Enquiry Desk
Welcome to the Virtual Museum. If you this is your first visit, please read the first section to find out the different ways you can explore it.
- Instructions
- Credits & Background information
- Contact details
- Links
- Wish List - things we'd REALLY like to add to the collection
There are four ways you can navigate this site:
- The main map shows the various rooms, each of which covers a different chapter in the story of home video. By visiting each room in turn (as indicated by the room numbers), and viewing each of the exhibits within it in turn, the story will be told in a logical order.
- A guided tour starts in the main hall. This will take you around a few of the most interesting and bizarre exhibits, to show you the sorts of things in the museum. This is a good starting point for the first-time visitor.
- There is also a "Family Trees" exhibit in the main hall. This shows how the various formats evolved over time, and how they relate to each other. The tree can be used as a starting point for your explorations; clicking on a particular area will take you to the appropriate room.
- Finally, you can just wander around at random, just like a non-virtual museum!
Total Rewind was created by Andy Hain, with contributions from David Browne. We are both thirty-somethings; Andy is a Software Engineer, David is an illustrator.
The museum is based on our collection of old video hardware. We started collecting them at boot sales and junk shops just for fun, because they were wierd (and cheap) and it was challenging to find out how they worked and if they could be got going again. After a while, we started to discover the richness of the history behind the technology, and began to hunt down specific machines in order to fill in the gaps in the story.
Eventually we had so many machines, and so much information, that we decided to do something creative with it.
Andy and David live in Brighton, on the south coast of England, and can be contacted at the following addresses:
Feel free to mail us with comments, suggestions, contributions, or just to say hello.
Here are some sites with some kind of relation to the museum.
BETAMAX
The BetaPhile society - the (now defunct) american Betamax fan club:
http://condor.lpl.arizona.edu/~vance/betaphile.htmlSome other US Beta fans:
http://home.earthlink.net/~videoholic
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/6263/index.htmlAnd some similar Beta pages in the UK:
http://www.palsite.com
http://www.elektratec.demon.co.uk/home.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/6263/index.htmlV2000
A sub-page of the betamax fans' palsite:
http://www.palsite.com/v2000/index.htmlCED / Selectavision
Looks like there's a very active Selectavision community, at least in the US:
http://www.cedmagic.com/selectavision.htmlMisc
The Farnsworth Chronicles - the startling story of who REALLY invented television.
http://www.songs.com/philoDiscoVision - a collector's page for the early US version of the LaserVision format
http://www.oz.net/blam/DiscoVision/MCA_DiscoVision_Welcome.htmPhonoVision - a remarkable site, by the man who "cracked the code" of Baird's TV records - TV signals on 78rpm records, from the 1920's and 30's. Includes animations showing the actual original recordings!
http://members.aol.com/mcleandon/tv_index.htmVarious "old sad stuff", from a fellow fan of obsolete technology. - currently very weak in video stuff, though
http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/oldsad.htm
Another video museum, this time concentrating on proffessional hardware & systems
http://home.pacbell.net/ricdiehl/rnd001.htm
We have managed to track down nearly all the machines which seem to us to be significant firsts, or which demonstrate some important stage in the development of home video. But there are some rarities which still elude us, and if anyone can help us locate them we will be eternally grateful.
Please let us know if you have an example of the following machines - dead or alive! - or anything else which you think we might be interested in.
- Telcan / Wesgrove reel-to-reel VTRs from the 1960s;
- Ted / TelDec disc players;
- SVR format VCRs;
- JVC's GR-C1 camcorder;
- Portable Betamax VCRs;
- Betamovie camcorders;
- VHD/AHD disc players;
- Fisher Price PXL "kiddiecorder";
- Baird TV records;
We are also interested in any stories about early home video - was your uncle one of the lucky few to have a VCR machine in 1974? Did you buy a LaserVision player, only to discover that there were no discs available? Did you invest in a V2000 deck the week before the format was cancelled?
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