U-Matic anyone? (working machines/personal expericences)

[Telecolor 3007]

Holly smoke, what a complex machine! And I thought a V.H.S. V.C.R. was a complex machine.
It's a low band or high band machine?

[centralradio]

When moving these boat anchors around make sure you wear safety shoes and a lifting belt. Maybe thats the reason my back is shot lifting these machines along with TV sets plus warehouse work all of these years.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by centralradio

When moving these boat anchors around make sure you wear safety shoes and a lifting belt. Maybe thats the reason my back is shot lifting these machines along with TV sets plus warehouse work all of these years.

Oh my goodness, I severely underestimated the weight of my JVC. I thought "Hey, it must be about the weight of an old top-loading VHS, right?" I went almost as far as the bus system would reach to get the thing, and had to carry it down quite a long path back to the main road before I could even get a bus. Of course I had to set it down many times. Then I had to carry it uphill from the transfer point to get my next bus, and the nearest stop was closed due to construction. It must have taken me about 20 minutes to get from where one route ended and the other began. Then I had to stop at the grocery store on my way home so I carried the thing a couple hundred yards over there and plopped it on top of a small shopping cart. I went to a nearby store as well with said cart, leaving it outside for a couple of minutes. These carts have an automatic locking mechanism on one wheel to prevent theft; they're triggered by cables buried under the asphalt. No trouble on my way to the other store. On my way back to the grocery store, the lock was triggered and the cart tipped forward, almost falling over. One of the cart wranglers released it with what I'll call a magic wand. Once I finished up there I carried the deck back to the bus stop and finally home. Re-gaining full use of my arms took a couple of days. Whenever I moved the thing after that I wondered how the heck I mustered the strength to get it home. I emailed the guy who gave it to me about my adventure and he said "Yeah I warned you about how juicy that one was". Had I known I would have taken my relatively small convertible trolley.

As for the U-Matic's flaws, or those of color-under systems in general, now it makes sense why U-Matic was so widely used in broadcasting. Early on I heard it is superior in many ways to VHS and Beta, not to mention the lesser-known consumer decks.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Holly smoke, what a complex machine! And I thought a V.H.S. V.C.R. was a complex machine.
It's a low band or high band machine?

see:
http://www.av-iq.com/avcat/images/do...20-%204611.pdf

All these formats used "color-under." The chroma signal was simply translated to a low frequency, and the FM modulated luma signal acted as the high-frequency bias for the QAM chroma signal.

The terms low band and high band do not really apply in the same way as for 2 inch and 1 inch formats, which recorded the color on the FM carrier as part of the composite signal, although Sony applied those terms when it raised the FM frequency in U-Matic SP.

Regarding red problems, there was really a problem with all saturated colors in all color-under systems, it was just more visible in red, especially in NTSC countries where TV sets were being built with increased R-Y gain to compensate for the contemporary yellowish green phosphors. PAL did the compensation in the cameras, so that excessive gain was not needed in receivers.

The different color-under systems differed somewhat in the noise and beat patterns that could occur in chroma due to the particular carrier frequencies chosen. All of them suffered from low chroma bandwidth compared to direct broadcast or tape formats that recorded the full composite signal on the FM carrier. The resulting chroma smear was most visible in reds, as you can see in the demo tape.