I was going to send this just to Graham, but I thought it may interest some
of the people on the list who might like to know more about the background
to the 'camcorder wars' of the late 80's & early 90's.
Graham wrote:
| Sony did develop DV but only after they signed up all the
| other camcorder
| manufacturers, so although it was a totally new, (backward -
| incompatible)
| format the future looked OK as all or most manufacturers were
| going with it.
| So, in a way Sony have sucked us the consumer and the other
| manufacturers
| in, in a big way with DV.
Yes, but Sony are not the first to have done this. Indeed, with camcorders
they wished to avoid another damaging VHS/Betamax style format war and
attempted to introduce 8mm as a the standard back in the early 80's. They
believed they had got everybody's agreement for this when they demonstrated
the prototypes. Something like 127 consumer electronics & peripherals
manufacturers (all the major ones including JVC) signed up to be registered
for production of 8mm equipment for the consumer market.
Although Sony invented the 8mm format, they were willing to license
everybody to produce it (undoubtedly at a price). Thus, it was most
people's intention for it to be the standard for consumer camcorders.
Brimming with confidence after winning the VHS/Betamax war, it was
Matsushita (JVC/Panasonic) who strayed from the 'standard' and decided to
quietly continue development of the compact version of their 1970's 3/4 inch
VHS technology (VHS-C). It was relaunched in direct competition with 8mm
under the rather misleading promise of complete compatibility with VHS home
decks (tapes needed an adaptor to play in the decks). Moreover, Matsushita
never produced any 8mm equipment of their own.
Having two types of camcorders in the shops confused consumers and directly
lead to another JVC/Sony format war. Most of the non Matsushita-owned
manufacturers went with Sony and 8mm. In terms of the UK market, at least,
even though it was generally agreed that 8mm was the better format (slightly
better picture, much better sound, much longer recording times, smaller &
more stylish cameras), VHS-C continued to take an equal share of the
consumer compact format market for some time.
After a few years, Sony licensed some smaller manufacturers to build clones
of its older models. This had the dramatic effect of flooding the market
with many more & cheaper 8mm models. Belatedly, JVC, Panasonic (and by now
Mitsubishi) produced more models on to the market which were also quite
stylish. But the damage had been done and 8mm had gained a significant
market lead, helped by the fact that the consumer had wised up to the fact
that camcorders were easy to connect to a tv or video and therfore did not
need to share any compatibility with VHS tapes. Moreover the camcorders did
not use prerecorded tapes and so people did not have to go with the
preferred format of the movie houses distribution companies. Actually, for
a time Sony did sell a limited range of prerecorded titles, intended for use
on their home 8mm decks, but they were expensive and people couldn't see
much advantage over VHS titles which were by now everywhere. I see a
simlilarity with prerecorded MiniDisc here. [See, I managed to get a
reference to MD in eventually !! ]
Later, both camps produced enhanced versions of their formats: Hi-band 8mm
(Hi8) and Super VHS Compact (SVHS-C), claiming backwards compatibility with
previous tapes. They were, and continue to be, sold at a premium in
parallel with the low band formats.
| FWIW, Sony have also deliberately kept the optics/mechanics at a lower
| quality to limit the video quality to less than that from DV.
| The digi8 format is exactly the same digital format as DV and
| is capable of
| the same quality, but not with current models.
| I guess you could call it brilliant marketing.
| I reckon it stinks.....
|
I think Sony's main 'push' is still towards DV in the consumer market. They
see Digi8 as a way of selling new machines to 8mm/Hi8 'diehards' who would
otherwise not purchase, and therefore not take sales away from DV. I think
the slightly lower optics/mechanics of the current Digi8 machines
demonstrates that this is their intention. However, I think that the
relative popularity of the format has surprised even Sony. So in the
future, we may see quality at the high end which is equivalent to high end
DV. Who knows?
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