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Old April 18th, 2018, 06:14 PM   #1
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The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

I was in Walmart the other day and noticed HI8 sony tapes for sale. Price was $42 bucks for two. I said wow thats a rip off. I decided to ebay search for hi8 cameras etc and tapes. Why are these cameras that are just consumer junk going for 200-1000 USD? I couldn't even get any decent offers when I tried to list one of my Canon XL1s for sale and people are actually paying more for hi8? Was there something I missed about hi8? Did it have some weird crappy analog feel that all the hipsters are having orgasms over now?
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Old April 18th, 2018, 08:38 PM   #2
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

You can also pay crazy amounts for a 5.25 inch floppy drive depending on when you look. Sometimes you just need one to read back old discs.

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Old April 18th, 2018, 10:21 PM   #3
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

I can't believe anything Hi-8 would actually operate these days. I thought all those capacitors went bad years ago.

"What's this funny rotten egg smell coming out of my camcorder? And why won't it turn on?"
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Old April 19th, 2018, 12:29 AM   #4
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

In electronics / tech circles the puff of grey smoke is regarded as "the magic escaping". :)

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Old April 19th, 2018, 07:18 AM   #5
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

The magic escaping, now that's funny.

Piet Hein of YouTube's "Bored Of Lame Tool Reviews" fame calls it "letting the smoke out:"


caution -- language -- very Canadian

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Old April 19th, 2018, 07:32 AM   #6
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Smith View Post
In electronics / tech circles the puff of grey smoke is regarded as "the magic escaping". :)

Andrew
Yep, we always had a saying in tech school that transistors operated on the little puff of magic smoke inside the casing. This theory was proven to be true because anytime that little puff of magic smoke came out of the transistor, it immediately ceased to operate. Hehe.


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Old April 19th, 2018, 08:17 AM   #7
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

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Originally Posted by Chris Hurd View Post
I can't believe anything Hi-8 would actually operate these days. I thought all those capacitors went bad years ago.

"What's this funny rotten egg smell coming out of my camcorder? And why won't it turn on?"
Hi Chris,

I have a lot of personal Hi8 tapes I need to get archived before it's too late (family tapes from the 90s) and I recently got a Sony CCD-TRV99 off Ebay for a song and got really lucky. Was old gear being liquidated by a university and included the Sony bag, accessory lights, the whole works, and is in absolutely immaculate condition and working great! Camera looks like it was never used.

The TRV-99 was Sony's top-of-the-line consumer model for 1998 I believe, so 20 years old now. Has all the bells and whistles on it, RC time code and all that, infra-red night shot (with IR light!) and so forth.

Hoping I can make it through digitizing my Hi8 library without issue.

Thanks

Jeff
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Old April 19th, 2018, 08:44 AM   #8
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

Jeff, you and I are in the same boat. I bought a Sony Digital 8 cassette player years ago for the same purpose, but haven't actually gotten around to digitizing all my Hi-8 yet. Hopefully that thing still works. I better check it soon!
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Old April 19th, 2018, 10:04 AM   #9
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

I have just a few old Hi-8 tapes that would be nice to digitize, but it's really not a priority. One of them was about an hour filmed during a visit to my Grandmother's place when she was 95 years old, a couple years before she passed away. In my case, it's probably more practical to send these few tapes away and let someone else do it.

Frankly I'm surprised that WalMart still sells Hi-8 tapes at all. I would think everyone is rushing to get all their video OFF existing tapes, not recording new ones!

I'm just glad my Sony HDV/DVCAM deck is still working because there are still well over 100 of those tapes waiting to be captured (maybe much more if my friend can find them in the store room at work).
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Old April 19th, 2018, 08:08 PM   #10
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

the tapes had a date on the back from 2010. So sony still made them. Also was a pack of DV tapes which was 20 bucks. that had a date of 2013. I still have dv tapes, just sold all my canon xl series cameras but I always loved the dv format. I dont know why anyone would still want hi8 around. If you check amazon a two pack of hi8 sony is going at around 60 bucks.
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Old April 19th, 2018, 09:51 PM   #11
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

I’m trying to sell my mini dv stock. Anyone want to overpay me would be most acceptable
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Old April 19th, 2018, 10:02 PM   #12
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

I think you've encountered an automated pricing algorithm. Those are probably the last of their kind in inventory for a tri-state area, so they've been assigned a ridiculously high price by a computer, most likely.
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Old April 20th, 2018, 12:46 AM   #13
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

The 8mm and Hi8/Digital8 media has been less than $0.15 at local retail outlets I frequent. I usually take the whole shelf peg of them and check out, knowing they're not going to stock them again. It's starting to happen to DV and MiniDV tape, VHS-C, Betacam SX, and eventually regular VHS which is currently still stocked at regular full price at many outlets. On the other hand online retail algorithms tend to crank up the price when they are down to minimal quantities so they don't sell out as rapidly ... this is on other things that are not obsolete tape media as well. The last point about 'obsolete tape media' doesn't factor in to automated logic yet, the system just knows it as a inventory unit. On the other hand, other department store algorithms will clear out anything that has been sitting for a while and has basically reached write-off state. That case of 3.25" floppy disks that I purchased at Staples, $0.12 for a 100-pack is basically the result of that.

Also some multitrack audio recording formats such as DTRS run on Hi8 media, and as Data8 or AIT for data backup applications. It's sort of the backwards of how DAT cassettes were easier found branded as DDS tape (which failed as a mass-market audio format, but successful as a data backup format).
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Old April 20th, 2018, 12:52 AM   #14
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Re: The price of HI8 is skyrocketing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Hurd View Post
I can't believe anything Hi-8 would actually operate these days. I thought all those capacitors went bad years ago.

"What's this funny rotten egg smell coming out of my camcorder? And why won't it turn on?"
I've recapped and re-aligned two EVO-9850s and a EV-C200. I keep them in good working order...

Hi8 still has a soft spot for me since that was the first video format I used growing up in the '90s.
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