September 15th – So, own up, how many of you bought Beta rather than VHS? Hm? I can say,
without fear of contradict, that I didn’t, but that was simply because, by the
time I could afford one it was a done-deal; Beta was pronounced crap and the
price of VHS tumbled. I figure a lot of individuals took a tumble on that as
did a number of producing outlets as each camp, Sony and JVC shortly followed
by RCA, wrestled to become the dominant supplier. The main stumbling block
early on was recording time per cassette, the US market (of course) wanting a
four-hour recording time because (put’s on whining, petulant vocals);
That’s how long a televised American Football game lasts;
I guess their selfish demands are what drive technology forward, except
when it comes to non-English-speaking movies, and then they’re just Luddites. I
mean, heaven forbid they should have to interrupt their happy-time to change a
cassette.
They tried SuperBeta but this was just the dying thrash of a doomed
system and VHS won the battle whereupon they both lucked out to laser
technology and the DVD. The real losers were, as always, us. We invested in
Beta, had to change to VHS and now spend vast amounts of time, because they’ve
stopped making the players, transferring our old VHS cassettes to DVD discs
which, as a secondary asset, allowed us to free up warehouse compatible storage
areas in our homes. Now, of course, the DVD is being overtaken by hard-drive
recording, storage and retrieval and on-line streaming. Very soon what took up
NASA bunker-sized storage space in our living rooms will be reduced, along with
the thickness of our wallets, to a portable device the size of a matchbox
(already there…)
The same thing happened with sound. For a good while the recorded disc,
either cylindrical or flat (single, LP, EP) was the recognised system, still is
in some ways as the price and desirability of vinyl albums is at an all-time
high, collectors willing to pay big money for them; rightly so because, after
all, a recording is a recording and you get the chance to obtain a slice of
history, your history, with each purchase. The use of tape to record the master
discs in studios was tried and tested but there weren’t many folk who were
prepared to invest in a Revox B77, say, or a Ferrograph tape recorder/payer in
order to take copies off the radio or from friends records.
With the advent of the tape cassette things became a lot easier but, as
with the visual side of things, two rival formats came onto the market
together; the Cassette and the Eight-Track Cartridge systems. To try and get a
run on the battle, the producers of 8-track (Lear and Ampex) on this day in
1965, got Ford to make it the default system in their cars and obtained the
backing of Motrola and RCA (don’t back a horse that RCA picks for you, will
you). They even upgraded to a system known as Quad-8 which offered the listener
quadraphonic sound (though why you’d want that inside of a car is beyond me)
but by 1982 the format was doomed with it’s inbuilt faults: too bulky, too
expensive, poorer sound quality due to tape flutter, technical playback hitches
if the player was left on for too long (?) fluctuating head alignment and no
rewind facility…as if that wasn’t enough but that wasn’t the main reason it
died the death.
You see, the 8-track cartridge, due to the fluctuating head alignment,
was constantly chewing up and jamming the tape; irksome, yes, but much, much more
than that. Like the deadly habit of today, texting as we drive along (covered
this before) if a tape jammed…you know what’s coming, don’t you…the
cabriolet-driving cool-dudes of the 60’s and 70’s would attempt to un-jam it
whilst whisking along the freeway at 90… Now, I know that your first thought
would have been that they crashed as they became focused on the sorting out of
the tape; perfectly understandable but, unfortunately not so. No, it was as
they threw the hopelessly fucked cassette out the window in a fit of pique that
the problems started. As the cassette hit the deck and bounced like a rubber
bullet along the tarmac surface so the miles of tape, still trapped in between
the playback rollers of the machine, unwound, tangling driver, passengers,
passing trees and pedestrians in its coils…ever tried to snap a section of that
tape?
As a supposedly intelligent species we don’t think things through very
well, do we?
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