History of video and audio systems

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The history of video and audio systems began around the 1930s.

Development history

1930 to 1955: pioneering days

The magnetic sound and image recording in today's sense was created around 1935 at AEG-Telefunken AG in Berlin. This was preceded by the development of a magnetizable tape material, which at that time still consisted of paper. AEG-Telefunken took advantage of this innovation and built an audio recorder that could magnetize the tape material and read out the resulting fields. The basic principles for this had been known for a long time, but could only be used economically efficiently and qualitatively in a reasonable manner thanks to the newly developed strip material. In the following years the device - and with it the tape as well - was continuously improved, so that in the mid-1940s it was possible to achieve an astonishingly good recording quality for the time. At that time, AEG-Telefunken was already working on the so-called helical track recording with a rotating head, which continued to increase quality and make longer recordings possible.

After the end of the Second World War , a real competition broke out for the economic evaluation of the patents, some of which had been captured, some of which were handed over as reparations. The Americans in particular were able to assert themselves here: In 1946/47, the Ampex company received an order from the US government to develop various technical devices for the army, and the German patents were made available for them. In the course of this, the first tape recorder suitable for the broad market was manufactured: the Ampex 200A machine. In the mid-1950s, Ampex also developed the first video system suitable for everyday use. In connection with the helical track recording devised by Telefunken, a machine was constructed that was able to record and reproduce not only audio but also image signals in sufficient quality (even if only in black and white until then).

1955 to 1975: the predominance of the 2-inch system

BOSCH 2-inch quadruplex machine (BCM 40)
AMPEX portable 2 inch machine

The next revolution came in 1957 when color television was introduced in the United States . In the same year Ampex presented the first color video recorder. This machine can hardly be compared with the home appliances known today: It was rather about 3 m³ large technology cabinets with a weight of about 600 kg, on which two reels with a 2-inch tape turned. This tape initially allowed a recording length of around 95 minutes, which could later be extended through various modifications. These machines were first called quad recorders (an abbreviation that goes back to the designation quadruplex system, in German: 4-segment recording), later the designations 2 ″ and, especially in German-speaking countries, MAZ (short for: magnetic recording or magnetic recording). Due to their high price and the large number of technicians who were required to operate them, the 2-inch machines were, with a few exceptions, only delivered to TV broadcasters.

With the beginning of the 1960s and the advancing technical development, nothing stood in the way of the widespread use of video recorders and tape recorders. The latter, in particular, were so cheap to produce that the average consumer of the time could also buy them. Around 1955 the average worker received a monthly wage of around DM 150, while a tape machine cost around DM 750 and the associated tape cost around DM 10. The ratio was even worse for video recorders, which means that the target group of consumers was limited to professional users and radio and television companies. By way of comparison: video recorders were available from around 3500 DM, a 2-inch machine from Ampex for 500,000 DM - the price of almost five houses.

The 2-inch technology existed in the professional sector until around 1980.

1975 to 1990: The one-inch systems and the rise of the market leader Sony

In 1975 Bosch began to introduce its own standard in Europe - 1 ″ -BCN, or 1 ″ -B for short. The company's history is decisive for this development: In 1939, Bosch fully took over the world's first real company for professional radio and television - Fese (Fernseh) GmbH. Fese, at that time still with Bosch with the other shareholders Zeiss Ikon and Loewe , was the first company in the world to record the Olympic Games with an electronic camera in 1936 and broadcast them all over Germany via radio or wire. In exchange for developed patents, after the war, Ampex granted Bosch the right to recreate their 2 ″ recorders in Europe. In this way, three machine types were created, which did not differ greatly, only each was more sophisticated.

SONY U-matic machine

With the experience gained, Bosch then developed the 1 ″ B machine. However, Ampex followed suit at the same time as the 1 ″ -A, and about two years later came the 1 ″ C version, which was to become established worldwide. This is where the Sony success story began . It all started with U-matic , but this standard was not suitable for making high-quality recordings. In the general technical race to catch up, Sony then turned to the Betamax format and modified it to a high quality system. At the same time, RCA fought with Hawkeye, Panasonic with MI and Bosch with Quartercam for the new, up-and-coming cassette market for the customers at the time, the TV companies.

Portable Betamax machine from SONY
BOSCH Quatercam machine (Lineplex)

Bosch lost the fight because the Funai drives came from Japan and the local NHK (comparable to the German Chamber of Commerce, only more powerful and exclusively responsible for the technical branch) was no longer allowed to deliver these drives under pressure from Sony and was unable to deliver in a short time build up your own production line. Hawkeye from RCA and MI from Panasonic succumbed to the fate of low quality and inadequate peripherals, because the demands of TV broadcasters worldwide related to portable camcorders and operable editing devices for electronic processing.

The only company that was able to meet all the requirements at the right time was Sony with their Betacam system , which emerged from Betamax technology in 1982. Almost three years later, Panasonic came onto the market with the successor to the MI, the MII, which significantly raised the quality standards for Sony. As a result, the Panasonic system began to sell well. Its problem, however, was the short running times compared to the one-inch machines that were still in existence in large numbers: a maximum of 20 minutes as a camcorder and a maximum of 95 minutes as a studio machine. Sony therefore followed suit in 1987 with Betacam SP (Superior) . The battle of the systems was thus decided for the time being, because 36 minutes of playing time were possible with the PAL standard with the camcorder and 110 minutes with the edit recorder. With the introduction of Betacam SP, the first fully digital D1 system from Sony was presented at the same time, which was based on a Bosch development with 1 ″ B-like machines.

1990 to today: video and audio systems in the age of digitization

From then on, digitization took hold: D2 followed in 1989 - intended as the successor to 1 ″ -C -, parallel to this D3 from Panasonic, around 1991 then DCT from Ampex and the next big hit was Sony in 1992 with their Digital Betacam system (simultaneously with Panasonic D5). It turned out that Sony would once again - and this time long-term - make the race. Even if new developments - including systems such as D6 (Voodoo) from BTS (formerly Bosch), D9 (Digital VHS) from JVC, DVC, DVC-Pro 25, DVCAM , Betacam SX - continued to be presented in the 1990s - and theirs in each case Found customers, Digital Betacam remained the undisputed number one.

Since the turn of the millennium, HDTV has been in the conversation again and is developing into the future system standard. As early as the end of the 1980s, Bosch and Sony had tried independently of one another using analogue methods to save the amount of data with one-inch machines, but it was not until the late 1990s that Sony had little success with HDVS (digital 1 ″ -C). From 2000 HDCAM , D5-HD, HDCAM-SR, DVC-Pro HD were added and the wheel began to turn again. In the recent past digital systems have also been introduced in the lower price segments: HDV , XDCAM , P2-HD. The progressive development has paved the way to completely tapeless recording in all areas - but due to the amount of data to be processed, this will in all probability be delayed until around 2015 to 2020.

Portable lace machine from MAIHAK

In professional audio technology, digitization began much earlier due to the lower amount of data. Until the late 1990s, analog lace machines (¼ ″ tape recorders) were also used in parallel in all TV stations. However, PCM recording established itself in production around the early 1980s . From the mid-80s the more elegant DAT system came onto the market, followed by multi-track versions such as ADAT (eight tracks and up to 16-fold cascadable ). Here, too, Sony went its own way with its DASH system , in which two to 48 tracks are digitally recorded on a ¼ ″ and ½ ″ tape. Around 1970 also began research on the storage of data in a digital, optical way. This led to the introduction of the CD for audio and the LD for video around 1981 . Of these two systems, the CD remained unchanged, but the LD mutated into the VCD and then into the DVD , from which the Blu-ray Disc has now emerged.

The digital recording standard AVCHD has been increasingly established in the amateur sector since 2006 for many recording and reproducing devices, but also for processing and reproduction software. Almost all of the camcorders examined in a comparative product test by Stiftung Warentest in 2012 , for example, use the AVCHD standard for recording images and sound.

outlook

From today's point of view, due to the rapid development in the data sector, ever greater integration of components, steadily better data compression using better software and the lower costs due to the high number of units, in the future only fixed storage systems or optical systems will be available. Therefore, recorded memories, recordings, images and other audiovisual data should be transferred to a new medium for backup. One reason for this is that there will no longer be any spare parts for old devices, as is already the case with tape recorders or 2 ″, 1 ″ A / B / C, MI and MII, and also other intermediate versions such as U- matic, Betacam, D2, D3, D5 D9. Then there is the progressive self-decomposition of the tape material due to age. Long-term storage is currently only possible on tape, and experience shows that 2 ″ tapes are better to transfer than 1 ″ A / B / C tapes, depending on storage. Due to the self-decomposition of the tape, these show partly irreparable damage, which makes the entire production unusable. The possibility of transferring to file-based systems is available in principle, but is still too cost-intensive and therefore only calculable for larger archives. Thus, at the moment there is only the possibility of transferring to a tape system again until the technology allows correspondingly high storage options with a favorable price-performance ratio and it is possible to manage various terabytes in your own computer with high security (mirroring). A digital system such as Digital Betacam is currently available for transferring. Because of the low cassette prices and the long running length of a maximum of 124 minutes, it is equally suitable as an intermediate carrier for audio and video.

Illustrations

  • BOSCH one inch B machine (BCN 51)

  • One inch portable C-machine from SONY

  • AMPEX DCT MAZ

  • BOSCH / BTS D1 machine (DCR 500)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Camcorders with and without AVCHD recording , test.de of September 27, 2012, accessed online on October 7, 2012

Web links