The Cartrivision used 8-inch plastic cartridges that were inserted into a compartment on a television console to record shows. One of the first practical television recording solutions for households was the Cartrivision, which debuted in 1972. Ampex only sold a couple hundred of the machines to broadcasters who wanted to record their programs and had the budget to invest in the equipment. It also cost $50,000, or about $500,000 in today’s dollars. But … there was a problem: The device was the size of a desk. With that breakthrough, Ampex introduced the Mark IV in 1956. A company named Ampex figured out that instead of moving the tape around the heads at ridiculous speeds, the heads themselves should spin. The thinking was, if you could record audio on magnetic tape, why not video? But video footage requires much more data than audio, and therefore needs to move much more quickly around the tape heads in the machine. In the 1950s, companies like RCA were trying to crack the code of practical video storage. or settle for a description from kids in school, co-workers, or their families.Įlectronics manufacturers knew consumers wanted a way to free themselves from appointment television. If they weren’t, they’d have to hope the network aired a rerun at some point in the future. Now they could watch comedies like I Love Lucy, Westerns like Gunsmoke, and riveting dog-driven dramas like Lassie-presuming they were in front of their sets when the shows came on. The advent of television in the American home in the late 1940s and its dramatic adoption throughout the 1950s offered a whole new entertainment portal for Americans, who had grown accustomed to radio as the medium of choice in their homes.
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