1968: Is this the FUTURE of TELEVISION? | Tomorrow's World | Retro Tech | BBC Archive
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- čas přidán 16. 04. 2024
- "The system has a fast-forward wind, and a fast rewind. You can also stop the film." - James Burke
Imagine living in a world where YOU have the power to control what appears on your television set, and when. Imagine living at a time when your viewing choices are no longer dictated by the whims of stuffy broadcasters. Imagine holding an entire television programme in your hand.
Well, according to James Burke, you don't have to imagine any longer. In this Tomorrow's World segment, he demonstrates the extraordinary Electronic Video Recorder, or EVR - a device that plugs directly into your television site, and allows you to play special twin-track 8.75 mm film from a cassette.
Television on demand? The future looks bright.
Clip taken from Tomorrow's World, originally broadcast on BBC One, 11 December, 1968.
You have now entered the BBC Archive, a time machine that will transport you back to the golden age of TV to educate, entertain and enlighten you with classic clips from the BBC vaults.
Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss a single stop on our amazing journey through the BBC Archive - czcams.com/users/BBCArchive?... - Věda a technologie
In 2024 it's all very well having a futuristic (for 1968) DVD player and a smartphone but what I really want is one of those 1960s ball chairs he's sitting in.
They sell for an absolute fortune these days!
@@AtheistOrphan I need a big 3D printer.
@@AtheistOrphan Yes I know. Although they probably did in the 60s too when they were new.
I am not a number; I am a FREE MAN!!!
Hahahahahaaaaaaa!!!
They're called Globe Chairs, originally designed by Danish designer Eero Aarnio and the originals start selling at £7,000.
You can get modern versions which range from around £200-800 these days.
James Burke was an excellent presenter on Tomorrow's World. Enjoyed his Connections series too.
I used to love watching tomorrow's world
I loved Connections, but when I mention it these days no-one remembers it.
It was a nice surprise to find out that he's still alive.
@@welshgit when will all that nonsense ever end
@@gavinives4705 Internet Archive has every episode, if you want to watch them again.
I’m a simple man. I see James Burke, I click the like button.
Same here.
Ah, James Burke,
My childhood guide through, _The Day the Universe Changed,_ and _Connections._
"All you need is 6 months in the gym in order to push the buttons in"
I love the way he had to thump the controls.
Yep, reminds of the early VHS machines with their mechanical buttons..
That ball chair was definitely ahead of its time.
The most uncomfortable chair I have ever sat in.
Sure was I still want one
@Techmoan needs to see this
Came to say this!!!
I’d be surprised if there’s working EVR systems floating around. I believe Databits has done a few videos on one and that one required quite a bit of electronic restoration
Also came to say this! Hope he tracks one down and does a video on it
So does Oddity Archive!
Just thinking that...
The great Mr. James Burke! I started admiring him in the 70's when I was a kid and started to watch his amazing TV documentary Connections 1, through Connections 3. He is a genius!
And Raymond Baxter.
What a brilliant programme that Tomorrow's World was, shame we don't have it back again.
It was a product and programme of it's time. The style, approach and character of the various presenters could never be replicated.
Consider the well spoken, inspiring yet fatherly Character of Raymond Baxter. His was a tremendous loss to our once very proud British broadcasting.
I just wonder if the future is rally going to be much different from today, in the 1960's when i was a child technology was moving ahead fast and we had the very exciting space race. Now with all the Tech we have, is there much more that can really have an impact on everyday life. I hope we can use our technology to build a better future, not just to make billions for the Tech companies pushing a forever consumer society. Probably time to turn our attention to saving the planet before we make ourselves and everything else extinct.
Thats because tomorrows world is a dispotic nightmare that people don't want to see, hence the yearning for the past, befiore the rise of of it.
@@uktruecrime Very well observed, considering that most of the People Indigenous to the UK feel likewise ................
The future looks short with not many tomorrow’s in 2024
Well the boredom was correct. I reach for the DVD shelf when I'm board of endlessly navigating the streaming services menus and finding nothing worth watching. Also, I need that chair.
Or should that be spelt boardom? 😉
YEP!! with ALL the so called CHOICE we have today TV (or its modern equivalent) is LESS engaging than the TV of the 60s and 70s. Programs like "Connections" and "This Week Has Seven Days", "Front Page Challenge", "The Nature of Things", and "W5" to name a few, were informative, interesting, challenging, and thought provoking. What have we got NOW?? A lot of dreadful and boring Reality shows, violent and depressing dramas, insipid soap operas, and very little to engage the human mind. Thank God for the occasional brilliant British productions like "Downton Abbey", 'Fawlty Towers', and various documentaries and excellent crime dramas.
Aero Arnio, ball chair.
@@louiselloyd1523downtown abbey don't make me laugh, that shite!!!
I can also find and watch many different types of shows and or movies etc on streaming services and not having to watch any reality TV
Machines that allow you to watch movies at home? It will never catch on.
😅😅😅
It nearly didn't. Remember Phillip's LaserDisk? Which came out before Sony's Betamax tapes
@@glen1555 I must have missed that being a child of the 80s, although I did hear that Elvis had a early version of the Betamax
I Agee. It’s positively devilish.
@@RavendarkwytchBetamax came out in 1976. “ The King” died in Aug 1977. I remember both.
Love it! That disc looked like a car clutch plate 😂
😂😂
Yes, I was trying to figure it out too; it must actually have been a spool.
The Prisoner-style set design with the chiaroscuro type lighting and and the weird background hum really give this an eerie dystopian feel
At least James Burke was a name and not a number. Be seeing you
It was predicting the future!
Mr Burke, if you are looking back on this footage, it must feel quite incredible what that future has actualy become and the many incredible steps it took to get there!
I think he died many, many years ago.
@@Foebane72no, thankfully he is still alive
@Foebane72 Nope he's still alive
He actually predicted a lot of it.
@@TChighbury Who did, Mr Burke? Predicted a lot of what? The future of TV?
I'm not entirely sure the script was written by him, perhaps it was, but generally these pieces are researched by a team and a script written up.
Those ball chairs would be great right now for the winter, i bet you would be very snug in one with a blanket.
I was 2 years old then, now I'm watching this on one of my many devices
What I find curious is why this type of tape, in 1968?
Sony introduced a prototype video cassette tape more or less as we knew them back in 1969, just a year after this.
Magnetic tape for video recording had been used for more than a decade prior to 1968, although very expensive. You could even get players for your home, if you were fabulously wealthy
Perhaps that was the thought - it would be too expensive for decades to come.
Fascinating stuff!
It’s basically 8mm cine film.🎥
This is film (like Super 8mm) not video tape, and was pretty much defunct by the time this item was shot. As you say Sony already had expensive domestic reel to reel video machines in the stores and the cassette was just around the corner.
@@MsSteve70 Yeah - that's what I meant, but didn't convey it clearly. That film was being used by this prototype looking machine, when already video tape was readily available. Clearly the BBC back then weren't much better at current affairs and technology than they are now! - some things never change 😉
Yeah, I just posted the same thing before reading your comment. It's not surprising we've never heard of this film based 'video' system, as it was basically dead on arrival. A domestic video recording system that recorded onto magnetic tape in a compact reel-to-reel format was already demonstrated by at least AKAI (even including a camera) and soon after also Sony. In professional studios magnetic tape had already been used for some time, and it was clear that this would be the future for video registration also for the home market.
No, this was done this way to reduce the cost @@matthewtrow5698
wow
the clunky switches
miss those
It'll never catch on as it doesn't have any fake wood panelling on it.
@@thepumpkingking8339what is this gadget called I never remember anything like this
I like that because we're living in the age of full 4K and plus videos, being literally streamed through the air to our flatscreen pocket computers, some of which can fold, ALL of which are thousand-fold more powerful than 60s NASA computers... all we want is the egg-chair 😅
and that's all we ever wanted!
Full 4k??
For 1968, the picture quality was really good.
They just did a 4K restoration of the film
Yeah, even a modern video cassette player gets flicker and has poor resolution in a still frame.
That thing was rock solid.
Well, it was from film; even 8¾mm film was considerably higher resolution than SD video. And - since you saw the whole frame even when he was doing a still - it must have had a full TV camera inside it, not just a line as in a telecine.
I wonder: in 1968, was it colour?
This video system reminds me of the early-80s CED by RCA, which was video on vinyl.
Apparently RCA had initially planned to release the format around the time of this show, but its development kept getting delayed. By the time CED home video was released to public, tape formats already had taken hold.
Lots of commenters liking the 'ball' chair.
The Patrick McGoohan TV miniseries 'The Prisoner' was first broadcast in 1967. A full year BEFORE this 'Tomorrow's World' broadcast. And that ball chair is featured prominently throughout the episodes.
never imagined that brake discs would store film, but then, this is the beep.
😂😂😂
What's a brake disc is that a new dance?
@ 02:40 "... anything you want, when you want it..." What a concept!!
James Burke was a great presenter of science programmes. Always enthusiastic, he never got carried away or patronised his audience.
"You can't put your own home movies on it."
Over more than 100 years, it was possible to buy professional photo-equipment and get the same quality as professional photographers. It was just a matter of some money and personal skills. With movies it was completely different. It needed a whole team and very expensive equipment to capture, edit and present a movie. It took a long time until digital cameras had at least FHD in good quality, computers large enough hard discs, editing software was fast enough to render the movie and screens good enough to present them.
The fact that we went in less than 20 years from VHS-quality home videos to affordable high quality film making equipment at home and the possibility to publish it world wide for everybody who wants to see it, stored and even broadcasted live for free on CZcams and other platforms, is breathtaking.
I LOVE Sci-fi, and if I could timetravel, I would take a smartphone, a laptop, and a combi printer-scanner to show the pioneers of TV, computers, and phones what their inventions would lead to
James Burke is an icon. I believe he is still with us. The day the universe changed, and Connections are excellent.
I don't think you mean "reproach"! Had to think a bit for what you were after, though - "compare" maybe?
@@G6JPG I apologize for using the wrong word.
@@MCW1955 No problem! My correction was meant to be helpful, not pedantic.
He's still alive - 87 years old. He was only 32 in this clip!
WoW.... what an amazing contraption. Imagine owning such a remarkable device and watching the future unfold before one's eyes. I wonder as to whether the demonstrated device receives regular updates? ☝️😮
It'll be the new grammar phone vortex upgrade
Spot on in ten years time VHS was released in late 1976. By 1978 until the 1980s there was the infamous video format war between VHS and Betamax (launched in 1975)! Also 1978 laser disc was launched. By 1979 a lot of homes had either a VHS or Betamax recorder! By the 1980s a lot of films and surprisingly quite a large number of a few television shows were available on commercial VHS, Betamax and Laserdisc releases!
Not to mention V2000! (Technically the best of the three, but of course the worst won.) And before those, reel-to-reel VTRs - mostly in schools I think. (And the early Philips cassettes with the stacked reels.)
I had a Grundig 2000, which was a very good system, but not much recordings made for it.
@@glen1555 Me too (well, I had several Philips ones); best of the three systems. I didn't want much in the way of prerecorded material, so that didn't bother me much. Pity the system died.
In 1971 the VCR format was released.
@@xaverlustig3581 Three years is a long time in technology, or certainly was about then. If this system had been truly available at a reasonable price in 1968, I suspect it might have done well, but I think it just didn't get going fast enough - I think that shown was a prototype or similar. (After all, if it had been a production item, would "Tomorrow's World" have shown it? It wouldn't be "Tomorrow's" if you could just go out and buy one.)
And then, just like that, around the same time, EIAJ began unveiling its "portable" 1"-inch VTR format, which would make this above demonstration virtually obsolete!
Incredible! Today I can have my entire collection of films in HD on a thumbnail!
You'll get a good workout too operating those huge clunky buttons 😂
I like those clunky buttons - like a keyboard with actual keys.
I Love them, so sturdy
When I was a kid, I was learning to type on computers like the TI-99/4A and Macintosh. But compared to those (real keys), typing on my grandmother's typewriter was a workout! Those keys had to be hammered to get any readable text on the page.
(And it's ironic that I'm writing this on a swipe-to-type phone keyboard. The word "typewriter" is one of those unfortunate words that is all on one row, hard to disambiguate.)
0:45 Ker-chunk! 😄
Lol. Its like microfilm with audio. I think my library still has microfilm. Though I dont know if the machines used to view them still work.
James! What a blast from the past. Funny how far we've come since then. BTW, when is the singularity going to arrive?
The scary thing was, come the 1980's devices like this were used in schools across the UK to show kids the BBC TV drama Threads. 😀
Cassette-based cine film like this was later tried as the Polaroid Polavision and the prototype-only McNallyvision.
And, of course, super 8, at the camera end of the line.
Never seen this system, wasn't long before video tape recording came along, the VHS/Betamax wars, very very expensive to start with, we'd just got used to this and the prices down and along come CD and DVD.
Thanks for the upload, Tommorows World was a great programme back in the day .
Amazing bit of history.
Little did they know that in 1972, Philips would release the N1500, a video recorder which had all the essential components of a "modern" video recorder: Easy to change cassettes, simple controls, a tuner and timer for recording unattended programmes. It cost as much as a small car, but it was the beginning of the end for anything like this. I did a YT video about it some years ago: czcams.com/video/wC_CLEQnM8w/video.html
*_What a time to be alive!_*
Heavyweight control buttons 😂
Oh, the tactile feedback.
@@knife-wieldingspidergod5059 when an application for the license was submitted
When will this be available in Scotland ?
As soon as you get electricity! 😜
😂😂
@@davidkmatthews I'm quite happy with my gas TV thank you.
After independence
Domestic telecine. So near, and yet..
Yes! Pity, as he said, you _couldn't_ put your home movies on it; it'd surely not have been hard to add that. Might have caught on!
1968: wish we had unlimited satellite channels
1978: we'll probably be bored of unlimited channels
1998: probably actually came true
2008: wish we had unlimited on-demand
2018: endless scrolling on Netflix
2028: Everything cost money to watch.
@@knife-wieldingspidergod5059
2038: the AI algorithm is controlling my life! Ahhhh!
@@stifledvoice No. That's not 2038 in the future. That's here and now in 2024.
In the end, we’ll be reading books and playing noughts and crosses.
@@AmigaA-or2hj Yeah like Carol Hersee and her Dole Bubbles the clown from testcard F.
Wow, the future is indeed bright!
And not orange!
That’s amazing 😮
The irony was, both the ball chair and the film to video system were equally impractical.
Can you upload the all 3 seasons of the connections.
I saw the reboot last week, it's fun - James is such an engaging watch.
@mattbrownartwork I thought, no way, he's still alive? And working?
Turns out, yes. And he's 87, making him 32 in this clip.
The great James Burke
I use one of those to sharpen my garden tools, lol
Gotta love those “soft-touch” buttons … 😂
The problem with this system was- 16mm film projectors were widely available, cheaper, and better. This was failed from the beginning.
It was a pioneer
It may have failed, but the vhs version is what succeeded in video
Also big, fragile, you had to keep them in bulbs, and the films were expensive and enormous. And you needed a darkened room, and to set them up.
@@G6JPGsounds crazy
@@David.L291 Oh, I am, I am! 🙂
@@Keithbarber This thing has nothing to do with videotape, even though the machine may look similar. It's essentially a film projector, using a television as screen.
Having a wheel/roller to manually scan video footage should have remained a constant feature since this film.
You could sort of do that with VHS. If you paused the player, repeatedly pressing the pause button would advance the video one frame at a time. You couldn't go backwards frame by frame though.
@@bluesrocker91 i don’t recall it being all that responsive, are you sure it was 1 frame at a time? Maybe it depended on the player a little. I remember it taking a moment to think about what it was about to do… whereas with a roller style control you’d effectively be manually moving the tape past the play head (at least- thats what the video clip implied)
That's because of the type of film used, with this you would get perfect frames as you scroll but with magnetic tape it doesn't work so well. I did once have a DVD player that had a little scroll wheel to do the same thing though.
You show those buttons who’s boss, James!
When I heard him say inventor of the LP I thought can't be since that was in the US. Then I thought Alan Blumlein who developed the way to get stereo into a record grooves. Alan died in 1942 but he was working on a way to get video into a TV by electrical signal in the 1930s.
Who said it wasn't in the US? I believe he is referring to Columbia Records' Peter Carl Goldmark.
In 1968, Sony had already put out early reel to reel portable video recorders, so it would not have taken a genius in 1968 to predict that in 10 to 15 years time, people would have cassette (VHS) home video recorders. I'm sure the Tomorrow's World team knew this in 1968, but interestingly preffered to try and plug a non-recording film system instead. It didn't help... home video recording was widely coming by the early 80s.
Of course Sony’s format was Betamax not VHS, pretty sure they didn’t see that coming.
@@DaraM73 No, it was before video cassettes. Sony brought out the first reel to reel b/w video tape recorder, the CV-2000, back in 1965 aimed mainly at schools/university market, but also for home market. The Tomorrow's world staff in 1968 would have been aware of it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CV-2000
I believe Philips tried the first semi-successful video cassette format in the early 1970s. Betamax and VHS came along a bit later, with VHS ultimately winning out.
@@DaraM73 Sony CV-2000 video recorder from 1965 czcams.com/video/wHiBxlhzgyY/video.html
The point is that this was an existing technology adaptation whereas video was new and still expensive and evolving.
@@dan.barrett True, but this was about looking 10 years into the future, and home video tape recording would have been easy to predict in 1968, as it was already possible, but, as you say, not yet practical nor affordable for the average joe bloggs
I wish I still had my first Akai VHS video recorder I bought in 1979 cutting edge technology then, I do have a Ferguson machine still top loader no damping lol and pseudo wood side panels, still upwards of 40 years old 😊😊😊😊
Shows you how long these devices are in development for.
I remember those spherical chairs.
The amazing thing is this is all analog.
Despite todays advances in grinding discs we are still unable to project films from them
What is this system? At first I thought it was an early VHS but it seems to run on film tape rather than magnetic tape.
I remember video recorders hitting our school 10 years on in 1978 and even then the buttons were just as clunky. I also had a white tv just like this one bought second hand in 1983.
This Burke is still alive and denying UFOs/aliens exist!
Love u James .. Legend!
In the future of television, I can finally fast-forward through those awkward family videos my mom insists on playing every holiday! 📺😆
Never seen that tech before, pretty cool idea.
I don't recall seeing him before Connections in 1978. But now I always remember that the first episode was at the World Trade Center.
Wife: "Hon, can we get a dining table that seats four but without chairs?"
Husbsnd: ?
Wow I want one
1:44 what is that thing he using to point at the film? A pointer that can record information, wow that might catch on.
Remarkably, people then envisioned the future with bulky, mechanically operated machines. This was clearly before the introduction of integrated circuits and micro-electronics.
That actually looks pretty compact, considering it must contain, in effect, both a film projector and a TV camera.
I bet this was better quality than magnetic tape video.
Incredible! And I'm not even being sarcastic. I'm old enough to remember when projecting a silent eight minute long Super 8 film version of King Kong onto our living room wall was absolutely enchanting and extremely exciting. The period soon after that brought the advent of VHS access to home video; entire feature films with complete soundtracks and in reasonable quality was a wonderful time to be young. I try and explain this to my sixteen-year-old daughter and she just shrugs with contempt and goes back to watching tik tok crap on her phone.
Wow! I can't wait for 1979 !
Nobody could of predicted the sheer amount of shite that passes for entertainment on our TVs these days.
I used to laugh at what they had in Blockbusters, so it isn't a surprise to me. People still watch it.
even watching old short clips
Could have
Could’ve predicted.
🤣🤣😂😂
56 years later, we still aren’t able to frame-by-frame video on CZcams like this antique could 😂
You have a slider with a pause button
Video tape was already a thing in the 60s being used in production, not to mention its use in audio recordings. Even in the late 60s it must seemed pretty retrograde to feed a reel of film into a machine to scan it, and to play it through a TV
Video tape was very expensive at the time though.
That's why the BBC ended up wiping whole series of classic programmes to reuse the tapes.
@@bluesrocker91 I doubt a magnetic tape was more expensive than a fully developed roll of film which is what we see here. The BBC certainly wiped tapes, but also when you think about it, that's the point of using tape - they couldn't wipe a 35mm film reel. They were rationalizing that tape was meant to temporarily store content for repeats or redistribution, and had no strategy for long term archival. I also doubt the magnetic tape was the real issue in commercializing this since tape was around for 30 years by this point. And it was already used in consumer audio so obviously people were thinking, hey why can't we do the same for video, especially as broadcasters already do. The technical challenge to decode/encode an image/audio on a magnetic tape and run it slow enough that you could get a reasonable play length out of a spool was the challenge. This and making such a system affordably and idiot proofing it. But all the pieces to do it were already there - helical scan heads, encoding formats, cassettes etc. I bet trade journals of the time were already picking up on efforts to commercialize consumer versions of what was already commonplace in studios by this point.
This was aimed at the home or school, not professional production. Remember, cinemas were still using film, and did for several more decades. Messing about with even 1" video tape - let along affording, maintaining, and just finding space for the machines would not have competed in 1968. (Though being able to run your own home movies through it probably would have increased the market; they slipped up there.)
Funny how our perspective on the future has changed from hope to horror.
Ah those satisfying clunky clunk buttons that would give you Geoff Capes sized fingers lol. This is brilliant, sort of Dvd sort of Video fused, and quite neat and compact. As an 80s kid, I've never quite seen anything like it!
It will never catch on.
It never did.
Seems like the days when pushing buttons on a machine like that was a real man's job! 💪🏻
It's interesting that they tried to introduce a film based system that didn't allow you to record, while video recording onto magnetic tape (in the from of a reel-to-reel) that allowed you to record yourself had already entered the market. Non surprisingly this film based system didn't see any succes.
What Films you cannot pirate?! It’s the Industry’s dream
@@andywatts8654 I guess they kind of ruined it for themselves with the introduction of home video recording 🤷♂😅.
@@MacXpert74 Sony introduced the home VTR, the movie industry fight tooth and nail against it, but they lost and so here we are.
@@knife-wieldingspidergod5059 Yeah it's kind of funny, as Sony later got into the 'movie industry' themselves.
1968, video recording was still huge and bulky (not to mention expensive, not just to buy but to maintain - heads mainly). I think this might have taken off (especially if a rental business grew up); I presume it didn't due to either cost, or it wasn't developed in time.
(Remember, DVDs sold well initially, and still do to a lesser extent.)
That ball chair was in defense against a nuclear strike, turning the user into human turtle.
Pandora’s box was opened with that tray. Some things man was not meant know, like where the wizard lives that controls that contraption.
So close, yet so far. But why aren't we all sitting in chairs like that in 2024!! I'd love one lol
The Eero Aarnio ball chair is still made, but you can expect to pay a hefty price for one.
What is the name of that electronic device?
Almost 10 years ahead of VHS and BETA systems. Though taped video was around at studio level since Sony's u tape system of 1971.
Still VHS and BETA were expensive when they hit the market and out of many homes purchasing power. I suppose this would have been beyond most peoples purchasing power also. This is the first time I have seen this system, or it made no sense to me at the time and I ignored it. And. I was into that sort of thing at the time this was made..
James Burke IS the answer to my boredom problem.
Por qué estaba tan avanzado el video en el 68. Ya nunca conseguiremos esa calidad. Tampoco en la comodidad de los asientos.
The Black Hit of Space
Get James Burke On The Case
Got one of those machines last week £5 car booty ..now if only i could get some tapes
"connecting to the world wide web means not many would be watching the same thing at the same time eventually"
Just wait until you can have a phone that will have enough computing power to show cats and dogs on it. lol
1970: First case of arthritic fingers
Techmoan's dad.
If things have moved this much in the last 56 years 😮 imagine what will be here in another 56
Here’s the Wiki about it en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Video_Recording
Looks like the inventor was a Hungarian American who developed it for CBS
Not as bad as I thought, I was expecting a telecine system.