OT: just for those intersted about analog tape

[Bill Akers]

Bill Vermillion wrote:
>>On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 10:18:06PM -0500, Bill Vermillion wrote:
>>
>>>On Thu, Jan 06 17:37 , while denying his reply is spam, Walter Vaughan 
>>>prattled on endlessly saying: 
>>>
>>>>John Esak wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Is this true?  If so, how would anyone ever get new tape for their old
>>>>>machines?
>>>
>>>>JE, you of all people should realize that this is capitalism at work. 
>>>>Someone will cobble up a line that can make the tape at a PROFIT. It 
>>>>doesn't take 250 people to make high quality tape.
>>>
>>[ ... ]
>>
>>>>I mourn the fact that they appeared to stop fighting 1-1/2
>>>>years ago. This company saw the writing on the wall. They just
>>>>gave up, hoping that tomorrow never came. But, their last new
>>>>product announcement was in 2003 for professional firewire
>>>>drives.
>>>
>>>That was Quantegy or someone else?
> 
> 
>>The Company Formerly Known As Ampex.
> 
> 
> So those were Ampex firewire devices, and not Quantegy? If the
> latter I was not aware they had gone into hw. As I understood it
> Quantegy was only to take over the tape operations, which Ampex
> orignally acquired from Orr.  Sony also built a video tape plant in
> Opeleika.  Up until that time there were only three video tape
> manufacturing operations in the US.  Owned by 3M, Scotch, and
> Tandy.  The latter was when Tandy acquired the tape division of
> Memorex and Burroughs acquired the magnetic data division.
> 
> RS kept the Memorex brand - and even put it on things like VCRs
> where they had their chain of video stores they bought from Jack
> Eckerd after he had to find a place to put his money after selling
> his drugstores.   It's a good thing they kept the brand as I don't
> think "Is it live or it is Radio Shack" would do anything but
> hinder sales.
> 
> 
>>But they said out loud in public many years ago that they would still
>>manufacture 2" quad videotape *as long as their was a machine running
>>in production anywhere in the world*. 
> 
> 
>>I believe they've dumped out on that promise.
> 
> 
> I think technically you could say there are no quad machine
> running in a production environment, depending upon how you define
> production.
> 
> All I'm aware of are being used to rescue/recover the jillions of
> miles of quad video to get it into a stable/newer format. So those
> are primarly playback and there is no need for new tape to record
> upon.
> 
> I remember watching an engineer SPLICE video tape using Magnasee
> to find the sync tracks before you could edit video electronically.
> 
> If you got the wrong sync pulse the picture would slip down 1/2
> frame. 

What??? Please explain what this does!!! My experience says it would 
just lose a part of one frame and all subsequent frames would be right 
back in proper order.

  The last time I worked an TV was in an audio booth
> as a VO announcer in about 1970 - and I think all the quads
> had been replaced by 1" C-types by then.
> 
> About 4-5 years ago at an ISP I was doing work for there were
> two quad units there.  One sort of worked.  They were almost used
> in From The Earth To The Moon as background props.  But those were
> the last I've seen of them.
> 
> The early days of video tape were like the last days of the steam
> locomotive. Huge beasts with kajillions of tubes.
> 
> I see no one came up with a guess as to what Northstar was from
> the other post - so I guess you or Ken can now tell the world.
> 
> Don't disappoint me on that one :-)
> 
> Bill