PXL 2000 By Fisher-Price, Retro Camcorder

The PXL 2000 is a retro Lo-Fi home video camera dropped on the world in 1988. It records a whopping 100 vertical lines at 15 frames per second. Technically, not terribly impressive, but this limitation gives the videos taken by the camera an airy, ghostly quality that I haven't seen before. There are a significant number of Youtube videos displaying the camera's stuff. I threw a couple of them up. It's definitely worth checking out.

This first video is a commercial from when it was first released. It's about thirty seconds long and contains a number of short clips demoing the camera in action. The display you see is the accessory 4" TV you could get with the camera.

This video is my favorite of the surprising number of PXL 2000 shot videos on Youtube. Eerie. I think this one demonstrates a lot of the motion blur and ghostliness.

This isn't a video, but this guy, Bill Miller, took the PXL 2000 and upgraded it, restoring all of it's functionality and adding in a number of other knobs and bells and whistles. Scroll down this page (same link) about halfway to find it. There is an auction up on ebay for his restored customized PXL 2000. It's running around five bills.

I don't recommend spending any money on one of these. But if you find one in your Old Aunt Bernice's basement, have fun!

[via RetroThing]