Kaku, K. Ogiro, S. Ozaki, and F. Scotr a A new drum system for the D-2 digital VTR has been developed at Hitachi. The new drum, with a specially shaped drum surface and head windows to control air film, assures stable tape contact, and a new multilayered amorphous thin film metal recording head increases recorded level 3 dB over ferrite heads. These two new features improve data reliability and increase the margin of error rates.