Released by BBC Enterprises - 1972 - Original price £249 per episode
The
U-matic tape format was invented in 1969 and was released onto the
commercial market two years later. Seeing the potential for making
its programmes available to the domestic market, the BBC decided to
invest in a series of selected U-matic Home Video releases for 1972.
It's safe to say that the BBC were nearly a decade too early and
they'd got the format wrong – something they would repeat many
years later with MP3 CDs and DVDAudio discs.
They also assumed that since the public was potentially willing to pay upwards of several thousand pounds for a U-matic playback/recorder, they would also be able to afford to pay several hundreds of pounds for original television programmes. In the end, they couldn't even afford the machine let alone the tapes.
I have one of these videos in my possession but since it has no cover or label and I do not own a U-matic playback machine, I cannot verify the contents. So there.