Sony's HDVS Electron Beam Recorder European Promo Video (1993 Digital HD EBR Film Conversion Video)

This is a 1993 promotional video for Sony's HDVS Electron Beam Recording (EBR) system, recovered from a Sony HDD-1000 digital HDTV master-quality tape!

One of the earliest targets of HDTV was to complement film in the marketplace as a production format; however, as it would be many years until theaters & businesses would afford/consider an upgrade to electronic HDTV projectors, early HDTV productions needed to be converted to film for the majority of uses. Thus, a lot of time & money was placed into research of high quality & high resolution HDTV-to-film conversion starting from the earliest days of HDTV production. This led to the first major deployment of EBR hardware. This special hardware was capable of "writing" to film using an electron beam records color by color, frame by frame, onto film. The result is an extremely high quality film transfer process. For much of the 1980's and 1990's, if an HD production was shown at a theater, trade show, or promotional event that didn't specialize in HD, it is likely that one of the three EBR machines were used to make a film transfer. While the first generation EBR hardware used all analog HDTV VTRs and I/O, by the release of this promotional film, the hardware had been upgraded to the digital HDD-1000 and was one of the few applications using the digital output of the hardware, allowing for clearer and more accurate film negatives.

The Sony HDD-1000 was the world's first commercially available digital HDTV recording format and was also the world's first uncompressed digital HDTV recording device. First demonstrated in 1987, the HDD-1000 was an incredible feat of engineering capable of data storage and processing deemed unrealistic to achieve in a mass-produced piece of hardware one year earlier. Storing uncompressed 1920x1035 interlaced video with 8 channels of uncompressed 48kHz DASH PCM digital audio, the HDD-1000 was capable of recording data at an incredible 1.2 Gbps onto a 11.75"-diameter (63 minute), 1"-wide metal tape for a total capacity of over 4.5 Tb per tape! This recorder was also the first HDTV recorder capable of editing digitally for completely lossless results.

It appears that this promo was specifically targeted for the European market. Have you seen this footage before? Please comment below and help us document how and where this footage was used!

Enjoy this interesting demonstration video!

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This was recorded off on a Sony HDD-1000 1" HDTV open reel VTR. Uploaded in upscaled 4K ProRes for extra clarity!

This is a REELY EXCLUSIVE upload! This footage is from the only known surviving 1" digital HD tape of this footage.

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More of my vintage HDTV uploads can be found in this playlist:    • World's Oldest High-Definition Footage (Cl...  

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