Frank Hirsinger
The Video8 Story
A small cassette that changed the video world
1. Introduction
Welcome to my Video8 homepage on SONY V8 VCRs in the PAL system. In this 62 chapter story I refer to all V8 and Hi8 VCR models developed mainly by SONY from 1985 to 2005. As VCRs have mostly disappeared from our everyday life, I will also try to explain some lesser known common facts about that technology. Video Cassette Recorders (VCR) were developed for several different types of video formats, like e.g. VHS, Betamax, U-Matic, Video8, DV, Video2000 and some rare types which could not really get established in the consumer or professional market, like MicroMV. All cassette systems have the advantage of protecting the sensitive tapes, compared to some of the earlier open reel videotape machines from the 60ies and 70ies.
The Video8 format with the V8 cassette was invented around 1984 and soon marketed as the first miniaturized video system capable of recording TV-shows and movies of up to 4hours on one cassette. I was among the early buyers of a Sony V8 equipment consisting of a CCD-V8 camcorder, a EV-S700 PCM-VCR and RM-E100, a video editing computer for analog cutting and dubbing of video sequences from Cam to VCR. For 20 years I have been repairing those devices. Here I report most of my knowledge and experiences of that system. With the start of my instagram account “HiFrankHi” I have reported this story already in German. Because of many international readers and viewers this updated and new arranged English version also makes sense. For those who prefer more continuity between text and photos I have added much more infos in a new homepage at the Jimdo platform: https://video8-plus-hi8-infos.jimdosite.com/
Another bilingual story about SONY's Video8 developments I updated until 2020 at www.1ivanka.de - my former business homepage, which I also used for promoting my former Ebay business account 1ivanka.
The table below lists the SONY Video8 VCRs and some more facts about them such as technical as well as marketing infos like their list price or their ability to cope with the formats V8, Hi8 or Digital8 (D8). In the coming chapters the video8 history and developments are reported. All VCRs listed in this table and several other devices like camcorders and some other brands are presented and discussed. Chapters with a red design are of general interest, like that on SONY's VCR terminology or on PCM. I am referring to 3 generations of SONY V8 VCRs. To make it easy to distinguish the different types of consumer and professional VCRs, those of the first generation are described here with a blue background, those of the second generation in green and the VCRs of the third generation have a purple background. That color code was also selected for the table of contents (see photo).
