Home made kinescopes

[The Pyramids]

I'm old enough to have used my tape recorder to recored reruns of 'Happpy Days' and 'The Beverly Hillbillies' before my family got our first VCR in 1981.

Does anyone have any anecdotes about placing their sound movie cameras in front of the televison and making their own kinescopes? I imagine it would have been an expensive hobby.

[Ian Wallis]

Not sound movie cameras, but I used my dad's reel-to-reel tape recorder to record a whole bunch of shows and theme songs back in the '70s and early '80s.  Over the years I've managed to copy some of the stuff to cassette, but unfortunatly a lot of the stuff is probably "lost" forever, as it was recorded on a four-track machine (two tracks per side) and those machines are hard to find these days.  I still have my dad's old machine, but unfortunatly it's not working very well.  I'd like to get a replacement so I can copy more of the stuff - but I wouldn't even know where I could get a four-track machine these days.

[Jimmy Owen]

I had a silent Super 8 camera and I did try to film off the TV, but it came out blurry, over-exposed and unwatchable with scan lines, etc.  It was a "Family Feud" opening from 77, so it's nothing rare.  The film cartridges had about 5 minutes of film (50 feet), so you'd have to have quite a few cartridges if you wanted to get a whole show.