It was technically similar to Betacam SP, using metal-formulated tape loaded in the cassette, and utilizing component video recording.

Of the three, Thames and TV-am lost their licences in the 1991 ITV franchise auctions, depleting still further the already scant MII usage in the country.

A small number of specialist companies maintain old MII machines in order to offer a transfer service for archive footage to modern formats.

Below these were diagonal tracks recorded by the moving head in a method known as helical scan, which increases the effective tape speed and thus the bandwidth needed for storing video.

In other words, audio channels three and four and the video chrominance (CTCM) signal were all frequency multiplexed and recorded on one track by the moving heads.