Akai VT-100 (1971)

Twenty pounds, a quarter-inch tape, and a battery pack - Akai's bid to put a television studio in a salesman's hands.

Overview

Aim the camera, shoot, and play it back right away on the built-in monitor. That was the pitch. Akai's VT-100 was a complete portable video tape system: camera with zoom lens, optical viewfinder and built-in microphone, a battery-operated helical-scan VTR, a three-inch monitor, and a charger for the pair of six-volt batteries. The whole kit was announced at $1295. The entire system, minus the adapter-recharger, weighed under twenty pounds. You could carry it into a client's office, tape a sample commercial, and show it back on the spot instead of waiting on film processing.

The recorder ran quarter-inch tape on five-inch reels, good for twenty minutes per reel, with twin rotating heads in a helical-scan format. Akai's advertising leaned hard on cost. Quarter-inch video tape was pitched at roughly a third the operating cost of competing systems, and the copy promised no film processing, no elaborate lighting setups, and no special equipment beyond what came in the box. The camera had an automatic light compensator. The deck had push-button operation with automatic fast forward and rewind. A converter was also available so the VT-100 could play back through any ordinary television instead of only its own little monitor.

The published numbers were modest. Resolution was rated at 200 lines, video signal-to-noise better than 40 dB, and audio frequency response from 100 to 10,000 Hz. That puts it in the utility camp, not the broadcast one - a tool for talent checks, program continuity, rehearsals, and sales demonstrations, not for air. High Fidelity (June 1971, p.93) covered the VT-100 in its audio-visual pages and described it as designed for high performance, providing everything necessary to produce professional audio-visual tape across a wide range of purposes. By the end of that year the system was part of Akai's Christmas lineup alongside its audio decks, with the company urging buyers to "create your own TV shows" with its family of quarter-inch video recorders. High Fidelity (December 1971, p.35) ran the campaign.

Quarter-inch video was being sold here as a consumable, not an installation. The limits were 200 lines, twenty minutes a reel, and mono audio to 10 kHz. Akai's own literature positions the machine as a way to erase and reshoot without burning film stock. The intended buyers were the salesman, the station doing talent auditions, and the association sending a taped message to its chapters. Akai even offered a free videotaping service to national associations that wanted to circulate a message to local branches.