[QuadList] Non-Contact Extraction of the Program from Quad Tape

[Don Norwood]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <allanmc-avtech at comcast.net
>
Allan:

I have not given this prior consideration, so these are my initial reactions in regard to your thoughts.  My replies are inserted below:

>SNIP<

 I'm suggesting non-contact playback! Its being done for other media such as phono records and we are all familiar with the development of magnetic tracks for editing. 

A couple of things to consider.  With phono records, you are measuring (with a laser) the physical properties of the grooves.  That's a totally different task from reading magnetic recordings.  As far as the magnetic developer, I believe the particles in the developer are far too large to resolve the frequencies required.

- What do you think? 

- What are the challenges to be overcome? 

I suspect that the nature of the video recording will make it extremely difficult to recover using non-contact magnetic heads.  Such an approach obviously works in disc drives, but the recording process for data is very different from that used in analog VTR's.

>SNIP<

But, couldn't we do better.... with a NEW non-contact method that potentially would recover everything originally recorded into a recovered and restored state? 

While I see problems with the methods you have mentioned, I certainly would not want to suggest that some thinking "outside the box" might not come up with a totally new approach.  Whether it would be economically feasible for anyone in the private sector to undertake such a project is another matter.  I doubt that there is enough market to ever recover the R&D expenses involved.  But it would be an interesting experiment!

Just musing........because I think the goal must be to extract the program information more than it is to just play the tape again in the same way we used to do it. 

Allan McConnell 

Don
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