An Experimental Digital Vcr For Consumer Use

An experimental digital VCR (DVCR hereinafter) was developed. The DVCR has two new technologies for reduction of tape consumption. One is a bit rate reduction technology of a component video signal down to around 25 Mbps and the other is a high density recording technology. The bit rate reduction technology is based on an 8/spl times/8/2/spl times/4/spl times/8 two dimensional DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) and a VLC (Variable Length Coding) that completes over 5 macro blocks. Editing, trick plays and invisible error concealments also have been realized by this bit rate reduction while keeping the playback picture quality very high. The high density recording technology is based on ME tape and an ATF (Automatic Track Finding) system. A track pitch of 10 /spl mu/m and a bit length on tape of 0.25 /spl mu/m have been realized. The possibility of a higher linear recording density has been confirmed through theoretical analysis, simulations and experiments. >