An experimental study on bit rate reduction and high density recording for a home-use digital VTR

A description is given of a prototype home digital videotape recorder (DVTR) used for experimentally studying the problems of bit rate reduction while providing high density recording. The authors report on a system adopted that combines two bit rate reducing methods: interfield sub Nyquist sampling and the Hadamard transformation with vector quantization of the resulting joint energy distribution. Using several approaches to high density recording, the prototype system achieved an area packing density of 135 Mb/in.² and a linear packing density of 109 Kb/in. at a tape speed of 3.75 m/s. This system is currently capable of one hour recording/reproducing and the feasibilities of two hour recording/reproducing with an area packing density of 270 Mb/in.², a linear packing density of 109 kb/in. and a track pitch of 10.3 mu m, were experimentally confirmed by using the same experimental DVTR.