any one ever seen this kodak Kodavision 8mm
 

I was just browsing throw shop goodwill and found this very odd VCR. Link will be removed once the item is no longer available.




Link removed.

The first 8mm VCR ever, made my Matsushita. There can't be many of those Kodak machines out there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_mm_video_format

I had a different Kodak 8mm VCR and tuner/timer set, bought new when they were being closed out for maybe $150 for the set. The picture quality was pretty bad, but it had an interesting feature, a digital stereo audio option.

I wonder how much Kodak had with 8-mm video. On the one hand, the format was initially drafted by Sony, Matsushita, JVC, Hitachi, and Philips around 1982. AFAIK, Fuji developed MP tape.

On the other hand, Robert Angus from High Fidelity magazine wrote that he had a preproduction version of the Kodavision machine a year before it went on sale. Was it Kodak's prototype or Matsushita's prototype? The production version of the camcorder was manufactured by Matsushita. Had Kodak ever made MP tape at its own factory?

I have the camera and the docking deck with DC adaptor but not the tuner/timer. I have batteries but they are long done. The cam and deck still work. I got the deck to rescue my 8mm. The camera is a bonus. It can dock or it has an optional cable to the deck if you want, The cam is striped tube at its best/worst. I will fire it and get some pics. What were they thinking. Stay tuned,

I have one here..


About 30 years ago .

I found it dumpster diving at my old APT along with a NEC or Fisher Stereo Betamax.

It was my daily driver until I got a Sony CCD-V8AF camcorder from a friend about 5 years later..

There was nothing wrong with both units except clean off the kitty litter on top of the Betamax machine.. Lucky none got into the VCR and camcorder set.

It used a 8 volt rechargeable battery .The 2 batteries were stone dead and gone so I had to make a 8 volt adapter with a adjustable regulator ic and it was connected to a 12 volt alarm battery for power.

The camcorder ran forever with that battery setup.

I recorded the entire town Bicentennial parade with the Kodak camcorder.

Sorry for the long post..

Take care all...

I wonder what Kodak was thinking when it decided to switch from Super 8 to 8-mm video? Did Kodak expect to keep slapping its name onto Matsushita products for the next 20 years? Camcorders turned out to be more complicated products than film cameras, and were improved continuously. The Kodavision became obsolete just one year after its debut, and was sold for half the price. In a couple of years Kodak became irrelevant in the video world, while winding down the Super 8 production. Kodak has not made new Super 8 cameras in 40 years, and it has never produced camcorders. Had Kodak at least produced video tape on its own facilities besides loading it into cassettes?

It was a cute idea of switching from 8-mm film to 8-mm video, but Kodak was not fully committed to video.

Dave, you probably know this way better than I do, but if you want to save/transfer existing 8mm video recordings, you should either use a Hi8 camcorder's S-video output, or get a Sony Digital 8 camcorder (or a Sony VCR in either of those formats) and use the IEEE1394 ("Firewire or I-link") internal-digitizing output.

Usually I play Video8/Hi8 in a Digital8 camcorder, but I've got a batch of tapes that do not show picture from the Digital8 machine - none at all, although it detects the tapes are analog. But when played on a Hi8 camcorder, they play just fine. These are regular Video8 tapes. Go figure.