Anime and the Video8 format

[labsenpai]

I remember one batch of fansub masters (nadia maybe?) that someone had recorded on Hi8. Easier to haul/ship than the SVHS format.

[greg]

Lordy, so much to remember when it comes to dead or otherwise forgotten media.

Yeah, you just reminded me of the Iomega Ditto drives. About 10 years ago, my job was to dispose of old assets at the company I worked at. There was an external serial port Ditto and an internal IDE Ditto drive I found, plus several brand new Ditto tapes. I took it home and experimented with it. The serial port one was SO SLOW. I ended up not even using the stuff and took them all to Best Buy for electronics recycling.

Anyhow, that was completely off-topic.

[SteveH]

Lordy, so much to remember when it comes to dead or otherwise forgotten media.

Yeah, you just reminded me of the Iomega Ditto drives. About 10 years ago, my job was to dispose of old assets at the company I worked at. There was an external serial port Ditto and an internal IDE Ditto drive I found, plus several brand new Ditto tapes. I took it home and experimented with it. The serial port one was SO SLOW. I ended up not even using the stuff and took them all to Best Buy for electronics recycling.

Anyhow, that was completely off-topic.

I still, even as we speak, have a USB ZIP drive connected. It's more for archived material than anything else. I have an old system backup on a JAZ drive cart and I wouldn't mind transferring it, it's my most early writing and communication so for history and junk I should have it in a current media, but it's about impossible to find the SCSI to USB dongle they made. (impossible as in reasonable price).

I still can't get over how one can buy a multi-TB hard drive for just a couple hundred Dollars, when not really that long ago a 500 meg internal drive was over $250 USD.

And don't get me started on RAM prices.

[Kame-Sen'nin]

For some reason, I seem to recall a model or two of VHS VCRs that could play Video8/Hi8/Super8 tapes in addition to standard VHS cassettes? Was that a thing or am I getting confused with something else entirely?

I believe that hybrid Video8/VHS decks did exist, though I'm not sure how widespread they were.

Neat find though! I'm curious, what formats have you found anime on for commercial release? While I doesn't surprise me that there were commercial beta releases, I've probably only seen ads for commercial beta and home recordings. I only learned about SVHS through fansubbing and that as the only time I saw anime on SVHS. I'd never thought to look for any on formats outside of the big ones (VHS, LD, Beta, etc.)

For the most part, I tend to find commercially-released anime on the standard formats (VHS, LD, Beta, etc.), though every now and then I'll find out about something like this Video8 release. I've been interested in picking up anime on VHD...

Whenever people talk about obscure/outdated video formats, I always think about this scene in Bamboo Blade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaKeB5iZrIs

...ever since I saw this clip! Thanks for posting llj!

I remember one batch of fansub masters (nadia maybe?) that someone had recorded on Hi8. Easier to haul/ship than the SVHS format.

Very interesting! I'll have to keep an eye out and see if I can find any of these that are still in existence.

[greg]

I still, even as we speak, have a USB ZIP drive connected.

I love Zip drives. I had an IDE Zip 250 drive, and foolishly got rid of my USB one when I moved to Japan. My desktop did not survive the move, and when I replaced everything, no motherboards had IDE slots anymore. So, I have a whole bunch of Zip disks with no way to access the media. I have some stuff on those that I can share with the forum here, too. I should look into getting a USB Zip 250 drive someday. I keep forgetting about that.