[red16v]

Quad was very much on the way out in 1986. Ampex and RCA, the two main manufacturers, had long stopped production of their last Quad machines and 1” was firmly in the ascendancy.

“Scott free” also brings up references to a Ridley and Tony Scott production company with references going back to the 1970’s. A hunch tells me that “20 to Saturday” is the key phrase here but I cannot find anything pertinent myself.

I do not think ‘the team’ should put too much emphasise on the cross tape creases seen in the original pictures - that looks to me like simple tape creases which are (were!) quite common on the end of a quad tape.

Edivue was the common material used to develop the magnetic tracks on video tape, nasty stuff by reputation - it was, as others have outlined, fine metal particles held in a solvent suspension.

The IVC 2” helical scan format was introduced too late to compete with Quad. It was, by reputation, superior to Quad technically but few machines existed in the UK. I knew of only one and that was in a television facility house in London (Maybe Rank Video Services if Rank badge engineered them?). I have seen references to a working machine but that was in the USA.

Edited to add. The original Quad format was developed in the US as we know and the linear tape speed was set at 15ips. When the format was altered to suit European standards the tape speed had to be increased to 15.625 ips to accommodate different EU specs and the mechanical parts of the original design. Therefore for any given running time a reel of EU tape had to be longer than it’s equivalent US tape as it runs faster. No tape manufacturer was going to set up to do that! As a consequence quad tape lengths were manufactured to suit the EU market meaning our US colleagues got longer running times out of any particular tape than their EU counterparts. Not many people know that!