Earliest American Home Video Recordings

[RMF]

This question is inspired by the British tape-hunters. There have been quite a few finds of missing programing in that country from home recordings, going as far back as 1965.

For comparative purposes, would anyone here know the earliest surviving American home video recordings, both in the game show genre, and in any other television genres?

[PYLW]

Okay, Mother was from 1948, right? Game show wise, I think that's the earliest known surviving footage, correct me if I'm wrong.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'PYLW\' post=\'175118\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 11:53 AM\']
Okay, Mother was from 1948, right? Game show wise, I think that's the earliest known surviving footage, correct me if I'm wrong.
[/quote]
I would love to see the home video recorder that rolled on that in 1948. It must have been *huge*.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'175119\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 02:57 PM\']
I would love to see the home video recorder that rolled on that in 1948. It must have been *huge*.[/quote]
Yeah, PYLW didn't quite understand the question.

I'd be amazed if anything from back in the sixties survives only because some forward-thinking early-adapter saved it on his U-matic, but I imagine anything's possible.  The Warhol collection seems to be just about the best-known example of early stuff being saved by a completely independent second party.  For the record, the 1974 Three on a Match episodes I was talking about in another thread were preserved because the winning player had his local TV station record and save them for him.  I magine maybe someday we'll encounter a few more examples of that kind of thing.

[PYLW]

Mea culpa. That's what I get for going on this board right when I come home from work.

When did the practice of home recording begin? Late 60's/early 70's? Is the Deacon $10,000 Pyramid a studio master? If not, then maybe that could be up there in early recordings.

[BrandonFG]

[quote name=\'PYLW\' post=\'175123\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 03:14 PM\']
When did the practice of home recording begin? Late 60's/early 70's? Is the Deacon $10,000 Pyramid a studio master? If not, then maybe that could be up there in early recordings.
[/quote]
I remember reading that the first commercial VCRs sold c. 1975 or '76. Ray Glasser on Youtube (videohollic08) has posted stuff dating back to late-1976.

I believe the Pyramid eps. are indeed studio masters.

[MyronMMeyer]

In one of the volumes of his autobiography (1979-1980), Isaac Asimov mentions that his son David was a "man of leisure" (I think those were his words), who didn't do much of anything, but who did enjoy taping shows off of TV. I've always wanted to see that collection.

-M

[Ian Wallis]

I remember reading that the first commercial VCRs sold c. 1975 or '76. Ray Glasser on Youtube (videohollic08) has posted stuff dating back to late-1976.

Part of the problem with finding home recordings that old are that tapes were very expensive back then.  When we got our first VCR (Christmas 1982), a T-120 tape was something like $9.  Usually when we watched what we recorded we re-used them the next day.  I'd imagine it was the same with most people until tapes became cheaper.

[TwoInchQuad]

Well, if you want to go by the rule of "conceivably could have been recorded at home", there were "portable" VTRs being sold in 1963 (using 2" tape, written in a proprietary 2-head Ampex helical scan format).  And for that matter, Hugh Hefner is reported to have had full-scale Ampex quad machines in the Mansion back in the 60s.  

However, more likely to surface would be recordings in the open-reel 1/2" formats (similar to the UK Shibaden format), which first gained traction in the US market in about 1969.  The "$10,000 Pyramid" episode opening with June Lockhart and Rob Reiner from 1973 is one of those.  The oldest game show eps verified to exist in that format would be the reels in the UCLA archive that date from 1971, which happen to include (among other things) an episode from the opening week of the ABC version of "Password".

-Kevin

[RMF]

[quote name=\'fostergray82\' post=\'175126\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 03:46 PM\']
[quote name=\'PYLW\' post=\'175123\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 03:14 PM\']
When did the practice of home recording begin? Late 60's/early 70's? Is the Deacon $10,000 Pyramid a studio master? If not, then maybe that could be up there in early recordings.
[/quote]
I remember reading that the first commercial VCRs sold c. 1975 or '76. Ray Glasser on Youtube (videohollic08) has posted stuff dating back to late-1976.
[/quote]

Betamax was. The earliest VCRs (the Philips N1500) are from 1972, U-Matic from 1971, and open-reel formats were around in the 1960s.

Below are a few links to British (non-game) clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apNG4Kc4f84

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRWN1t2q4UA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhlnDQS5KEE

Edit: Thank you, TwoInchQuad, for the on-topic answer. How about for American television programs in general?

[TwoInchQuad]

[quote name=\'RMF\' post=\'175172\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 04:12 PM\']

Edit: Thank you, TwoInchQuad, for the on-topic answer. How about for American television programs in general?
[/quote]

In terms of **videotape**, those same UCLA reels also captured other daytime programs on the three major networks, so those are the earliest **verified** recordings that I know of.  I'm sure there are many that exist which are even older, but just haven't surfaced.

In terms of US home video recordings in general, it woud probably be the Zacherle shows that were recorded by a fan on a home-brewed kinescoping set-up... this was in the late 50's, IIRC.   Portions of those recordings have been released on DVD.

-Kevin

[snowpeck]

The old World of Soap Themes website once had an episode online of As the World Turns which had been recorded on one of those old open reel recorders in 1972.  IIRC those things could only record in black and white, regardless of whether the signal it was receiving was in color or not.


Greg

[Kniwt]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'175141\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 01:22 PM\']
Usually when we watched what we recorded we re-used them the next day.  I'd imagine it was the same with most people until tapes became cheaper.
[/quote]

Yes, and I frequently hit myself over the head for it.  I distinctly remember recording anywhere from two to three hours a day of game shows in 1984 (got my first VCR in December 1983 -- a bargain at only $750 at J.C. Penney!), and then watching them and promptly reusing the same tape the very next day.  Oh, the things I could have kept.

Fortunately, I did have the foresight to save a few things, such as six uninterrupted hours of MTV from December 1983 and the few clips I've recently posted here as part of my conversion to DVD.  But my vault could have been so much larger.

[Chief-O]

That early 10KP clip was definitely recorded on one of those open-reel VTR's------I'm not sure if it was a home recording, but it is possible.....

[mrmatchgame]

[quote name=\'Chief-O\' post=\'175184\' date=\'Jan 16 2008, 08:14 PM\']
That early 10KP clip was definitely recorded on one of those open-reel VTR's------I'm not sure if it was a home recording, but it is possible.....
[/quote]

it was most likely a recorder called a Shibaden 1/2" videotape (skip field recording), where only half of the field is recorded and they are known for low quality playback. The recordings was reel-to-reel, and now a days, the recorders are really hard to find since only a handful exist.