It seems everyone I know whose dad had a Super8 home movie camera and projector had several reels of cartoons - and everyone agrees that the cartoons were much funnier run in reverse 
About Star Wars - shortly before The Empire Strikes Back was released, the story of the original movie was run as a radio play. On public radio. Imagine that happening today?
IIRC, almost the entire set of Steve Allen’s 60’s nightly shows were erased and reused for that reason. In contrast, most of the Parr/Carson Tonight shows were preserved. Maybe NBC had more money for blank tape.
So the only record of Steve Allen’s shows now in existance is in the minds of the viewers. If only we could transfer that to a more permanent media!
U-Matic was the term I should of used instead of just “larger tape Betamax.”
commasense, your edit of my post changed the meaning:
You quoted:
Which you followed with the sentence:
“Yes, it is incorrect.”
The correct quote is:
It is quite clear that the term “This may be incorrect” refers to the patents.
The effect of the meaning change by the edit may be evident in BJMoose’s post when he wrote:
So was I BJMoose, but I haven’t done a patent search yet. Are the patents that old accessible on the Internet yet?
Steve Allen was the host of Tonight! from 1953 to 1957. In the Steve Allen era, the show was broadcast live, not taped. NBC didn’t start using videotape until 1957. However, the networks started making kinescope films of their broadcasts in 1948. Many of Steve Allen’s shows (including his first network Tonight! show in 1953) exist as kinescope films.
1952: Bing Crosby Enterprises demonstrates first videotape prototype.
1956: Ampex introduces 2-inch Quadruplex videotape.
1957: Clip from one of the first entertainment programs recorded on videotape.
1958: Clip from one of the first entertainment programs recorded on color videotape.
1965: First videotape recorders marketed for business, educational, and home use.
1971: Sony introduces U-matic, world’s first videocassette format.
1972: Avco Cartrivision, first VCR marketed primarily for home use.
1972: Philips VCR format (UK).
1975: Sony introduces 3/4-inch Betamax videocassettes.
1976: JVC introduces 3/4-inch VHS videocassettes (although several of VHS’ critical technologies are licensed from Sony).
1978: MCA DiscoVision optical disks.
1978: Pioneer LaserDisc optical disks.
Thanks, Walloon. One of my instructors mentioned this and I always wondered if it was true.
I see Google now has a patent search.
The Patent Office searches only do text seaches to 1972.
…
Well, it’s not quite clear what the “this” in that sentence refers to, but I apologize for the misunderstanding. I didn’t realize you were referring to U-matic when you spoke of the “larger tape Betamax.”
BTW, U-matic was not initially used by broadcasters; the signal wasn’t good or stable enough. It wasn’t until tape formulations improved and digital time base correctors became relatively cheap and common in the late 1970s or early 1980s that it was taken up by broadcasters.
Another minor point…
Beta and VHS are 1/2-inch formats, not 3/4-inch.
My, am I feeling old…
As other posters have noted, real life had a lot in it. For music, there were round things called “records.” Also “musical instruments”; you played them yourself. And there were other artifacts called “books.” I read them. Games were played using actual physical objects, too.
As for TV; in my area we got one channel. If we were lucky. Movies? Maybe once or twice a year. Except I remember one summer when our town rented a projector and hung a big sheet on the back wall of the grocery store, and we all sat out in an empty lot and watched Tarzan.
Wasn’t Actors’ Equity also afraid that if the BBC (& ITV) could keep showing old programs over and over again it’d put actors out of work?
I dunno. I stumbled across the Patent Office’s website a couple of years back (think I tried to look up Armstrong’s FM patent). My memory is vague, but I don’t think they had everything in their database and, as someone has noted, search options were limited. Keep meaning to go back there someday. Maybe this discussion will motivate me.
This really isn’t germane to the discussion, but it reminded me of how they had to edit 2" videotape before the development of edit controllers. Just like audiotape, they cut and spliced it. The tape had a recorded “control track” along one edge and the editor would smear some solution on the tape to make the blips on the control track visible (if you didn’t edit precisely “between” video frames you would get a nasty glitch on playback).
I was a bit slow getting into home video - my first Betamax had a “hard-wired” remote with three buttons (pause and two shuttles, I think).
In these parts in the Sixties a TV remote control was hardly necessary, there being only three broadcast stations.
It was called the Selectavision. I personally would love to get my hands on one of those as a collector’s item. In fact, there’s one on eBay right now with 237 movies included, for $500, and the auction is ending in 33 minutes.
I get that, this really wasn’t great quality (from what I’ve seen of partly reconstructed episodes) you can see the curved edges of the screen and lines running down it from what I assume is some sort of lack of synchronisation between the frames on the tv and the film.
Although you are probably correct, nothing you say changes anything I said. I was referring to a different show in the early 60’s. Steve Allen was the host of this nightly show, taped across Vine Street from the Hollywood Ranch Market in the early 1960’s. This followed a Sunday night show that competed with Ed Sullivan in the 1950’s.
The Steve Allen 1960’s nightly show was videotaped, but I understand most tapes were erased shortly after airing to save tape and be reused. Apparently the concept of a profitable rerun or syndication had not yet matured.
Ah, you are referring to The New Steve Allen Show, which ran from 1961 to 1965. It was shown over the ABC network in 1961, but from 1962 to 1965 it was syndicated, by Westinghouse TV.
An ABC episode from 1961 is available from KineVideo.
A Westinghouse episode from 1962 is also available from KineVideo.
Reminds me of my grandparents admitting that the family would all gather around in the parlor and watch the radio. Literally.
Remember too, that before cable there was a lot less stuff available to watch in the first place, and still most of it was crap. In case you wanted to see 2 shows on at the same time, you’d have to depend on a friend watching the other one, and then you’d both recite what happened.
Movies? There used to be things called “theaters” for those.
As Diogenes notes, we didn’t know it sucked that there were fewer than 10 channels. One thing I remember is a lot more movie theaters, including some that would show little but old movies.
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it yet, but comic books. I got into them I guess early-mid 70’s or so, and whatever time wasn’t taken up by schoolwork, swimteam practice and eating, could be pretty easily filled with reading and rereading my ever-increasing collection of comics.
In my later teens I got into music and punk and hanging with my punk friends and we could spend hours just listening to music and being punks.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve sat down and really listened to a whole album, much less a few albums in a row. I mean, just sitting there doing nothing but listen.
Seems almost bizarre now.
Oh, when I was younger and we went to the movies, mom would sneak a tape recorder in her purse and record the movie so we could listen to it later. The last time I remember that was when mom took me to see Logan’s Run. We used to listen to that movie over and over.
Hmm. I was only a kid in the 70’s, so my persception was a bit skewed. (And I guess, it still is.)
We were at the mercy of whatever the local four or five TV stations saw fit to show us.
But it wasn’t too bad. Happy Days, Three’s Company, etc. Oodles of sitcoms come to mind. My dad liked M.A.S.H., but I was too young to get the more subliminal messages.
Tons of shows come back as what might be called classics now. (My grandparents loved The Waltons.) Police crime/drama (Police Story, Hill Street Blues, Husky and Starch), Scifi (Battlestar Galactica which seems so campy now, Space 1999, Buck Rodgers with Erin Gray. Yumm), “family values” shows (The Waltons, Little House on the Prarie), variety shows (remember Donny and Marie Osmond show?), and of course, Johnny Carson.
Plenty to pick from.
Now, If you still didnt like what was available on TV, you had the movie theatre. (The first movie I ever saw multiple times in the theatre during it’s initial release phase was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.)
Then, the local drive-in’s would show the lesser hyped releases (I saw Star Wars the first time in a drive in), as well as showing major releases for a cheaper price ($5 a car load, IIRC) after the theatres moved on to newer stuff.
Failling that, my parents would throw on the vinyl records, invite over friends, and party. Us kids had no problems finding ways to entertain ourselves in any case. (“Stop it! Stop it! DaaAAaad! Scott’s LOOKING at me…!”)