Now the shrink wrap costs more than the camera…
In 1989 I was living in Stockholm, working for the Swedish billionaire Jan Stenbeck, who was starting the first commercial TV network in Scandinavia.
Stenbeck wanted to produce a Swedish version of the US hit, America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Sweden’s Funniest Home Videos
I know.
There were only two problems.
The second was that almost no one in Sweden had home video cameras.
We had to give them out.
In the end, we produced a Swedish version of Wheel of Fortune Instead – Lukke Hujlet, I think it was called.
In any event, hard as it is to believe, in those days actually very few people even had home camcorders, and certainly not HD.
Now, Tim French, who is married to Kelly Korzan, who runs our LA office, produced a great deal of the content you see here on NYVS and also is the ‘voice’ of NYVS, has sent me the photo above.
As you can see, it’s a pair of HD video cameras, on sale at a convenience store, for the unbelievably low price of $29.95.
There was a time when an HD camera on sale for $2995.00 was considered dirt cheap.
In 1986, I was invited to a party at the home of NY TVÂ producer Barry Rebo.
Rebo is known at the Godfather of the HD Video Revolution – and for good reason.
In 1986, Rebo bought the very first HD video camera in the US. It was the size of a Volkswagen and cost $1 million (in the days when $1 million was still something!) The camera was so big he needed a truck to haul it around NY.
It recorded onto 20 minute tape casettes. Each casette cost $1,000.
Rebo’s only client was NHK Japan, which had an experimental HD channel. All of this was, of course, analog.
Digital had not arrived yet.
In an ironic twist of fate, Rebo’s first feature in HD was produced by the then unknown young talent, Julie Taymore, who would later go on to The Lion King fame and Spiderman not so fame.
In any event…
In a kind of hardware extrapolation of Moore’s Law, the cost of HD cameras has dropped as precipitously as computer chips.
$29.95 for HD.
And I expect that this trend will continue.
Once, the greatest barrier to entry to video was the cost of the equipment.
This clearly is no longer the case.
Now, for $29, anyone can get access to a video camera that is far better than the $1 million camera.
And still, we are only at the beginning.
