The History of the Camcorder
I remember as a teenager, going to visit an Uncle of mine who had recently retired. He spent an afternoon demonstrating his new gadget too me, a portable video recorder. This thing was huge; it consisted of a camera (fairly large by modern standards) and a portable video recorder and TV tuner, about the size of a briefcase. Sure it was portable, but it was not useful in my eyes, as it was just not convenient.
Several years passed, and things started to get smaller, in 1982 two new technologies were released that paved the way for current hand held camcorders to evolve. Sony introduced the Betacam, the first really portable camcorder (well OK it was still big but it was a single unit), and JVC released the VHS-C format, these were smaller sized VHC style tapes, which were used in camcorders to record video and then slotted into an adapter cartridge to be played on a standard VHS video recorder. The public was awake, and it took the concept of a portable video recording device to heart, the ball as they say, was in motion.
If a single gadget had to be given as an example of design and innovation driven by the consumer, then surely the camcorder is a good choice. The market loved the idea of portable video recording, but they wanted it smaller, easier, more reliable, and it was quite obvious they were willing to pay for it. A second major breakthrough came with the advent of digital technology, the old and antiquated storage methods were consigned to the scrap heap, recording tapes disappeared and digital storage took its place. More reliable, faster, cheaper and able to store far more than a video tape, it was quickly accepted as the best solution available. Digital storage took many forms from small hard disk drives to writable DVD, and was a major milestone in the camcorder lifecycle.
Since the acceptance of digital storage as the preferred recording medium for camcorders, most development has concentrated on making things smaller, the idea of the handcam was forming in many minds, Sony stated that after the movie Back to the Future was released, which featured a scene of the main character using a handcam to record an experiment, the amount of written and email queries they had, questioning plans of releasing smaller camcorders was huge.
Modern camcorders are often a hybrid unit, consisting of a full motion video camera, a still shot camera and a suite of video or picture editing software built into the device, allowing users to take movies and video, and then edit it into a single production, dunning video and adding subtitles, without eve moving the recording from the camcorder. Almost all current camcorder models have the facility of being linked directly to a TV so that recordings can be viewed directly from the device.