Interesting; I'd not heard of NICAM, but there were several other audio formats that used video tape as a storage mechanism. The Sony PCM-F1 recorder was proba

Interesting; I'd not heard of NICAM, but there were several other audio formats that used video tape as a storage mechanism. The Sony PCM-F1 recorder was probably the most common, and could be attached to either a VHS or a Betamax recorder. My personal favorite, and one that I still own, was the dbx 700 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbx_Model_700_Digital_Audio_Processor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbx_Model_700_Digital_Audio_Pr...) which used delta-sigma rather than PCM encoding, and produced an NTSC output suitable for tape. (For reasons I don't really understand, 3/4" U-Matic was the dominant recording format, at least that I saw. But it works fine onto a good VHS deck.) The digital format was ahead of its time, although it was a bit of a dead-end technologically unless you count SACD (arguably also a dead-end). Compared to the F1 it was a joy to use, because you didn't have to leave the headroom of a PCM recorder (it doesn't "brickwall" if you run a hot signal into it). In the days when most audio engineers were used to analog tape and recording very hot, this led to much better-sounding recordings. You could also take the video signal and send it around a video distribution system (closed-circuit TV, cable, satellite, etc.) and have a very high quality audio feed on a point-to-point link. Occasionally the boxes turn up on the used market... I still have one, and largely just keep it in the signal loop because of all the neat 1980s blinkenlights and digital VU meters.