Cartrivision is an analog video tape cartridge format introduced in 1972, and the first format to offer

feature film A feature film or feature-length film (often abbreviated to feature), also called a theatrical film, is a film (Film, motion picture, "movie" or simply “picture”) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole present ...

s for consumer rental.1972: Cartrivision — The First VCR with Prerecorded Tapes
CED Magic, cedmagic.com. Article retrieved 2006-12-22. Cartrivision was produced by Frank Stanton's Cartridge Television, Inc. (CTI), a subsidiary of Avco,"Cartrivision — The First ALL American Home VCR!"
LabGuy's World (labguysworld.com). Article last updated 2005-01-09, retrieved 2006-12-22. which also owned

Embassy Pictures Embassy Pictures Corporation (also and later known as Avco Embassy Pictures as well as Embassy Films Associates) was an American independent film production and distribution company, which was active from 1942 to 1986. Embassy was responsible ...

at the time. Cartrivision was available in the form of a TV set with a built-in recorder for the format. Cartrivision recorders and sets were manufactured by Avco, a company that CTI partnered with to manufacture and develop the format, as well as Admiral, Packard Bell, Emerson,

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a mail-order business and later a department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001; its common nickname was "Monkey Wards". ...

, and

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

, the latter two marketing Cartrivision sets under their own brand names in their stores. While Montgomery Ward's TV used the Admiral chassis, as did all Montgomery Ward airline TVs, Admiral marketed their own Cartrivision with a different chassis. The first model of Cartrivision-equipped TV set sold for US $1,350Television on a Disk
''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'', Sept. 18, 1972. Retrieved 2006-12-22. (), and was the first videocassette recorder to have pre-recorded tapes of popular movies available for rent.

History

Avco Corp. introduced Cartrivision at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

in New York in June 1970. It was first sold in June 1972, mainly through Sears,

Macy's Macy's is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. The first store was located in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, south of the present-day flagship store at Herald Square on West 34 ...

, and Montgomery Ward

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...

s in the United States. Manufacture ended thirteen months later in July 1973 after poor sales. Later, it was found that Cartrivision tapes that had been stored in a warehouse had disintegrated due to humidity. After the demise of Cartrivision in 1973, many Cartrivision-equipped TV sets, separate recording mechanisms, tapes, and other parts and accessories were liquidated by surplus retailers, mainly in California, and many electronic hobbyists bought quite a few of the Cartrivision systems. Some made their own homebrew modifications with the hardware, such as a stand-alone Cartrivision player in its own chassis with an RF modulator to hook it up to any TV set, much like later VCRs.

Design

Like Philips' Video Cassette Recording (VCR) format (introduced at the same time in Europe), the square Cartrivision cassette had the two reels of half-inch

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...

mounted on top of each other, but it could record up to 114 minutes. It did so using an open loop helical scan "

skip-field In video, skip field recording is a process in which only one field (video), field (one half of a video frame, frame) of video is recorded in order to conserve recording media space. For some kinds of recording, the quality loss of not using both ...

" form of video format that recorded every third video field and played it back three times. Citing "the present invention (of recording and playback) represents an improvement over the prior conventional skip-field systems." Such conventional systems are described in issued to Kihara on Dec. 19, 1967.

Retail

Cassettes of major movies such as ''

The Bridge on the River Kwai ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' is a 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the novel ''The Bridge over the River Kwai'', written by Pierre Boulle. Boulle's novel and the film's screenplay are almost entirely fictional but u ...

'', ''

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner'' is a 1967 American romantic comedy drama film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, and written by William Rose. It stars Spencer Tracy (in his final role), Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Hepburn, and feat ...

'', '' Dr. Strangelove'', ''

High Noon ''High Noon'' is a 1952 American Western (genre), Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, which occurs in Real time (media), real time, centers ...

'', ''

It Happened One Night ''It Happened One Night'' is a 1934 American pre-Code romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite ( Claudette Colbert) tr ...

'', '' Divorce Italian Style'', '' The Quiet Man'', '' The Belles of St Trinian's'', '' Two Rode Together'' and ''

Brother Rat ''Brother Rat'' is a 1938 American comedy drama film about cadets at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, directed by William Keighley, and starring Ronald Reagan, Priscilla Lane, Eddie Albert (in his film debut), Jane Wyman, and W ...

''Cumberland Evening Times 6 July 1972 Page 11
/ref> were ordered via the initial 200-movie catalog at a

retailer Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesal ...

, delivered by parcel mail, and then returned to the retailer after viewing. These rental cassettes were red, approximately high by wide by deep (however used the same videotape used today) and could not be rewound by a home Cartrivision recorder. Rather, they were rewound by a special machine upon their return to the retailer.Cartrivision Cassette
mrbetamax.com. Article retrieved 2006-12-22. Other cassettes on sports, travel, art, and

how-to How to or how-to (among other spellings) may refer to: * A user guide ** An owner's manual, more narrowly * A tutorial ** Especially, instructional material created for the do it yourself market In titles of specific works * How to... (film serie ...

topics were available for purchase. These cassettes were black, and could be rewound on a Cartrivision recorder. An optional

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

camera manufactured for Cartrivision by Eumig could be bought to make home videos. A color camera was in the works but never materialized before CTI's demise.

References

External links

Cartrivision.com

The Cartrivision Site

Video of "I Am Cartrivision", a demo video released on Cartrivision cassette to retailers

Cartrivison's appearance on ''What's My Line?''
(on

Buzzr Buzzr (stylized as BUZZR) is an American digital broadcast television network owned by Fremantle North America, a unit of the Fremantle subsidiary of RTL Group. The network serves as an outlet for the extensive library of classic game shows ow ...

YouTube channel)
Details of a Cartrivision cassette

* ttps://youtube.com/watch?v=HcpouZiZ4UE Video demonstration of a working Cartrivision unit in 2022{{Homevid Audiovisual introductions in 1972 1973 disestablishments in the United States Discontinued media formats Video storage Composite video formats

History

Design

Retail

See also

References

External links