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.

Abc

Abc

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?