[2][3] In January 1984, Eastman Kodak announced the new technology in the U.S.[4][5] In 1985, Sony of Japan introduced the Handycam, one of the first Video8 cameras with commercial success.

Much smaller than the competition's VHS and Betamax video cameras, Video8 became very popular in the consumer camcorder market.

[11] In April 1986 six Japanese electronics companies—Matsushita, Hitachi, Pentax, Minolta, Mitsubishi, Sharp and Toshiba—announced their lack of plans to embrace eight millimeter in the foreseeable future and instead adopted VHS-C format.

[2] In terms of video quality, Video8 offers similar performance to Beta-II and VHS in their standard-play modes.

Audio on Standard VHS and Beta is recorded along a narrow linear track at the edge of the tape, where it is vulnerable to damage.

Coupled with the slow horizontal tape speed, the sound was comparable with that of a low-quality audio cassette.

By contrast, all Video8 machines used audio frequency modulation (AFM) to record sound along the same helical tape path as that of the video signal.

Although it is possible to transfer tapes (using the VCR to rerecord the source video as it is played back by the camcorder), the VHS copy would lose some quality compared to the 8mm original.

Collectively, they dominated the camcorder market for almost two decades before they were eventually crowded out by digital formats, such as MiniDV, 8cm DVD.

First demonstrated in February 1989, it was initially endorsed by ten other manufacturers — Aiwa, Canon, Fuji, Hitachi, Konica, Matsushita, Maxell, Ricoh, Sanyo and TDK,[12] which were joined later by Nikon, Samsung, Sharp and TEAC.

Like S-VHS, Hi8 was officially rated at a luminance resolution of 400 lines,[12] a vast improvement from their respective base formats and are roughly equal to LaserDisc quality.

Sony accepted HiFi AFM Stereo for its future mid-range models and relegated digital PCM audio to top of the line camcorders and VCRs.

To store the digitally encoded audio/video on a standard NTSC Video8 cassette, the tape must be run at double the Hi8 speed.

Most Digital8 units offer an LP mode, which increases the recording time on an NTSC P6-120 tape to 90 minutes.

Digital8's main rival is the consumer MiniDV format, which uses narrower tape and a correspondingly smaller cassette shell.

Since both technologies share the same logical audio/video format, Digital8 can theoretically equal MiniDV or even DVCAM in A/V performance.

The three formats are physically very similar, featuring both the same magnetic tape width and near-identical cassette shells, measuring 95 × 62.5 × 15 mm.

The 8mm tape width was chosen as smaller successor to the 12mm Betamax format, using similar technology (including U-shaped tape loading)[16] but in a smaller configuration in response to the small configuration VHS-C compact camcorders introduced by the competition.

Some later cameras and players attempted to derive the tape position from the differential rotation of the spools with limited success.

This is an improved version of the VHS write-protect tab, which prevents erasure after it has been broken off, requiring covering with adhesive tape or filling with an obstruction to remove the write protection.

It lacks the long (5+ hours) recording times of both VHS and Betamax, offers no clear audio/video improvement, and cost more than equivalent full-size VCRs.

Even with all of the advanced features offered in high-end Video8 machines, there was no compelling reason to switch to Video8 for the home application.

[18] Among home and amateur videographers, Video8/Hi8 was popular enough for Sony to make equipment for video editing and production.