Video formats war in Britain.

[ha1156w]

Yes, that Quasar variant was known as the VX format. They were the only ones to sell a single model of machine for it. It had a neat design that allowed user-replaceable video drums. Cartrivision was a skip-field format that looked jerky for even minor scene motions, not to mention what garbage a sports field looked like. The media turned out to be perishable and there were warehouses of it in the mid-70's that were completely unusable as a result. I think it was the material they chose for pads in the cartridge? Somebody help me out here.....

Diverting us down the path of North American options, don't forget the odd Sanyo V-Cord (B/W) and V-Cord II (color), circa 1977. The tapes looked like 8-tracks with a flap on the side. They were inserted into the machine short-end first and the machine pulled from the long side. I understand they were more popular in Canada than in the US.

And somewhere in there is the Technicolor CVC format, a 1/4" portable video format that didn't get much traction. I've seen a few of their machines on second-hand markets going back to the late 80's but it seems nobody actually ever had a working example. Akai had a contender similar to CVC too, but it had even fewer sales. I've never seen one in the wild.