Cartivision: '70s home tape system had physical DRM

Posted by Joel Johnson, June 30, 2008 8:27 AM | permalink

Dan Rutter has a wonderful retrospective on the first wave of home video recording systems, casting his wistful eye on 1972 and the launch of the "Cartivision." Like all dabbling attempts to release media, it appears that Cartivision also had their own corny proto-DRM scheme in place that contributed at least in part to its quick demise.

But if you wanted actual cinematic films, you could only rent them.
This, by itself, was not a disaster. Movie rental turned out to be a huge business, and Cartridge Television were the first to do it.

But because Embassy Pictures were in the movie business, they saw absolutely no reason to let people who rented a movie on Cartrivision watch it more than once.

So movies came on special tapes, which could not be rewound. Well, not without the special machine they kept back at Rental H.Q., anyway.

Meet the new DRM, same as the old DRM [Dan's Data]

Image: Cartivision Site

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Discussion

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#1 posted by David Stein , June 30, 2008 1:15 PM

Heh - instead of "Be Kind, Rewind," these tapes should've come with a sticker reading: "Rewinding this tape constitutes a violation of the copyright of Studio, Inc. and is a federal crime punishable by blah blah blah..."

Oh, right - this was *before* the insanity of the DMCA... when anti-circumvention was fair game, and not an outrageous slashing of fair use that is enforced against us by the federal government (on our own taxpayers' dimes)... when pompous analogizing of fair use to the Boston Strangler were appropriately met with ridicule and incredulity. Ahhh, the good ol' days.

- David Stein

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#2 posted by Downpressor , June 30, 2008 6:46 PM

Too bad a potentially nice retrospective on an early consumer video technology had to be ruined by someone calling for the Whaaaambulance.

Crybabies should learn to vote with their moolah, even if it is still coming from Mommy's Magic Purse.

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#3 posted by SaulTSack , June 30, 2008 9:00 PM

My parents had two of these when I was a kid, my dad built the prototype chassis for cartrivision. The two units we had were big, encased in oak and gold tweed fabric - looked like something Marantz would have made. My dad always ran the decks with the faceplate off so you could watch it work - it had a tape head the size of a dinner plate that spun really fast - it was fascinating to watch it work.

I remember quite fondly watching tapes of 'Roger Ramjet', the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals. Our Cartrivision (that is how it is spelled by the way) decks *did* have rewind though. We owned all of our own tapes - I don't remember any rental facility at all for the things. Then again, I was 9 years old at the time, what would I have known about renting anything.

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#4 posted by Simon Greenwood