1969 July 21
The quest for home video
EVR
Page 1: The system
Source: CBS July 1970, Terra Media Archives
Of all the film-based video formats, EVR (Electronic Video Recording) made
the greatest impact, mainly because of the heavyweight status of its
developers. Head of the technology team was Dr Peter C Goldmark, president
and director of research at CBS Laboratories, who
had been involved in developing the CBS colour television that almost became the US
standard and was responsible for the LP disc. CBS retained North American rights
and formed the EVR Partnership for the rest of the world. Members of the EVR
Partnership with CBS were Imperial Chemical Industries of the UK and Ciba-Geigy,
the Swiss chemicals firm.
CBS announced EVR in October 1967. The 750 ft film was stored
on a seven-inch diameter spool in a plastic cartridge. It used a
twin-track 8.75mm film onto which signals were transferred by electron beam
recording, one monochrome track in each direction of travel. It was thus not an
electronic image, not really 'video' (except in the TV industry's technical
sense) and certainly not intended for home recording. The players did
feature still framing and manual individual frame advance, as well as the
ability to switch from one picture track to the other in monochrome mode.
The first public demonstration was staged at the Internavex
exhibition in London in July 1969. Queen Elizabeth came along in her tiara and
decorations to inspect the system. [We have not traced at which event this
occurred. Do you know?]
[Source: EVR Partnership August 1972, Terra Media Archives]
A colour version was demonstrated by CBS in March 1970. In this version
one track was used for luminance information, the other encoded for
chrominance (to combine with the luminance information to produce colour
images). A high-speed printer allowed a 20-minute programme to be copied in
around 30 seconds.
CBS never undertook player manufacturing itself, although it
retained a monopoly on the production of cartridges and processing of programme
material. The company announced its withdrawal from the EVR Partnership on 23
December 1971 and ran down its New Jersey plant, having lost up to $20m on the
project. Motorola ceased production of players in mid 1972, but towards the end
of that year EVR still had enough momentum for a
consortium to be formed in Japan by Teijin, ICI, Ciba-Geigy, Hitachi, Mitsubishi
and Mainichi Broadcasting. Called by the long-winded name New International
Electronic Video Cassette Company Nippon EVR, the grouping was capitalised at ¥1bn.
It effectively took over EVR as other partners abandoned the system in the face
of growing competition from videotape-based systems. EVR Systems, which had kept
the flag flying in the US since CBS and Motorola's abandonment of the system,
was finally closed in November 1974.
EVR found customers among the business community and was
able to continue reporting user deals even into 1975. In 1975 Mitsubishi
collaborated with arcade games manufacturer to develop a video game application
for EVR. After successive
retrenchments, however, it fizzled out and was barely in evidence by 1976.
Although it was never a serious consumer proposition, EVR did prove one thing: there was a market for a system that allowed playback of 'videograms', at
least in education, industry and commerce.
[Source: EVR Partnership 1970, Terra Media Archives]
The EVR Introductory Catalogue: Phase 1 Education Training and General
Interest, published for the UK in 1970, 'lists some 3,000 titles which
could, subject in some cases to appropriate clearance, be made available in EVR
cartridge form'. The potential suppliers were mostly industrial film
distributors, plus the BBC and five ITV companies.
Page 2: Manufacturing.
1969
The quest for home video
index
