Hello, and welcome to another episode of the 8-Bit Guy.
Today I’m going to show off the Fisher Price PXL-2000 camera.
This thing came out in 1987 and was considered a kid’s toy and it initially sold for $179,
although the price was later reduced to $100.
Keep in mind that a regular camcorder would have cost around $1,000.
In today’s inflation adjusted dollar that would be like $382 and $213, respectively.
Still, it seems cheap compared to the $2,137 a camcorder would have cost in today’s money.
Of course, the thing that makes this camera so interesting is not its price point, but
rather the fact that it records on standard audio cassettes.
So first I have to tackle the question of, how did it accomplish this?
Well, first of all, let’s take a look at the read/write head of a standard VHS recorder.
Most people have seen that it has a tilted head that rotates.
The reason for this, is that it enables a lot more information to be crammed onto a
tape.
You see, the head writes a single frame of video diagonally like this across the tape.
This allows the tape to move at a much slower speed than would otherwise be necessary.
Another advantage is that you can pause the tape and at least keep some sort of image
on the screen because the tape head is still scanning that single frame.
Although, if you ever wondered why it can’t pause perfectly it is because the tape is
moving while the head is recording, and thus when the tape stops, it slightly changes the
angle of recording, meaning that the head no longer lines up with the image.
So how in the heck does this PXL-2000 camera record to a standard audio cassette?
Well, they did many things in order to accomplish this.
One of the things they did is they ran the cassette at almost 9 times the original speed.
In fact, what when I press play on this tape.
You might think it is in fast forward, but this is actually the speed that it moves.
The downside to this is that you can typically only fit 3 or 4 minutes of video on each side
of the tape.
So, what’s worse is that the noise of the high speed tape mechanism is about all you
can hear from the built in microphone when you are recording.
But still.
that is not enough to get the bandwidth needed in order to record video to an audio cassette.
Other sacrifices had to be made.
So they got rid of color.
This is a black and white camera.
But wait, it gets worse.
They also reduced the frame rate down to 15 frames per second.
OK, still, not the end of the world.
But it gets worse, the resolution is also reduced to 120x90 pixels….
Say what?
In the end you’re left with a picture that’s pretty bad.
OK, so this is what the camera looks like when I am recording directly from the camera.
This is not going to tape first.
Also, of course, I’m using my overhead microphone, I’m not using the microphone that’s built
into the camera because if I were, well, it would sound terrible and you wouldn’t be
able to hear anything.
So anyway, it is really difficult to get a good picture out of this camera.
It takes a huge amount of light and a lot of patience.
But..
It gets still even worse.
That recording came directly from the back camera without actually recording it… let
me show you another clip where I actually record it to tape.
OK, now I’m doing a second test.
And on this test, I’m actually recording it to tape.
So, hopefully you’ll be able to see the difference in the video quality from what
it looked like direct from the camera and what it looks like now coming right off the
tape.
So the truth is, this level of quality is pretty much unimaginable today, but it wasn’t
exactly considered stellar back in 1987.
Shooting video was virtually impossible indoors.
The only reason I’m able to do it is because I have 9 different spotlights, because this
is a studio that I film in.
Now, despite the poor quality, surprisingly these cameras are still kind of a cult icon
when it comes to filmography.
The camera was used in the movie Love and Other Drugs, although when Anne Hathaway is pointing
it at Jake Gyllenhaal, the camera is noticeably quiet and the image it produces is much higher
resolution than what the real thing does.
The camera was also used in a less popular film called Hamlet where the main character
uses it to record his diary.
So you might think you could just take an RCA video cable and connect it straight to
the composite input of your TV… but you’d be wrong.
This isn’t a composite video signal, rather it is the old style RF signal that was used
by many old systems from the era and you will instead need one of these clunky switch boxes.
Originally these switch boxes had these two terminals like this that would just screw
straight down onto the back of your television.
But my TV is actually slightly newer and uses the coaxial “F” type connector, so I need
yet another adapter to make this happen.
Once it is all connected, I can tune my TV to channel 3 and receive the image.
Wow.. this is unfortunate.
The image is extremely dark, despite having 9 very bright flood lights in my studio room.
The CCD on these things is not very light sensitive.
It probably isn’t helped by the fact that it appears they used a pinhole to focus the light
instead of a real lens, so that further reduces the amount of light hitting the CCD.
I borrowed this camera from a friend of mine in the Dallas area.
We met up at the Dallas Galleria where we had decided to shoot some test footage.
Here, he explained to me how difficult it was getting the batteries in and out.
The battery compartment is a little too small for the batteries.
So you gotta kinda finesse it to get ‘em in and out.
As a kid, the trick to getting the batteries out was a butter knife.
As an adult, you learn you can just take the screws out of the bottom part of the camera
and that’ll fix it.
We thought this ice-skating rink would be really cool, however, most of the footage
was unusable.
OK, so I’m going to try to record the ice-rink down here using the pixel-vision camera.
You can barely see the ice skaters here, and most of the tape ended up looking like this.
So what if you want to capture video directly from one of these cameras to a computer?
Well, there are 3 ways that you could potentially accomplish that.
The first way to do it would be with an older video capture card that has an analog TV tuner
built onto the card.
I don’t know if they still make these anymore, I haven’t really checked.
The second option is to use an old VCR like this one.
You can plug the camera into the antenna input and then use the composite audio and video
outputs to connect to your computer’s capture device.
And the last option is of course, modification.
That’s right, it’s actually possible to modify these cameras to output a composite
video signal as well as some other hacks that you can do to help with the exposure.
I happened to be talking with Techmoan the other day and it turns out he actually has
one of these that has been modified in both ways.
So, he offered to send me a couple of video clips, which I’m going to show you here.
OK, so I finally got my PXL-2000 up and running.
I’ve had this about a year or so it’s only just now that I’ve gotten around to
putting some batteries in it.
I’m so glad to find out that it works.
Now the one I bought was from eBay and there was a chap who modified it and it’s got
audio and video out over RCA cables.
Also, there’s an exposure control dial on the back there.
And I’ve got that set to probably about as good as I think I can go.
This is about the best brightness I’ve been able to get out of it.
OK, I’ve just played that previous section back, and I noticed there were a lot of dropouts
on the tape.
I’m wondering if that’s down to the tapes I used.
Although they were brand new, type II, chrome tapes, but perhaps they weren’t a particularly
good quality one, or maybe not good enough for this camera anyway.
I’ll try some other tapes later and see if there’s a problem with those, or whether
I need to clean the heads in the machine.
but regardless, I thought I’d show you what the quality is like coming straight out of
the composite lead on the back.
So what I’ve done now is connected the camera up to my computer through a capture device.
So what you’re looking at is the quality of the video directly from the sensor into
the computer with no tape in the middle.
So, it looks like there is at least some improvement in quality by having the composite video mod
done.
I did ask him if he would consider making a video on his channel about the camera even
though I’ve already made one.
I think it would be interesting to see his take on the camera because I’m sure he has
different things to say about it.
In the meantime, I wanted to stick one of these tapes into a regular cassette deck and
listen to what it sounds like.. so here goes.
So what the heck is this we’re hearing?
Well, let’s listen to the left and right channels separately.
So, this is clearly the video signal.
But what on earth is this sound?
It sounds like something from Jurassic Park, or some horror movie.
Well, you have to keep in mind that my boom box is moving the head 8.5 times slower than
the camera does.. so let’s compensate for that by speeding up this recording by a factor
of 8.5.
Now let’s play it and see what we have.
OK, I’m doing one final test and this is recording using the….
Well, it looks like that mystery is solved.
So you know, I don’t know.
I think kids probably ended up not liking these very much, but I suspect parents hated
them, and I kid you not, the expected battery life from 6 AA batteries is about 5 to 10
minutes.
So, while the purchase price was much lower than a traditional camcorder, you would need
about 20 audio cassettes to equal the same recording length as a single 2 hour VHS tape,
or 60 if you used EP speed on the VHS.
Also keep in mind it requires type II or chrome cassettes, which weren’t cheap.
And then you would go through 72 AA batteries to record that 2 hours of footage.
And top it off, 90% of the footage would be unusable when you were done.
So, if you’ve watched all the way through this, and you are STILL thinking that maybe
you want to buy one of these on eBay or something, let me add a little bit more information.
So the camera is black and white, has very low resolution, generally can’t film at
all indoors, the microphone is unusable, the battery life is beyond terrible, the recording
time on a tape is very short, and the recordings are in general unreliable.
But if that isn’t enough, these things sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay.
So what’s even worse is that most of the ones available for sale don’t even work.
In fact, I’ve read stories of people buying them brand-new in the box, never even been
opened before, and they still don’t work because the lens has fogged up and the belts
have disintegrated on the inside.
OK, so what do I think about this device?
Well, I think its actually really, really fascinating from an engineering standpoint.
You know, I actually remember seeing these in Toys "R" Us when I was a kid and I wanted
one really bad.
But they were too expensive and my choices were a Commodore 64 or one of these, well,
I picked the computer.
But, if I had actually ended up getting one, I might have ended up not liking it, because
I really had no idea how difficult it was to get a good picture on it, and actually,
impossible to get a good picture on it.
But, you know, I love old technology.
I love collecting old technology, and when possible, I actually love using old technology,
but this is one of those examples of old technology, it’s pretty cool to own it, but I really
don’t think it’s that great to actually use for all of the reasons I’ve shown already.
But it is definitely something cool to have on your shelf, and is definitely a good conversation
starter.
But, I think if you’re looking for a vintage camera.
Something that is really challenging to record from, maybe something like a Connectix Quickcam
would be better.
As terrible as the quality is on those, it’s actually better than one of these.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this video, and please stick around because, as always, I have more
exciting stuff coming!