the way it originally began. No Home Video prints since the first in late 1981, as far as I know at least, begin with that kind of logo.

 

[Mark Collins]

I can remember in 1972 my English teacher produced a video recorder and played for us a recording of " Guess Whose Coming To Dinner" which he recorded off CBS Sunday night broadcast.

I have always wondered what sort of machine he had. This was the first time I had ever even knew there was such a thing as video recording. The machine belonged to our school.

My first was a beta max in what the mid 80s?

 

[bryan4999]

I can remember in 1972 my English teacher produced a video recorder and played for us a recording of " Guess Whose Coming To Dinner" which he recorded off CBS Sunday night broadcast.

I have always wondered what sort of machine he had. This was the first time I had ever even knew there was such a thing as video recording. The machine belonged to our school.

My first was a beta max in what the mid 80s?

Maybe that was a U-Matic machine? My Uncle was in the advertising biz and had a U-Matic that he used to review commercials. He recorded a few things from television; I remember watching "My Fair Lady" at his house that he had recorded from a CBS broadcast. It seemed like such a luxury to be able to watch a movie at home (even if it was pan/scan and mono - still thrilling.)

 

[Mark Collins]

Bryan thank you. So long ago I at first thought it had reel to reel tape but I looked the machine up and it looks sort of like what I remember. The machine was large and I thought this would be nice to have when Dark Shadows was on the air. The show of course was canceled 1 year before.

I thought the teacher said he taped the movie from home.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Bryan thank you. So long ago I at first thought it had reel to reel tape but I looked the machine up and it looks sort of like what I remember. The machine was large and I thought this would be nice to have when Dark Shadows was on the air. The show of course was canceled 1 year before.

I thought the teacher said he taped the movie from home.

There were reel-to-reel recording machines that date back to the late 1960s. They only did black-and-white, but they were out there. Some early 1970s game show recordings (whose master tapes are long gone) exist in this format in the UCLA archives.

U-matic didn't first hit the market until 1971, so unless that school was an early adopter of the format, it might have been one of the earlier reel-to-reel systems (such as this one, though there were earlier proprietary open reel formats, too)

 

[Jack P]

Vanderbilt University started recording evening news broadcasts of all three networks (along with Convention and Election coverage) in August 1968 on a B/W videotape recorder that they were still using as late as 1979 when they finally switched to a color one. But their newscast recordings from 68-72 thereabouts are in most cases the only surviving version of that particular evening newscast (at least for NBC and ABC)

 

[Mark Collins]

Andy the Sony machine jogs my memory but I cannot swear the movie was in B/W or not. I just remember he filmed it off the CBS Sunday Night Movie or special event night that Sunday back in 1972. I would say of the two machines the Sony though looks more like it. I wonder how many old soaps and other shows are floating around in private collectors hands.

Jack from what you have stated Dark Shadows could have been video taped since the show aired between 1966-1971. Perhaps some day that lost episode of DS will be found.

 

[Neil Brock]

There has been home recording going on since the mid-60s, which was when the first reel-to-reel machines hit the market. Check out the 4th season Fugitive episode with Lois Nettleton where Kimble wanders into a place demonstrating them. UMatic indeed came out around 1971 with Cartrivision following soon after. There were even color reel-to-reel recorders on the market in the 70s. And of course people who had money, such as Hugh Hefner, had their own 2-inch machines that they did off-air recordings on. LBJ and later Richard Nixon made recordings in the White House. There could be long lost broadcasts of who knows what that are sitting around somewhere, much like the Bing Crosby kinescope of game 7 of the 1960 World Series.

 

[schan1269]

My great uncle had one of those Zenith combi VHS camcorder things.The deck itself slide from the home player into the camcorder, which was three piece...Battery packRecord packCamera

 

[Jack P]

The Nixon White House recordings do have some Tonight Shows (some partial) that weren't listed in the Carson vault, mostly from 1970-71 plus a half hour of Agnew appearing in 1969. Curiously, the LBJ White House *blew* a chance to save in pristine color video tape one of the most controversial programs in Tonight Show history, which was Jim Garrison's appearance. On the night that program aired, the program was delayed 15 minutes for an NBC News special on the Tet Offensive. The LBJ White House recorded the news special which included Johnny at his desk explaining they would be delayed 15 minutes, and then they caught the first two minutes of the Tonight Show with sub-announcer Jack Haskell reading the credits and Johnny coming out. Then they stopped tape in the White House. 40 minutes of audio of the Garrison interview segments do exist and circulate and the Carson people put up on YouTube about six minutes of footage in kinescope quality.

 

[Mark Collins]

I wish collectors would share what they have. I am sure there is a great deal of things we have never even seen. The Soap Opera The Edge of Night aired a 90 minute special late night when it went to ABC from CBS. People know that a collector has this episode which I would love to have.

 

[wizard55]

Cartrivision has fascinated me ever since I discovered it. I would love to own a cartridge, catalog, anything. Ebay listings are scarce and gone right away as well.