An Experimental HDTV Digital VTR with a Bit Rate of 1.188 Gbps

This paper describes the technical details of an experimental HDTV digital VTR with a bit rate of 1.188 Gbps. This newly developed machine satisfies the proposed parameter values in the CCIR Report 801. The basic technologies developed to achieve such an ultra-high speed recording are: metal particle tape and Sendust sputtered type head, a high performance head assembly, and parallel signal processing. Using 8 recording heads, the recording rate per channel is 148.5 Mbps and the minimum recording wavelength is 0.69 pm. The error control mechanism, based on Reed-Solomon product code, worked sufficiently well with the overhead for parity, sync code and ID code in the blanking period. Even after 20th generation dubbing, no picture quality degradation has been observed.