The Forgotten History of Home Video
117,892
Published 2020-11-05
You will link this video to other people during conversations. I made it for that.
This is the work of several years of investigation, research, and about 1200 source files culled from Google Books, Youtube, Pinterest, and dead eBay listings. I have cried over this project, I have started from scratch five times, I have put it down for a year and a half and picked it back up, I have wondered if people would find the unfinished project on my hard drive after I departed this mortal coil. But here I am, posting it, against all probabilities.
This is because the amount of ground covered is immense. There's thirty years of history in this video; I am summarizing a lot. I am ignoring certain unknowables, because this isn't Sega - nobody has 50 year old sales figures, and for a lot of these products I can barely prove they existed at all. Some of this stuff only exists in single low-res scans of magazine advertisements. So some of my claims here are inaccurate, and there are things I summarized very reductively, like the role film played. This is known, and unimportant.
The value of this documentary is in understanding that things did not begin when and how we usually think they did, and whether any of that matters is an exercise for anthropologists, because it's way beyond my capabilities. What I want you to know is that it could have.
If you enjoyed this, please fill up my eBay fund so I can buy this ancient equipment to show off on here, either on my Patreon (patreon.com/gravisvids) or ko-fi (ko-fi.com/gravis)
Thank you so much for watching!
Support my channel:
patreon.com/cathoderaydude
ko-fi.com/cathoderaydude
Tech Connections' Betamovie video: • Betamovie: Sony's Terrible (But Ingen...
Here Come The Videofreex: • Here Come the Videofreex
Sections:
00:00 Chapter: Premise
01:17 Forgotten etymology
03:05 Chapter: The Usual Story
03:15 Home movies
05:04 Needs of broadcasters
06:02 1951 - First video technology
06:34 1956 - Practical video
07:14 1969 - First cassette video format
09:45 1983 - First camcorder
08:35 1970s - Consumer videocassette
10:38 The incomplete timeline
12:05 Chapter: The Complete Story
12:17 1965 - First consumer video
13:43 1965 - First consumer video camera
14:35 1967 - Portable consumer video
16:05 1969 - Standardized consumer video
18:13 Mostly fixing the timeline
18:52 Popular portable video
20:59 The EIAJ standard
22:32 Chapter: Conclusion
23:22 Home video advantages
24:53 Counterculture / Videofreex
29:24 Cultural impact
29:57 Outro
All Comments (21)
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Whelp... you sir have just joined LGR, TechMoan, Technology Connections, and 8-bit guy as some of my favorite YouTube channels... thanks!
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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.
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This better get blessed by the algorithm
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The total gap in communal knowledge about the EIAJ plug is mindblowing
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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it feels like every single advertisement before like, 1995 was just some variation on "ey have you guys seen these broads, amirite fellas?"
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There’s a guy on YouTube 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
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this video is dry but you keep it in your mouth a while and it melts
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I love this. It went from a history lesson on tape to making me want to take down “the man”.
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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!
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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.
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Ok but that intro tag is fucking rad also the production quality on this is absolutely wild
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This is Technology Connexions-level quality. And yeah, it's high praise.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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As an A/V enthusiast, this video is an absolute blessing! Amazing work!
