International Video Corporation
International Video Corporation, or IVC, was a California company that manufactured several models of low to middle-end videotape recorders, or VTRs, for industrial and professional use. Their products were quite popular in the industrial and institutional markets.
IVC 800 series 1 Inch VTR
IVC 800 series 1 Inch VTR was very popular. 800 series are reel to reel helical 'mid band' color portable TVR using 1 inch/25mm tape running at 17.2 cm per second/6.77 inches/second.
IVC 9000
One of their last products before their end as a company was the legendary IVC model 9000 VTR, considered by some to be one of the best analog VTRs made. It used 2" tape, much like the 2" Quadruplex format, but using segmented helical scanning for the recording & playback of the video tracks (as opposed to 2" Quadruplex's transverse scanning). The 9000 was used quite frequently for the production of most popular television series throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as it was capable of higher quality through many more generations than other available products. However, the leftover R & D costs from the development of the 9000 left IVC with having to go out of business by the late 1980s.
Some of the first laserdisc releases on the market from Discovision were mastered by the company using IVC 9000 VTRs for master videotape playback for making glass masters from during the laserdisc replication process. Discovision later switched to using 1" Type C videotape around the early 1980s for laserdisc mastering when service & support for the 9000 became unavailable due to IVC's demise as a company.
In 1979, the IVC-1010, a 1-inch VTR, was introduced. It was capable of recording a 10 MHz bandwidth, designed for medical and scientific markets.
Modified IVC model 826P VTRs were also used as the transport for Decca Records' digital audio recording & mastering system of their own design starting in the late 1970s, one of the first systems introduced for recording digital audio.
Besides VTRs, IVC also manufactured other types of video equipment, such as studio video cameras. They also produced modified video recorders for use in medical and data storage applications.
References
- LabGuy's World: Remembering IVC
- List of IVC VTRs
- - Library of Video History, Science and Technology
- - DC Video current operator of IVC VTRs
- RGB video services in Philadelphia operates & repairs many IVC models.