My very vague recollection is that there was at least one attempt to do something along these lines for small computer systems.
It is worth mentioning that the basic idea was indeed used in professional data systems. The trivia question is: why is a CD recorded at 44.1 kHz sample rate? The answer is that this fitted into a TV frame evenly. The early CD recordings were held on video cassettes. (But being Sony, it would not have been VHS - but rather the pro version of Beta.) The very high end digital TV recording media were also used for data storage, but these were systems that cost more than a house. Sony made a few, and they were directed at the very high end data storage market, and simply added front ends onto their professional video offerings. The other well known one was Video-8 format, which was very successfully used by Exabyte as a data storage system. But VHS? - I’m sure I remember some, but would have to go search.
Found it. The Corvus Mirror. 36MB on a 60 minute tape. Corvus were probably the first, but not the only ones. They were a pretty amazing company, but got swept away like so many others.
Again, with Beta this was theoretically possible for a home hobbyist. The Beta HiFi system used a PCM digital encoding system. Sony sold special processor units so that you could record really huge number of “near CD” quality audio on the (consumer grade) Beta tapes. With a little bit of work you could have put anything digital on them. I don’t think any VHS maker came out with a comparable processor unit.
The ADAT format recorded 8 channels of professional quality audio on an S-VHS cassette. Even though it is not used much any more other than to recover archives, the units were so popular that their connection options are an industry standard for computer audio workstations.
A slight tangent, but this thread reminded me of another esoteric means of software delivery used for a while back in the 80s - telesoftware. As I recall, the BBC and possibly other UK TV channels sometimes used some of the capacity of their teletext services (pages of text encoded within the analogue TV signal) to transmit software, for the BBC Micro and possibly for other popular home computers too. You needed a teletext adapter for the computer, and you tuned it at the appriate time to receive the software.
Yup, and I’ve seen it done, as recently as about 15 years ago. The VLBI network of radio telescopes used them to exchange their data for interferometry. Shipping physical tapes across the country was still, at the time, cheaper than transmitting that much data over the Internet. They’ve probably switched to DVDs now, though.
I remember a BBC programme where they broadcast software by modulating a flashing dot in the corner of the screen - enthusiasts were supposed to press a light-sensor against it - the circuit diagram for which had been published previously.
I think they also developed (or at least proposed) some kind of ‘intercode’ that was supposed to be a symbolic programming language that could be received and interpreted by several different popular computing platforms, each with its own idiosyncratic dialect of BASIC.
Alesis’ ADAT was a fairly popular digital 8 (or more if you linked machines together) track audio system that used S-VHS for storage. Since those systems we intended to be used in semi/pro audio studios, I’m sure there were/are interfaces to hook one of them up to a computer.
Those aren’t CD format specs, those are CD player specs. The specs for individual CD players are going to be all over the map, so I don’t see how you can make a blanket “this was better than all CD players” statement. And that cite you quoted doesn’t really say anything relevant.
In the UK, cassette might have been the only way of buying games for much of the 1980s, but in the US, floppies were often the only way to buy games past, oh, 1981 (except for the ultra-low-end computers like the VIC-20 or MC-10, and even then most users seemed to prefer cartridges over cassettes). It probably helped that the Spectrum never made headway over here. US Commodore 64 users who were even aware of it thought the popularity of cassettes in the UK was bizarre. A lot of US computer users in the 1980s never even saw a cassette in use on a computer, or may have owned one or two as a novelty.
I agree with you, in that the lesiure computer market, in the early 80’s disk drives were just too expensive for the average home user. Though it was possible to use a floppy disk drive as a periphal for a spectrum prior to the launch of the +3. That said even after the +3 from what I remember the tape format remained the dominant format for Spectrum users in to the nineties until commercial releases for the Spectrum became sparse.
I was certainly buying tapes for my (by that time quite old) Spectrum 48K until my parents bought a Commodore Amiga 500+ in 1992