Ampex 2 inch helical VTR
Encyclopedia
From 1963 to 1970, Ampex
manufactured several models of VTR 2 inch helical VTRs, capable of recording and playing back analog
black & white video. Recording employed non-segmented helical scan
ning, with one wrap of the tape around the video head drum being a little more than 180 degrees, using two video
heads. One video drum rotation time was two fields of video. The units had two audio
tracks recorded on the top edge of the tape, with a control track
recorded on the tape's bottom edge. The 2" wide video tape used was one mm thick. The VTRs were mostly used by industrial companies, educational institutions, and a few for in-flight entertainment
.
The capstan
tape speed is 3.7 inches per second, which provided a long record time of up to 5 five hours on a large reels. The units were 100% solid state
. The Ampex 2 inch helical VTRs were popular, as they were priced much less that the 2 inch quadruplex videotape recorders used in the broadcast television industry at the time.
for consumers as the Signature V.
, and a television set
with tuner. It also contained an audio
system with AM/FM tuner
, stereo amplifier
, an open-reel audio tape recorder
, and stereo
loudspeaker
s. The video camera included with the system was very large, weighing about a 100 pounds. The complete system was sold by the Neiman-Marcus department store for about $30,000, and was featured in their 1963 catalog. The Signature V console containing all the equiment was nine feet long and weighed 900 pounds, only one was sold.
used the VR-660 for movies shown as part of their in-flight entertainment
system. For Apollo 11
, NASA
installed a VR-660 as part of a slow-scan video system for recording at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station
in Australia
. The slow-scan television
video transmitted from Apollo 11 had a resolution of 250 TV lines at 10 frames per second, where it was then converted using equipment at the tracking station to standard 525-line 30 frames-per-second NTSC video, and then recorded to the VR-660.
The U.S. Air Force used 6 hour VR-660 VTRs in B-52 bombers to record bombing runs during the Vietnam War
and during training exercises. The first helical scan VTR used in broadcast TV stations was the VR-660. Later versions of the VR-660 had a color option, the VR-660C with an external color adapter. An optional electronic editor ("Edicon") also was available in later models. The VR-600 was used both for mobile and studio TV applications. Its list price in 1963 was $14,500.
Only four VR-8000s were manufactured, sold, and delivered to customers. The units had a number of problems, so they were later replaced with VR-1100 machines, a quadruplex-format machine. The VR-8000 was advertised by Ampex as being ideal for closed-circuit video, and for educational & training applications. Employees of Ampex at the time reported that the company kept a VR-8000 hidden behind a wall at the 1960 National Association of Broadcasters
convention, kept hidden just in case a competitor showed a helical scan VTR (they could then reveal the VR-8000 if the scenario arose, as a competing product). No other companies at NAB showed a helical scan VTR, so the VR-8000 stayed hidden.
in 1960 on helical VTR agreements, this joint effort did not work out as Ampex had hoped. In September 1964 Ampex entered into joint venture with Toshiba
. In 1961 Sony showed a 2 inch helical VTR, the model SV-201. Only a few were made, and the 1962 cost for a SV-201 was $10,000.00. The SV-201 was the first VTR to have stop and one frame at a time play back. It did not meet U.S. Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) specifications for broadcastable videotape formats for television at the time. The SV-201 was a vacuum tube
based unit and had a total weight of about 440 pounds / 200 kg. The PV-100 was Sony's second model of 2 inch helical VTR. The PV100 was solid state and had a total weight of about 132 pounds / 60 kg. The VR-420 VTR has one of the Toshiba-Ampex's joint venture VTRs.
Length: 29-7/8 inches (75.9 cm)
Depth: 17-38 inches (44.1 cm)
Height: 14-5/8 inches (37.1 cm)
Weight: 100 pounds (45 kg)
105 to 125 volts AC, 60 Hz, 4 Amps peak (VTR furnished with one 117 VAC utility outlet, rated at 100 Watts maximum)
3.7 in/S (9.4 cm/S)
+/-3 dB, 10 Hz to 3 Mhz
40 dB or better on interchange tapes, p-p video to RMS noise
B-wind tape tape comes off the right side reel, with the oxide surface facing out.
Ampex
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence...
manufactured several models of VTR 2 inch helical VTRs, capable of recording and playing back analog
Analog television
Analog television is the analog transmission that involves the broadcasting of encoded analog audio and analog video signal: one in which the message conveyed by the broadcast signal is a function of deliberate variations in the amplitude and/or frequency of the signal...
black & white video. Recording employed non-segmented helical scan
Helical scan
Helical scan is a method of recording high bandwidth signals onto magnetic tape. It is used in reel-to-reel video tape recorders, video cassette recorders, digital audio tape recorders, and some computer tape drives....
ning, with one wrap of the tape around the video head drum being a little more than 180 degrees, using two video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
heads. One video drum rotation time was two fields of video. The units had two audio
Audio
Audio is an electrical or other representation of sound.Audio may also refer to:*Audio, audible content in media production and publishing*AUDIO , an American R&B band of 5 brothers formerly known as TNT Boyz and as B5...
tracks recorded on the top edge of the tape, with a control track
Control track
A control track is a track that runs along an outside edge of a standard analog videotape . The control track encodes a series of pulses, each pulse corresponding to the beginning of each frame. This allows the video tape player to synchronize its scan speed and tape speed to the speed of the...
recorded on the tape's bottom edge. The 2" wide video tape used was one mm thick. The VTRs were mostly used by industrial companies, educational institutions, and a few for in-flight entertainment
In-flight Entertainment
In-flight entertainment refers to the entertainment available to aircraft passengers during a flight. In 1936, the airship Hindenburg offered passengers a piano, lounge, dining room, smoking room, and bar during the 2½ day flight between Europe and America...
.
The capstan
Capstan
Capstan may refer to:*Capstan , a rotating machine used to control or apply force to another element*Capstan , rotating spindles used to move recording tape through the mechanism of a tape recorder...
tape speed is 3.7 inches per second, which provided a long record time of up to 5 five hours on a large reels. The units were 100% solid state
Solid state (electronics)
Solid-state electronics are those circuits or devices built entirely from solid materials and in which the electrons, or other charge carriers, are confined entirely within the solid material...
. The Ampex 2 inch helical VTRs were popular, as they were priced much less that the 2 inch quadruplex videotape recorders used in the broadcast television industry at the time.
VR 1500
VR 1500 was first shown in December 1962. It was the first consumer-marketed VTR commercially available, and was also packaged as as part of a high end home entertainment centerEntertainment center
A home entertainment center is a piece of furniture seen in many homes in North America, which houses major electronic items, such as a television set, a VCR and/or DVD player, stereo components , and cable or satellite television receivers...
for consumers as the Signature V.
Signature V
The Signature V system came with a VR-1500 VTR, a black & white video cameraVideo camera
A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...
, and a television set
Television set
A television set is a device that combines a tuner, display, and speakers for the purpose of viewing television. Television sets became a popular consumer product after the Second World War, using vacuum tubes and cathode ray tube displays...
with tuner. It also contained an audio
Audio
Audio is an electrical or other representation of sound.Audio may also refer to:*Audio, audible content in media production and publishing*AUDIO , an American R&B band of 5 brothers formerly known as TNT Boyz and as B5...
system with AM/FM tuner
Receiver (radio)
A radio receiver converts signals from a radio antenna to a usable form. It uses electronic filters to separate a wanted radio frequency signal from all other signals, the electronic amplifier increases the level suitable for further processing, and finally recovers the desired information through...
, stereo amplifier
Audio amplifier
An audio amplifier is an electronic amplifier that amplifies low-power audio signals to a level suitable for driving loudspeakers and is the final stage in a typical audio playback chain.The preceding stages in such a chain are low power audio amplifiers which perform tasks like pre-amplification,...
, an open-reel audio tape recorder
Tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, tape deck, reel-to-reel tape deck, cassette deck or tape machine is an audio storage device that records and plays back sounds, including articulated voices, usually using magnetic tape, either wound on a reel or in a cassette, for storage...
, and stereo
STEREO
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...
loudspeaker
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
s. The video camera included with the system was very large, weighing about a 100 pounds. The complete system was sold by the Neiman-Marcus department store for about $30,000, and was featured in their 1963 catalog. The Signature V console containing all the equiment was nine feet long and weighed 900 pounds, only one was sold.
VR 660
The VR-660 VTR was first introduced in December 1962, and was the professional version of the VR-1500. Continental AirlinesContinental Airlines
Continental Airlines was a major American airline now merged with United Airlines. On May 3, 2010, Continental Airlines, Inc. and UAL, Inc. announced a merger via a stock swap, and on October 1, 2010, the merger closed and UAL changed its name to United Continental Holdings, Inc...
used the VR-660 for movies shown as part of their in-flight entertainment
In-flight Entertainment
In-flight entertainment refers to the entertainment available to aircraft passengers during a flight. In 1936, the airship Hindenburg offered passengers a piano, lounge, dining room, smoking room, and bar during the 2½ day flight between Europe and America...
system. For Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
, NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
installed a VR-660 as part of a slow-scan video system for recording at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station
Honeysuckle Creek was a NASA tracking station near Canberra, Australia, which played an important role in supporting Project Apollo. The station was opened in 1967 and closed in 1981....
in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. The slow-scan television
Slow-scan television
Slow-scan television is a picture transmission method used mainly by amateur radio operators, to transmit and receive static pictures via radio in monochrome or color.A technical term for SSTV is narrowband television...
video transmitted from Apollo 11 had a resolution of 250 TV lines at 10 frames per second, where it was then converted using equipment at the tracking station to standard 525-line 30 frames-per-second NTSC video, and then recorded to the VR-660.
The U.S. Air Force used 6 hour VR-660 VTRs in B-52 bombers to record bombing runs during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and during training exercises. The first helical scan VTR used in broadcast TV stations was the VR-660. Later versions of the VR-660 had a color option, the VR-660C with an external color adapter. An optional electronic editor ("Edicon") also was available in later models. The VR-600 was used both for mobile and studio TV applications. Its list price in 1963 was $14,500.
VR-8000
In 1961, Ampex introduced the first helical scan video recorder, the VR-8000, which recorded video using helical scan recording technology on 2 inch tape. The VR-8000 was made using a similar chassis used by Ampex's 2 inch quadruplex VTRs. Unlike the VR-660, it used only one video head on the scanner with a full alpha wrap.Only four VR-8000s were manufactured, sold, and delivered to customers. The units had a number of problems, so they were later replaced with VR-1100 machines, a quadruplex-format machine. The VR-8000 was advertised by Ampex as being ideal for closed-circuit video, and for educational & training applications. Employees of Ampex at the time reported that the company kept a VR-8000 hidden behind a wall at the 1960 National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Broadcasters
The National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association, workers union, and lobby group representing the interests of for-profit, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters in the United States...
convention, kept hidden just in case a competitor showed a helical scan VTR (they could then reveal the VR-8000 if the scenario arose, as a competing product). No other companies at NAB showed a helical scan VTR, so the VR-8000 stayed hidden.
Joint efforts
Ampex worked with SonySony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
in 1960 on helical VTR agreements, this joint effort did not work out as Ampex had hoped. In September 1964 Ampex entered into joint venture with Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
. In 1961 Sony showed a 2 inch helical VTR, the model SV-201. Only a few were made, and the 1962 cost for a SV-201 was $10,000.00. The SV-201 was the first VTR to have stop and one frame at a time play back. It did not meet U.S. Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC) specifications for broadcastable videotape formats for television at the time. The SV-201 was a vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
based unit and had a total weight of about 440 pounds / 200 kg. The PV-100 was Sony's second model of 2 inch helical VTR. The PV100 was solid state and had a total weight of about 132 pounds / 60 kg. The VR-420 VTR has one of the Toshiba-Ampex's joint venture VTRs.
General specifications of the VR-1500
- DIMENSIONS
Length: 29-7/8 inches (75.9 cm)
Depth: 17-38 inches (44.1 cm)
Height: 14-5/8 inches (37.1 cm)
Weight: 100 pounds (45 kg)
- POWER REQUIREMENTS
105 to 125 volts AC, 60 Hz, 4 Amps peak (VTR furnished with one 117 VAC utility outlet, rated at 100 Watts maximum)
- TAPE SPEED
3.7 in/S (9.4 cm/S)
- RECORDING TIME
- a. 40 minutes for a 6-1/2 inch reel (750 feet)
- b. 90 minutes for an 8 inch reel (1650 feet)
- c. 195 minutes (3 hrs 15 min.) for a 6-1/2 inch reel (3600 feet)
- d. 300 minutes (5 hrs) for a 12-1/2 inch reel (5540 feet, 1 mile+) at 25 pounds.
- Frequency responseFrequency responseFrequency response is the quantitative measure of the output spectrum of a system or device in response to a stimulus, and is used to characterize the dynamics of the system. It is a measure of magnitude and phase of the output as a function of frequency, in comparison to the input...
+/-3 dB, 10 Hz to 3 Mhz
- Signal-to-noise ratioSignal-to-noise ratioSignal-to-noise ratio is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power. A ratio higher than 1:1 indicates more signal than noise...
40 dB or better on interchange tapes, p-p video to RMS noise
- Winding
B-wind tape tape comes off the right side reel, with the oxide surface facing out.
See also
- Type A videotape
- 1 inch type B videotape1 inch type B videotape1 inch type B VTR is a reel-to-reel analog recording video tape format developed by the Bosch Fernseh division of Bosch in Germany in 1976...
- 1 inch type C videotape1 inch type C videotape1 inch Type C is a professional reel-to-reel analog recording helical scan videotape format co-developed and introduced by Ampex and Sony in 1976...
- IVC videotape formatIVC videotape formatIVC 2 inch Helical scan was a high end broadcast quality helical scan analog recording VTR format developed by International Video Corporation , and introduced in 1975. Previously, IVC had made a number of 1 inch Helical VTRs...
about the IVC 2 inch helical VTR, Model 9000 - Video tape recorderVideo tape recorderA video tape recorder is a tape recorder that can record video material, usually on a magnetic tape. VTRs originated as individual tape reels, serving as a replacement for motion picture film stock and making recording for television applications cheaper and quicker. An improved form included the...
(VTR)