Thank you to everyone who's commented, I really appreciate the response! I wanted to mention that I have not yet completed the subtitling for this video because I've been working on it for so long that looking at it makes me sick; as soon as I can stomach it I'll get proper CC in place.
As someone who does have harder time hearing certain sounds, I certainly do appreciate proper CC. However you speak clearly enough that the auto-gen had no trouble I seen understanding you! While no substitute to proper CC, the auto-gen certainly provided to get me through the video with no issue.
Hey man, this is a GREAT documentary and you are doing a fantastic and really important job of preserving the history. If you want some insight into 70's media (and the reasons for distrust in them) I can really recommend you "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.
That transition music and blue screen with flying text really does lend this the feel of one of those classic 80s/early 90s documentaries. I applaud your research on the topic, as well as the passion and humour in your narration. I hope you keep producing content like this: it deserves to become required watching in college and university classes on the subject.
As an old dude who used eiaj VTRs and EIAJ connectors when they were new, i really appreciate your fresh enthusiasm for these topics . I never really thought about how people today are unaware of these gaps, because i used all of these cameras and recorders, but you’re absolutely right ht!
Yes when you start breaking it down and realizing initially it took two different devices, plus your wires, the first the camera just to capture the signal and a separate device with your storage tape. Some of those first portable units were only that by name, since you literally had to have a place to set some of it down and even plug it in, because it was not truly mobile, I think that's where the term remote location started being used. It's interesting to see how far the technology has come. Imagine if he had covered the old large reel to reel systems used in professional movie making as well, I think some of the very first were 1920s or earlier. (essentially the same technology seen miniaturized in the very first home video recording systems).
@@benullom2301 You forget about the basic point: Portable meant you could take recordings out on the field, without a generator and a car to give you power and machinery. Of course you could make that before, using a film camera. But that included a constant changing of incredibly expensive to develop reels, waiting for development and time consuming cutting afterwards. So having a portable Video Tape recorder was huge! Of course it was lame, compared to the following camcorders. But as such, we will be loughed at in a decade, with our constant power plug hungry and sunlight shy smartphones that cost a fortune. Remember, there was a time we had portable phones that had a battery that lasted for 2 Weeks. What if a future smartphone generation can do that, including constant use. What will our current 1000 Dollar smartphone be worth then?
@@genius1a touching on the two week battery life. That was back before we even had smartphones and a lot of phones were Nokia, I don't even think they exist anymore, at least I don't see them. Lithium ion does have more capacity but the phones just eat up power, it's surprising they last as long as they do. The screen is the big culprit it takes a lot of the battery power to light it.
@@genius1a Hey, plenty of good budget phones have 5000-6000 mAh batteries! Not everyone wants some $1000 flagship that allocates more priority to performance or features than a battery. [It seems to be increasingly hard to find a budget phone with optical image stabilisation on the camera though. :(]
Same I didn’t know that people were unaware of EIAJ and video camera’s of this era. It’s really not a big deal and saying nobody knows about this or remember it was hyperbolic by this channels creator.
Please don't forget the system called "VCR" released by Philips and Grundig in 71/72. It used cassettes, offered full frame rate, full resolution, color and even stereo. Quality was like VHS. It was aimed at consumers and it had some commercial success. Video cassettes for consumers did not start with beta. There were portable machines and there was even editing equipment that allowed editing with single frame precision. It was only released in Europe and Africa, PAL only. Tech history tends to forget things not sold in the USA.
This is seriously one of my all time favorite video essays. So much history that never made it into the "mainstream" of youtube tech retrospectives. Thank you for this, I never knew how much I needed to have those gaps filled.
The instant you showed the camera and said that nobody would know what it was made me feel very old, as I definitely used that exact camera as a teenager and had not, in fact, forgotten about the original split camera-recorder systems that camcorders were an improvement over.
LOL, I am OLD. When he was first showed the Camcorders, I thought "Those are camcorders, NOT video cameras. A camcorder is a video CAMera WITH a built in reCORDER." - And then he went on to explain, LOL. PS Your web cam is a "modern" example of a "video camera" -sans recorder.
There’s a guy on RUclips who seemed to record alot of his life starting in the 1980s when he was about 14 and for about 20 years after. Him and his friends on BMX bikes, later his cars and parties etc. I love watching these things and seeing how life was all thanks to these cameras
I picked up an old camera like that at a garage sale, has the same EIAJ connector, and I later picked up a box to power it and convert it to RCA. Never really looked into the connector, never knew how obscure but universal it is!
I'm impressed how every since video I've seen of yours so far has been touching on a topic I thought I knew a lot about, and still manages to drag me through a rabbit hole of history that I didn't even know existed!
Aesthetically perfect blue gradient and public school synth. Now I know why my parents basement has plastic tubs of 8mm reel, a Sony VHS camera, and how we got from one to the other.
Thank you for this. If you're curious, the short film "VTR St-Jacques" documents an early activist exploration of the social possibilities of portable video equipment (specifically those Sony CV-2000s and Video Rovers.) It was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1969 and can be found on their website to view for free, if you wish.
Just stumbled on your channel, great stuff! I'd love to see more like this, where you dive into the details of forgotten tech history. Since the 90s, I've been fascinated by analog TV descramblers for cable and satellite, and it seems no one has done a full video on how they work and how it started. It would be awesome if you did something like that.
That JVC commercial at 19:54 is a big yikes. Great work! I'd definitely watch any follow up rabbit hole you jumped down around this, or likely any other subject
I should note that I became a Patreon supporter based on this video. I know this can't happen every time, but I appreciate the piece at the end discussing what people actually tried to do with this tech.
I watch one youtube video a year and I'm really glad it was this one, great work!! I am always glad to watch your latest documentary about technology I've never heard of
I'm genuinely shocked that this has only 6k views. That's an absolute _travesty_ for the quality this brings. I've sent this to a few of my tech chats to hopefully get this more traction. Hopefully you'll get your break soon enough.
I want you to stay motivated. I see your videos as being like Technology Connections or Techmoan, but with your own unique style and look, which I hope you continue to refine. The first video of yours I came across, I enjoyed - and it was surprising to see that you only had ~8k subs given the level of information and research that went into it, as well as the production quality. I'm sure that if you keep it up, you'll be as well known as the aforementioned. Keep it up, mate. You're doing beautifully!
Watching this video makes me realize how fortunate I was to come across a working Sony AVC-3400 with it's portable recorder 10 years ago. When I turned it on for the first time I was hooked on how the quality of the image looked and enjoyed its limited quality atheistic. Thank-you for putting together this history and it was really cool to see how the device that I have fits into it!
What a video! The way you have demonstrated the mass forgetting of such a ubiquitous device (the "half-inch") and related technology is certainly something I am going to keep thinking about as I continue to learn about all the many things we keep forgetting.
Great video. It might be good to include "EIAJ connector" or similar in your description or even title just to help with those searching about it in the future!
Well, I don’t think it’d be wise to try and establish “EIAJ connector” to refer to the 10-pin camera connector, because “EIAJ connector” is already firmly established as the term for the EIAJ-defined system of DC barrel plugs. (It not only defines the plug dimensions, but also pairs each size with a specific voltage range, so that devices don’t get damaged by overvoltage.) It seems that “10-pin camera connector” and the like is the most common term, but if it does have an official name, it’s not easy to find.
Good information! Another company involved in home video recording in the early 70s was Cartrivision in San Jose, CA. Their machines used ½” video tape in a stacked reel cartridge format and recorded in full color using a skip field recording technique. The machines were too expensive and not packaged or marketed well (along with a host of other problems) and the company went bankrupt. A lot of unsold machines (along with a black & white camera AND microphone) were sold in the mid 70s for dirt cheap. I got one then and still have it. After a few years of use it sat idle for about 40 years. I replaced a belt and did some other minor repairs and got it working again.
Thank you for this video a few years ago i worked in my high school theatre and there was a 10 pin in the tech booth that nobody knew what it was for (this theatre was built in the mid 70s) and now i realize how cutting edge that mustve been to have wired in video capability with the recorder being in the booth and the camera being wherever the director wanted considering the flexibility of the overhead wiring network. I'm now the only one who knows what that connector was for
so well done! big thanks for crediting all of your sources, this is a goldmine of research that was as entertaining as it was intensely interesting to watch! also gotta appreciate the network shoutout, one of my favorite movies.
Your transition screen music gives me PTSD from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES. The beginning of the music from the underwater section of the Dam, that transition music must have been what inspired that music. Awesome production quality by the way.
This is it! This is great! Thanks for collating all of this information into one place. "Typical" in that title provides a lot of tension. Also, excellent points about how home film vs home video were recorded.
let me tell you , in re: "typical", i had to back off my verbiage like 4 times to make sure i wasn't inadvertently insulting anyone. the original script was basically me going "everyone just lies about all this!" when that isn't true at all!! but yeah, "typical" is carrying a LOT of weight here, and I much prefer it as implicit rather than an explicit callout, heh. thanks for watching!
When I was a little kid and first heard the word I thought it was "camquarter" because they were about a quarter size of the professional cameras at the time. Then I saw it spelled out.
There was an attempt by Bosch to sell a news camera called the QuarterCam. It used quarter inch tapes. The prototypes were tested by ABC at the 1984 Olympics but Betacam had already established an unbeatable lock on the broadcast camcorder market for another 12 years.
I had one of those rover cams with the goofy plug back in the late 80s/early 90s. It had a power brick/some kind of signal processor. Never got ahold of the tape/recorder unit for it as i picked it up at a yardsale. I managed to adapt it to my little black and white tv and i could see a live feed of whatever the camera saw on my tv. My buddy managed to find another one in his grandparents' attic but again no recorder. We ended up stringing a bunch of coax cables together with barrel connecters from radioshack to connect the feed from my camera to the tv in his room and vice versa.....strung the cables out my window, thru a tree, and into his window. Viola video conferencing. ....then our parents got pissed off that we'd swiped every unused coax cable from both our houses to create what they thought would be a nice lightning rod and made us take the whole thing down. Still, 12 year old me thought this was the raddest thing ever. The picture quality sucked, but man, we thought we were the jetsons.
I'm so glad I found your channel. Its exactly the type of content I like and usually consume but with loads of info I've never seen before. Thank you for putting so much effort into this videos.
22:30 Ad for the Sears C131. A peeve of mine: When discussing home movie cameras: People who call 8mm or 16mm FILM cameras "video cameras" or "camcorders".(not uncommon on Craigslist and eBay, LOL!) UGHH. "Video" is an ELECTRONIC form of motion picture. Film cameras do NOT make "video". While it IS perfectly OK to call a film camera or an analog (or digital) video camera or camcorder a "movie" camera, (as "movie" is slang for "motion picture") it's NOT ok to call a film camera a video camera.
Great video - I really do appreciate all the work that you must have put into editing this - not to mention the research - top notch! It just shows that great TV programs can be made completely independently. I have a few 80s JVC cameras, also really into the Panasonic switchers - its a great hobby as stuff can picked up so cheap on ebay still. Keep it up!
I grew up with my grandfather having a camcorder. I want to say it was a National branded VCR that had these great big NiCad or sealed lead acid batteries that slotted in the front. It had a faux leather over the shoulder case that held the VCR, with a clear vinyl window so you could see the buttons and protect it from the elements. He always had the neatest gadgets.
I just found your channel here on RUclips and have been power watching dozens of you programs for 2 or 3 days now. My gosh my man, so good. You're just great -- keep it up!
Excellent episode. I just discovered your channel and you're making some great content. I'm a big fan of both Techmoan and Technology Connections, and you distinguish yourself with this wonderful, original research and your own unique style and humour. It's a pleasure to share your fascination with old tech. Love it.
You’ve got a great thing going! I love the nostalgia and forgotten information. From one creative to another, don’t be afraid to venture out of your comfort zone, I believe you have real knack for informative content and could make interesting works on anything your interested in. Way to go!!
Fantastic video, thanks for making it! Nice to see yet another person on YT sharing the interest in vintage video equipment. I knew most of the stuff you mentioned, but it was still a pleasure to watch. Never heard of the Videofreex - definitely a topic I have to dive into.
love seeing those acid-inspired diagrams. im sure they seemed at the time like they needed to be communicated to others!!! reminds me of the mspaint scribbles in jordan peterson’s “maps of meaning” LOL
This video is an absolute blessing and I had no idea about almost any of the camcorder history, as my family was mostly involved in production broadcasting so I only really knew the professional side until my uncle showed up with his fancy VHS camcorder many years later. Very well put together and very worth it. However, I have one thing to add to the timeline, and I don't fault you for not including it as I only found out about it through a series of strange coincidences. The first home video cassette format, i.e. something actually aimed at consumers and not U-matic, was made by an American company, the format called Cartrivision, released in 1972. This system allowed not only for timeshifting on a cassette-based system, but also allowed for home movie recording (provided it happened within your home, as you needed to plug the camera into the unit). The problem, and why you've never heard of it, is that it was only sold integrated into certain television sets, which were really expensive, and most of the tapes were rentals with a "rental-only" switch on them, a historical predecessor of the self-erasing DVDs the MPAA tried to push for in the early 2000s. I personally found out about it via the fact that the only taping of the last time the New York Knicks won the championship was on a home-recorded Cartrivision tape, as the broadcast videotape had turned to mush. Here's a source on the Knicks: www.creativecontentwire.com/duart-relies-on-nucoda-to-get-lost-and-found/ And here's videolabguy's transfers of original Cartrivision material, including a video "manual" for the device: ruclips.net/video/bClJ12fHl5A/видео.html ruclips.net/video/pXEiJ1e6Iqk/видео.html His website is quite informative on the development of the device as well: www.labguysworld.com/Museum017.htm (his site is also full of references to some of the VTRs you noted!) On a final note - really, U-matic came out in 1969? My dad had some archive videotape from a live performance that went on TV in 1984 that was recorded on U-Matic, and a couple other U-Matic broadcast tapes from that time...that's quite a lifetime for that technology; they were still using it very actively for archive work in Venezuelan TV through the 80s.
I was the whacko "civilian" that had a U-Matic. It cost as much as a Buick new (Kidding,...but only slightly.) I bought a used deck and tuner when Beta was the big "thing" (no money for a NEW VTR!). No thought was given to renting movies, It was to RECORD TV! I used the (very expensive!) tapes OVER and OVER. Ahh, The old days! Now I can shoot 4K on my damn phone!
Fascinating! Enjoy the reference to Tech Connections. Kudos for finding the early video news advocates. The offbeat uses of technology are often the forgotten starts for later trends and you stitched that together wonderfully.
Wonderfully comprehensive history. Quite a bit of this was familiar to me via working with broadcast equipment and rummaging through miscellaneous electronic artifacts at amateur radio festivals, but I've never seen such a thorough & comprehensive retrospective. Bizarre to me that the EIAJWTF cable didn't even get a seat at the Wikipedia table, and the preservationist in me continues to wonder what obsolete tech knowledge is still a gap in this internet that we tend to think Has It All.
the internet does not have all the answers! in fact, it almost DENIES you the answers! when you try to search for this stuff, google tends to prefer results about newer, more popular stuff, so it implicitly, unintentionally erases this history. if people were to spread this knowledge around, google et al would sprinkle in a few more results about older tech!
Just a few remarks: I don't see the Philips VCR series on your timeline, being one of the first colour cassette home video system (N1500, N1700). In Europe the VCR system was quite important, but I'm not sure about the USA. Marketing of consumer video to women (TC 19:14) is a little misinterpretation of the picture material. In the 70's, women were still pictured in ads to make the product more attractive to men; just like car ads with women, leaning against the newest models, hanging over hoods of the newest models (women being 'the newest models' at all for sure). Although women's lib was a movement not to miss in this decade, technical stuff wasn't that much of their interest (there might be some exceptions to that rule, but still...). At that point, you're correct saying that women didn't seem to be interested that much in consumer video, but from the advertisers angle it was a little different, although I can imagine that the thought of more women using their products can't be wiped out completely. A little third one: please try to speak just a little slower. Sometimes you're going so fast to non native speakers, just like me. At some points, you're losing me as a listener and that's a pity because you've got a lot of interesting things to tell. Enjoyed your video very much. Tnx for posting.
Thank you for this amazing documentary. It was wonderful and provided little-known information that is fascinating and interesting. Now I feel like I should try filming on one of those cameras.
Been following you on twitter for a while and I've always enjoyed when you'd post about some weird thing you noticed, dug into and found all these unseen details of, so it's great to see that but with a little more polish. Hope you'll have time to make something like this again
This was an excellent timeline that produced a fair bit of fodder for chatter for me and my friends, and it's information I can keep tucked in my pocket as I dig through the myriad bygone junk my father has collected over his long life. Still, excellent framing of the video and good job keeping it interesting and moving forward throughout the whole length. I really do miss this era, when technology was something you could see and touch.
Thank you for teaching me about the history of home video (and a whole bunch of other stuff)! This is so wonderfully produced, the amount of effort and love that went into it is palpable.
Have you ever heard about the Telcan, also sold as the VKR-500. I'm pretty sure it was the first ever home video recorder, going on sale in 1963. It was made by two british guys, and it ran on 1/4 inch tape. It used a longitudinal recording method so the tape ran really fast, I think it only had 20 minutes recording time per side. They sold it for £60 as a kit! Unfortunately they weren't very successful and it soon faded into obscurity, but it's pretty interesting and notable for being a first.
Correction at 19:22 First portable Betamax VCR was the SLO-340 from 1978, that was an industrial model though. SL-3000 was the first consumer portable though. I have an SLO-340 dated around June 1978.
That's fair - although I was focusing on consumer gear and deliberately leaving out commercial, if it worked with betamax then a normal consumer might have bought and used it and that's good enough.
@@CathodeRayDude Also, I think you should have mentioned the first portable U-Matic deck was released in 1974, the Sony VO-3800. The early U-Matic decks from the early 1970s were massive and not portable at all. Prior to U-Matic on-location shooting was done on 16mm film, which you didn't mention. Great video anyways, I can really tell you are going somewhere; keep it up.
I'm re-watching this again in January 2022. Your videos are always great quality, and keeps me glued to the monitor the whole time. Please keep up the good work! Your channel is vastly underrated!
I appreciate that you made this short documentary. I was in a frendly dispute with a buddy of mine on this very topic. terns out I was right we knew what the 1/2 in plug was but we couldn't find any good info on what it was called. Thank you and keep up the good work
thank you! i worked REALLY hard to pack it into 30 minutes without sounding *completely* rushed and I'm surprised everyone else is actually keeping up with it - to my ears it sounds like a maddening flurry of information far too fast to digest, but my test audience all said it was perfect as-is so I stopped fighting with myself and released it.
my parents have been recording weddings since the 70's. They had a recorder, or a battery pack and audio set up, in a messenger bag well into the early 00's. Nice to learn about the predecessors.
Your video holds true for 525 line NTSC areas and is all well and good, but Phillips had their N1500 video cassette for the domestic market in 1972 with a under/over spool layout and a horizontal as opposed to slanted azimuth drum similar in operation to to the Sony 3400but in a cassette format. This predates both Betamax and vhs by a few years. They were not released in the states as they had been set up for 625 line 50hz of Europe, uk, South Africa and Australia. To adapt them for the higher 60hz frequency (but lower 525 line resolution) meant increasing the tape speed and the tapes became unusably short in playback time.
Not sure how I stumbled onto your channel but I have spent the past 2 hours watching your work. It's obvious you have a strong passion for what you do, and a awesome ability to tell stories about it in a well thought out way. Your doing a superb job and earned another subscriber. Keep it up.
This is the second thing I have seen on your channel. I have enjoyed both quite a lot. Good still, information and entertaining. Keep up the good work and I hope you have a lot of success.
This is a really wicked wee documentary on a fascinating subject, thanks! I fortunately got algorithm'd onto your channel, hope you blow up soon!! Quality content and you deserve it my man.
My dad started an editing studio out of our house in 1990, when I was 10, so I grew up around prosumer grade equipment... Hi-8 camcorders, big SVHS and 3/4"SP decks, Toaster/Flyer, and so on... but it blew my mind when I saw corporate video footage being recorded circa 1995 at my mom's workplace with a portapak-style betacam setup. Even that late in the game, footage was still being captured with discrete video cameras and battery-powered VTRs. Any time since that I've seen equipment like this, I always assumed it was high end studio gear, so It's remarkable that it was a consumer-oriented technology that far back. Thanks for presenting this history of it here.
Thanks for filling in the gaps that most had forgotten. I, being in my middle aged times, knew about a lot of this but even I learned something today. Keep up the great work.
This is a fantastic documentary piece. You've gone into significant depth on the subject matter. Besides that your presentation and delivery are top notch. You have a great voice for this sort of work. I am not an a/v enthusiast or a tech enthusiast in general, but I still found this to be both interesting and entertaining. This kind of excellent work deserves much more exposure than it currently has. Hopefully that will come in time. Thank you for the history lesson.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
![1000ft of ANALOG HD video over a single cable?! [AHD/CVI/TVI]](/img/1.gif)
Whelp... you sir have just joined LGR, TechMoan, Technology Connections, and 8-bit guy as some of my favorite RUclips channels... thanks!
i follow them all❤😊
Me too! 😜
Check out Nostalgia Nerd as well, his documentaries are excellent
@@KrisDouglas thanks for the suggestion will do!
he sure has. the effort put into these vids is astounding
Thank you to everyone who's commented, I really appreciate the response! I wanted to mention that I have not yet completed the subtitling for this video because I've been working on it for so long that looking at it makes me sick; as soon as I can stomach it I'll get proper CC in place.
As someone who does have harder time hearing certain sounds, I certainly do appreciate proper CC. However you speak clearly enough that the auto-gen had no trouble I seen understanding you! While no substitute to proper CC, the auto-gen certainly provided to get me through the video with no issue.
Adding my comment to feed the almighty algorithm! This video is great, keep up the good work friend, you've earned a sub.
Hey man, this is a GREAT documentary and you are doing a fantastic and really important job of preserving the history. If you want some insight into 70's media (and the reasons for distrust in them) I can really recommend you "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.
❤
That transition music and blue screen with flying text really does lend this the feel of one of those classic 80s/early 90s documentaries.
I applaud your research on the topic, as well as the passion and humour in your narration. I hope you keep producing content like this: it deserves to become required watching in college and university classes on the subject.
thank you so much! wow this is such a compliment
Crap another blue screen, damn you Windows 95...
@@CathodeRayDude where did you get this music? Im sure I recognise it from somewhere and it's driving me mad
@@JamieEC96 it's from a xerox training tape
@@CathodeRayDude it made me think of the laserdiscs we used to watch in my middle and high school classes 😂
As an old dude who used eiaj VTRs and EIAJ connectors when they were new, i really appreciate your fresh enthusiasm for these topics . I never really thought about how people today are unaware of these gaps, because i used all of these cameras and recorders, but you’re absolutely right ht!
Yes when you start breaking it down and realizing initially it took two different devices, plus your wires, the first the camera just to capture the signal and a separate device with your storage tape. Some of those first portable units were only that by name, since you literally had to have a place to set some of it down and even plug it in, because it was not truly mobile, I think that's where the term remote location started being used. It's interesting to see how far the technology has come. Imagine if he had covered the old large reel to reel systems used in professional movie making as well, I think some of the very first were 1920s or earlier. (essentially the same technology seen miniaturized in the very first home video recording systems).
@@benullom2301 You forget about the basic point: Portable meant you could take recordings out on the field, without a generator and a car to give you power and machinery. Of course you could make that before, using a film camera. But that included a constant changing of incredibly expensive to develop reels, waiting for development and time consuming cutting afterwards. So having a portable Video Tape recorder was huge!
Of course it was lame, compared to the following camcorders. But as such, we will be loughed at in a decade, with our constant power plug hungry and sunlight shy smartphones that cost a fortune. Remember, there was a time we had portable phones that had a battery that lasted for 2 Weeks. What if a future smartphone generation can do that, including constant use. What will our current 1000 Dollar smartphone be worth then?
@@genius1a touching on the two week battery life. That was back before we even had smartphones and a lot of phones were Nokia, I don't even think they exist anymore, at least I don't see them. Lithium ion does have more capacity but the phones just eat up power, it's surprising they last as long as they do. The screen is the big culprit it takes a lot of the battery power to light it.
@@genius1a Hey, plenty of good budget phones have 5000-6000 mAh batteries! Not everyone wants some $1000 flagship that allocates more priority to performance or features than a battery. [It seems to be increasingly hard to find a budget phone with optical image stabilisation on the camera though. :(]
Same I didn’t know that people were unaware of EIAJ and video camera’s of this era. It’s really not a big deal and saying nobody knows about this or remember it was hyperbolic by this channels creator.
This better get blessed by the algorithm
Better, kinda, the channel has been blessed by Technology Connections.
Spread the good news ! 👍✨
It’s been blessed - by Technology Connections! 😁
It did. For me at least. Don’t worry. :)
A blast to hear from this guy!
Please don't forget the system called "VCR" released by Philips and Grundig in 71/72.
It used cassettes, offered full frame rate, full resolution, color and even stereo. Quality was like VHS. It was aimed at consumers and it had some commercial success. Video cassettes for consumers did not start with beta.
There were portable machines and there was even editing equipment that allowed editing with single frame precision.
It was only released in Europe and Africa, PAL only. Tech history tends to forget things not sold in the USA.
The total gap in communal knowledge about the EIAJ plug is *mindblowing*
This is seriously one of my all time favorite video essays. So much history that never made it into the "mainstream" of youtube tech retrospectives. Thank you for this, I never knew how much I needed to have those gaps filled.
And thank you for watching!
The instant you showed the camera and said that nobody would know what it was made me feel very old, as I definitely used that exact camera as a teenager and had not, in fact, forgotten about the original split camera-recorder systems that camcorders were an improvement over.
LOL, I am OLD. When he was first showed the Camcorders, I thought "Those are camcorders, NOT video cameras. A camcorder is a video CAMera WITH a built in reCORDER." - And then he went on to explain, LOL. PS Your web cam is a "modern" example of a "video camera" -sans recorder.
this video is dry but you keep it in your mouth a while and it melts
There’s a guy on RUclips who seemed to record alot of his life starting in the 1980s when he was about 14 and for about
20 years after. Him and his friends on BMX bikes, later his cars and parties etc. I love watching these things and seeing how life was all thanks to these cameras
it feels like every single advertisement before like, 1995 was just some variation on "ey have you guys seen these broads, amirite fellas?"
This is Technology Connexions-level quality. And yeah, it's high praise.
At least... I can't believe I only found this channel last week.
@@fisqual the algorithm decided it was time
ah, a fellow fan of alec. i see you are a man of culture as well.
@@fisqual Agree!
I love this. It went from a history lesson on tape to making me want to take down “the man”.
I picked up an old camera like that at a garage sale, has the same EIAJ connector, and I later picked up a box to power it and convert it to RCA. Never really looked into the connector, never knew how obscure but universal it is!
I'm impressed how every since video I've seen of yours so far has been touching on a topic I thought I knew a lot about, and still manages to drag me through a rabbit hole of history that I didn't even know existed!
This is my favorite video on RUclips. Thank you, Gravis, for making it.
Ok but that intro tag is fucking rad also the production quality on this is absolutely wild
Aesthetically perfect blue gradient and public school synth. Now I know why my parents basement has plastic tubs of 8mm reel, a Sony VHS camera, and how we got from one to the other.
Thank you for this. If you're curious, the short film "VTR St-Jacques" documents an early activist exploration of the social possibilities of portable video equipment (specifically those Sony CV-2000s and Video Rovers.) It was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1969 and can be found on their website to view for free, if you wish.
wow, thank you! i'll check this out!
Just stumbled on your channel, great stuff! I'd love to see more like this, where you dive into the details of forgotten tech history.
Since the 90s, I've been fascinated by analog TV descramblers for cable and satellite, and it seems no one has done a full video on how they work and how it started. It would be awesome if you did something like that.
That JVC commercial at 19:54 is a big yikes. Great work! I'd definitely watch any follow up rabbit hole you jumped down around this, or likely any other subject
subscribe if you haven't and keep an eye out! at a minimum i'll be doing videos eventually about my army of old tube based cameras!
No that’s awesome, come on. It was the 80s, dude.
@@brantisonfire The guy's being a creep, but that's the joke. He just ends up with video of bikini girls telling him to buzz-off.
As an A/V enthusiast, this video is an absolute blessing! Amazing work!
thank you! I'm here for my fellow Enthusiasts
I should note that I became a Patreon supporter based on this video. I know this can't happen every time, but I appreciate the piece at the end discussing what people actually tried to do with this tech.
I watch one youtube video a year and I'm really glad it was this one, great work!! I am always glad to watch your latest documentary about technology I've never heard of
This video was outstanding! I feel like I just visited the best Home Video Museum ever - Thank You for all the hard work and research, wow!
I'm genuinely shocked that this has only 6k views. That's an absolute _travesty_ for the quality this brings. I've sent this to a few of my tech chats to hopefully get this more traction. Hopefully you'll get your break soon enough.
I want you to stay motivated. I see your videos as being like Technology Connections or Techmoan, but with your own unique style and look, which I hope you continue to refine. The first video of yours I came across, I enjoyed - and it was surprising to see that you only had ~8k subs given the level of information and research that went into it, as well as the production quality.
I'm sure that if you keep it up, you'll be as well known as the aforementioned.
Keep it up, mate. You're doing beautifully!
Love how densely packed this video is and the pace maintained throughout. Never gets dull or waffley!
Watching this video makes me realize how fortunate I was to come across a working Sony AVC-3400 with it's portable recorder 10 years ago. When I turned it on for the first time I was hooked on how the quality of the image looked and enjoyed its limited quality atheistic. Thank-you for putting together this history and it was really cool to see how the device that I have fits into it!
Wow, I was amazed to see so few subscribers since this felt like content produced in 500k subs channel. Subbed
What a video! The way you have demonstrated the mass forgetting of such a ubiquitous device (the "half-inch") and related technology is certainly something I am going to keep thinking about as I continue to learn about all the many things we keep forgetting.
This is a PBS quality documentary. Impressed. Great work :-)
Great video. It might be good to include "EIAJ connector" or similar in your description or even title just to help with those searching about it in the future!
you're right, this reminds me that I completely forgot to create any keywords! whoops! thank you!
Well, I don’t think it’d be wise to try and establish “EIAJ connector” to refer to the 10-pin camera connector, because “EIAJ connector” is already firmly established as the term for the EIAJ-defined system of DC barrel plugs. (It not only defines the plug dimensions, but also pairs each size with a specific voltage range, so that devices don’t get damaged by overvoltage.)
It seems that “10-pin camera connector” and the like is the most common term, but if it does have an official name, it’s not easy to find.
Sony introduced a 14 pin connector, (HVC3000), to plug it into a VHS portable (with the J10 plug) you needed an adapter (this was in 1981).
I've been curious about those early home-friendly open reel video machines. Thank you for FINALLY putting them in some sort of historical context!
Seriously though, you should become RUclips famous and rich because you are producing incredible content. Subscribed.
Good information! Another company involved in home video recording in the early 70s was Cartrivision in San Jose, CA. Their machines used ½” video tape in a stacked reel cartridge format and recorded in full color using a skip field recording technique. The machines were too expensive and not packaged or marketed well (along with a host of other problems) and the company went bankrupt. A lot of unsold machines (along with a black & white camera AND microphone) were sold in the mid 70s for dirt cheap. I got one then and still have it. After a few years of use it sat idle for about 40 years. I replaced a belt and did some other minor repairs and got it working again.
I'd be very interested in talking to you about your CV player, especially if it does still work.
Thank you for this video a few years ago i worked in my high school theatre and there was a 10 pin in the tech booth that nobody knew what it was for (this theatre was built in the mid 70s) and now i realize how cutting edge that mustve been to have wired in video capability with the recorder being in the booth and the camera being wherever the director wanted considering the flexibility of the overhead wiring network. I'm now the only one who knows what that connector was for
so well done! big thanks for crediting all of your sources, this is a goldmine of research that was as entertaining as it was intensely interesting to watch! also gotta appreciate the network shoutout, one of my favorite movies.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Your narration and the general structure of this is Aces man! Really enjoyable.
Your transition screen music gives me PTSD from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES. The beginning of the music from the underwater section of the Dam, that transition music must have been what inspired that music.
Awesome production quality by the way.
This is honestly astonishing, everything about this video is so damn good.
Amazing video dude. God-tier level I swear.
This is it! This is great!
Thanks for collating all of this information into one place.
"Typical" in that title provides a lot of tension. Also, excellent points about how home film vs home video were recorded.
let me tell you , in re: "typical", i had to back off my verbiage like 4 times to make sure i wasn't inadvertently insulting anyone. the original script was basically me going "everyone just lies about all this!" when that isn't true at all!! but yeah, "typical" is carrying a LOT of weight here, and I much prefer it as implicit rather than an explicit callout, heh. thanks for watching!
This channel is criminally underrated, your content is top tier man
When I was a little kid and first heard the word I thought it was "camquarter" because they were about a quarter size of the professional cameras at the time. Then I saw it spelled out.
There was an attempt by Bosch to sell a news camera called the QuarterCam. It used quarter inch tapes. The prototypes were tested by ABC at the 1984 Olympics but Betacam had already established an unbeatable lock on the broadcast camcorder market for another 12 years.
Dude, great work on filling in those gaps, any info from the 60's on video tech is largly unsaid or forgotten, thank you.
thank you for *appreciating* it!
I am old enough to have witnessed the advent of home VTRs firsthand, so this video was quite nostalgic. 😁
I had one of those rover cams with the goofy plug back in the late 80s/early 90s. It had a power brick/some kind of signal processor. Never got ahold of the tape/recorder unit for it as i picked it up at a yardsale. I managed to adapt it to my little black and white tv and i could see a live feed of whatever the camera saw on my tv. My buddy managed to find another one in his grandparents' attic but again no recorder. We ended up stringing a bunch of coax cables together with barrel connecters from radioshack to connect the feed from my camera to the tv in his room and vice versa.....strung the cables out my window, thru a tree, and into his window. Viola video conferencing. ....then our parents got pissed off that we'd swiped every unused coax cable from both our houses to create what they thought would be a nice lightning rod and made us take the whole thing down. Still, 12 year old me thought this was the raddest thing ever. The picture quality sucked, but man, we thought we were the jetsons.
This is historical internet Gold!! Great work!
08:08 the clip seen here is an old ad from WSOC 9 in Charlotte, NC!
Good gravy, that JVC advertisement...
Great video!
I'm so glad I found your channel. Its exactly the type of content I like and usually consume but with loads of info I've never seen before. Thank you for putting so much effort into this videos.
22:30 Ad for the Sears C131. A peeve of mine: When discussing home movie cameras: People who call 8mm or 16mm FILM cameras "video cameras" or "camcorders".(not uncommon on Craigslist and eBay, LOL!) UGHH. "Video" is an ELECTRONIC form of motion picture. Film cameras do NOT make "video". While it IS perfectly OK to call a film camera or an analog (or digital) video camera or camcorder a "movie" camera, (as "movie" is slang for "motion picture") it's NOT ok to call a film camera a video camera.
Great video - I really do appreciate all the work that you must have put into editing this - not to mention the research - top notch! It just shows that great TV programs can be made completely independently. I have a few 80s JVC cameras, also really into the Panasonic switchers - its a great hobby as stuff can picked up so cheap on ebay still. Keep it up!
thank you for this! lately i've been interested in learning about home videos, and technology from when i grew up/even before me. this was very cool.
Finally got time to watch the whole thing. Subscribed and hit the bell. Lots of interesting stuff in here. Thanks for making this!
Thank you for subscribing!!!
I grew up with my grandfather having a camcorder. I want to say it was a National branded VCR that had these great big NiCad or sealed lead acid batteries that slotted in the front. It had a faux leather over the shoulder case that held the VCR, with a clear vinyl window so you could see the buttons and protect it from the elements. He always had the neatest gadgets.
Geez my grandfather had a Brownie box camera...
I just found your channel here on RUclips and have been power watching dozens of you programs for 2 or 3 days now. My gosh my man, so good. You're just great -- keep it up!
That was really enjoyable. Very good production value, too!
You deserve way more subs! :)
Excellent episode. I just discovered your channel and you're making some great content. I'm a big fan of both Techmoan and Technology Connections, and you distinguish yourself with this wonderful, original research and your own unique style and humour. It's a pleasure to share your fascination with old tech. Love it.
It’s like you’ve discovered a lost civilization
You’ve got a great thing going! I love the nostalgia and forgotten information. From one creative to another, don’t be afraid to venture out of your comfort zone, I believe you have real knack for informative content and could make interesting works on anything your interested in. Way to go!!
"Great sound too~"
Keep it in your pants mate.
Fantastic video, thanks for making it! Nice to see yet another person on YT sharing the interest in vintage video equipment. I knew most of the stuff you mentioned, but it was still a pleasure to watch. Never heard of the Videofreex - definitely a topic I have to dive into.
love seeing those acid-inspired diagrams. im sure they seemed at the time like they needed to be communicated to others!!! reminds me of the mspaint scribbles in jordan peterson’s “maps of meaning” LOL
This video is an absolute blessing and I had no idea about almost any of the camcorder history, as my family was mostly involved in production broadcasting so I only really knew the professional side until my uncle showed up with his fancy VHS camcorder many years later. Very well put together and very worth it.
However, I have one thing to add to the timeline, and I don't fault you for not including it as I only found out about it through a series of strange coincidences. The first home video cassette format, i.e. something actually aimed at consumers and not U-matic, was made by an American company, the format called Cartrivision, released in 1972. This system allowed not only for timeshifting on a cassette-based system, but also allowed for home movie recording (provided it happened within your home, as you needed to plug the camera into the unit). The problem, and why you've never heard of it, is that it was only sold integrated into certain television sets, which were really expensive, and most of the tapes were rentals with a "rental-only" switch on them, a historical predecessor of the self-erasing DVDs the MPAA tried to push for in the early 2000s. I personally found out about it via the fact that the only taping of the last time the New York Knicks won the championship was on a home-recorded Cartrivision tape, as the broadcast videotape had turned to mush.
Here's a source on the Knicks: www.creativecontentwire.com/duart-relies-on-nucoda-to-get-lost-and-found/
And here's videolabguy's transfers of original Cartrivision material, including a video "manual" for the device: ruclips.net/video/bClJ12fHl5A/видео.html ruclips.net/video/pXEiJ1e6Iqk/видео.html
His website is quite informative on the development of the device as well: www.labguysworld.com/Museum017.htm (his site is also full of references to some of the VTRs you noted!)
On a final note - really, U-matic came out in 1969? My dad had some archive videotape from a live performance that went on TV in 1984 that was recorded on U-Matic, and a couple other U-Matic broadcast tapes from that time...that's quite a lifetime for that technology; they were still using it very actively for archive work in Venezuelan TV through the 80s.
Kind of dissapointed that it was all from a North American perspective, no V2000 and "VCR" formats, but the video was still very informative.
I was the whacko "civilian" that had a U-Matic. It cost as much as a Buick new (Kidding,...but only slightly.) I bought a used deck and tuner when Beta was the big "thing" (no money for a NEW VTR!). No thought was given to renting movies, It was to RECORD TV! I used the (very expensive!) tapes OVER and OVER. Ahh, The old days! Now I can shoot 4K on my damn phone!
anything else? any other,, details?
really though, great story, thanks for telling it!
ANYTHING ELSE??? ANY OTHER < < < DETAILS ?
You. Deserve. Way. More. Subscribers.
I really like your videos.
Fascinating! Enjoy the reference to Tech Connections. Kudos for finding the early video news advocates. The offbeat uses of technology are often the forgotten starts for later trends and you stitched that together wonderfully.
Wonderfully comprehensive history. Quite a bit of this was familiar to me via working with broadcast equipment and rummaging through miscellaneous electronic artifacts at amateur radio festivals, but I've never seen such a thorough & comprehensive retrospective. Bizarre to me that the EIAJWTF cable didn't even get a seat at the Wikipedia table, and the preservationist in me continues to wonder what obsolete tech knowledge is still a gap in this internet that we tend to think Has It All.
the internet does not have all the answers! in fact, it almost DENIES you the answers! when you try to search for this stuff, google tends to prefer results about newer, more popular stuff, so it implicitly, unintentionally erases this history. if people were to spread this knowledge around, google et al would sprinkle in a few more results about older tech!
Just a few remarks:
I don't see the Philips VCR series on your timeline, being one of the first colour cassette home video system (N1500, N1700). In Europe the VCR system was quite important, but I'm not sure about the USA.
Marketing of consumer video to women (TC 19:14) is a little misinterpretation of the picture material. In the 70's, women were still pictured in ads to make the product more attractive to men; just like car ads with women, leaning against the newest models, hanging over hoods of the newest models (women being 'the newest models' at all for sure). Although women's lib was a movement not to miss in this decade, technical stuff wasn't that much of their interest (there might be some exceptions to that rule, but still...). At that point, you're correct saying that women didn't seem to be interested that much in consumer video, but from the advertisers angle it was a little different, although I can imagine that the thought of more women using their products can't be wiped out completely.
A little third one: please try to speak just a little slower. Sometimes you're going so fast to non native speakers, just like me. At some points, you're losing me as a listener and that's a pity because you've got a lot of interesting things to tell.
Enjoyed your video very much. Tnx for posting.
Thank you for this amazing documentary. It was wonderful and provided little-known information that is fascinating and interesting. Now I feel like I should try filming on one of those cameras.
they're great fun to collect, lots of them used! thank you for watchign!
Been following you on twitter for a while and I've always enjoyed when you'd post about some weird thing you noticed, dug into and found all these unseen details of, so it's great to see that but with a little more polish. Hope you'll have time to make something like this again
That video freeks stuff is ameteur, sure, but it has a sort of charm to it. It just looks very genuine and heart-warming
I love how in depth this all goes. I found it fascinating! thanks for your hard work!
This was an excellent timeline that produced a fair bit of fodder for chatter for me and my friends, and it's information I can keep tucked in my pocket as I dig through the myriad bygone junk my father has collected over his long life. Still, excellent framing of the video and good job keeping it interesting and moving forward throughout the whole length. I really do miss this era, when technology was something you could see and touch.
Yet another RUclipsr that deserves at least two orders of magnitude more attention
I'm glad you released this against the odds.
Thank you for teaching me about the history of home video (and a whole bunch of other stuff)! This is so wonderfully produced, the amount of effort and love that went into it is palpable.
Have you ever heard about the Telcan, also sold as the VKR-500. I'm pretty sure it was the first ever home video recorder, going on sale in 1963. It was made by two british guys, and it ran on 1/4 inch tape. It used a longitudinal recording method so the tape ran really fast, I think it only had 20 minutes recording time per side. They sold it for £60 as a kit! Unfortunately they weren't very successful and it soon faded into obscurity, but it's pretty interesting and notable for being a first.
Correction at 19:22
First portable Betamax VCR was the SLO-340 from 1978, that was an industrial model though. SL-3000 was the first consumer portable though. I have an SLO-340 dated around June 1978.
That's fair - although I was focusing on consumer gear and deliberately leaving out commercial, if it worked with betamax then a normal consumer might have bought and used it and that's good enough.
@@CathodeRayDude Also, I think you should have mentioned the first portable U-Matic deck was released in 1974, the Sony VO-3800. The early U-Matic decks from the early 1970s were massive and not portable at all. Prior to U-Matic on-location shooting was done on 16mm film, which you didn't mention.
Great video anyways, I can really tell you are going somewhere; keep it up.
I'm re-watching this again in January 2022. Your videos are always great quality, and keeps me glued to the monitor the whole time. Please keep up the good work! Your channel is vastly underrated!
I appreciate that you made this short documentary. I was in a frendly dispute with a buddy of mine on this very topic. terns out I was right we knew what the 1/2 in plug was but we couldn't find any good info on what it was called.
Thank you and keep up the good work
Fantastic review. Love all these old machines. My favorite part is the ad, you can't beat "Buzz off, buster!" thanks for including that gem
I'm always glad to see an update from you and this one is incredible, especially packed in to only 30 minutes.
thank you! i worked REALLY hard to pack it into 30 minutes without sounding *completely* rushed and I'm surprised everyone else is actually keeping up with it - to my ears it sounds like a maddening flurry of information far too fast to digest, but my test audience all said it was perfect as-is so I stopped fighting with myself and released it.
my parents have been recording weddings since the 70's. They had a recorder, or a battery pack and audio set up, in a messenger bag well into the early 00's. Nice to learn about the predecessors.
Your video holds true for 525 line NTSC areas and is all well and good, but Phillips had their N1500 video cassette for the domestic market in 1972 with a under/over spool layout and a horizontal as opposed to slanted azimuth drum similar in operation to to the Sony 3400but in a cassette format.
This predates both Betamax and vhs by a few years. They were not released in the states as they had been set up for 625 line 50hz of Europe, uk, South Africa and Australia. To adapt them for the higher 60hz frequency (but lower 525 line resolution) meant increasing the tape speed and the tapes became unusably short in playback time.
Apparently Abbie Hoffman, of the Chicago seven, is the one who gave Videofreex the broadcast equipment
Not sure how I stumbled onto your channel but I have spent the past 2 hours watching your work. It's obvious you have a strong passion for what you do, and a awesome ability to tell stories about it in a well thought out way. Your doing a superb job and earned another subscriber. Keep it up.
This is the second thing I have seen on your channel. I have enjoyed both quite a lot. Good still, information and entertaining. Keep up the good work and I hope you have a lot of success.
This needs to get to the front page
This is a really wicked wee documentary on a fascinating subject, thanks! I fortunately got algorithm'd onto your channel, hope you blow up soon!! Quality content and you deserve it my man.
That was an insanely great rundown of video history, and I loved that revolutionaries got some coverage, too.
My dad started an editing studio out of our house in 1990, when I was 10, so I grew up around prosumer grade equipment... Hi-8 camcorders, big SVHS and 3/4"SP decks, Toaster/Flyer, and so on... but it blew my mind when I saw corporate video footage being recorded circa 1995 at my mom's workplace with a portapak-style betacam setup. Even that late in the game, footage was still being captured with discrete video cameras and battery-powered VTRs. Any time since that I've seen equipment like this, I always assumed it was high end studio gear, so It's remarkable that it was a consumer-oriented technology that far back. Thanks for presenting this history of it here.
Thanks for filling in the gaps that most had forgotten. I, being in my middle aged times, knew about a lot of this but even I learned something today. Keep up the great work.
This is a fantastic documentary piece. You've gone into significant depth on the subject matter. Besides that your presentation and delivery are top notch. You have a great voice for this sort of work.
I am not an a/v enthusiast or a tech enthusiast in general, but I still found this to be both interesting and entertaining.
This kind of excellent work deserves much more exposure than it currently has. Hopefully that will come in time.
Thank you for the history lesson.
Thank you for listening, I appreciate this a lot. I think almost any story can be generally interesting if explained well.