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Thread Number: 59515
/ Tag: Classified Ad Finds
Unusual TV/VCR Combo 1977/78 |
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Post# 821173 4/27/2015 at 15:02 (3,285 days old) by vacbear58  (Sutton In Ashfield, East Midlands, UK) |
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I am posting this outside my usual thread as I thought North American readers might be interested to see it.
Dynatron were a premium brand in the UK dating from the 1950s but really had their heyday in the 1970s. They are more known for music centres and radiograms (what US members call a console I think) which were often, although not exclusively dressed up in antique style cabinets. I knew that also did televisions although whether these were of their own manufacture I cannot say. But this is the first time I have seen such a combo and it must have cost a fortune when new. Dynatron was expensive, but matched with this VCR .... In some ways this unit is rather reminiscent of the earliest TV sets where, in order to get a larger size screen, the tube was so large it was mounted vertically in a cabinet which was around the size of a radiogram (think 1930s console) and the picture reflected off a mirror mounted on the underside to a lid on the top. The VCR is a Philips N1501 - the first domestic video recorder in the UK I believe was the predecessor to this model the N1500, which I first saw when my school bought one in around 1974 or maybe 1975. The cassettes were pretty much square but around twice the thickness of a VHS. Of course the whole system became obsolete in a couple of years time when VHS took off and, at the time at least, Philips continued with their own systems. By the way, the reason I believe that VHS became so popular here, when it was launched around the same time as Betamax, was that a couple of the large TV rental companies adopted VHS for their rental machines. At the time VCRs were so expensive and rather notoriously unreliable that people chose to rent rather than buy and, for the most part, all they could get was VHS. Of course VHS and indeed the TV rental companies are all consigned to history - well this TV console has its own place ion TV history What it would take to get this recorder and TV going again I cannot imagine. Al CLICK HERE TO GO TO vacbear58's LINK on eBay | ||
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| Post# 821214 , Reply# 1 4/27/2015 at 20:41 (3,285 days old) by alr2903 (TN) | ||
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Thanks for posting this! I would agree it had to cost a fortune. Is that start and stop times, the extra dials on the analog clock? | ||
| Post# 821223 , Reply# 2 4/27/2015 at 23:29 (3,285 days old) by PhilR (Quebec Canada) | ||
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Post# 821243 , Reply# 4 4/28/2015 at 03:20 (3,285 days old) by vacbear58 (Sutton In Ashfield, East Midlands, UK) |
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VCRs
I am glad you found this to be of interest.
Arthur I believe you are correct about the start and stop times, this timer is very like the sort of timer used on cookers (ranges) of the time and so is fundamentally mechanical rather than electronic. Phil As noted above, this was the first domestic VCR in Europe and from reading the Wiki link below, possibly in the world. But the format itself was doomed almost from the start as it would have needed the major Japanese manufacturers to take it up for world wide distribution and they of course produced their own formats. And possibly the Philips came out slightly ahead of when the market was ready for it, although in its way it was probably highly instrumental in creating that market in the first place. But with 5 years they had come up with a completely new format which did not succeed either - this was a tape you could turn over, rather like a cassette to use both sides. Brent What a great story, sometimes the fates are on our side and what a good feeling when it happens. The following links might be of interest for more background en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Casse... Be warned about this link, there is so much interesting stuff in here you could be reading for some considerable time www.rewindmuseum.com/philips.htm... And, from the same site, I believe it was the first machine on the following link which, almost single handed, established VHS as the predominant format in the UK www.rewindmuseum.com/vhs.htm... It is a throwaway comment on the link where it comments it was badged as Baird. This was the brand name of Radio Rentals who were the largest TV rental company at the end of the 1970s and I believe it was this factor which led to their runaway popularity. If they could have adopted Sony, Sanyo or Toshiba (Betamax) machines the story could have been very different. I was a die hard Betamax fan for 10 years until the early 1990s when I finally bowed to the inevitable and went VHS. Laser disc never really took off as a format here at all, and of course Philips produced their own variant of that too Al | ||
| Post# 821267 , Reply# 5 4/28/2015 at 08:04 (3,285 days old) by cadman (Cedar Falls, IA) | ||
Vacbear, how neat to see one as a console! In the US we never had anything like this. U-Matic and the Sony reel-to-reel variations were pretty much it until Beta came along. I first learned about this format years ago on the Secret Life of Machines and then a few years later ended up finding one of the tapes at a boot sale outside of London.
Now that I think about it, there was an obscure format that never took off here that was 'play only'. There was a catalog of titles available for rent...but the kicker was that the carts couldn't be rewound! You paid for one viewing and that's what you got! -C | ||
| Post# 821288 , Reply# 6 4/28/2015 at 11:28 (3,284 days old) by A440 () | ||
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Sony Beta Combo This is the exact set that I sold. It weighed a TON!
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