MovieChat Forums > The Candidate (1972) Discussion > VHS-style video tapes back in 1971?

VHS-style video tapes back in 1971?

posted 16 years ago by cryptical70
6 replies | jump to latest

When Bill McKay (Robert Redford) and his political team are viewing some of his recent campaign footage on tv monitors, the guy in charge of video shows him a plastic container. This container apparently contains footage of McKay's recent health care facility visit. He goes into a back room and installs the contents of the container and they watch the health care facility foogage (which turns out to be problematic due to the lack of rapport McKay has with the people whom he's trying to talk to).

What kind of video tape did they use for this scene? Since this movie was shot back in 1971, prior to more recent VHS, what kind of technology was available in order to play video tapes on television monitors?

[–] glock78 15 years ago

Perhaps U-matic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-matic

[–] fdog9 13 years ago

VHS was introduced in 1971. It was not marketed to the public at the time.

Professional videocassettes for TV stations (and possibly political campaigns) were introduced in 1969.

Videotape was introduced in the 1950's.

[–] goleafsgo27 10 years ago

I have a page from a dept. store catalog, Sears or Wards, from the late 1970s for a top-loading VHS VCR. It sold for about $1,000, so they clearly were not yet something for everyone as they became in the next decade, but were definitely around.

I have seen enough to know I have seen too much. -- ALOTO

[–] urgeking 9 years ago

At home (which is not where I am now) I have a copy of a Life magazine from 1971, and it has a two-page ad for a new Sony videotape cartridge system for home use-- I don't think they were calling it U-Matic. (I'll have to go unearth that magazine to find the name.) A video camera could be connected to the main unit, and the ad suggested that consumers could use this system to record family events and play them back on their TV instead of dealing with a movie camera and projector. It also predicted that people would soon be able to buy commercially-produced movies on these cartridges and watch them at home on their TVs whenever they wanted. Sound familiar, anyone?

Sometimes it seems as if every electronic innovation gets introduced twice because nobody was paying any attention to it the first time.

[–] lipwak 9 years ago

I think it's 1/2" tape which would be on a reel but they're in carrying cases. I see handles on the ones he picks up.

U-matic is a rectangular 3/4" cassette format; what we see don't look wide enough and are square. There were a few cassette formats back then like Vcord and EIAJ but I don't think that's what we saw.

(I was a former audio and videotape librarian but these are a little before my time.)

[–] nutsberryfarm 9 years ago

beta?

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