VCord Beta VCR

Cartivision VCR

Before there was Beta or VHS, or Panasonic, V-Cord or Phillips, there was Cartrivision. It was the very first serious attempt to market a home VCR to the American Public. The Cartrivision system was produced by Cartridge Television Inc. of Palo Alto, California and marketed by retailers such as Sears. This virtually unknown relic of the early 1970's was ahead of its time and was made available a full three years before the Betamax was released. Unfortunately it never really got off the ground. Factors that led to it's demise included: it could only be purchased as a $1600 combination TV/VCR (Sony's first unit was also a TV/VCR combo at about the same price... go figure), operation was bulky and the cassettes were large. It also suffered from distribution problems and low sales. After going bankrupt in 1974, the company liquidated their inventory and most of the remaining systems, less cabinetry, ended up being sold at auction or through mail order companies. The majority of the units still around today are in home-built cabinets with the guts of the Cartrivision two main pieces, tape transport and signal processing unit, placed inside. The mechanics seems large and strange when put along today's units, but back then it was breaking new ground and video wasn't as sophisticated as it is now. In the photo above you can see that the tape mechanism mounted vertical. Cassettes were dropped down into receiver and the lid was pushed closed. Threading then moved the tape into a crescent shaped position half way around the video drum assembly. If you click on the picture above you will see a typical cabinet design with the front doors opened. Clicking again will open a duplication of several printed pieces featuring the VCR format. The next photo shows the inside of the front and rear of a typical cabinet design. Clicking again and you see the mechanism and electronics. The next picture shows typical front controls. Next is the tape path and the video head locations. The cartivision used three spinning heads on a large disk. Each recorded half of the broadcast picture. This was known as split-field recording. Clicking again shows an elargement of one of the video heads. The last three photos show the tape path components up close. The Cartrivision system was revolutionary for the time and paved the way for the coming home video revolution. More information on this ill fated recorder can be found on the Web. To go back to the index page for the other early designs click here. To go to the information on the Quasar VCR click here. To go to the information on the V-cord machine click here.