Video 2000: Encyclopedia II - Video 2000 - Technological innovations

Video 2000 - Technological innovations

Video 2000 offered several innovative features unmatched by the competing standards, VHS and Betamax:

• All Video Compact Cassettes store video and audio on one side of the tape. The V2000 scans half the tape, and by flipping the tape it scans the other half of the tape, thus doubling playing time.
• Because of its Dynamic Track Following (DTF) technology (involving an advanced, movable video head tip), V2000 did not require video tracking control. Note that a few V2000 models lacked DTF.
• All V2000 VCRs sported an auto-rewind function (later matched by VHS and Betamax)
• Superior dynamic noise ("tape hiss") reduction
• Inclusion of a data track alongside the video track
• Linear stereo sound on some models, though Hifi sound was never marketed.

Thanks to DTF, V2000 was able to play both fields of the image in still frame mode, allowing full vertical resolution, whereas VHS and Betamax could only reproduce one field, giving only half of the normal vertical resolution. This was actually more an annoyance than an advantage, as for non-film material fields are spaced in time and displaying them together (without modern digital correction) causes flicker.

Not long before the end of Video 2000 production, Philips introduced a long-play cassette, the V2000 XL, with a capacity of eight hours per side. Philips also created a prototype of a more compact V2000 cassette (analogous to VHS-C) that was playable in existing units using a full-sized cassette adaptor, but Philips retired Video 2000 before the development was ready for market.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Technological innovations", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki