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