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Video: The Awful MPEG Camcorder From '97

🕑 Added 2021-08-31 05:43:25 +0000 UTC

Comments

8b!t7r3x

What’s the discord?

Callan Christensen

Great video once again! It seems so bizarre nowadays that companies back then would release stuff like this before it was ready. It really surprises me how you happen across these obscure and ridiculously expensive items. I suppose that being in such a tech-centric city makes this less surprising, but it still baffles me that anyone would ever buy these things in the first place. I just wish I knew the timeline of ownership, did someone drop $2k on the thing, realize its shit, but were too embarrassed to return it and felt it was too expensive to throw away, so they just put it in a bag with the other accessories to be forgotten until now? Additionally, I really appreciate how deep you jumped into the included software and figured out how it worked, you have such a skill of making even the worst software entertaining to explore. It is wild to think that actual humans made this software given how unfriendly it was to users but how dense the feature set was. It seems like the culmination of multiple years of meetings and development cycles where a room of middle managers were trying to outdo each other in pitching the most creative problems that didn't exist and having their development teams force out the most basic solution to the problem before diving into creating software to fulfill another manager’s winning feature request. Was this the norm at the time or was the software department having to bide time until the hardware team finished the product? I’d love it if you put out an open request to the people that developed the thing (hardware/software/project management) and interview them. I know that might be a bit awkward with how much you dunk on the product, but I think enough time has passed that no one who worked on that project would still see it as some kind of crowning achievement and I bet they’d like to reminisce. You are bringing content into my life that I didn’t know I needed and I’m always excited for the next thing you bring our way! P.S The visual effects you did in this one were super, it perfectly complemented your narrative. Cheers!