Happy 46th Birthday U-Matic!

From the Winter 1970 Sony® Dealer Newsletter: “Exciting the world!… Sony Demonstrates Color Video Videoplayer” says the headline. “The Color Videoplayer is considered the next home entertainment product that will win wide acceptance.” Well of course they were a bit wrong about that, as it was not what came to be known as the U-matic cassette player but the smaller and cheaper Betamax and its rival’s VHS players that became ubiquitous in peoples homes. But the U-matic VTR saw many professional applications (such as replacing news film with videotape) and the machines persisted in advertising agency offices well into the early 2000’s.

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