An interactive control system including a wide bandwidth, random access recorder including a recording which contains sequentially recorded discete sets of co-located video, audio and digital information including, for example, a question or other interrogation signal, and wherein at an end of a set of such co-located recorded information there would be recorded a multiplicity of digital signals, each signal being comprised of an "answer" portion and a "second location" portion. Further, circuitry is provided to halt the playback of the recording when an input from the user is required for the purposes of testing, measuring or selecting and where the recording medium is halted before the location of the multiplicity of digital signal portions is reached. Further, circuitry is provided for a digital response to the interrogation signal to be obtained from a manual or automatic operation and placed in a "response" digital storage register. After this is done, circuitry is provided to restart the recording medium and to play the sequentially encoded digital signal "answer" and "second location" portions through a digital shift register where they are successively, at high speed, compared to the digital response previously stored in the "response" storage register.