World's First Commercial Videotape?
 

I'm playing some old records tonight and ran across this interesting statement on the back of an album:

"Audio Fidelity Records produced and released...the world's first commercial Videotape ("Johnny Paycheck" on Audio 20/20 Label) in June, 1966."

Does anyone have any of these videotapes released by Audio Fidelity? Also, what type of machine would they have been played on?

The album containing that statement is "Tailgating with The Dukes of Dixieland" AFSD 6172, 1967 - one of if not the last Dukes release on AF before they signed with Decca.

Hmmm... Got my interest up enough about this to do a Google search. Here's an old Billboard article from 1966 about it.

Thats quite interesting...... I havent ever seen any of these!!!! (Must have been before VHS came out so what did these play on??)

The earliest VHS movie I have is a Magnetic Video Release of "Silver Streak" -- Its dated 1980. (I saw one marked 1977 @ salvation army the other day but seeing it was PART 2 of a movie,i didnt wanna get it (magnetic video))

Would have been a reel to reel helical scan type.

Sounds like a Sony CV-2000 monochrome skip-field machine is what would have been used. The 1/2" tape would have been on 7" spools.

Thank you for posting that, Ed. Some interesting items in that article... It sounds as if you needed to have audio/video inputs added to your TV set to use that Sony VTR. "Only" $500 for the machine, but $40 for a one-hour tape, quite different from the prices when Beta and VHS hit the market.

This looks more like a marketing thing closer to pay-per-view. Except you get a tape of the performance and can recycle the tape to save money. Not a commercial but the whole show.

His deck looks more Ampex-like but I forget the early Sony/GE decks. He is holding a 1/2" reel.

I would more like to know if any of these tapes are still hidden somewhere.