Half inch tape
The half-inch tape is the dominant tape format for magnetic recording in the professional television and digital film production. Introduced in 1975, numerous sub-formats were developed on this format.
At first, formats for private users, such as Betamax , were saved on half-inch tape.
From the 1980s onwards, only formats for commercial use emerged, for example Betacam for television production.
In the 1990s also digital, such as Digital Betacam, and finally in the present also for HD video and cinema production, such as HDCAM .
Currently, a large part of the visual archive of all television channels is stored on half-inch tapes.
The main developers of the half-inch formats are Sony and Thomson . The main users of the devices and media are almost all television broadcasters and film studios .
Half inch formats
- Betamax , 1975
- Betacam , 1982
- Betacam SP , 1986
- Digital Betacam , 1993
- Betacam SX , 1996
- Betacam MPEG IMX , 2000
- HDCAM , 1999
- HDCAM SR , 2003