Sears Catrivision Tapes (1 Viewer)

[Teme]

Sears made original content for Avco Cartrivision in the 1970's Does anyone know where I could find them?

 

[Neil Brock]

Sears made original content for Avco Cartrivision in the 1970's Does anyone know where I could find them?

Even if you could find them, what would you play them on? I found a guy who had tons of these tapes around 30 years ago and I was able to rent a machine to transfer some of them. But that was a long time ago. Good luck finding a working machine now.

 

[Teme]

Even if you could find them, what would you play them on? I found a guy who had tons of these tapes around 30 years ago and I was able to rent a machine to transfer some of them. But that was a long time ago. Good luck finding a working machine now.

Hi Neil,
I'm pretty sure I could find the machine to play them so if you have any leaads on who has the tapes I would be most grateful!
Thank you!

 

[Alf S]

 

[Blimpoy06]

I had never heard of this format until I saw this thread. Upon doing some research, I find that this would have to entail two forms of hardware to enjoy prerecorded material. One two play and one to rewind. As the tapes are damaged unless rewound by a special unit available to the retailer. This was the means to limit viewing and get the studios interested in releasing titles.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

I have 4 of these machines but can't get any of them to work. Anyone near Sacramento want to take a crack at them?

I don't know of any original content made specifically for the format, other than a couple demo tapes:

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[Blimpoy06]

There were movies released for rental that had a red case. These had to be returned to the retailer to be rewound to prevent multiple viewing.

 

[LeoA]

I have 4 of these machines but can't get any of them to work. Anyone near Sacramento want to take a crack at them?

There's a good chance that the capacitors have gone bad or that the power supplies have aged and gone out of spec. Those are the two most common faults with electronics of the era, with the former requiring recapping the device with new capacitors and the latter possibly frying it or blowing a fuse.

Electronics of this era were pretty durable and are maintainable to this day by hobbyist that aren't afraid of a soldering iron, reading voltages with a meter, etc. Thousands of people around the world are keeping 1970's and early 80's computers, videogame consoles, arcade games, and so on ticking to this day. So a high end videocassette player from the era probably wouldn't take much effort for the right person to resurrect.

The bigger concern I'd have is the durability and survival rates of the media itself. Tracking down a machine is going to be the least of your troubles, I suspect.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

They all seem to get power, but won't thread the tape. I don't know enough about them to mess with them any further. I have a number of tapes, mostly rentals but they seem to have been taken apart to remove the anti-rewind mechanisms.