Dv / dvcpro / dvcam

[ARC Tech-109]

Panasonic used to live by the slogan "Slightly Ahead Of Our Time" but clearly they were so far behind with this one they were in another time zone. That DVCPRO drive never made it out of fantasy land, I imagine the price and immaturity of the format kept it on the drawing board in the day. Rather amusing they would show the operator holding both the large and small tapes together as if to say they will both fit, while this may have been true in concept all of the Panasonic DVCPRO decks I've used require an adapter frame for the small tapes to work in the full-size mouth similar to VHS-C. Sony on the other hand had a motor driven adjustable reel table in their DVCAM decks and dedicated gates on the loader to accept both large & small tapes.