I have never seen someone make an unintentional found-footage horror film with **out of all things** a Barbie branded video camera before. 10/10, would like to watch a sequel.
It would be so cool if the original owner see this video and gets a copy of the video. I have a daughter, she's 4 years old, and I feel like she keeps growing and growing, and I already miss her being a baby. Childhood goes so fast and it only creates so few memories. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but hey, that's what this channel's about!
Same here. Maybe someone of that family will stumble upon this video and will want to get a copy of the tapes recordings for safe keepings. And im pretty sure The 8-Bit guy would be more than happy to do that.
No moving parts, no magnetic elements, only solid state. I'm more impressed that the video tape still works and outputs a pretty acceptable image considering the fact that it may have spent the last 20+ years literally anywhere.
@@KkkKkk-re9il i see a bunch of capacitors in the camera's circuit board.... wasn't this camera made around the time of the so-called 'Capacitor Plague' ?
Some more info on that Barbie remote control: That remote did indeed come with the Barbie Videocam Wireless Video Camera and it's model number is the "Remote Control BE-278. It's a universal remote control designed to allow you to control the VCR (or TV/VCR combo) that this camera is hooked up to for recording. Yes, one could have used the original remote that came with the VCR or some other universal remote you already had but having a Barbie branded universal remote added to the fun for the child who owned this camera. It doesn't actually control the camera in any way, on;y a TV or VCR (or TV/VCR Combo) though the camera does appear to have a fake IR receiver on the back of the unit (The red piece of plastic you pointed out), much like the fake rotating antenna on the receiver, it only controls a TV and VCR (or TV/VCR Combo). There have been a number of Barbie branded TV's, DVD players, and TV/DVD combo units aimed at kids that have been manufactured over the years though it' doesn't appear the remote control that came with the Barbie VidieoCam kit was intended to control any of these specifically (I think it's just a simplified universal remote). Here is what I found on Barbie branded TV and DVD player products in my brief research: * Barbie TV/DVD Combo - Model No. TVDVD1BB, appears to have been sold in Spain (220v), though it's not clear if it was sold in a 120v model or sold elsewhere in Europe. * Barbie Bloom Tube - an analog TV (13") with a flower motif cutout attached to the top the top bezel. * Barbie Bloom DVD Player - Supposedly rare DVD player model with an unusually shaped flower themed case (The DVD door looks like a flower and there's butterfly on top of unit). * Barbie Portable Dvd Player for Kids (LCD Flip-up screen) - Model No. bbepd003 (2012) 7" screen - One of those common but cheap 7" LCD flip-up screen portable DVD players sold under many different names in the late 2000's and early 2010's, some included a TV tuner but not this one. * Barbie 7" Portable DVD player (LCD Flip-up screen) - DVT-P3310 - made by Tectoy - Similar to the above model but with a slightly different design on the case and sold in Brazil. * Barbie HD Ready 1080i LCD TV/DVD player (Side slot-loading DVD player) - Tell Corp. - Sold in 15" (HD-1308D), 19" (HD-1908D). and 22" (HD-2208D) models. - All used a side slot-loading DVD player as was common in LCD TV/DVD combo units of the time and in the Apple iMac G5 and Intel Core2Duo models. * Barbie 18.5" LCD TV w/ DVD Player (side slot-loader) - Model No. BBHTC180 - Similar to the above Tell Corp. slot-loading LCD TV/DVD combo unit but slightly different case decoration (no flowers along side and bottom bezels), include speakers on bottom bezel. Appears to be white-label OEM model manufactured for Mattel by whoknows. Note: Neither Metal or anyone else ever sold an actual Barbie branded TV/VCR combo, only the TV/DVD combo type.
I'm chiming in to confirm. Back in the early 2000s, I had a nearly identical universal remote... minus the pink powdercoat, of course. It must have been the sort of thing where anybody could call up a factory in Shenzhen China and have thousands of them stamped out with their own branding.
Also about the info about the Nintendo DS, it is blue, most likely it was the Nintendogs bundle as they were really popular at the time. as the bundle came out in late 2005. This recording may also be from 2006.
That camera is very impressive for what's essentially just a toy. We take having a decent camera for granted now, with everyone have a smartphone in their pockets. There was a time where having a camera instantly made you the coolest kid on the block however. I'm hoping that the people on the tape get recognized and found, or stumble upon this video themselves. They'll probably want the footage off that tape. Those are childhood memories now.
Adult guy trying out a child's toy from 20 years ago and wonders about vertical alignment of the built-in antenna. Yeah, that mostly sums up why I love this channel.
And yes, the antennas are pretty much guaranteed to never be lined up for a good shot. Vertical polarization would have been much more effective, I think.
@@tomwilson2112 As long as both polarizations match on both antennas, it doesn't really matter. What becomes an issue is when one is vertical, and the other is horizontal (or vice versa)
@@Suctess Not really. They occupy the same spectrum; filters only work to block signals from other frequencies or bands that happen to be interfering due to spurs, harmonics, or other side effects of RF transmission. When two things are meant to use the same frequency, the only way to block one from the other is physical isolation.
Except that horizontal antennas are also directional - you get the best signal when the two antennas are not just parallel, but their sides face each other. In this setup, when the base station is behind the camera or in front of the camera, it's going to get the least signal. So you not only have to think about distance, but also direction.
The receiver and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi interference brought back memories for me. In the mid to late 2010s, at the previous flat I lived in, I had a similar system but as a dedicated transmitter and receiver combo, and it was a little more advanced as it had a directional antenna and IR repeater. I used mine to wirelessly transmit the composite video signal from the pay TV box in the living room to my TV in the bedroom so I could watch its DVR recordings. However, the remote for that provider's boxes used a strange frequency that wouldn't work with cheap IR repeaters, so I had to walk outside to control the box and walk back into my bedroom (nearby) to watch my DVR recordings of Wander Over Yonder or whatever show it may be. However, when I wanted to use the composite video out on the box, I had to switch the output video resolution from 1080i to PAL. It was still an upgrade over what I used in the late 2000s in the flat I lived in before that, which was a long coaxial cable from the RF out on an older pay TV box into a TV I had in what used to be my sister's shared bedroom (which I used as a study).
I hope the family sees this and can relive a bit of their old memories. I wonder if the family reached out would David give them the full digitized footage? Seems like it might be tricky to verify they are who they say they are.
Only David Murray can turn a 2001 Barbie Cam into a technical presentation that captured my attention when I was almost about to skip it! Also the fast jerky movement while the camera quickly adjusted its exposure time is darn good for a 2001 "toy"!
Can't wait to see all the indie bands record music videos on these kinds of things. It baffling to hear things i grew up with like these cameras or the Playstation 2 be called vintage nowadays, but i guess that's now people your age must have felt in the 2000s.
I hope you saved the video and tried to get it to the people in it, I bet they would be glad to have it back. That would be a awesome addition to the next video, you giving them a usb stick with the footage on (if they consent to participate of course). I lost some reel to reel tapes of my mom and would be verry happy to find them again, so I can imagine how they might react.
This thing came out while I was in high school or thereabouts. I worked at an electronics store in 2004 and could have sold a camcorder or digital camera to their parents that same year.
I would say this has a more 90's low end camcorder vibe, but then again you can always just get an older Logitech USB 2.0 webcam that only does 480p max that does not need drivers on a modern system(at least on Linux) for the same vibe.
I have a Philips webcam that is 480p and UVC/driverless, both for modern Linux distros and Windows 10/11. The image is pretty good, but this 90's vibe is intense 😆
I often recall beautiful memories in my mind to forget some of the pitfalls I am facing at the moment. The memories are even more beautiful when you find a large community that shares your memories and interests. Thank you for adding more episodes that connect us to the past.
I imagine the robustness of having screws hold down the battery cover is more a product of safety requirements or concerns (anti kid eating/choking on batteries) than anything else, though breakage prevention would be tangentially addressed nonetheless.
I seem to recall that the late 90s was about the right time for everything to have warning stickers on it - a precursor to the anti-right to repair era?
@@the_kombinator no safety requirements are a negative cost. Without regulations we wouldn't have them. Anti right to repair is extremely capitalistic because it means the consumer has to keep giving money to wealthy freeloaders, instead of only once. Without regulations, everything would be anti right to repair. Regulations are the reason why electronics have to accept inputs they're not designed for.
@@ax14pz107 Yeah but now the regulations are headed for "don't even think about opening that, your kids will die." Absurd. My not-that-old glasstop oven has a wiring diagram glued to the back panel. My (admittedly much older summer) car came with the tools you need to repair lik 90% of the maintenance items, which are outlined in the manual (not the shop manual, mind you.) Now? Take it to the dealer. Completely crushes innovation, in the name of "safety".
@@the_kombinator that's not what the regulations do. Right to repair IS regulation. Anti right to repair legislation prevents regulation by allowing companies to do what they want, which is stop you from repairing your devices.
Whoever design this is a freaking genius. I believe if this technology were further developed, we might have pure wireless camcorder. Wow, this thing is freaking amazing!
Omg. I was friends with this girl in 1st grade and she had this camera. We had fun seeing how far the wireless signal goes. And I remember stealing the VHS tape from her because I thought she was cute and wanted to watch it after she said no cause she filmed herself with it lol. For a kid's toy it was fascinating at that time period to see a wireless camera
I loved how you did the studio walk-around and some updates with the camcorder at the tale end of the video. Makes me want to fire up my old Aiptek HD (different model than the one you featured).
That fet minutes of recording via the camera and making it as the end segment of the video, just gives this content that little bit of extra love and charm. Fantastic video as always mate!
Actually, around 2004 they were still making these types of cameras. For my ninth birthday that year, I got a Spider-Man 2 camera which was the exact same camera as the Barbie one.
Nice video! I remember walking through Toys R Us in the late 90s and admiring all of the technological advances in toys, seeing things like the Tyco camera and noting that they were insanely cheap compared to their "adult" competitors.
This reminds me of when I was watching 10 Shake while on holiday in Australia and seeing adverts for various V-tech products including a digital camera for children.
I remember using a 2,4 GHz video transmitter and receiver in the late 1990s or early 2000s and it worked pretty good untill Wi-fi networks became common and it became unusable.
@@cmdraftbrn Yeah the 2.4Ghz band has been very crowded for a very long time with thing like cordless house phones, but I remember when I got my first WiFi router in 08(when my town finally got faster than dial-up internet from the cable company)which was a 2.4Ghz Belkin with a single tiny antenna, and every time someone was in the kitchen using the microwave the wireless signal would cut out no matter the settings. Thankfully these days we have better WiFi even on 2.4Ghz that helps eliminate that somewhat, and wireless speeds that are as fast wired speeds if not faster in many places with things like T-MO at home 5G(I have it, and pull down 500 Mbps+ and push 150 Mbps+ up).
The quality for that is really good, especially for the price and the fact that it is a toy. Also, that pink vhs tape.. Why didn't we have colored vhs tape shells? That would have been fun to color coordinate the tape with whatever you were recording.
Screwdriver to open battery compartment is a safety requirement for toys, to stop kids eating batteries, which can cause serious injury due to electrolysis
I've got an old camcorder from the early 2000's made by Sony. It uses a 16:9 aspect ratio, though it does use 8mm cassette tapes. This model even appeared in Sony's 2021 animated film The Mitchells vs. The Machines, so naturally I've got something in common with the movie's protagonist. In fact, it's a lot more than just a nostalgic artifact, but that's a story for another time.
get an analog FPV camera with transmitter and some kind of receiver or dvr module. The quality would be about the same. Almost all of those cameras has wide lenses. though they can be swapped.
Old cameras have such a charm to them! Recently dug up a mid 2000s digital camera my parents had. That was the one I used for a school project back in 2018. Playing back the clips from that project felt so nostalgic, unlike videos from the same year recorded in newer hd cameras. The overly saturated, grainy, low resolution image makes it feel like old memories which look less sharp as time goes by
I would recommend the signed boxed edition, the production quality is so good - reminds me of a big box game from the late 80s... Back when $35 was a huge spend for a single game :) Lol I just received PETSCII Robots and Planet X3 Amiga and C64 versions, absolutely superb. The artworks are amazing and soundtrack are even available on casette and vinyl! I am going to review them all soon but fyi this stuff is so cool, I love it! Nice one David.
2:17 - I traded my Sega Saturn and games with a friend for the Tyco camcorder 😂 Recording myself on a VHS tape blew my mind! Best trade ever! (At the time 😂). The long tethered cable made it really hard to film outside though, so I just filmed my neighbors going to the shop through my living room window
2.4ghz band being open to the public, is now heavily abused by amplitude modulated baby monitors, wireless surveillance cameras, invisible animal fences, and “digital” wireless microphones, cordless phone systems, radio controlled toys, and home automation mesh protocols such as zigbee. It’s a pretty hostile airspace these days.
I had this camera as a kid, it was one of my biggest toys at a time when we didn't have much. As someone now in their mid/late twenties seeing this again and watching the footage, I am feeling many emotions. Thanks for the video 💖🥲
6:01 Not Only Wi-Fi will interfere, also LTE Signals as b2 and b66 works on those frequencies... for the time that was sold, l2100 wasnt licensed yes for Cell Phone use
Leave it to David to make something as simple as a Barbie toy video camera an entertaining video. Loved it, hope you make a video about those new solar panels going up! Made my day to see a new upload!
I don't know why tech reviewers don't seem to realise this, but the reason why battery compartments on toys are held together with screws is to stop younger siblings from getting inside and swallowing the batteries. It's got nothing to do with longevity of the device or anything like that.
Interesting how an unassuming object like that Nintendo DS put things in a entirely different timeframe/perspective. This footage looks like it was recorded in the mid-/late nineties to me, yet the DS, as Dave said, didn't come out till 2004. I guess you can never fully know just from looking at footage alone which time period it's from. Like a 1930s black and white documentary, but the people wearing top hats are all carrying iPhone 14. LOL
I am shocked how good the footage looks considering it was a toy. I would have loved this thing as a kid, did they also make a Hot Wheels version like the PC? This thing totally looks moddable, a couple of external antennas, a rechargeable battery pack and you could even upgrade the camera, but I kinda like the way it looks now.
Excellent! Every day a new 8-but guy drops is a wonderful day! The value for this item is pretty legit. I still had a combo TV/VCR into the late 2000's. So this could have had a decent useful life.
I had this toy when it first came out! I was 6 years old in 2001. I'm 29 now but I still remember the commercial for it lol. I had a lot of fun with this thing growing up. Cool video, very nostalgic for me 👍🏽
@@youtubeaccount697 it contains images of minors without their or their parents consent (even though this is after the event, they are minors in this video). AFAIK this is illegal in California and other parts of the world. At the very least, seeing ones self as a child (or the other members of this family), appear approx 20 years later on a random video on the Internet, which has a global audience could be against their wishes. It is highly unlikely that they knowingly distributed the video with this artifact still on it, and even less likely that it would be picked up by a RU-vidr to share their private family time. I feel this is a gross violation of their privacy.
damn. need to get me one of those. The video quality is absolutely perfect for a lo-fi look, and with the built in transmitter it's super compact. Great for live visuals for some concerts or events.
Love it. The 8-Bit Barbie Guy by Aqua remix: Verse 1: I'm an 8-bit guy, in a 16-bit world I love to play, and make games unfurled Commander X16, my computer of choice I code all day, and I rejoice Chorus: He's an 8-bit guy, in a 16-bit world Creating games, that'll make you twirl PETSCII Robots, his latest delight And Planet X16, is out of sight Verse 2: He loves to code, in BASIC and more His passion for games, we can't ignore He'll teach you tricks, to make your games shine And his retro style, is simply divine Chorus: He's an 8-bit guy, in a 16-bit world Creating games, that'll make you twirl PETSCII Robots, his latest delight And Planet X16, is out of sight Bridge: You can't deny, his love for the past His games will last, and always outlast He's an 8-bit guy, in a 16-bit world A retro gaming master, that can't be unfurled Chorus: He's an 8-bit guy, in a 16-bit world Creating games, that'll make you twirl PETSCII Robots, his latest delight And Planet X16, is out of sight Outro: He's the 8-Bit Guy, and we all adore His retro gaming style, we can't ignore.
That cam footage is genuinely unnerving, it's like an analogue horror video before shit goes down. I was half-expecting an Alternate of the 8 bit-guy to ambush him or something lol.
Awright! You know your birthday feels complete when a new video of the 8-Bit Guy comes out right on your birthday! Thanks David, and don't stop producing great content. 😊
when I was 4-5 around 06-07 I bought a VHS-C camcorder at a yardsale up the street for $2. I had so much fun hooking it up to my bedroom TV, and ironically my VCR, even though it had a working tape mechanism. I remember me and my brothers put it on a stool and covered everything but the lens and made a "hidden" camera. I still had that tape until around 2011 when I lost it somehow. That was the only surviving pictures or video from my dads old appartment that he lived in my whole early childhood.
You know what really pisses me off is that a cheesy *wireless* barbie cam from 2001 still has a much better image than the ridiculously expensive USB webcams of the era, and a SHITLOAD faster to boot. Goes to show how bad we got ripped off for real PC hardware back then. I can't be the only person thinking about our 2001 webcams & digital cams that certainly weren't even wireless
@@JavaJack59 I don't think the 1.0 standard even came anywhere close to its rated throughput, I know it's CPU intensive but frack.. USB in both higher end standalone cards and built-in just barely worked as anything more than convenient keyboard and mouse ports, coz you weren't about to get any decent data transfer with anything else certainly not any imaging device. I vividly remember having a serial Logitech cam that made better stills and video than the $250 USB one I bought to replace it. And don't forget the irritating USB crashing
Good idea! Obviously these days anybody can just apply "old VHS tape" filters to digital video, but you can't beat the real deal. Haha, 20 years ago, who'da thought we'd be yearning for that?
Just a note about the screw access to the batteries - it's actually a regulatory requirement in many jurisdictions that batteries on toys are only removable with the aid of a tool, to avoid kids taking them out on their own.
Quite impressive for a kid's toy camera or in this case camcorder it's pretty cool for it it's time when it came out just like the Tyco camera and it has that 90s and early 2000s aesthetic. Pretty neat
7:22 I was so expecting the creepy video from The Ring (it was out around that time) and then the phone ring haha. I actually like the image this cam produces, it gave me some The Wonder Years vibes.
8-bit guy is the perfect example that it's not youtubes fault that your not getting views, granted the 8-bit guy has been doing youtube for years, but he has continued making great content no matter what it is he's making a video about.
