PXL-2000: The Video Camera That Recorded on Audio Cassettes (1987)

In 1987, home video had been dominated by VHS for a decade, but consuming video was one thing; creating it was quite another. A traditional VHS camcorder could cost over a thousand dollars, so Fisher-Price reached an odd conclusion: turn it into a toy. That gave birth to the PXL-2000, a camera with a very futuristic look that could record its content on... audio cassettes?

With films like Hellraiser, Innerspace, Lethal Weapon and Predator in theaters, there were plenty of reasons to go to the movies in 1987. But home video wasn't far behind, and with VHS as the absolute king, movie distribution was unstoppable. Now, the desire to create home videos had always existed, except the process needed to be a bit more... accessible. Commodore Amiga users found a fantastic solution in the Video Toaster platform (at a fraction of the cost of professional equipment), but inventor James Wickstead and his team decided to target a completely different market segment: children.

Once Fisher-Price bought the rights from Wickstead, the PXL-2000 camcorder became a real product. Debuting with an official price of $179 in 1987, the PXL-2000 bet on its futuristic design and the use of traditional audio cassettes as storage media, which were much cheaper and easier to handle (not to mention the reduced manufacturing cost since all it needed was a regular cassette mechanism). A CCD sensor, a lens, an infrared filter, a Sanyo LA 7306M chip, an RF modulator, and six AA batteries completed its specifications.

So how exactly did it work? In essence, using conventional cassettes severely limited the bandwidth available for recording video. The camera's design compensated by moving the magnetic tape nine times faster than normal, but even that wasn't enough. Black-and-white images, a framerate of 15 frames per second, and an image size of 120x90 pixels balanced the equation... recording between four and five minutes of video per side.

The PXL-2000 had many difficulties when recording indoors, so the recommended use was in full daylight. As if that weren't enough, all clips ended with the awful noise of the mechanism in the background. Once these limitations were exposed, Fisher-Price cut the price of the PXL-2000 to $100, but it was still too expensive as a "toy," and in just over a year it was discontinued, with a final production run of 400,000 units.

However, the PXL-2000 managed to retain a certain popularity in experimental artistic spaces, with enthusiasts interested in modifying the camera to get video "closer" to the sensor, without the RF chaos. Interested in owning one? Well... tough luck: The passage of time combined with reviews from various YouTube specialists turned it into a collector's item, with prices that exceed $500.