| In 1956, Ampex developed
the first commercial black and white videotape recorders
that quickly displaced kinescope recordings as a
broadcast delay medium. The first videotape recorder
used two-inch wide tape in lengths up to 90 minutes.
Color television was first broadcast live in 1954,
but it wasn’t until about 1958 that color
videotape was developed using a technique called
low band heterodyne recording. Although quite impressive
at the time, low band videotape color recordings
did not lend themselves to duplication with any
degree of quality. Even second generation copies
exhibited a noticeable loss of resolution and displayed
relatively high levels of color noise and distortion.
The analog time base corrector made direct color
recording possible, but it was not until 1965 that
a new generation of high band color videotape recorders
was introduced, which further improved chroma quality. |
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