Until the advent of AIT, Exabyte was the sole vendor of 8 mm format tape drives.

The company was formed with the aim of taking the 8 mm video format and making it suitable for data storage.

They did so by building a reliable mechanism and data format that used the common 8 mm helical scan videotape technology that was available then.

Exabyte's drive mechanisms were frequently rebranded and integrated into UNIX systems.

Metal Particle (MP) Data8 cartridges are essentially identical to Video8 cassettes and can be used for video recording.