Camcorder that uses Cassette Tapes - The PXL-2000
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2024
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In this episode, I take a look at the Fisher Price PXL-2000 video camera. Its most unique feature is that it records video to an audio cassette tape.
Ah, the 80s. When simply adding '2000' to the name of your product made it futuristic and exciting.
now it doesnt work anymore, sadly it needs to go over 9000
Thener Oliveira Usually with the prefix: BFG 😎
MidtownSkyport See Conan O'Brien's "In the year 2000"
they still do that AFTER the year 2000.
Add FX to that along with Grafix and Super :)
The camera of choice for bigfoot enthusiasts
Herblin thats funny 👍🏻
lol right
200th like
Herblin
Outside it's kinda good, he did try indoors.... any Big Foot indoors?
Probably quite popular around Loch Ness as well.
Fun Fact: the Roswell autopsy was filmed on a PXL-2000
Got one of these Christmas morning in1988 when I was 12. Was super excited until I filmed something. Dad noticed it was crap, noticed I was faking satisfaction & gratefulness. Pulled me aside and said hey look I wanted to get you a compound bow and your mom said no. We can take that camera back to hills tomorrow then go get a bow if you want to. So that’s how I got my first compound bow.
I got mine at Hills too
Cool dad
Very cool dad. I was actually thrilled when I got a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 a few years prior to that (Dad said I turned white with shock when I opened it), but then a few years later the magazines arrived announcing the Color Computer 3. I wanted it so bad but I didn't want my parents to think I wasn't grateful for and enjoying the CoCo 2 I already had so I actually went to them and told them I didn't want the CoCo 3. They didn't see thru my act and I never got the 3.
Your Father was a good man
Aaron Stepien 100%
Good for filming Ufos with.
DanClarky1 only if you shake it around a lot
don't forget bigfoot
This is what they film ghosts with...
probably the best thing about the ubiquity of video cameras is that it's finally ended the endless UFO and various legendary monster hoaxes.
@Joe Duke Oh so you're told. Go on to one of these dumb corporate news sites and find a "liberal" that is showing up with the "highest votes", and see if you can get them to respond to you.
Because the vast majority of them, aren't people, they're bots - which is why they don't respond to anybody.
People aren't as dumb as the establishment makes them out to be.
I had this camera when I was a kid. I never really used the tape or batteries. I had it hooked up to a portable tv as a security camera for my fort...
Haha cool!
Much better use for it!
I ran mine through a VCR
Now that's a cool effect for a cctv! Gives fnaf vibes :P
I would love to see someone try to re-engineer this idea today. With codecs that are so much more efficient, it would be interesting to see just what cdould be stored on cassette in real time.
It is really interesting idea BUT...
Cassette heads, availability of higher quality coder of this format is non-existent. It's the same reason why every modern walkman is terrible. But HDD is honestly pretty similar solution ;)
I calculated that a 120 minute ferrite oxide compact cassete (since it has maximum frequency of 32 Khz), can store up to 30 Megabytes.
Using both channels for digital compressed audio/video, we can have a better video
quality.
A couple examples of people trying this recently:
th-cam.com/video/p9I7T08LFQA/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/D5zV1mC4E3w/w-d-xo.html
@@thereisalie819 The trick would be to develop helical-scanning heads like VHS used.
@@thanthanasiszamp4707 where did you get 32khz for a ferric? most type i tapes have around 15khz frequency response
This was my sons first video camera. He LOVED it! He went on to a career in television. Good stuff back in the day. Thanks for the memories.
this is a good camera for catching UFO
Enzo Capuano tru
and the Loch Ness monster!
or if you are a filmmaker who wants to shoot a Soviet propaganda videos
Rakitha Peiriz I was thinking the same thing.
joseph burtulato
Unidentifiable FUZZY objects?
"My choices were C64 or one of these..."
...That's like choosing between 120.000$ and a 20 years old toenail.
TheMrRuttazzo I fell for this.
He chose......Wisely.
I when I was eight, I made a narrow choice between a C64 and an Omnibot. I'm now nearly 40 and still have my original C64. It still fascinates me.
+TheMrRuttazzo $120 or $120K? You make it look weird and unusual to me.
I'm old enough to remember when this was the bee's knees. My parents worked for Fisher-Price which meant we got a discount on it. Real video cameras were still financially out of reach at the time, so this was awesome for us.
I'm sure they did.
I remember it being much better . Does some of video quality and noise due to age of camera now?
@@GT1004 We just seem to remove the bad things of the past in our memory :) Very human behavior!
They still use this format in 2019 in banks except to record the Teller.
Why?
@@coppeis Insurance money scam. The bank robber got away because nobody recognized him.
@@champmarly7665 ah cool!
Ideal Subjects to record using this Camera: Sasquatch, The Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, Alien Autopsy, Elvis....
Snow White U win everything!!!!
Moon landing
I had one of these when I was a kid, and it was great! When I was 7, I didn't care about video quality, so being able to record any sort of video was amazing! It would eat through batteries, so my father ended up hooking it up to a car battery on a skateboard that I would push around.
You should have tried dirrectly connecting it to a powerplant :))
I was great back in the day. But kids nowadays have smartphones
@Shufei Sure they have : it's called a smartphone. Every kid today has one, and they upload directly to TH-cam! When I watched kids tv as a kid, it was old geezers and hags doing it. When my little sister watched it it was 20-40 year olds doing the tvshows. Todays kids watch videos made by kids 2 years their senior...
Brandon Freeman
12V car battery we all used on the old cassette tech, great way to film too, the skate board was the gyroscopes glide cam!
You still have any content?
Remember the open Cabel TV shows, or pirated home video shows on the cable networks, we were watching kids too! or old people that did kid shows at home...
Today, GoPro kids do the same, producing better content! easy software to make it creative and good!
It was great. Sorry
Me after 15 seconds: My God! Why didn't I have one of those when I was a kid? This thing should have been a massive hit back then and a must at every home!!!
Me after 4 minutes: oh... I see...
I'm just watching "Archive 81" (Netflix series) - searched for "PXL-2000" - and landed here.
haha me too
Wow!!!!!! I had one of these when I was a kid. Late 80's / early 90's. :) As a 8-10 year old, I didn't even know to expect better video quality. The parents camcorder was better quality, but even as a kid I didn't expect my Fisher Price toy to rival my Dads camcorder. I absolutely loved it and made videos of my friends and me playing basketball, jumping in the swimming pool, etc.... regular kid stuff. As a 9ish year old, I even made a "movie" where I wore a cowboy hat and shot my stuffed animals (tied a string around the stuffed animal and had my friend pull the string when I 'shot' it). Pretty awesome for a 9 year old in 1989!
Unfortunately, I have no idea where the camcorder is, or where the cassettes are. But I can certainly say it was in the top 5 best toys I've ever had. Thanks for sharing!
Great comment, reminded me of my childhood and my lost tapes I overwrote with crappy tv movies
Truly a potato cam.
TheToaMaster this is where it all began
If the board gets fried, you can eat it because it would be a fried potato!
This is where all true potatoes have started as.
TheToaMaster Nah... Its more dirt cam.
Don't you DARE insult potatoes like this.
I had just watched a short documentary about the history of television. The image quality that device produces is reminiscent of TV's of the 1930's.
Link?
Stop insulting televisions. Comparing this to a tv is heresy
Not even that good, honestly.
Adult, in the 21st century: "It just gets worse and worse and worse!"
Kid, in the late 20th century: "This thing is RAD!"
Nowadays, when we, both adults and kids, have access to all kinds of devices with video recording capabilities, this device might seem ridiculous, but back then, this could very well be the ONLY video recording device in the house, so even with its terrible quality, it could be cool to have for a kid.
@@OMA2k Indeed! There was no way in HELL my parents could have afforded an actual camcorder (or even a separate video camera & VCR system like my rich grandparents in Florida had) back then... Heck, even though I wanted one of these things pretty bad when I saw them advertised on TV, my parents probably wouldn't have even got this for me as a Christmas present, due to $100 being about half a week's pay for my dad back then, but even as crappy as it was/is, I would have been over the moon to have something like this! Or even a working super-8 film camera (although those things were an order of magnitude more expensive than even these were).
WOW! you can see Jimmy's whole face when he puts it near his head! Oh no its dead!
@@DJ_Bonebraker my grandparents also had a very and camcorder that I'm like 99% sure my parents stole for my birthday because my grandparents lpved it and wouldn't even let anybody touch it but then it vanished and a few days later the exact same one shows up on my birthday
Etch-a-Sketch Animator: Allow me to introduce my self.
Kids: :O
8bit guy working with Techmoan... that made my whole weekend.
Leivthious indeed
Love Techmoan. My favourite TH-camr.
Rewatching in 2020
I'm hoping Techmoan's dealt with this product more fully - like does it use a revolving head?
I got one of these Christmas 1989, it was the best Christmas I ever had. My cousin and I spend years making home movies with them. While the quality is bad, I know for fact it wasn't as bad as you see in the video, i the the hardware aging has something to do with it. As David mentioned, the lenses fogged up over time and deteriorated which made the light sensitivity even worse. As far as usable footage, it all depended on the quality of batteries you used and the quality of tape. We used rechargeable ni-cd batteries and my parents bought the chromium tapes, maxell branded from Costco so it wasn't that expensive to own. I have many many childhood videos on this camera.
You have to appreciate a toy camera for kids. It was cheap enough and durable enough to kids to make memories with. And I think from that perspective it was a slam dunk. No parent in their right mind would give a 1000+ camcorder to their kids to make videos with, but for a hundred bucks, why not? You have to keep in mind those days kids didn't have iPhones and access to cameras easily, so making videos and memories was a very rare thing for kids,
I have really really fond memories of this thing. It has a special place in my heart, many summers spent making news casts and other movies with my cousins. Good times.
Just much respect. And the camera is vintage too and very interesting because it records video on cassette tape :)
I love people like you who spend time writing these really constructive comments 👍
s3v Hundred bucks for a kid?? I don't think so. Maybe a crappy cell phone, no need for crappy casettes
remember your precious memory forever :)
but were you able to convert your videos into digital file?
Yes, the quality was good, like a cheap security camera. I had good results with mine, even indoors. You had to clean the tape heads constantly! I always had a large package of Q-Tips and a quart of rubbing alcohol handy.
This is utterly fascinating. An audio tape that is capable of video is the stuff of childhood fantasy. I had no idea this was possible.
I had one of these, I loved it, made tons of silly movies with my friends. Yes, it went through tapes and batteries like crazy. But we tried to plug in the power cable to an outlet when possible, since at 50% battery, the picture starts breaking up like crazy. It was fun to own, I transferred some to VHS tapes, and used to make credits on my C64 which we also stuck on the tape. Good times.
The 8-bit Guy + Techmoan = AWESOME!
Bah. He lied like Trump about not being able to hear anything.
8 bit guy + Lgr =awesome
5-10 minutes of use out of 6 AA batteries....DAMN! I thought the Sega Nomad was bad...
The Obsolete Geek I know right
The Obsolete Geek my Cannon 490 eats batterys I thought it was bad but this 1987 camera makes my Cannon 490 look like the best camcorder in terms of battery life and quality
Maybe my Lynx and Game Gear aren't so bad after all.
I'd be very much guessing that battery life would be a lot better when using some of those new-fangled NiCads, or nowadays, Eneloops - IOW, cells with much lower internal resistance. Turn-off threshold might be too high for those altogether, of course, but in the world of power-hungry digital cameras at least, the difference to alkalines tends to be night and day.
The Obsolete Geek youre awesome too
Damn, even video from WW2 military is more "HD" than this, lol
A WWII video is 4k compared to this beast LOL
Well those were recorded on film rather than tape so....
Timmity3
Film has a certain resolution, or grain count.
35mm film is comparable to (at least) 4k digital video
35 mm is full frame sensor on digital camera, mostly for pro video/photographer.
I just wanted to hear one of those tapes in an audio player, so I'm happy
I'm amazed that this product even exists! wow!
8Bit guy and TechMoan was such a delight for me. :D
Liam Hollingsworth Fox aren't they the same guy?
It's a shame they live so far away. Imagine the collaboration if they lived within driving distance of each other.
Aleatha Vogel yes they should get together and do a video review of something...
I just want to thank you for demonstrating this.
This seems like a cool glitch/fx type of camera where you want the footage to be very lo-fi with lots of glitches in them due to the tape.
I bought one at a thrift store in the 90s for about $20, and DID use it for it's "effect", LOL.
I still have mine! when I was a kid, my dad made me a battery pack out of a 12V Gel battery that fit in a little shoulder bag and hooked up to the DC of the camera. I could record for hours, just as long as I had enough tape.
Wow your dad must be an electrical engineer
Great idea! I used an AC adapter and a long cable to run the RF out to the family VCR. The indoor lights were bright, so with all the lights on and the blinds open the video quality was good. To make music videos, I would run the sound from my boom box into the stereo inputs on the VCR, and the video would come from the camera. I wish things were that simple in the digital world!
8-bit guy and techmoan in 1 video! best day ever
Same thought!
and one time clint from lgr was in a 8 bit vid too that was pretty great too right
I had this camera as a kid and I used the hell out of it. The recording mechanism died after some time and so I then used 100' of speaker wire to run it to a VCR on which I recorded, and another 100' of speaker wire to run to a 9v power supply to power it. Even with the noise my unshielded RF cable picked up, it was still considerably better than the defunct audio cassette recorder.
You forgot to mention the lenses selectable silver "outdoor" filter - which was a definite requirement to film in direct sunlight if you didn't want an over exposed white square (I don't think this camera was able to adjust shutter speed much to meter exposure, and it sure as hell didn't have an iris)
To this day I have a stack of VHS tapes which I recorded misc junk on.
The experience this camera gave me left me with a real appreciation for the quality camera equipment we have in such excess today. I would have killed to have had even a VHS camcorder at that time.
On the note of vintage video cameras, I think 1980s CRT type cameras (with the VCR backpack) produce video with a unique look and are interesting to play around with these days.
This is the exact same TV my family had when I was a kid. It's incredibly nostalgic seeing you use it for so many of your projects. 😍
This camera was used extensively to record UFO sightings. Unfortunately, the image is still too clear and requires smearing vaseline all over the lens.
So funny
I can think of a lot of better uses for Vaseline...
>lens
*Pinhole
Bigfoot too
Yeah... it's really hard to get a good UFO picture on a camera that's in proper working order.
I personally think this lends itself well to horror movies. Surprised there was no market for that.
damn son i was just thinking the same thing.Tbh i wanna get one just so i do that.
Check the Oddity Archive episode on this camera.
Hey, I just want to thank you for amazing videos. I found your channel by coincidence and since then I'm regular client. You're showing amazingly interesting things. Thanks man.
Thanks for doing this video! I've read about the PXL-2000 several times with all of its limitations but always wondered what the video quality was like in practice.
why is your channel so damn amazing? keep up the awesome work!
do you want to create a video about him?
skibidoobap daw dada *EXPLOSION*
I think it's because he puts actual journalistic effort into everything he makes rather than just speaking out of his behind over random gameplay footage, and he has spent decades of hard work developing skills in electronics maintenance and light repair, as well as music and video production. And he collaborates with people rather than scaring them away.
ReviewTechUSA fancy seeing you here.
ReviewTechUSA
IT'S OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR!! WHY DOES HE LINGER IN AROUND THIS CHANNEL?!? Actually, I'm happy to see you watching i-Book Guy's (aka 8-Bit Guy) videos :-D
Hey I got one these as a Christmas gift when I was a kid in the 80's & at the time it was my favorite thing in the world. You kept mentioning how terrible the A/V quality is. When you are a 10 or 11 year old kid in the mid 80's with your own video camera the audio/video quality is the last thing you care about. I still remember all the videos I took with this thing, especially on the day it was given to me, playing outside in the yard on Christmas day with my brother & my dog.
James Zee that’s a very good point. We are judging it by today’s standards. A kid of the 80s was less spoilt for technology choices and would try so hard to make this video camera work for him. And have so much fun with it.
A nice Lego set seems infinitely better.
I had one when i was a kid to my brother and i loved it i agree with 100%
I had one too. I really appreciated it. It is still probably the nicest gift I ever received as a child.
Back in 87, for a kid, as a present? Absolutely fucking amazing. And that would have been the words I would have used and would have have earned a clip round the earhole for expressing my true feelings.
However I would have hugged my parents to death in gratitude so almost all would have been forgiven.
I had one of these as a kid- the camera came in a kit that included a small 6" black and white CRT television specifically for use with these. I have a feeling the camera sensor on these degrades over time, because so long as you used the proper high-bias cassettes- the image quality was decently acceptable; AND indoor filming was just fine. I did almost ALL of my filming in my parents home, in the basement usually, and there were no windows; with just average lighting. Nearly all my footage was good, and yes the motor hum was pronounced- but not loud enough to overpower somebody speaking at a normal taking volume. More than likely the cassettes back in '87 were of a higher quality- or at least the specific high-bias cassettes that were specified were of a higher quality back then. So yeah, I was 7 in 1987 when I got mine for Christmas, and I used it until it broke (before the next Christmas) lol. Ahh, we had way cooler toys back in the 80's!
I wanted one of these back in the day because I thought it was amazing that they accomplished this on a cheap audio compact cassette.
Apparently it needed chrome tapes, so not that cheap!
Those cameras were not too bad, it was a toy camera, my cousin used it because it was small and you didn't need to use 8mm film which had to be developed. Also battery life didn't bother him because he had rechargeable ones. It's outdated, but he recorded fun videos at a mall.
my sister got one for xmas in the late 80s for a kids toy it was pretty cool and we found we could cheat by using the power adapter and running it through the vcr and just recording on it it was a lot of fun for the day
So did you hack the exposure?
wonder if you (or her) might still have those cassettes, videos¿
That was very clever, and sure beats the 3-1/2 minute video you can record on a cassette tape!!
I did exactly that too! It was fun.
@@sailaab I also wonder how degraded the tape gets at that speed, and what would happen in the circumstance the tape got eaten.
I think what was particularly cool about the PXL-2000 was that even though it was poor quality, it showed how you could re-purpose a regular audio tape for video recording. This also made the camera smaller for kids. There's just something special about re-engineering one type of product into another. It's a real life illustration of how there is often more than one way to accomplish something. In a word, it's call recombinance. It can spark new ideas, help spawn improvements, or as in this case, just get people to see things differently.
Considering the fact it records from a normal audio cassette, this thing is actually pretty impressive!
Ah reminds me of when i was 6 and just record my bumhole.
what
same
what
what
what
The 8 Bit Guy but every time he says "however" the quality drops
he only says however one time in this video according to the transcript
I read an article about it some time ago. We may laugh, we may make jokes, but what we really need to remember is that Fisher Price had achieved something that everyone at that time thought was impossible - it was almost a "proof of a concept" that simple video can be squeezed onto a regular audio cassette (a bit like video vinyl records - look them up on Techmoan's page). And they achieved it, with price constraints set for the project. As the 8-Bit Guy says, it was 10 times cheaper than a "real" video camera.
And it was a TOY. There was no aspiration to replace consumer market av equipment. They were available to play with in the shops, their parameters/limitations were clearly stated, so nobody tried to 'con' parents into thinking they are buying a real thing. Just like simple tape recorders or cameras you could buy in toy shops.
We also need to put things in perspective and look at what was available in general at that time - like first hand-held 'affordable' ($500?) scanners, producing a tiny strip of 1-bit image...
In late 80s the common and affordable way of capturing motion picture was still to buy Super8 cine camera which, when recording sound, would still set you back hundreds of dolars (not to mention cost of stock and processing) but was way cheaper than a real videocam.
So, to summarise: HATS OFF to brilliant guys who did it!
7:07 : of course Techmoan has a device like that
Roel Tijskens ya think? Lol
Spot on. Got one for Christmas in 1987 and it was a fun toy .... But definitely a toy. I think we *MIGHT* have copied some footage to VHS at some point (it'd be sitting at my mom's house if so) but I'm sure it wasn't very much. As for it's appetite for batteries ... I normally used it plugged into a wall (further limiting it's usefulness 😜)
Derek Weber WHY DOES IT SAY YOU COMMENTED 8 HOURS AGO WHEN THE VIDEO WAS RELEASED 50 MINUTES AGO???!!
onlineetti 1 because he is a patron supporter. All of the videos, at least recently, are posted for patron supports first then the general public.
onlineetti 1 he is supporting David in patrion
If you support him on Patreon you can see some releases a bit before they're out for the general public as well. :)
Derek Weber Increasing the uselessness I think.
A person sees an alien,Bigfoot and a ghost in their backyard all together at the same time.They run to their closet,their hand shakes in excitement as it hovers over a studio quality 4k camera,the newest smartphone and the Fisher Price PXL-2000.Take a wild guess as to which one they pick!
The Fisher Price PXL-2000?
3MJB Studios -obviously
+Saud Siddiqui Any studio 4K camera
But what's weird is that there are phones that record in 4K that are cheaper than the camera you mentioned
The movie Nadja used the PXL to produce the Vampire point of view shots. I think one or two other films might have used it.
I still have mine, I bought it on clearance brand new in the store and used it quite a bit. Great for outside recording especially on nice sunny days it has a good picture. Inside requires a lot of lighting behind the camera onto the subject. I was able to record my child's birthday party at showbiz pizza place and it came out well. For something that is over thirty years old now it works pretty well for what it is. Thanks for the video and keep them coming. Doug
Wow. The 8 bit guy is uploading like every 2 days! keep up the good work!
He quit his job and went full time you tube.
But that does not detract from the fact that he does a great job! I mean, he does not only upload videos very often, but they are very good :)
He went full TH-cam? Never go full TH-cam.
im so happy to see that you and Techmoan keep on collaborating. I hope it keeps going.
My time on TH-cam has been exclusively dedicated to your videos and techmoan’s videos for the past month. They’re just so good and well put together on items and topics that interest me. I get to watch you guys tinker will all these electronics I’d love to buy, but can’t quite justify spending the money on
I wanted one SOOOO badly as a kid... thank you, this makes me feel so good that I didn't have one :-)
"Captain, we're receiving a distress signal from the far side of the galaxy".
"Put it on screen".
...Gets this... :-)
Love it 👍🏻
YEESSSS!!!! same idea with me
There might be a cause as to why your PXL-2000 has such a dark picture--there's a small square light-blue-colored piece of plastic about 1/8" by 1/8" square that is fitted over the camera's CCD pickup, behind the round movable daylight/indoor "faux-lens" filter. The blue square of plastic acts at a "cut" filter to optically attenuate natural ambient infrared lignt, since the PXL's CCD is a bit more sensitive to IR than most other CCDs (which are all sensitive to IR to one point or another).
Over time, this blue cut filter outgasses a residue that builds up on its surface, and may be the cause of why the camera reproduces such a dark picture. To solve this, disassemble the PXL until you can remove the turnable daylight/indoor filter, then you'll have access to the CCD and it's microlens, and the light blue IR filter mounted in front of it. Carefully pry out the filter square (you can use a small tweezers or pin), and clean the cut filter with a glass cleaner like Windex. Let it dry, snap it back in, and bob's your uncle--you should get a brighter and better picture.
Another cause of the dark picture is kind of an obvious one--the round turnable daylight/indoor filter is probably in the daylight position (the area of the filter that has a mirror finish). I've found that with my PXL that it's not necessary, that decent exposure is obtainable by using the clear "indoor" portion of the filter at all times.
Couldn’t find the right video but I’ve been dying to get my 6 month old nephew the MEOWsic piano that was featured on your channel. It’s been the highlight of my first Christmas gift buying experience so I’d like to thank you! I’d been teasing about getting one since my sister found out she was having a baby and i owe it all to you!
Saw this camera in Archive 81 on Netflix and had to rewatch this video :D
We had one of these as kids and we freakin' loved it. Yeah the quality was terrible but for a bunch of 6-10 year olds in the mid 80's, just being able to record video was novelty enough to be worth it.
My brothers and I had one of these when we were kids in the '80s. It was definitely a toy then, and easily one of the most extravagant toys we ever had. That being said... it was a toy, and even in the '80s, nobody considered it to be a real video camera. We actually used and enjoyed it for years. I do recall the quality being bad, but not quite so bad as being showcased in this video. I wonder how much of that is due to decades of degradation of the units used for this TH-cam video, or if I'm remembering the quality being better than it actually was.
As for batteries, we mostly ran ours off a power adapter, and rarely used alkaline batteries in it. We may have used rechargeable batteries in it from time to time.
I think examining the PXL 2000 as if it were ever considered a viable video camera does a disservice to what an awesome toy it was.
I'm sure these cameras are just perfect, and all you need to make them look good is a nice pair of rose-tinted glasses.
We had so much fun with this as a kid. Yours is much louder than ours was. The low quality made your terrible props and special effects look great.
The image looks like the footage sent back from the moon in 1969.
Not far from the truth. That was slow scan video of 10 fps and 320 horizontal scan lines. It was then converted to normal NTSC by aiming a camera at a high persistence monitor due to the low frame rate.
These were kind of an early "hipster" fad... when I was in film school in the 90's, a lot of film students used them to make their student films. They liked the style. I didn't get it at the time - I wanted the best quality possible, so went in a totally different direction - but you can make a really stylized lo-fi look with these and sync up external sound with it in post. Anyway I still think they're basically useless for real shooting, but they are interesting, and they make for an interesting retrospective too.
the point is you can always downscale / downgrade hi-fi to lo-fi quite easily but it's impossible to do it the other way around especially with something so darn low quality as this!
I can totally see the reasoning: "If I can make something watchable using the crappiest tools possible, then when I use top-of-the-line tools the things I make should be gold." It's probably not a solid argument, but a lot of great art stems from, sometimes severe, technological limitations, so it's not a bad idea to try it out.
I remember they were all the rage in the art student movie/and music video maker crowd and hard to find. There were as far back only as about 10 years ago film fests based on these.
all cameras give a look. the higher quality the equipiment the easier it is to change that look. if people want this look, or want to challenge themselves to working with the limitations of this camera, I think that's a great idea. I don't like calling it "basically useless". it's a tool that can capture video, that's all the use it needs to have.
It would seem easier to record on tape rather than trying to develop 8mm film.
Wait, you didn't take it apart. What am I supposed to do now?
Maybe techmoan will take his apart?
The 8-Bit Guy maybe
Send one to Dave at EEVBlog.
Too expensive to send.
buy one and smash with hammer
I bought one of these back in 1988 because it was all I could afford when our first child was born and even with poor quality video it was better than nothing. We still have the camera and tapes but haven't tried to use it in many years. Thanks for the video about the camera.
had to check this camera out after seeing it in Article 81. Never knew this existed but awesome you could do video on a audio cassette!
Most amusing! :) I think this one is better suited as a wall mounted display piece. 😜
Anders Enger Jensen he didn't own it
adi paramartha Could I be talking about the product itself in general..? 😜
Nice music as always, Jensen
what the hell. It says the comment was written 12 hours ago on a video that was uploaded 1 hour ago.
Trokenking Thank you very much! :) I'm actually working on a remix/elaboration on the Atari Junk Keyboard theme right now. Stay tuned.
Considering what it was, the quality actually is better than one might expect.
i strongly agree.... the fact that any kind of video was recordable on the cassette tape .... is in my opinion a great feat in the 1980s
That's so cool. I never heard of a camcorder that recorded on audio cassettes. And yes, I remember when our family all chipped in around 1988 or 89 and bought an RCA camcorder. It was somewhere between $900 and $1000, as I remember. We still have all of the VHS tapes we took of the family, and our kids growing up, and I'm not in the process of transferring them all to hard drives, and backing them up to the cloud.
Oh man, I remember 1980 when father bought first VHS recorder. It was magic when I was able to record TV shows to the cassette. This has been so awesome time to live from 1967 to 2020. Almost all higher technology has been developed in this time period and I've been able to see and use part of that technology.
You are currently my favorite TH-camr. When I'm down I go watch one of your videos (I've literally seen all of them) even though I don't need to create a desk or have a Mac. Keep up the great work!
Pretty awesome proof of concept :D
ayy I didn't think I would see you here.
The great thing about the confineds of different tech that sets up different perimeters is it creates new genres. Think of the pinhole camera or early web videos that had to be very short or early twitter that limited the number of words... An interesting element of this camera was it was experimental and the randomness of some aspects like the bleed through from one shot to the next. This was not just a toy camera but a science project.
I love this channel, and although this video is now already 4 years old, being a vintage geek myself, I'm just here to say: I want this t-shirt!
The nostalgia of this camera lies in the fact that I received it as my Christmas present from Santa the year it was released
8-bit Guy's been killing it! Keep up the good work :)
I remember when this came out. It was hard to find and very popular. Lots of people made very clever little movies with it and it was used for a lot of art projects. I never had one, but I wish I had.
This was not the 8-Bit Guy/Techmoan collab I expected, but it is one that's much appreciated.
Review the Gameboy camera and printer!
Reviewed. It was an excellent video (though the AVGN made it hilarious)...
Well, these sacrifices are really big. But still it's a camcorder that records video to audio cassette!
When are we going to see a "found footage" movie recorded with a camera like this ;)
After barely 10 seconds, he says "Fisher-Price" - and that was all I needed to hear! After all, I've only ever heard that brand name in connection with kid's toys.
Then I scrolled comments and.. yep: negative pre-judgment totally validated!
I will say though, I think it's great that so many obscure, or even failed, music and video formates have been tried out over the decades.
I found one of these cameras at a flea market in the early 2000's, so I bought it because of the hype. The one I had (it might have been the second model, I really don't remember actually) still had all of the original tapes, which curiously enough had someone's home movies on them from the 80s. I'm pretty sure they ran longer than 4 minutes. Not a lot longer, but longer. Obviously you'll get more mileage out of say a 90 min. tape vs. a 60 min., and it's possible the PXL tapes were deliberately longer for that purpose. I recall us taking it to a party and trying to film (total disaster), so we might have used the high quality AA batteries or something, because the batteries lasted a few rounds. But ya- the microphone picks up the sounds of the mechanism, so every piece of footage has a grinding noise in the background. The home movies on the PXL tapes that were in the damn bag were filmed outdoors and looked way better than the footage we took on lower quality tapes. I feel like this product lead people to believe they could use any tapes, when in fact Fisher Price wanted them to buy the PXL ones.
*_This is the video camera that NASA used to record captured aliens_*
moon landing was recorded with it as well
теперь понятно почему видео с пришельцами, такое убогое :)
Kubrick did not know he needed slow scan TV protocol and did by standart one.
@Nigel Cam Yes, NASA decided to "recycle" their original tapes. Not because of fake landing conspiracy bollocks as the flat-earther mob would have you believe, but because Ampex tape was bloody expensive back then. We lost a lot of classic TV shows for the same reason.
I totally had one of these as a kid. When we got it for Christmas, it came with a 5 inch black and white tv. Wow. I'll have to look for mine.
These things were frickin’ awesome!! I believe there are still fringe groups of artists that have festivals of short films made from these things still.
I've never heard of *video* being recorded to a compact cassette! This is AMAZING! :-) And Fisher Price as well?! This amazing little thing is a children's toy? Who cares about all the limitations... ;-)
Exactly well said ....
Till this time , I always thought it was for Audio and limited to such ...
But this is indeed a technical milestone....
You can record video on vinyl and 💿
It was also featured in the Richard Linklater film, "Slacker".
Yeah, I was scanning through the comments to see if this had been brought up. That's a great film, and yeah, the Pixelvision footage in it is definitely interesting!!
Ive been watching a lot of these videos lately. The nostalgia has been so overwhelming that I've shed a few tears... I miss those times so much.
Same
I loved the use of this camera in Linklater's Slacker, and it's legit footage too.
So 8bitguy is a T-Rex talking really fast then
T-Rex on Helium talking really fast, yes. :)
That's why he likes prehistoric gadgets like this
No one could have ever finished this video yet and it already has a dislike.
Your videos are amazing though, keep it up!
I had one when I was a kid...I think my parents found it on clearance or something. Honestly, it was pretty cool back in the day for a young kid. I remember the exposure being much better on the one I had and it was decent outdoors and also did work inside. I wonder if it's just dried up capacitors.
Got one Christmas 1987, 3rd grade. Still have it, but the TV that came with it long gone. I used the TV way more just as a TV and even for my NES