Video8 - Sony's forgotten ambitions & the crazy Walkman Compo

If you're old enough to remember videotape, you more than likely think of it as a camcorder format, and even if it were, if sewing it your way had been much more, you would have eliminated the VHS tape and it has taken over everything the home video recorder market, so that's what I'll talk about at the beginning of the video, going a little bit deeper into the history of the video eight, but then I'll move on to do a demo and show you some Eight video tapes are playing on a couple of teams and one of them in particular is a fascinating little device.

I've never seen it before. I bought it about a month ago searching online. It seems to be particularly rare. It's also a little

crazy

, nothing like it has ever been done before or since, so I hope that's reason enough for you to stick around and watch the rest of the video, so let's get on with it before we can talk about the video. First we have to do it. go back a little further and talk about B the most because Sony introduced it in 1975, it was designed to be a home format and cassettes were supposed to be about the size of a paperback book.

Sony had developed an earlier videocassette format called u-matic, but it was not really suitable for home use, it was also very expensive, although it later found favor with the streaming community, so Betamax was supposed to be a standard of the industry. Sony got the other manufacturers at the time to demonstrate them. I passed on the technology to them and tried to get them to sign up so there would be a home video cassette format, but unfortunately the deception was a step because JVC and Matsushita had seen Sony's demos instead of agreeing to become partners, instead they left and came back with a rival system called VHS and thus began the battle of Betamax versus VHS, now VHS was cheaper to produce because the internal mechanisms were less complicated and also there were a large number of different manufacturers producing VHS machines, which reduced the price practically everywhere. the others stuck with Betamax after a while, so when this catalog came out in 1984, VHS was already on top.

If you look at the list here you can see that there is only one that beats a box machine mentioned, in fact there is a V mm. the machine underneath that too and everything else is a VHS now, while Sony continued to produce beats abouts machines for several years after that, I think you can effectively say that the war ended in July 1988 when Sony introduced their first VHS for that machine, but behind the scenes Sony had planned to replace Betamax much earlier, just a few years after Peter Max's arrival on the market, they were already working on their next generation format and in 1979 they entrusted their engineers with the task of produce a video tape. the same size as an audio cassette tape with the intention of developing a next generation VCR for the 1980s and that's exactly what video was supposed to be, it hit the market in 1985 the eighth the title refers to The 8 millimeter wide tape inside the cassette and the overall size of the cassette is of course much smaller than a VHS tape and if Sony had had their way instead of it being an ax versus VHS beat battle, They wanted a battle of video 8 versus another VHS.

The technology Sony had been working on at the same time was the CCD, this small chip would allow for much smaller video cameras, so they combined the CCD with the video tape mechanism and released the first products using video tape. 8 which were a range of camcorders there was the CCD v8 which was a traditional camcorder that offered recording and playback and then a smaller device that could now only record, of course if you have a machine that can only record you will need something to play those tapes, so it also launched a range of home video recorders. 8.

Sony's plan for video aids was to use video cameras as a Trojan horse. People bought video cameras for their compact size and then, when it came time to replace their home video recorder, they decided to opt for a video tape machine instead of a VA S1. Initially the Saudis were very optimistic about the video potential eight products at the bottom of the screen here says that as a pioneer in this field Sony hopes to establish market leadership by developing and marketing a wide range of innovative and attractive products, why didn't this happen? There are a couple of reasons: the machines were very expensive for home recorders, especially compared to VHS, but also the recording capacity and time were much less than VHS. look at this screen here, that's buddy and NTSC, if we look at the poll numbers in the short right game mode, which is normal at 90 minutes, I think that's the longest table you could get in the PAL region, but look below in NTSC than 90 minute table US 126 minutes, so the recording time is even longer if you are in the NCSC region, you can now watch it in the NCRC regions instead of choosing to sell a tape of 126 minutes, they took a bit off and rounded it up to 120 minutes, which is equivalent to 85 minutes in PAL regions, but that's the maximum length of technology you can buy, of course, it will record longer in long play mode, but you will lose some of the quality. 120 minutes is fine for a camcorder, but not so bright for a home. video recorder, so length and cost are concerns, but the next one is perhaps an even bigger problem for video aids.

As soon as it was released, JVC released their own compact version of the VHS tape called VHS. Let's see, let's take a moment. to compare a video with VHS, see starting with VHS, see the tape that is used in here is the same as our standard VHS tape, which means that the cassette is quite thick, but it also means that it has the great advantage that it can play this tape on a normal VHS machine with the appropriate adapter; However, the disadvantage is that the maximum recording time is only 45 minutes in the PAL region on one of these cassettes while of course the eight video tape is much thinner meaning that camcorders can be made smaller than they use and Of course, we have the maximum recording time of 90 minutes here in the UK.

One advantage that Video Eight has is the sound. The sound quality is much better than standard analog VHS tracks. Now VHS Hi-Fi was introduced in 1984 and if you use a VHS - recording, compare it to video and tape, they will sound more or less the same, but VHS high fives don't tend to be used in camcorders, so if you remove the ease of playback at the moment and just think about recording video on a camcorder, a tape pretty much had the advantage that you could record for longer, it was smaller which meant you could potentially have a smaller camcorder and the quality of the sound was much better.

However, one disadvantage of that smaller sized tape is that it was a little more prone to failure, which led Sony to introduce things like an anti-static cap on their cassettes, so in the following years the video 8 became a successful camcorder format, but unfortunately for Saudi Arabia, that format did not migrate to the home as they had originally planned for Video 8 to become a replacement for VHS. People were very happy to keep their camcorders and VCRs separate, so they thought they were going to have a battle between 8V and VHS. It ended up being video 8 versus the VHS. in the field of camcorders, which over the years changed to high quality VHS and no, Sony really dislikes video 8 was not the video format of the 1980s, although that was the old man's job VHS from 1976, the format they thought had ripped them off.

There is a legacy of Saudi

ambitions

for video 8 to become a full format that not everyone is aware of and it is a pre-recorded video and a cassette. These are all music titles which will of course take advantage of the Excellent sound quality that Video 8 provides but of course you can also get children's cartoons or full length Hollywood movies. Now I find them fascinating. There's always something really attractive that catches the eye in a packaging design that you used to see in a larger format, for example a VHS Tape, but then it got scaled down to something this size and it's a nice little setup.

You have a cardboard box. You have this plastic box inside. Everything is fine. I would have to say if the titles I purchased on VHS were available. in video 8 during the 80s and 90s, which I had the appropriate video aid equipment at home, it is more than likely that I still had those tapes now, while the large and voluminous VHS collection I amassed during that time I unfortunately had than to give it away. when I started collecting DVDs in the late 1990s, and if you're wondering what I was pointing out on those tapes, it would surely show that the first Lethal Weapon was in NTSC, but the last two, including Return of the Jedi, are in Powell format , but what am I going to reproduce them in?

How about one of these? This is something I really wanted at the time it came out in 1989 as you can see it weighed 799 pounds ninety nine well at least it is. not 800 but still at that price I couldn't afford to buy a new inflation calculator which goes down to over £2000, unlike some of the later video Walkmans this one had a built in TV tuner so you could watch TV, but I was also able to record on the TV so you could change the timing of shows in Washington later on your trip. However, you were only able to go about 50 minutes before the battery died, but that would have been enough time to play one of these now.

This is a video magazine nowadays, you wouldn't think of watching a video on demand on your mobile device as long as you have reception, however with this you have to accept whatever they have chosen for you, in this case it is New. York goes to better supper club movies etc. and you get a total of 30 minutes on tape and this lasts about six or seven issues. You can see here that you can subscribe and you will buy monthly issues, so every two. months, you get thirty minutes and it will cost you $6.99 each, but back to the playback equipment, unfortunately, it's almost impossible to find the first working video Walkman.

Derrida, they all seem to have self-destructed so I bought a video Walkman from the 1990s now this one is hi-8 compatible it's just a player you can plug cables into to capture video or stream it to a TV and it uses a cell lithium battery on the back. I bought one separately as You can see it sticks out quite a bit but when I fully charge it it says it will give me around 800 minutes of playtime so it's a small improvement over the first model but yeah it's just a simple model , there is no recording. There's no TV tuner here, all we can do is put a tape on and play it.

The idea with these laser machines is to actually play tapes that you have recorded on your camcorder. I think this is the biggest screen they put up. a hi-8 video Walkman now disrupts a later standard that has a higher resolution of 400 lines compared to the 250 or so of the original video format 8, which is about the same as VHS before playing anything, let's just see what titles were available In the eight millimeter format, initially the first releases in 1985 in Japan were all music-based titles because the tapes were not long enough to hold a feature film, but in 1986 longer tapes were developed and Sony He got some film studies.

Ironically, the main advantage that 8 millimeters had over VHS, which was size, was a disadvantage in retail because retailers were worried about stocking movies on a tape so small that it could be easily stolen from the shelves. and furthermore they were no longer particularly interesting to stock formats regardless of size, so, with the exception of some Sony stores, larger music retail outlets were added. The 8 millimeter was retired to mail order and in 1991 it seems to be the best place to buy. The eight millimeter tapes were from Columbia Harris, which if you don't know, tended to specialize in end-of-the-line products, so how many titles appeared in the eight millimeter format?

I'm not entirely sure I've seen some numbers around 1800 of the 1990s though, I don't know if that includes the Japanese releases. I don't think we'll ever know the final number. The three titles I have here came out in the 1980s, so I gave myself a little challenge. I wanted to see what was the most recent movie that I could get to the millimeter but I managed to find this virtuosity now this movie came out in 1995 from the cinema but if we look at the tape inside we can see that the copyright of the tape is from 1996.

This is the movie latest that we can find in retail packages. However, I have others. These films were released in 2000 and 2001.If you just look at these two, you'll notice. something to the right here I'm sure some of the viewers will know what these two words mean and may have guessed where the tapes came from by reading them, but I'll turn it around and this might reveal what it says and that's what it says Home Hunter, what does that mean? Well, of course, it means they come from an airline. In this case, no, now it may look like they are being hacked, but they won't have been, it will just be a very small amount.

The production is probably just these two tapes produced for this particular airline with subtitles. I looked and I know they're online the other day and it looks like they only have one plane in their fleet right now, but they have a couple more on the way. online soon, but I'm sure they wouldn't have worried about having photocopied inserts on their tapes. Now I'm a little more interested in this one, not because of the movie, although it is a great movie and it's all because it's on high. 8 As far as I know, no movies have been released in the hi-8 format, so I'll be interested in trying this one out because hi-8 is supposed to have a resolution roughly equal to that of a laserdisc with around 400 lines.

Now there was one thing I really wanted to find there, that's where the airlines stopped. using eight millimeter tape, so I found this post online from 2013 and here you can see that Delta Airlines says they are still using video tape in in-flight entertainment systems in some of their fleets around 2013 and a guy from American Airlines It says it will switch from eight-millimeter systems before the end of the year, but some planes will continue to use them until mid-2015, when they are retired. In my case, about nineteen years ago I stopped buying new releases of movies on videotape, but I did little.

I know that if I got on a plane in 2015, I could have been watching my inflight entertainment that came from a video tape eight and it's quite possible that there are still some airlines, some of the smaller ones, that still use the equipment, I can understand why they didn't bother spending the money to upgrade it because on a screen this size the video quality is totally acceptable, it's only when you increase the size that it starts to look a little soft, now this particular player doesn't have built in speakers, you have You have to use a headphone jack if you want to listen to it and also look at the bottom right of the screen.

I've got five hundred and twenty minutes left on that battery and it's getting a little low, so what? I will do that. I'll capture video of some of these tapes now and put it here so you can see the proper quality. We are manipulating the homicide mile. It's hot. Okay, you write, begging you to take our time, both leading by example. I don't. I don't want to play too much of that for copyright reasons, but I'm sure you can see that the video quality is about the same as the VHS, but let's try this Chocolat tape now because if anything, it should there be higher quality at a high level. tape, but as you can see it's not and that's because it's not a high h recording, it's just a standard 8 video recording, but using a high and blank tape is a bit disappointing.

I was hoping to get the only high eight. movie that exists, but this time it doesn't turn out that way, as you can see, it is actually a little softer, that must be because it has been played many times on that plane. Now I did have a video, a camcorder in the 1990s and this is one of the texts that I recorded on it again. Now, of course, it's in PAL format, so if I play it on this NTSC machine, this is what happens, so I've got a couple of PAL tapes that I'd like to try to play them and I'm going to play them on something a little different.

You watch all the videos. Pretty similar Wortman design. You have the tape player on the bottom, the folding screen on the top and they are carried out with this design. all the way up to HD V, which is a high definition DV format, but what I'm going to show you now is something a little different. This is the video

compo

sition. This configuration came out in 1990, which is just the following year. the launch of the first Walkman video, but this is a completely different idea, what we have here is a modular system where you buy your stereo video recorder and then add the parts you need to be able to have an LCD screen and a TV tuner and you can also buy a small video camera that connects to the video recorder via a cable, which of course means that your video camera can be a little smaller and lighter.

As a result, I don't have the camera now. but I have the video recording of a TV tuner and the LCD screen, so I'm going to show you how the three things work and how they all fit together, so put the TV tuner on the bottom first if you want. use it with others and then put the video recorder on top and those things just hole them with this screw here and then on the bottom here. I'm just going to show you that it has a backup battery that's going to be for the TV tuner and the clock setting that's there and if we just turn back here, you can see we've got a lot of plugs and outlets on those

crazy

ones, but what I'm going What to do is plug that in there, so that's the TV tuner. going into the recorded video that's where you put the camera if you had one of those and then this cable goes to the headphone cable there so those two things are now joined together this cable here the A/V out cable goes to the TV screen so this is a pretty long cable and on the other end I'm going to plug it through the LCD screen so you can see this cable just pops up on the back of that plug these are all proprietary plugs , so if you don't have one of these cables, you may have some trouble finding the right one, so the other thing we need to do is connect some power to it.

I don't have a battery for it, but I have this adapter here. It goes in place of the battery and simply clips onto the side of the device. Of course, the idea of ​​this is that it's supposed to be small and lean, so you can run it all on one battery, but what I'm doing here. I'm going to run mains through the charger and then into the wall supply, so let's turn it on and have a look, looking at the top of the screen here you can see we've got quite a few. power buttons on the left, if we slide it in we can see the screen turns on, then we'll just go through the other buttons here we have the on/off data and the counter reset, you can see I can turn on the screen. there and then at the top these are the transport controls behind there on the right we have a brightness wheel and then if we turn it on the back here there is a dial to adjust the color on this side we have a base and volume beggar and on this side where the headphones come out again, this thing doesn't have a speaker, we have a tripod screw mount on the bottom and then two rubber feet so the thing can stand like this, maybe you could use that tripod mount to mount it in a car or something on the back of a headrest or you could just use this little bracket on the back now the bottom element here the tuner has an infrared remote control, we have its own little power switch There too, behind from this tab, here are the controls to use it as a normal recorded video, so you can set the time for the recordings, which of course will record into that tuner and then on the right side here we can cycle through the channel. then on the right you can actually see them, but there are a few more buttons to set the clock and do a couple of settings on that tuner, so just turn it over and take a look at the other side that you can see on the back. here we have the antenna input and video output, headphones again on the bottom, some switches on the top as well.

It's surprising how many switches there are, one that goes between the camera and the tuner, there's a control switch socket I should say. There's another switch behind, way behind that main recording mode, short player, long play, also video out for the one on top, it's a completely mAb device, in fact I think I counted 40 individual dial buttons and switch on this device between this screen and these. two

compo

nents here completely bad but also absolutely brilliant because we don't make things like this anymore for a good reason, we also have a little LCD screen on the top for counting, so we have buttons on the left here for the video.

The transport controls, which are of course duplicated on the LCD screen, are just a completely crazy little device from Sony. Sonjia is the best thing he ever did. They just did what they wanted and I doubt you've ever seen one of these before. I know he hadn't done it now. It is particularly difficult. making videos from our old video equipment because it doesn't usually work, this thing works luckily, although I can tell he's not very happy with it, it makes some humming and driving sounds so I think it's about to go away. but fortunately we have caught it from the sides, we will be able to make this video before it finally dies as you can see here.

This is a video I recorded in '97, that was my car at the time. mr2 I missed that car. very nice little car, although unfortunately it will be a junkyard by now and here I am in 1997. Now I was trying to do a bit of acting here and as you can see I'm not particularly good at it, but that was my video collection in the moment left I leave the performance to the Muppets now it's better that they do it seems a little better than I am the ejection mechanism of this video recorder is particularly elaborate the way it advances and then appears Of course, that will be keep it as compact as possible, but when you look here, the components are really crammed together, it's a wonder this works, but let's play a proper tape in there, so I've got Return of the.

Jedi here, one thing I will say: the video quality of this device is not as good as the last model I have, it is a little softer, a little off in places, but notice that I can control the tape using the controls on the screen so you can put your video recorder in your backpack and just take out this screen and wash the film from there. Also notice at the bottom right it says long play, so this tape was recorded in long play, so the video quality again will be a bit reduced from a standard play tape, so for Bach, watch out, you come with me.

I'm not going to leave you here, but to save you, okay, so I hope you enjoyed this look at the tape of video 8, maybe you. I've gathered a couple of facts about things I didn't have before, for example, most people think that video tape 8 was just for camcorders and didn't realize that it ever came home in the form of recorders. of video and especially in pre-recorded films and in particular how long those films continued to be released after the format apparently disappeared and then it is also as if it was a state of life after death that continued to be used in in-flight entertainment until very recently, but even if all that was old news to you, I hope you enjoy watching the Sony compo video in action, not only does it have a strange name, it's an even stranger device, get dongs once, but that it's all for the burnt bow as always thanks for looking at you and oh wow he has done it now what's it about now said Betamax what's wrong with that bothers people who pronounce it beta buggs but the letters are pronounced B as in I I'd rather not be talking about something else right now, it depends on where you come from, do you know Greg, from Australia, yes, he calls him pop from time to time, he looks after the computers at school, yes, have you ever heard him say the word data?

It's a shame there was a war with Barrett when the adducts flooded at school and she lost his daughter. He does not have kids. Well, not since the flood. No, you don't understand. He pronounces the word data like floor data. That destroyed the computers or Flippy Neck. I bet you're wondering why I sent you flowers now.