Did people actually really use and buy these things? How popular were they
>>109459316I was born in the mid-90s and much of my childhood was captured on those tapes. I think that we had a Panasonic or some other import brand. From watching myself at school functions, it looked like most of the families had one.
>>109459316They were everywhere right up until smartphones replaced them. When I was a kid in the mid 2000s a lot of people I knew had little digital camcorders, myself included. How else would all the early YouTube videos have been recorded?
>>109459316Hugely popular with families in the 90s. Anyone that was an elementary or HS student in the 90s remembers the back row of Dads all setup with their camcorders to record school plays, choir events, award ceremonies, etc.
>>109459316You know how I know you don't have kids?
>>109459316suburban middle/upper-middle class types had them but not everyone had a camcorder by any means.
>>109459400And all those tapes mightve been watched once, then never again
>>109459912such a waste of raw material that could have propped up the economy in deeper ways
>>109459912I think very few were ever watched. Most sat on a shelf for months or years and then were recorded over for some movie, tv show, or PPV.
>>109459400This + during weddings, birthdays, new years, sport events
I inherited one of these. Records 480i to MiniDV, digital tape cassettes.It has such a strong high-prod late analog-era TV aesthetic. Outdoor shots look like they could be from Y2K news or old Top Gear, etc.
>>109459316They were a somewhat luxury item in the 90's, by the 2000's you got small, relatively cheap ones and maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of middle class families had one.
>>109461516I'm sure the new millennium New Years was recorded by everyone with a camcorder just in case shit really did hit the fan.
>>109459316I have a home movie (which is what we called them) of my mom and my aunt both filming each other with their camcorders on vacation. They had each started filming without realizing that the other had, and ran into each other (not literally collided) and filmed each other filming. It was amusing. These were the bulky old VHS camcorders that you tested on the shoulder. I believe this was in 1988. We were a military family. Most officers' or NCOs' families seemed to have them, but in the late 80s, the prices were beyond the reach of many enlisted mens' budgets. So they were a middle class item, often a big Christmastime expenditure.There were always parents filming school events, Christmases, etc.
>>109461782>testedrested
>>109461590The quality of MiniDV really is excellent. Of course it has to be viewed on a CRT to really appreciate the quality.I bought a MiniDV camera in like 2012 for £1 at a table top sale, one of the best purchases I ever made. Footage taken with that thing, then viewed on 14inch CRT made it look as if the tv had been replaced with a window, looking onto a real scene.
fuck bros I'm glad we grew up with those instead of being uploaded onlinewe have to go back
>>109461870If your parents were young enough, they had all their tapes scanned and uploaded anyway.There were lots of services to scan camcorder film, even ones that just took the composite video feed from the camcorder player itself.
>>109459316We used this RCA Pro Edit recorder mostly, among others. You just place the standard VHS tape into it and then put that tape into the VCR to watch later.
>>109459316Extremely popular all through the 90s. My dad got one like the one at the bottom right in about 1991 or so. It's still in the basement somewhere, the battery still holds a charge, and you can still see stuff through the viewfinder when it's on, it just doesn't record any more.
>>109459912I have years worth of recordings that I watch once in while to reminisce.
