Hello!
In a previous episode I did a review of the Fisher Price Pixelvision camera and I immediately
got a ton of emails saying "David, you should also do a review on the Tyco Video Camera,"
which was also another type of kids toy camera and well, here it is!
And, I actually bought this several months ago and I'm just now getting around to actually
doing something with it.
So, let's dig right into this thing.
So, this is the Tyco videocam.
It came out in 1996, almost a decade after the Fisher Price camera.
As you can see it is shaped more like a Handicam from the 1990s.
There is no screen in the viewfinder, it's just a straight through lens to help you aim.
This slide switch turns it on, and you can see the LED light up.
It has a tripod mount on the bottom..
And it has a lens cap on the front, and you can see it is a fixed focus lens.
It runs on 6 double A batteries, but can also be powered by an A/C adapter.
But where is the record media?
Well, it doesn't have any.
The idea behind the camera is that you'd plug it into your VCR.
It just needs a 1/8 inch phone jack to RCA cable like this.
And you would connect one end here to the camera, and the other end to the line-input
in your VCR.
Of course, I'll need to insert a VHS tape so that I can record a little sample for you.
So, I was curious to know the original cost of this camera, but after searching for hours
on google and looking through old catalogs from Toys R us and Radio Shack and places
like that, I just came up empty.
One reason I was hoping to find it in a Radio Shack catalog is due to the manual.
If you look at the last page it actually suggests a replacement for the 20 foot cable using
a Radio Shack part number.
Looking on some old discussion forums, I did a few mentions from people saying that they
had originally bought the camera for $50 and another person said they bought it for $100.
Either one of those could have been correct, or both of them could have been correct depending
on the time they bought it.
So, while looking through those catalogs I also wanted to see what the cost was of a
typical camcorder at the time.
This Radio Shack catalog shows several camcorders costing between $800 and $1,000.
So even if this was sold for $100, that was probably not a bad deal to get your child
the ability to record their own videos.
I'll set up the camera on this tripod here and connect the camera's line output to
the VCR.
That way I can record some authentic VHS samples for you to watch.
OK, so this is what the tyco cam looks like when its hooked up here in my studio.
Now, obviously the first thing you'll notice is that it's black and white.
And you'll probably also notice that it's a bit blurry.
You might want to attribute that to the fact that this is being recorded to VHS tape and
being played back.
But, that's not exactly all of the reason why.
I also wanted to take a moment to let you hear what it would sound like.
This is actually.
This section here is coming right from the microphone on the tyco camera rather than
my overhead microphone that I was using just a minute ago.
So, see what you think of that.
For this next test, I'll use this laptop and a USB video capture device.
I'll unplug the camera from the VCR and pipe its video directly to the video capture
instead.
OK, so in this test, I am recording straight to this laptop computer that I have setting
down here rather than to the VCR.
And, In a moment, I'm going to take some still frames from this and we can kind of
compare side by side between the VCR and the direct capture to see what kind of difference
there really is.
Well, here are the two frames.
And looking at them side by side, I can just barely tell any difference.
I think because the image is so soft to begin with and the fact that there is no color signal,
it works really well with VHS tape.
I can see a bit of a jagged edge due to the interlacing on the sides of my face, that
is visible on the VHS copy but not on the direct capture.
The camera also comes with this little tripod.
It has these little extendable legs.
They're actually kind of hard to get out, but there we go.
You can connect the camera up like this, and well, that's how that works.
I mean, I guess it was okay for an included accessory.
Since it uses a standard mount, you could have always bought a real tripod at some place
like Wal-Mart or Target that would have been a lot better.
it also comes with this 20 foot bright yellow extension cable.
And, one of the nice things about the tripod is that it has a little area designed for
you to wrap the excess cable around and presumably you would wrap all of it around this for storage.
And once you've done that, it all goes into this little carry bag, which is pretty cool.
I wanted to take some footage just around the house, to see how the lighting and dynamic
range are where there is less light than in my studio, after all that's what kids would
have been expected to deal with back then.
Now, what's interesting about this is that it almost looks like I'm filming in the
dark, but the lights are on in the living room and to be honest I have pretty bright
LED lights.
I have better lighting in my office room so let me show you some of my collectibles…
that is except for this irritating tangle that I got, I suspect this was a common issue.
Now that that is fixed, let's try it again.
Even in here it almost looks like I'm filming with the lights off, despite it being very
bright in this room.
By the way, this is a Tandy Model 4P somebody recently donated, and then there's an Osborne
one I recently picked up for $60 that needs a little restoration work, which you'll
probably see soon.
And I also got a bunch of Tandy Color Computer stuff too.
Let's see what Starlight is up to.
She likes looking out the window.
Speaking of, the camera really likes that sun light!
So I decided to try some outdoor video.
Of course, I'm not going to carry the darned VCR around with me at the park, so I brought
my laptop.
I tried taking some footage straight from the bench here.
It's actually quite bright and for the first time I feel it has some real dynamic range.
But it is still not a very sharp image.
And of course the irony here is that I doubt it was ever intended to be used outdoors considering
it required a VCR to be connected at all times.
Next I got out the long 20 foot cable so I could get up and move around a bit.
One thing I notice looking at this footage is that the grass and trees are very bright,
which suggests to me that this thing is picking up a lot of infrared.
So, when I got home I decided to try looking at an infrared remote control.
And holy cow!
Boy is this camera sensitive to infrared light!
It's so sensitive, I can use this TV remote as a flash light!
In fact, let me try turning the light off in the room.
Wow, look at that.
Take a look at this clip where I shine it straight into the camera.
Let's do a still frame of that.
I've never seen a pattern like this before when a CCD has a glare from a bright light
source… but the it occurred to me that this might be a result of the rapid flashing of
the LED that is actually sending a binary signal to the TV.
So I tried using just a regular flash light instead to see what it does.
And it appears I was correct about the flashing, but it also appears this camera cuts out to
black when there is a huge over exposure, which is weird.
So, one of the things I now wonder about is if maybe the reason that some of the scenes
look so dark is because this camera prefers infrared light.
And since my entire house pretty much has LED lighting, I don't have much infrared
light.
And, when I think about it, this camera was made during a time when practically everyone
used incandescent lighting.
To test this out, I took the camera over to my parents house.
My parents are one of the last few holdouts still using incandescent bulbs.
And it turns out my hunch was correct.
This kitchen, for example, actually looks really bright!
What is really telling about this scene is that to the human eye, this living room is
much darker than mine, but to the camera it appears much brighter.
One other thing I wanted to point out is about the viewfinder.
It's really not very accurate as to what you are recording.
In fact, if you look at this still frame here of what the camera was recording, I'll overlay
a little box showing what you would see if you were looking through the viewfinder.
So this is what your eyes would see when recording, but this is what the camera would actually
be recording.
I also wonder how many people noticed that the camera has a bad pixel?
See, it's right here.
I didn't want to mention it earlier in the video because I knew you'd be staring at
it the whole time if you noticed it right away.
So what do I think of the Tyco video camera?
Well, if it really did sell for $50 back in 1996, then there's not really a lot I could
complain about.
Even I find myself wanting to compare this camera to the Fisher Price Pixel Vision Camera
that I reviewed a few months back, but it's not really a fair comparison because that
camera came out in the 1980s and this came out almost 10 years later.
Yet, at the same time there aren't a lot of other toy video cameras to really compare
it to.
There weren't very many products like that.
So just for a reference, here's what the Pixel Camera looked like.
Versus what the Tyco camera looked like.
So It's pretty clear the Tyco camera produced a better picture, and cost quite a bit less
too, because it didn't need to carry around its own recording mechanism.
Also, the microphone on this camera is not too bad.
Had something like this existed when I was a kid, I would have probably used the heck
out of something like this.
where if it I had the Fisher Price camera with all of its problems, I probably would
have gotten frustrated with it.
And I'd probably have a lot of videos to show for it today.
On the other hand, my parents would have probably been very irritated because I would have been
hauling the VCR all around the house because I would have had a 20 foot ball and chain
with me, so to speak.
Anyway, that about wraps it up for this review.
I hope you found it interesting, and stick around until next time!
For more infomation >> GRINGO REAGINDO AOS FUNKS PESADÕES | American reacting to Brazilian Music - Duration: 5:42. 
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