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Pretty much these sold to high end consumers and educational institutions. My first year Sony VO-1600 Umatic has built in TV tuners and an accessory timer unit was made for it (the first 2-3 standalone Betamax decks were the same way: Internal tuners, external accessory timers), and these clearly were meant for consumer applications. My 1600 came from a college in Illinois with the tapes it made and had a mixture of time shifts from television and recorded events in lecture halls.
A few years ago I went to an estate sale on one of the last days and picked up a few pron flicks on Umatic. They apparently were being rented out by a local establishment that they weren't returned to.... That same sale yielded a 50s RCA TV, a bunch of EIAJ, PL-259 and BNC cables, and a Bell and Howell audio cassette changer. The folks clearly had a good bit of high end early VTRs and audio gear, and I wonder what I missed out on earlier in the sale...
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