A photo from 1956 shows a home television tape player developed by RCA

[Chip Chester]

From a tape transport standpoint, it's possible it's a real thing. The exaggerated distances in the tape path could be to take up slack during FF/RW of much higher tape speed recordings. Absent "logic controlled" transport, the usual way was to add 6+ inches of takeup in the mechanism. Audio decks of the day made do with about 1" of slack take-up.

I believe Pixelvision uses fm recording (of a CCD-captured signal). Data recorders back in the day used fm as well.

Chip