SONY VT-M5 - Beautifully Obsolete

SONY's "new image" presented.... doesn't sound good.... https://japantoday.com/category/business/sony-says-focus-is-on-creativity-with-games-movies-music-sensors-ip-and-not-gadgets?

I would have LOVED to have something like this back in the day as I recorded a lot of TV (and movie) audio for my theatre-of-the-mind enjoyment.

It's such a shame that it's essentially useless because I do agree, it is beautiful. It's great to see it working anyway.

I love these little Hi-Fi TV devices, despite having very little practically, even back then. They're perfect for the "Hi-fi that has everything". The reason the first RF modulator didn't work is because it most likely outputs on North American channel 3 or 4, which doesn't overlap with any Japanese channel frequencies. Also Japanese channels 1, 2 and 3 overlap the 88-108Mhz FM band, which explains why you were getting those radio stations. Not sure about the 2nd RF modulator. Maybe it's using TV frequencies for a European region which have different video and audio spacing. At any rate, glad to see you got it working well in the end!

I’d have loved a gadget like this as a kid. We had a hifi separates stack. If I’d had something like this , I’d have been pretending the hifi was one of those communications columns from Space 1999.:

That would have been just perfect for recording Top of The Pops and Eurovision which we used to do back in the mid 1970s via the mic on our Philips cassette recorder. Great video, Mat - very impressed at your ability to work your way through all the connectivity issues!

I like the bit of history at the beginning, about how recording the audio was the only means available to most people of preserving a TV broadcast. While I'm not a Doctor Who fan, I was reading recently about it, and I find it fascinating how many early episodes are lost completely, exist as fragments, or exist only as audio that someone recorded from their TV. As a Star Trek fan, I try to imagine if there were some TOS episodes we couldn't watch, but only listen to.

I like both styles of videos, but feel some topics fit one style more than another. Something like the Schaub Lorenz (sorry if I misspelled that) is a good fit for the "free form" videos since it is a story and exploration of the time and device. On the other hand, the video about the 33 vs 45 format war is a lot about the details and fits the voice over format. Your video on the CD demagnitizer could ONLY be a free form video (in my opinion) because there is no technical detail. I guess that applies to all of the "Mat on Tat" videos. Anyway, just my opinion.

Thanks for this history lesson, loved this so much!

I love the explicit "More = Better" aesthetic to 1970s hifi and its marketing. The message was that everybody will judge you by your hifi stack and, indeed, this is how you should judge your own worth. A component like this had a function, sure. But I imagine that Sony sold a lot of them to people who just wanted More Stuff in their hifi. The same people who vastly overspent on their tuner and amp and every other component, because they were seduced by the More Stuff (knobs, buttons, toggles, dials, meters, lights) on the front of the high-end components. I look at catalogues from the 70s and I can come up with no better explanation for that consistent aesthetic at the top of the range.

I was the weird kid who liked to record Catchphrase in sound only. No idea if it's imported overseas, so if you're not familiar with it, it's a very very visual gameshow.... that doesn't work at all without the pictures. It's good, but it's not quite right. There's something very satisfying about familiar things being seen through a 5" (ish) black and white CRT. I quite often enjoy pumping stuff like Hancock's Half Hour through my portable set. He would have been 100 today, incidentally!

A really curious device! And speaking of which: I spotted a Tefi cassette playing at 6:50! 😁

Terrific overview of a unique and undoubtably overlooked piece of home A/V history! Some variety of demand was definitely there in the mid to late 1970s. My brother and I would record episodes of Happy Days for the music and ANY old variety show that KISS was featured on. (I wish to underscore... I was maybe 7 and big brother was 11). I also recall later on seeing ads in Goldmine (an American magazine for music collectors. Unsure if it has much spread in the rest of the world) for collection of direct-from-TV audio recordings of shows like The Midnight Special and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert.

Well that rarely used Roku Express I have sitting in the bedroom is finally going to get some use. Never knew about the analogue output. Can now stream some stuff to the Trinitron in my office without the hassle of Rasplex!

This is the kind of content that drew me to your channel in the first place. Even though this is a short video, I for one hope that you don't have to cater to audiences with low attention spans, even if the almighty algorithm makes it seem necessary. I've never come across a video of yours that I did not want to watch from start to finish. The SONY VT-M5 falls into the category of things that you don't really need but you would like to have, be it just for its futuristic looks. It wouldn't look too out of place as a prop in a classic sci-fi show. The device brought up some memories as well. It pretty much shares the design language with the stereo system my father bought in 1979. He gave it to me many years later and I've used the amplifier (TA-515) up until the mid-noughties, when it unfortunately stopped working.

Sony was flush with cash in the late 70s, so was throwing money at anything the might make a profit. Sometimes we got this, sometimes we got the Walkman. It helps a company to keep trying different products to see what will catch on, but it's hard to see how this would ever have been a mainstream seller.

wonder what the biggest linked stack hifi you could make was ?

In the late 60s I was given a Philips Reel to Reel recorder and wanted to connect that to the TV. It was an old Baird set from Radio Rentals and was always going wrong. When the telly man came to fix it, I asked if I could connect my recorder to it, he very kindly connected some wires to the speaker transformer which made it safe and I could then record Star Trek. Guess what trade I took up when I left school?? 😉

I like both styles, you do both well and picking one for a specific video / issue is part of your charm Now... This lovely thing looks suspiciously similar to the hap 1?

If you have a source for which you can vary the actual RF frequency band, this video might help if you show a Japanese TV tuner again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVyFEMg0Kpg

I enjoyed that. Well done. To make the end more funnier you could have turned off the unit by using the power switch instead of fading the video out. Well, it's done now.

NTSC uses an audio carrier offset of 4,5 MHz while PAL has 5,5 or 6,5 MHz depending on the country. So unfortunately no audio and video at the same time with that adapter.

When you were attempting to get it working, I was close to shouting ‘It’s not worth it!’. Then you did and it was so I was wrong. I’d have loved to own one of these at the time but as I would have been 10, that would have been unimaginable. Until the 80s, recording video at home would have been similarly unimaginable for most people. It’s worth remembering that lost Doctor Who episodes have been reconstructed from home audio recordings, complete with background sounds, from the homes where they were recorded.

All your videos old and new appeal to my attention span Techmoan.

The second method produces excellent videos, the video flows well, what you tell comes out clean and incisive. In addition, YouTube prefers short videos, no longer than 15 minutes. At least, that is my opinion.

I miss Sony* - no other company had a design ethos like them (and no other company could make as many utterly niche products that hardly sold yet still be as successful a company as they were). Yet again another excellent video Mat, showcasing technology that I'd never heard of (or even imagined could exist!) *I know that Sony are still going, but their products and design language just doesn't feel the same as they used to do.

Mat, both video recording methods have their pluses and minuses and I enjoy them whichever style you choose to use for any given video. I’d also suggest that you’re underestimating your ability to speak on camera extemporaneously, but modesty is a virtue in itself. Back in 1982 I tried to record video from my parents’ cable TV set-up onto a compact cassette by bodging together various wires from the TV coax cable to the mic input on the cassette recorder. I figured it should work since it’s just a signal being recorded on magnetic tape-right? Needless to say the attempt was a complete failure—Ya think I might have missed a step somewhere? 🤔😆

I think you've given me my epitaph: "Beautifully Obsolete." Years ago, while cleaning out my folks home, I came across an old box of those old reel to reel tapes that I must have made in the late 60s. I took them home, not knowing what was on them. It took some time and effort to play them back, but when I did I found a good number of them were the audio of my favorite TV shows. Several were of Star Trek recorded by placing the cheap mic in front of the speaker of the TV and recording the show as it was being broadcast for the first time. Since the tape length was about 3 minutes and the TV episode was an hour long, there was quite a bit of editing, (I seemed to be a big fan of Mr. Spock). I only imagine if it were 10 years later and I lived in Japan, I may well have owned one of these. Thanks for the great video and the memories.

Sony could had just made a box with lots of switches and lights that did absolutely nothing in the 70’s and it would have sold. Such beautiful design.

These made far more sense when you remember that most TVs had live chassis back in the 1970s so the only connections were mains and a well isolated antenna socket. There is a family story on how a gadget loving relative tried to connect his TV to his Radiogram and ended up destroying both.

Very cool video and interesting piece of tech. I was surprised how good the picture quality was once you zeroed in on the tuning. This might just be me, but the intro volume seemed a bit low compared to the rest.

I still have an old Roku XS packed away that I had never considered to be even vaguely valuable, every time I've tried to use it I've been frustrated or disappointed. It baffles me that the output is NTSC only.

Great video and a product I've never seen. Frank Zappa also did a B/W TV appearance on OverNite Sensation :) https://i.postimg.cc/vHFBG1R9/bild.png

Not so useful, but that makes it very interesting and a nice piece of equipment to make a video about 😃. BTW: it's black and white, so PAL or NTSC doesn't matter. But the other (older) parameters of course, like the frequency spacing between the audio and video, and the exact black levels. There are some differences between the American System M and Japanese System J, although I don't see a difference in audio frequency spacing...

I wasn't going to watch the video yet as I'm supposed to be asleep right now (5:30 AM) but what the heck - resistance is futile. Reminiscent of your prior video on the topic ( https://youtu.be/KPneS9ZdUB8&t=9m45s ) you cited this Sony device. I always hoped to see it in action, thank you for that. I get the distinct feeling that you put a lot of hours into this one - akin to obtaining DNA results within 30 minutes on television but 3 weeks in real life. For a moment I thought you might run the outro credits through the VT-M5 after zooming into its screen, almost like slipping into another dimension. Boy, I would have loved one of these in my formative years. I am also looking forward to the color TV 'boombox' you sneak-peeked us a while back. Loved this video (as I do them all; well, except the one about the rechargeable hand warmers https://youtu.be/nH97woCUrLg - just kidding). Take care 🤍

I remember recording Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds from the telly onto audio cassette back in the 70s. I can't recollect how I did it though, and it was very hit and miss. This would have been ideal, although well out of my pocket money budget.

I like both styles to be honest. Interesting bit of 70's tech. I did record audio from TV back in the early 80s but this was limited to putting my portable tape deck by the TV speaker and hoping no-one walked in the living room making a noise whilse recording!

I'm someone who prefers the voiceover style, possibly because that's what I got hooked on years ago. They felt more complete. I believe you used to call these "live to camera" videos "cheese sandwiches", because they're quick and easy to make hey it's still a cheese sandwich. It's your channel and your call.

It looks so much better in the video than the thumbnail and I don't know why. Maybe use the photo of the components together and draw a big fat YouTube arrow pointing to it? It looks cool as hell in motion. Maybe that's the problem. Just gotta see it working. When I was a kid I didn't have a VCR in my room and tapes were expensive but I did have a Sony cassette recorder and a few compact cassettes. I did used to record audio of TV programs on the tapes, and I used to even listen to them while mowing the lawn as I got older. I would have enjoyed this I think, but wouldn't have really needed it. At some level of hacking audio together it just needs to be listenable, where this would be overkill. Anyway, regarding the video, this was excellent. I was expecting a bit more history on other devices like this should they even exist, but was not expecting the fun troubleshooting. That was good fun and I had a good time watching it. Very tight video overall. I do wonder what other options there were to do this. I bet there's a video in that. Video on audio. Monty Python records, stuff like this, weird devices that would output cable to RCA to go in the back of your tape deck, video formats with discrete audio tracks, shit like that. I might be the only person in the world who has that interest though.

Whatever style you adopt Matt your videos are always a welcome addition to the weekend, especially retro hifi like this one. 😀