Picked up an odd tape at a flea market today. Neat looking, feels pretty robust compared to its contemporaries. The bidirectional tape shield mechanism is pretty cool. I could see it causing some apocalyptic jams if anything was off kilter or dirty.

I’d never seen this type before, which isn’t a surprise given it was for PAL and SECAM only. It was developed in partnership with Philips as a competitor to VHS and Betamax, and was marketed under the Video Compact Cassette and Video 2000 names. It did not prevail on the market and concluded its short run with discontinuation in 1988, less than ten years from its release in 1979.