MII (videocassette format)
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- This article disscusses the MII video tape format. For information on the game console by Panasonic please see Panasonic M2
MII is a professional videocassette format developed by Panasonic in 1986 as their answer & competitive product to Sony's Betacam SP format. It was technically similar to Betacam SP, using metal-formulated tape loaded in the cassette, and utilizing component video recording.
MII is sometimes incorrectly referred to as M2, the official name uses Roman numerals, and is pronounced "em two". And much like Betacam SP being an improved version of its predecessor Betacam (originally derived from Betamax) with higher video and audio quality, MII was an enhanced and improved version of its predecessor as well, the failed M format (originally derived from VHS).
Unlike M, MII was somewhat successful when it was first launched, with customers like NBC in the USA and NHK in Japan using it for news gathering, and PBS in the USA using it in the late 1980s to delay their network programming by 3 hours for later airing on the West Coast. But MII also suffered from lackluster marketing, a lack of customer support & public relations from Panasonic and Matsushita (Panasonic's parent company), and most importantly, a lack of reliability (as mentioned below). This resulted in MII not being nearly as successful as Betacam SP.
MII is not widely used nowadays, and spare parts as well as tapes for the format are now hard to come by. But used MII equipment can be had for quite affordable prices (under $1000 USD for a decent MII VCR) on the used professional video equipment market.
MII problems
MII has also been known as being a notoriously unreliable format for various reasons, as discussed from a Wikipedia user's first-hand experience with MII:
ADDENDUM, by Steve, former MII user:
''I'm writing this because I'm a videographer who had an extremely negative experience with the MII format back in the year 1990. In my experience, every video professional with whom I've spoken, who has ever used MII has had complaints about what seemed to many to be a fundamentally defective product.
''Usually on a daily basis, the record deck would often have problems with the servo lock mechanism, indicated in the field by a "servo" malfunction light blinking and a warning beep in one's ear piece. When that happened, one would usually come back from the field to find a flawed recording, the main symptom of which was usually the picture flickering from all red to all green to all blue. At other times, the picture would simply have vertical lines all through it. And still at other times, the tape would record at a speed that would fluctuate between too slow and too fast, ruining both the audio AND the video recording.
Also, some brands of the videocassette stock itself for the MII format were also of dubious quality, known to clog the video heads of MII VTRs quite frequently.
These issues with the format, as well as Panasonic's failure to fully support MII, ultimately led to the quick demise of the format.
See also
External links
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