Help with cartravision
 

I no longer have Orson Welles tape.

You'll probably have better luck finding someone with a working deck than resuscitating one yourself. First place I would start is this website:

http://www.angelfire.com/alt/cartrivision/

Check with the guy who put the site up; he appears to have one or access to one (You might not have found it if you were googling "Cartravision" rather than "Cartrivision.")

There are also commercial vendors who specialize in obsolete videotape playback and restoration; you'll spend some money but given the situation and the value of your material, it would probably be well spent. Best of luck with it.

Also search Cartrivision on this site for old threads on the subject - but none that would help repair one, I'm afraid -- good luck, and let us know how you progress.

Abc

I bought one from Olson electronics in the 1970's and was able to get it to work using a small B/W Sony TV monitor with video/audio out and used a modulator to send the COLOR signal to any color TV. The Sony monitor had a wide enough bandwidth to receive color. I highly recommened you get hold of someone who has a working one and will dub them for you, Even tapes recorded on the playback machine would have hooking problems at the top of the screen. You need someone familiar with the skip field system AVCO used.
Good Luck
Richard

Sorry, I don't know how the units were connected to the TV when they were built in. At Motorola, we evaluated stand-alone units, but Motorola eventually decided against marketing any Cartrivision either stand alone or built in.

I agree that finding a working one would be the best bet.

One note of encouragement: "Hooking" at the top of the picture due to horizontal sync mistiming was visible mainly due to the slow horizontal AFC in TV sets at the time (done for best off-air performance). Later TV sets (and VCR/DVD recorder dual decks) have been built with faster AFC to accomodate the horizontal mistiming that may occur with any home VTR. So, I expect you could get reasonable playback into a modern TV set or DVD recorder.

Abc

The first color VCR on the block
 

Everybody I showed the chassis and "fish tank" electronics to thought I was crazy. How was a 16 year old kid going to get color tv programs with a black and white TV as the receiver. I was lucky, mine came with the camera and using a modulator I could trace out the video/audio in's and outs and even taped my cat to be sure I had the wires hooked up right. Those vidicon cameras neaded a LOT of light. Then I hooked up the video out of the 5 inch B/W monitor and hit record and pause and a color picture came up on the 19 inch monitor. First program I taped to show off to my friends was of course Star Trek. About 5 people came over, I crossed my fingers and pushed the lever for the play button and after about 30 seconds was a pretty good picture of Capt. Kirk. Everybody in the room wanted me to buy them one and make it work. Sorry, not without a supply of TV's with A/V out and inputs. A couple of years later Betamax came out for something like $1,700.00. It could be cool to be a nerd back then.
Richard

Abc

Here's another site at Labguy's World that you might find useful.

Also you might want to check in at the oldvtrs discussion group at yahoogroups.

--Dave

You may be able to get audio and video directly out of the Cartrivision chassis to feed into a computer video-capture device.

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You have the market cornered! Great to hear that you were able to save all this; hope to hear good updates on the progress.

I should know this, but what make of TV is that?

Wow! You should definitely be able to get at least one working. If you determine it has baseband video and audio, that would be the way to go. If not, using the RF is a reasonable plan B.

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They started long before then. The first one was in 1948. There were 70 cable systems in 1952.

There were also other reasons for having a 73ohm input. See the attached image from a 1949 Sylvania manual.

John

The audio in and out is on the connector that does not connect to the transport, the video in and out is on the same connector, I think it is the green one. Look at the wires going to this connector and you will see four shielded wires feeding it, 2 are audio and 2 are video. I hooked up the camera and started to probe the shielded wires center conductor with a small video monitor until I got the image from the camera on the monitor. Then did the same with the audio until I got feedback from camera mic to monitor speaker. Then the inputs were easy to figure out.
GOOD LUCK!
Richard

The 528 in the model number tells who built it-Warwick. I think Sears was their only customer. Later Sanyo took them over. The 312 on the crt means it was made by Sylvania; they sold to many other companies. Just as a TV, if it didn't have the catrivision, it would not be valuable but would be kinda rare...not many have survived. As a combo, a real keeper!

That console is a Warwick and was most likely made in their Forrest City, AR. plant (now Sanyo). It's definitely a keeper. I'll be watching this thread as I have a Cartravision unit I need to get going. Keep us posted on your progress.

Abc

connections
 

If I remember correctly, it was back in the early 1970's and I was 16 or so there is a switch by the camera input jack for camera or input from tuner connector, make sure it is on camera so it will pass the camera video to the connector you are probing. All my friends thought I was crazy that I could make this pile of wires and chassis record TV in color. The first show I played for my premire was a Star Trek (of course) then they were throwing money at me to buy one for them and wire it up. The hardest part was finding a TV that had video outputs, when I tried to tap the video of a regular TV it would draw down the signal. I would up using a 9 inch B/W Sony monitor and nobody could understand how I was getting color from a B/W tv. Oh yeah I fed the output through a Channel 3/4 modulator.

I was away from here a couple of days - glad to see someone jumped in with some answers.
Baseband composite video and audio is like what is on "RCA phono" connectors, usually red for right audio, white for left audio, and yellow for video on modern gear, but probably not existent on your set. So you have to play around to determine what you have.
Please do keep us informed on your progress.

Edit - I meant the connectors are probably not present, but as Richard D says, the signals are somewhere there on different wires or connectors.

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Did the picture at any time have static or snow in it, or was it always gray no matter what deck you used?

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Anything that old, and mechanical, probably has grease that has solidified into a glue. I'd check that first.

Maybe the camera tube has gone bad? Apparently older vidicon tubes suffer from helium infiltration.

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You should have color for your broadcast material. All of your home movie stuff will be in B&W because of the camera. As the cartravision player is such an odd bird, I hesitate to say what the problem is, but you're basically only getting luma signal and no chroma for your colors. I would try to establish a steady b&w picture first. Are just your home movies showing bad tracking, or are your broadcast tapes doing the same thing?

BTW, this is an amazing thread. You're so close now! Keep at it, as you are sure to get this one running!