An Experiment on Half Inch Hi-Vision Digital VCR

An experimental half-inch tape Hi-Vision VCR was developed. This paper reports on its signal processing system. We begin by explaining the intrafield fixed-length DCT algorithm, which compresses Hi-Vision data at 594 Mbps to 125 Mbps. Next we describe the error-correction system, 1,7 codes, and PR (1,1) and 3-level 4-state Viterbi decoding. The experimental system has two heads for each of two channels, and the total recording bit rate is 160 Mbps. Finally, we describe the VCR performance and present an eye pattern and reproduced image. Bit error rates were less than 10^¿5, and the quality of the reproduced picture is sufficient for home-use VCRs.