Take a look at this video from [Reely Interesting], showing scenes from traditional Japanese festivals. It’s well filmed, and as with any HD video, you can see real detail. But as you watch, you may see something a little out of the ordinary. It’s got noise, a little bit of distortion, and looking closely at the surroundings, it’s clearly from the 1980s. Something doesn’t add up, as surely we’d expect a video like this to be shot in glorious 525 line NTSC. In fact, what we’re seeing is a very rare demo reel from 1985, and it’s showing off the first commercial HDTV system. This is analogue video in 1035i, and its background as listed below the video makes for a very interesting story.
Most of us think of HDTV arriving some time in the 2000s when Blu-ray and digital broadcasting supplanted the NTSC or PAL systems. But in fact the Japanese companies had been experimenting since the 1960s, and these recordings are their first fruits. It’s been digitized from a very rare still-working Sony HDV-1000 reel-to-reel video recorder, and is thus possibly the oldest HD video viewable online. They’re looking for any HDV-1000 parts, should you happen to have one lying around. Meanwhile, the tape represents a fascinating window into a broadcast history very few of us had a chance to see back in the day.
This isn’t the first time we’ve touched on vintage reel-to-reel video.
Analog typically includes film and 35mm quality stock is roughly equal to a 5K digital video in resolution so no this wouldn’t be the highest res old footage but still a cool find. I like watching those digitized, colored and upscaled turn of the century videos.
It’s more about the oldest electric recording done with a video camera, I think. A video tape recording.
In Germany, in TV studio slang, we would say it’s a “MAZ”, Magnetaufzeichnung (magnetic recording).
That the opposite to a “FAZ”, Filmaufzeichnung (film recording).
Old film reels are wonderful, but they do also have limits. Such as grain, and deteriorating of material.
Yeah I agree we massively underrated the glorious appearance of good film footage.
And somehow over rate vinyl and lossless audio!
I’m kind of surprised that this was digital and such high quality though. I watched 28 days later in cinema recently and that used awful handicap footage so time didnt being always great quality!
That really depends on which film stock and which camera/lenses it was shot with.
The Japanese TV industry tried to get the FCC to adopt their HD analog standard. The US TV industry pushed back and developed our current HD standard.
Nobody could negotiate the extra radio broadcast BANDWIDTH required to send the extra data over the air using typical 6Mhz channel as defined back then. It wasn’t until 2008 when all that go hashed out, THEN and only then did we get HDTV.
Yes, digital HDTV takes the same channel width as NTSC. Between that and the “made in USA” aspect it won out .
words have a funny thing, they mean something like HD Video has nothing to do with 35mm film
Exactly. Nobody claimed that there wasn’t high-quality footage before this.
Any opportunity for pedantry, I guess…
It’s a big difference between film and video. The title of this says ‘HD Video’. It can very well be the oldest video available anywhere, even when there is plenty of much older film around.
“Most of us think of HDTV arriving some time in the 2000s when Blu-ray and digital broadcasting supplanted the NTSC or PAL systems. But in fact the Japanese companies had been experimenting since the 1960s, and these recordings are their first fruits.”
The interesting thing is that HDTV appeared on VHS first. Well, in principle.
There are demo tapes with HDTV recording from the 90s.
YouTube has some nice demo reels of New York City, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-VHS
The videocassette had a high bandwidth and was excellent as a computer storage.
It had been used as streamer tape early on, way back in the 80s..
Like a datasette, but using the video head. The mono head for linear audio was poor.
(Info: VHS also had a vertical-helical audio track later on, which had better quality)
About 2GB of data could be stored on an ordinary VHS in 1985..
Beta had the helical-scanning audio tracks first. Beta Hi-Fi predated VHS Hi-Fi by at least a couple of years.
LaserDisc was the best, of course, offering Dolby Digital AC-3 before DVDs came out.
It’s correct that consumer HD pre-recorded media arrived on VHS form-factor cassettes before Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs – using D-VHS/D-Theater (leveraging the ATSC MPEG2 transport stream stuff)
However broadcast HD VTRs based on 1″ open reel analogue (Sony HDV-1000) and digital formats (Sony HDD-1000), 1/2″ analogue cassette formats (UniHi from Panasonic, Sony etc) were around in the mid-to-late 80s.
In Europe there was the BCH-1000 analogue open-reel 1″ VTR from the late 80s, and the BBC and other European broadcasters/manufacturers also leveraged the early 3/4″ D1 SD Digital VTRs that had just arrived to record HD video by splitting the HD video signal into 4 SD signals for recording to 4 D1 VTRs and then recombining the output of the 4 slaved VTRs back together again for replay. (This also allowed for SD editing equipment to be used – albeit 4 times – to edit Digital HD recordings).
The BBC actually recorded and edited their first HD content in 1988 before they could actually replay it in full quality HD (the playback unit took longer to get working…) The playback unit worked just in time for IBC in 1988 I believe.
And to clarify – experimental 1″ analogue HD recording dates back earlier than the mid-80s – the Japanese team were prepared to record some of the Moscow 1980 Olympics in HD (but technology export issues and the US boycott of the games were an issue that prevented it) and in 1984 the Los Angeles Olympics did have some HD coverage (I’ve seen it!)
If 720i is considered “HD” then the French had a 819-line HD system back in 1949.
The quality was really good, despite the video bandwidth being a little bit too high.
But still, it was fine for the few public TV channels. The state had the money to operate it.
Sigh. If only the French hadn’t invented SECAM and kept using 819-line system..
The latter had grace, at least. Monochrome video is wonderful, if only the resolution is excellent.
It’s same as with old b/w photos shot with good cameras, it’s magical.
There were pictures on the net by hobbyists who managed to recreate 819-line video using Linux and VGA cards programmed with special timings.
A few of the old 819-line TVs are still in existence and test patterns had been preserved.
PS: “Composite video” (VBS) in pure monochrome can do up to 1000 lines.
Analog surveillance systems used b/w studio monitors and b/w cameras.
720i doesn’t exist as a real world format though…
It’s important not to confuse 720x480i and 720x576i – which are 480i and 576i – with 1280x720p – which is 720p. It’s always the vertical active lines that are counted when you use a definition like 480i, 1080p etc.
The French 819 line standard would be described today as 737i25 (aka 737/50i) as it had 737 active lines out of its 819 total, the UK 405 lines standard would be 377i25 (aka 377/50i) as it has 377 active lines out of its 405 total, and of course 525/59.94 is known as 480i29.97 these days and 625/50 as 576i25.
The current 1080i standards are usually 1125/50 or 1125/59.94 in ‘old money’ (the original 1125/60 HDVS standards had between 1035i and 1045i active lines that were expanded to 1080i to go ‘square pixel 1920×1080’), and the European 1250/50 standard would now be described as 1152i (it’s 2×625 and 2×576 respectively) – though it is technically possible to carry 1080i in a 1250/50 signal with a lot of vertical blanking.
That’s completely besides the point, which was that if a 720 line television is considered “HD”, then 819 line television is too.
Oh heck I’m old.
I remember seeing HD-MAC TV demonstrated at an IEEE or other trade association lecture in one of the UMIST buildings back in the late 80s or early 90s, we didn’t see the playback source but the quality was soooo good even compared to the best publicly available sources like Hi8 or even UMatic
Yep – I saw both the HD-MAC off-air broadcasts AND the output of the BBC Quadriga 4 x D1 record/replay system (uncompressed digital 1404x1152i25 aka 1250/50) and it looked AMAZING. The neon of the Top of the Pops set just looked real!
I saw my first HD TV in Guanzhou in 1996 ish.
I thought, “yeah the handover of HK is going to go OK then”.
Well, it did, to start with anyway.
This footage is fantastic. I don’t really have the cultural knowledge to know, but I wonder how much things have changed since then? Is the vibe still basically the same, or is this type of festival different now? I bet this is very nostalgic to the right person
All three festivals shown are still exactly the same. Assuming the Japanese would noticeably change traditional festivals within such a short time is a bit of an insult (not joking).
Good question. Judging by our own festivals here in good old Germany, I would say that it’s different, but same.
Festivals like carnival are being celebrated for ages but might be different in detail a bit every time, also depending in the region.
There’s the desire for tradition, but also for a bit of innovation.
The Japanese festivals might be similar.
I assume that the most beloved parts remain basically unchanged.
The dancers, the traditional wardrobe etc. Things that people might find aesthetically pleasing or ceremonial.
What a wonderful treat for a Japanophile like myself. Sol clear and detailed. The festival participants and dances look very similar today but the people attending, their appearance, what they are wearing, and the total lack of phones certainly are different. Makes me want to watch films of the era, like Tampopo. Yep – that’s my viewing for this evening. Thank you – a genuine suprise and technically interestig too.
Back in 1984 I attended a SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I don’t recall the manufacturer or actual resolution, but there was a live demo of a couple of HD studio cameras and a video recorder, with HD monitors. I believe they were using plumbicons or saticons in the cameras, as CCDs were also just being introduced. With the extreme scan rates for those tubes, the light sensitivity was also quite low, so the lighting was very bright, and quite hot. The room was so packed with observers, it was hard to move between the cameras and monitors. At the time, it was very impressive.
Probably Saticons – they seemed to be preferred for HD. Sony used them and BTS/Bosch offered them alongside Plumbicons as options for their HD cameras.
High frequency ringing (primitive compression?), chromatic aberrations (3CCD?), static vertical noise (no idea). Must have been recorded using HDC-100 camera. Really unusual set of artefacts for HD recording nowadays. Nice find.
That 1993 New York DTheater DVHS Demo Tape https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4lDU-QLUY recorded with HDC-500 camera shows none of that, picture looks pretty much perfect and could be mistaken for something recorded with modern equipment. Huge leap in quality between teh two
Looks like CCD didn’t arrive UNTIL the HDC-500. So the good ol’ 100 was still tubes,… so maybe most of the perceived lack of quality is down to the light sensor and not much else.
https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/6247-whatever-happened-to-these-cameras
Tubes would explain weird vertical static. Im surprised by no typical for tube smearing and high brightness in bad lighting.
That 1993 tape looks nowhere near as good as the old Japanese one. Come on. There’s very little detail, there’s clipping galore… take a closer look.
I’m wondering if it could be Youtube that’s introduced some of the artifacts.
That’s incredible looking. All the warmth of analog video, all the sharpness of HD. Wish more analog HD video like this gets discovered and uploaded.
Why not? This video just cost more than average consumer camcorder. Let’s say $100000 vs $250. So Toshiba was able to produce this video. But not me back in 1985.
In the late 80s and early 90s Sony were showing their largely analogue HDVS video system – and one showreel included coverage shot at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. This was in the pre-CCD era, and all the material was shot on tubed HDTV cameras (HDC-100s and HDC-300s mostly).
(Sony did, by then, have the HDD-1000 uncompressed digital HD 1″ open-reel VTR)
The BBC started their HDTV test productions in 1988 using the 1250/50 European standard and recorded one HD signal as uncompressed digital across 4 x D1 SD VTRs in Quadriga format (recording 1/4 of the HD signal on each VTR). They too used tubed cameras at this point. (Bosch/BTS KCH-1000s). I’ve seen BBC HD recordings made between 1988 and 1994 in this format (Compression eventually allowed one SD D1 to record 4:1 compressed HD).