The ancestor of the VCR was so expensive it’s actually making our eyes water a bit

[NeophobiA 1,503]

If you had a spare £23,000, what would you buy?

The best holiday in the world for you and all your friends? Several horses? An entire house in a place that’s not London?

Well think again - if this had been 1963, you could have spent all that dosh on…*drumroll* …a video recorder!

This was the first-ever VTR marketed for domestic use


Party time.

That £1,278 18s translates as £22,694.34 in today’s money. That would buy you a brand new Philips EL3400 1” Helical Scan Recorder. Oh, when the ad says “the other channel”, it really means “the other channel”. There were only two channels - BBC Two didn’t launch until ‘64. Oh, that high-pressure media landscape of the 60s.

It may have been extremely expensive but, hey, it was pretty cheap compared to its predecessor, the Ampex VRX-1000, which retailed for over $50,000. (That’s £257,828 in today’s money!)


The Ampex dev team records Top Gear while watching Downton Abbey.

But why the massive leap forward in home video recording technology on 1963? Why would so many more people want to record things off the TV… in that specific year?
Aha.

It’s the year that Doctor Who started, with all-time best Doctor William Hartnell. Suddenly, it all makes sense.