In this essay I will tell you about 15-30 years of home video history that you have never heard about from anyone, anywhere. It covers entire categories of technology you never knew existed, and completely defies the most common conceptions about what happened when in the history of consumer videotape.

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 (https://patreon.com/gravisvids) or ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/gravis)

Thank you so much for watching!


Support my channel:
https://patreon.com/cathoderaydude
https://ko-fi.com/cathoderaydude

Tech Connections' Betamovie video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uZ13I2zvfM
Here Come The Videofreex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIv_KCS-0R8

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