HOME DESKTOP BROADCASTING 

"Within five years, all of your favorite television shows will be produced either by someone you know, or you." While these aren't my words, I would have only disagreed as far as the time span is concerned. However after testing some of the new home video equipment, I agree. Visuals, images or whatever people end up calling them, big steps forward are being made to replace print around the world.

Before strenous objections surface let me point out one usually unobserved fact. Last year 46 million videocassette recorders were sold on this planet. They can process a vast amount of material. Viewers are consuming much of this visual media. But in the marketplace what is really happening? The manufacturers see that so-called amateur production is many times larger than the professional television market. While they sell 20,000 professional TV cameras at $50,000 each, at best a $1 billion market, they are now selling 46 million home VCRs.

Many of those same people who purchased inexpensive videocassette recorders are now buying expensive amateur video cameras. At $1,500 each. The amateur market for VCRs last year was worth more than nine billion dollars. You don't have to be a rocket trajectory scientist to figure out that the money spent on VCR research and development (averaging around five percent of total sales) produces more research money for the amateur market than it does for the professional market! About $450 million. Professional equipment R&D can't exceed $50 million.

After operating one of Sony's Hi-Eight, CCD-V101, 8mm cameras in Europe, Morocco and the Western Sahara for over a month convinced me that amateur equipment now is as good as professional equipment. These amateur cameras operate on AC/DC current, from batteries, a car cigarette lighter or house current. The batteries recharge in one hour. The Hi Eight records on two-hour video cassettes that are smaller than normal audio cassettes and have a picture resolution of 500 lines. That's better than your TV set at home picking up broadcast quality war news from CNN. This camera weighs two pounds! It picks up pictures in ultra-low light. That's dark. In some situations the camera is small enough to be practically invisible. During more than 25 security check points in Morocco, no one enquired about the camera. With a bulky professional camera I would have been questioned at the first blockade.

What's coming? The Video Toaster. It does for single video frames what the kitchen toaster does for bread! It allows the power of the broadcasting studio to be manipulated by the consumer. It is not that much different to what happened a few years ago when the Apple Macintosh changed the face of printing with desktop publishing. Suddenly desktop published material started to match that of the professional!

A color-base corrector that costs a TV studio $50,000, is now available for your home video studio for US $1,500. That evens the playing field with the professional studios. The Video Toaster also costs only $1,200 and creates all the flip-flops, visual animation and high tech razzamatazz seen on broadcast TV, including what your kids have been weaned on from MTY. Now you can do all that at home. What's the difference? Not much. What's one of the highest-rated television shows now on major network TV? "Home Videos". Hollywood has moved to a desktop in Indian Head, Saskatchewan!

A home video setup, totalling under $15,000 and including a good computer with color/video interchange like on the Amiga, can now match to about a 95 percent ratio that of $500,000 worth of professional video equipment. Naturally, you have to acquire a basic knowledge of studio techniques and put in some long hours developing the proper style. Just like occured in professional TV during their early years. In fact because you have been watching how it has been done for the past several decades your early productions will be better than what Milton Berle did in the Fifties.

The only thing holding you back from making a saleable television show is that you don't think you can do it. Perhaps you can.

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