Back in the day we had the Fisher-Price PXL2000, which was a toy video recorder that recorded video to a cassette tape. This gem which came out in 1987, held an ordinary cassette audio tape that would store both video and sound. The PXL-2000 would hold 11 minutes of footage by moving the tape at a high speed, nearly 9X normal cassette playback speed. This was my little brother's toy, but we all shared it in my family.
The PXL would record at roughly 16.875 in/s (429 mm/s), vs. a standard cassette's speed of 1.875 in/s (48 mm/s) on a C90 CrO2 (chromium dioxide) cassette. The higher speed is necessary because video requires a wider bandwidth than standard audio recording. (In magnetic tape recording, the faster the tape speed, the more data can be read/written per second, i.e. higher bandwidth.)
We made lots of movies with this technology, including attack of the giant chickens, and many stop motion movies with Lego blocks. VHS recorders while available at the time were not considered toys at that time, verses now kids often get $1000 iPhones for xmas, and computers. This product was expensive for it’s time ($179 dollars, which in 2017 dollars would be around $383 dollars), in my family that was our whole Christmas budget for a family of 5, but if you saved your birthday money, and spent summers doing chores, and mowing lawns you could save up to buy things.
The PXL would record at roughly 16.875 in/s (429 mm/s), vs. a standard cassette's speed of 1.875 in/s (48 mm/s) on a C90 CrO2 (chromium dioxide) cassette. The higher speed is necessary because video requires a wider bandwidth than standard audio recording. (In magnetic tape recording, the faster the tape speed, the more data can be read/written per second, i.e. higher bandwidth.)
We made lots of movies with this technology, including attack of the giant chickens, and many stop motion movies with Lego blocks. VHS recorders while available at the time were not considered toys at that time, verses now kids often get $1000 iPhones for xmas, and computers. This product was expensive for it’s time ($179 dollars, which in 2017 dollars would be around $383 dollars), in my family that was our whole Christmas budget for a family of 5, but if you saved your birthday money, and spent summers doing chores, and mowing lawns you could save up to buy things.
