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Not too long ago there was a time when stereo television broadcasting was in the development stages rather than a reality. Around this time Sony was locked in a fierce battle to win the hearts of the VCR buying public. Because of the longer recording area produced by the larger video drum their engineers were able to implement the very radical and clever innovation of using the spinning video heads to record the audio information along with the video. The result was a sound reproduction system that rivaled almost anything available up to that time. The reproduction was almost perfect with virtually no wow, flutter or distortion. Because of the speed of the heads it was like recording audio on a linear tape machine at thirty inches per second! It was a big deal back then and the impact on the public was very favorable. Above is a chart showing the comparison of various recording methods and how they stacked up beside the Beta HiFi system. Sony developed this impressive stereo video recording system before off-the-air broadcast stereo was available. So they wisely made their Hi-Fi units upgradeable so that when TV stations across the nation began to offer stereo programs the owners of these new machines could add on a device to take advantage of the coming technology. We are going to look at most of the examples of these innovative add-on devices and examine also how Sony marketed Hi-Fi to it's customers. Click on the photo and examine the MLV-1100 which was made to work with all the machines made prior to the adaptation of the broadcasting stereo standard. In the upper left is the plug that allowed the unit to accept signals from the VCR tuner for conversion. Click again and you see that the stereo cables would be installed to and from the VCR which was then set to "tuner with auxiliary audio input" and the result was stereo off the air. This unit was also an amplifier so you could add extra speakers if you wanted. Because the Beta Hi-Fi machines were good sellers there were other manufacturers that made units to produce stereo results and we will look at some examples of them now. Click and you'll see the Recoton unit that also had several special simulation modes to replicate stereo, if you wanted to add effects to a mono broadcast. Click again to see the rear hookups. Click again and we have the Panasonic decoder and if you click again you'll see the rear panel hookups. Click the photo again and here we have the HFP-100 adapter that was marketed to convert "BetaHi-Fi ready" units to stereo, but it didn't receive stereo broadcasts. Click again to see the front panel close up and again to see the rear panel hookups. A special plug and socket design was used for this unit and the HFP-200 coming up next. These combinations were exclusively Sony, with these there would be no third party units. Click and examine the Stereo adapter which would be used to upgrade the Hi-Fi ready units if you wanted stereo off-the-air. Click to see the front panel up close and then again to see the rear. Click again through the next set of photos to see the Aiwa adapters that was sold to mate with their portable unit. It wasn't interchangeable with the Sony units and it had a differently keyed socket and plug to prevent accidents. It also was an amplifier. There you have it, the decoder/adapter line up and more examples of Betas creative innovation in pursuit of the brass ring. More innovations would follow within the Beta format but as we all know it didn't stem the tide. |