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This website and mailing list is focused on 2" Quadruplex Videotape:
The Recorders, Recording, Playback, Maintenance, Equipment Design and Tape Preservation,
and the Preservation of Knowledge about these subjects so that knowledge can
be used by new people today or years from now to preserve the content contained on Quad tapes.
Sharing your experiences working with Quad tapes, recorders, their quirks and foibles can be very helpful in migrating the thousands of aging Quad videotapes now just sitting on shelves at archives world-wide.
Members of this group are working with the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia at the request of Steven Nease, the Chief Technology Officer for the NAVCC.
Historical stories or personal recollections are welcome. We all need a laugh, an "Ah-Ha!" or to
remember when "that happened to me."
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The Ampex Mark IV 2" Quadruplex recorder as it was unveiled to a select group of CBS network people and affiliates and during a private showing at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago in April of 1956. A thunderous round of applause from convention goers several days later greeted the machine's public debut. |
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CBS was the first on-air user of the machine, to tape-delay the evening CBS News broadcast with Douglas Edwards on Nov. 30, 1956. The historic recording and playback happened inside CBS Television City in Hollywood, which figures into some significant Quad tape restorations. Click here to see more about CBS's early use of videotape. |
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Tuesday April 28, 2009 is the 51st anniversary of the dedication of Videotape Central at NBC Burbank. The tape facility inside 3000 West Alameda (at Olive Ave.) cost $1.5 million. Click here to see more about the RCA Television Tape installations in Burbank, New York and WBTV. |
| Another Quad Tape milestone: | |
Restored Eisenhower Color Tape playback from Ed Reitan's D-2 Digital Master, |
May 22, 1958, President Eisenhower became the first president to be recorded in color on videotape. The president helped dedicate NBC's brand-new Washington, D.C. facilities housing NBC network and WRC-TV television studios. A usable Quad tape of this event was located at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas, and is the earliest known color recording discovered to date. Learn more about its restoration, here: Eisenhower Tape Restoration |
 RCA: Presentation to NAB, 1958 |
Over the years, the equipment shrank from the six racks used by the RCA TRT-1s (three racks shown here)... |
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... to three-rack wide self contained systems, with rollers for ease of maintenance or mobility.
The newer recorders offered High Band recording, electronic editing and a host of electronic circuits to record and play the highest quality pictures possible. Machines like these second generation recorders, and |
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the third-generation units—like this AVR-1 that was used to recover the earliest color Quad tapes— continue to be used on a daily basis for transfer of Quad video recordings to other media. |
 Photo © 2006 Ted Langdell |
"Jurassic Park" is the lower-level facility at CBS Television City that houses multiple 2" Quadruplex machines, 1" Type C, BetacamSP, Digital Betacam, D-1, D-2 and machines for other broadcast tape formats. Thousands of hours of Goodson-Todman game show Quad tapes were re-mastered here for use on the Game Show Network. Check back to see if the tour of the CBS Dinosaurs has started, yet. |
