Antique Video Transfer Service

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antique video home

Antique Video Transfer Service was born out of a need to perpetuate the soon to disappear original and first only professional TV broadcast video tape recorder, the "Quad" [short for quadruplex] VTR which went into production starting back in 1957. This QUAD videotape machine recorded a TV program's picture and sound onto a two inch wide magnetic tape. The Quad VTR existed on it's own for nearly two decades, recording and playing back millions of hours of videotaped television programs both nationally and universally. The thought of its demise commanded the desire to start a business to salvage any historical remaining shreds of this bygone technology. Starting in the mid 1970s, 99.9% of previous recorded quad tapes had been transferred to some other analog or digital tape format for future viewing and storage. The 1/10th of one percent remainder is where Antique Video comes into the picture to provide a way to resurrect those remaining precious televised historical magnetic documents from deteriorating forever in time capsules across the nation.
In 1993 I found two Ampex AVR-3 Quad tape machines stored in a network TV station right here in my own town of San Francisco.
Upon moving both machines into my new home studio I began working on them to slowly bring them back to life. Gently bringing them to up to full power to preserve the sensitive electronics I began to restore the Quads to full factory specifications. Several months later with the help of some hobbyist magazine ads I discovered an enormous source of QUAD 2" tape scattered throughout the country in need of refurbishment and restoration. One noteworthy experience really helped. After receiving a call to transfer a Quad Tape of a children's science show, the parents of a young boy informed me that a Quad tape they had received from a local TV station is the only recorded memory of their child. The young preteen had passed away after the show had aired. I was so moved by the happiness brought them by the transfer to VHS that I had to make this service available to everyone in the entire country.
Antique Video Transfer Service is located in the Diamond Heights region of San Francisco, just across from Twin Peaks in San Francisco.

our attention to detail...
Each Antique Video quad videotape transfer includes quad-tape examination, trial and error diagnostic time and tape rejuvenation [via a temperature controlled dehydration process]. Prior to actual re-recording, each tape is carefully matched [both mechanically and electronically] to our Ampex AVR-3 Quad VTRs for best interchange and optimal playback of all off-tape signals.
Transfers are then made to legal broadcast audio and video levels. All transfers include time-base error correction, chroma-phase, chroma saturation and black level correction.
Faroudja vertical and horizontal detail processing provided to enhance [sharpen] image on each tape transfer.