Peter Berg remembers the
early days of the
videotape recorder
Below is the text from a couple of emails that I received from Peter Berg.
Peter was part of the Cartrivision development team and
he was also an
employee of Cartrivision for the duration of CTI’s
existence. The correspondence deals with the early days of the home VCR and the
companies that were competing against each other to be the
first to
get one to market. Most interesting is Peter’s account of showing off
the Cartrivision VTR to Sony executives in Japan.
“RCA
had two home video programs running concurrently. The first one was a VCR
with
Large scanning disk, 4 heads, record all fields, and it was expensive to
make.
The
mechanism was to be built by Bell and Howell in Chicago (where I spent about
half my time)
and
the electronics and assembly was to be done in RCA's Rockville plant, outside
Indianapolis.
We
actually had the pre-production line and most of the automated test equipment
in
place in Rockville when RCA decided to can the program.
The
second project going at RCA was a video disc with high and low points in
the
tracks, read by a MECHANICAL stylus which drove a small capacitance
change
in a (1200 MHz) ?? oscillator - the frequency was then down converted
and
FM demodulated thusly recreating the recorded data. This one was doomed
from
the onset but actually made it to market - but not for long.
(Webmaster’s
note: Peter is refering to the RCA CED
videodisc. For more info
on
this format check out the CED
Magic Web Page )
Frank
Stanton (President of Cartrivision Television Inc.) was correct when he told
a
reporter that RCA had a VCR "ghost",
just an announcement, (the word "vaporware' had
not
been coined yet); no hardware, no software, but their announced low price made
some
companies like GE, Zenith and Motorola
wait it out and not jump on the Cartrivison
bandwagen.
Then,
of course, Zenith started their own development, in cooperation with
Philips
of the Netherlands, to do a 'DVD-like' medium. It, too, ran out
of
money. Two of the original members of
the Cartrivision team eventually
became
involved in the Zenith project.
And
I am sorry to say that I have no mementos from my RCA days, I was so upset
at
the video world when they, too, abandoned the project, that I decided to
abandon
video
on my own terms and go back to my old profession in aerospace telemetry and
command
systems. There, at least, one knew who
and where one's customers were.
However,
I now remember that I was approached by BASF who wanted to do a
longitudinal
tape recorder using 1/4 inch tape spooling it at high speed
along
a fixed head. I actually went to an
interview at their headquarters
outside
Heidelberg (?) in Germany, but that fizzled.
Good thing!
In
some frantic maneuvering, Frank Stanton sent me with a colleague
to Japan with a working Cartrivision VTR to try
and work with Sony, NVC (jvc),
Matsushita
(Panasonic) and others in an attempt to try to get them to jump on CTI's
bandwagen. This was one of the more difficult projects
in my life since
almost
all communication had to go through an interpreter. And I knew
nothing
about the Japanese and their working and living habits. And the
outcome
was a big fat zero.
During
this trip I even got to meet Mr. Akio Morita, president and founder of Sony.
Sony
was not interested, with no reason given.
Matsushita was not interested,
no
reason given although I later learned they were also doing their own thing.
JVC
was very interested and I actually worked with them for several days
discussing
all the design and manufacturing details of our machine as Frank
Stanton
had given me the instructions to 'open the kimono'. They even took
the
whole machine apart over the weekend and put it back together. When we
returned
for further discussions on Monday, the machine stood there working
as
always, and the large conference table was plastered with a zillion
pictures
of every damn part in the CTI
recorder/player! Those guys knew
what
they were doing.
Well,
that, too, fizzled and a while later JVC came out with a new format,
later
named..…...VHS.
In
my mind, the main reasons for the demise of Cartrivision were:
1. Machine was too expensive, worked
only with modified tv's (timebase problem),
which,
in turn, led to the industry selling it in expensive combo floor
tv/vcr
combinations, not good to enter the market at the 'max price' level.
2. The concept may have been a bit
too early (but obviously the movie rental
"first"
was a wonderful idea).
3. The Fuji tape debacle; this would
have been a killer at any time, but it
happened
at a time that CTI was most vulnerable, introduction and cash flow
wise.
4. RCA's announcement of a “ much
cheaper” machine; it was created by
H.
Ray Warren. This VTR won him the Sarnoff price for innovation for it and got
himself some patents. However, it
turned out to be 'nothing new' but just a bit different,
and
expensive to make.”
Regards,