This year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas had some extraordinary companies. One of my favourites was showing off what it claimed was the world's cheapest camcorder. Their English PR guy tapped me on the shoulder as I was working the booths in the North Hall and said he had something interesting to show me.
It was nice to hear Estuary English in a sea of Corporate American so I followed him to their show stand. He introduced me to the marketing director of Placebo Imaging Systems, a tall, energetic man wearing thick Michael Caine-style dark framed glasses. He was called Steve, so I asked him:
"What's the pitch?"
He gave me a big smile and said, "Michael, I can show you today, exclusively at CES, the world's cheapest camcorder. Voila!"
He directed me to a small red cushion on a steel plinth at the centre of the stand. On top of it was a very sleek-looking silver camcorder, a fairly traditional layout, with a swing-out LCD screen. It wasn't so small you'd lose it, but not so big you'd feel uncool whipping it out at a party.
"How much?" I asked.
"It's $60. That's about £35 of your English pounds."
Now he had my attention.
"Really? That's amazing! That looks like the sort of mid-range MiniDV camcorder you'd pay about £400 for in the UK. What's it's called?"
"The SRD-1000. Want to give it a try?"
I picked it up. The weight was just right: not too heavy, not too insubstantial. I noted with approval that it also had a decent 5x optical zoom.
"So what's the deal? How do you keep the price so low?"
Steve beamed at me and said, "Research. Michael, do you have any kids?"
I beamed back. "Yes, I've got a little boy."
Steve flipped open his wallet to show me a picture of two smudged little girls and then slipped it back into his pocket without missing a beat.
"Me too -- two little girls, ah the pride, pride and joy, the little darlings, anyway tell me, how old is your boy?" "He's two."
"So you've got a camcorder, and you filmed his birthday? The little face beaming over the candles, the little face stuffing itself full of cake, the little face projectile-vomiting cake over the Axminster?"
"Actually, it was organic Wotsits and a fun-fur bean bag, was that a bitch to clean, but yes..."
Steve looked pleased with himself and said, "What software did you use to edit that footage and turn it into an amusing home movie for you and the rest of your extended family to enjoy? It may interest you to know that I have the name of that software written on this card..."
Steve took two cards out of this pocket and held one up expectantly.
"Um, well I've got iMovie on my G4 at home, but I've actually never got around to editing that footage, so I suppose -- none."
Steve turned the card around. It said, "None."
Steve smiled and held up the other card and said, "When you digitised that footage, did you store it on an offline external drive, or keep it on your hard-drive, or back it up to tape?"
I blushed. "Well, actually, I never did take it off the camcorder, and in fact the original tapes are still in..."
Steve turned over his second card. On it was a picture of a shoebox.
"You're not alone. We've looked into this and over 97 per cent of all MiniDV camcorder footage ends up in a shoebox. No one ever digitises it, no one ever edits it, and no one ever -- EVER -- looks at it."
"What happens to the shoebox?"
He sighed, and said, "We call it 'the landfill memory mountain'. It's actually a serious environmental problem. The shoebox gets put in storage in a leaky crawl space where it's forgotten and then you move, new people move in and it's discovered by the new owner's children. They take it to their parents who throw it away. The staff at the local dump examine a few of the tapes to see if there's any porn there, and then throw the rest away in disgust."
I looked at the camcorder in my hand and said, "Ahhh... so this thing doesn't actually have any tape inside it -- you're using some kind of ultra-cheap hard-drive or flash mechanism? Mini-DVD? A new proprietary data-storage format?"
"No, no," Steve impatiently, "It's not a problem with the tapes. It's a problem with the whole ecosystem of digital imaging in the home. The camcorder isn't for actually creating images that are viewed at a later date. It's a symbolic object -- you bring it out on special occasions to make everyone feel special. It's a totem or fetish. We've found you can perform this function just as effectively even when the camcorder has no actual recording media inside!
"Think about it. You're badly hung-over. There are 17 toddlers going nuts in your home during a kid's party. Your wife is upset with you because you tried to iron her blouse before she took it off and she's got third-degree burns in the small of her back. The doorbell rings and yet another much-loved child arrives and your wife says, 'Get the camcorder! Get the camcorder! You've got to get this on film!'
"So you grab your camcorder and one of two things are true. Either there's no film in the camcorder, or the batteries are dead, and you're in a lot -- and I mean a lot -- of trouble. With the SRD-1000 there's no film to run out. There's no hard drive to fill up. The LED is powered by two AA batteries and you can always lift them from the TV's remote, so you're covered there. With the SRD-1000 you can pretend to film away to your heart's content, secure in the knowledge that you've got it covered. The big guy's on top of it."
I looked at the camcorder sitting there on its little red cushion.
"What does SRD stand for?"
"I'm glad you asked. 'Symbolic Recording Device.' That's patented."
"What's the reaction at the show been like?"
"Amazing. Our order book is through the roof. 'Once you go blank, you never go back.'"
"Do you take cash? Could I grab one now?"
He shook my hand and said, "Off course, Michael. We'll have a 'review unit' sent to your hotel room. And wait until you see our digital cameras."
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