The portable consumer video cameras that came out in the late 1970s extended the range of the portable 16mm camera that had allowed cinema vérité to flourish. Unlike film cameras, video cameras first used analog, and then digital, technologies to capture sound and image, dramatically lowering the price of footage and potentially democratizing production as well as distribution of moving images. On the other hand, the movingimage industries also incorporated new video delivery systems to reach an even larger audience, through video cassette recorders, cable and satellite.

The availability of cheap video technology in the 1970s allowed average lay people to produce moving images. Many more families have home videos now, even though their content differs little from previous 8mm home movies, except for accessibility. While most associated video in America with the VHS cassette, other formats have been used by professionals or independents. Hence, there was euphoria when the U-Matic was introduced with good quality BetaSP tape. More “prosumer” models followed, including 8mm, high-8 and super VHS; all are analog videotapes.

The digital age arrived in the mid-1990s, further improving the quality of the image and sound of the taped event. The camera became cheaper, smaller, even more portable.

With digital technology nonlinear editing becomes more accessible as well.

On the industrial side, digital technology has helped made Titanic a success, as well as creating other works from Toy Story to the Matrix. More and more films are now edited first in video rather than film.

With the development of the Internet, video technology has found a new channel for distribution and exhibition. It can be both broadcast, reaching whoever hits the site, or narrowcast, where only the target audience will be reached. Technology is developing quickly so that the quality of cyber-video constantly improves both in resolution and the time needed to transmit images.

We cannot fully understand the implication of these new technologies for the production and transmission of moving images and sound without placing them in the basic cultural and economic landscape of the US. When new, better quality cheaper, more accessible technologies arrive, different people in society will find diverse uses for them, be it portable video or digital nonlinear editing systems. Lay people shoot home videos, activists make community/advocacy works, artists create avant-garde works and George Lucas makes Hollywood blockbusters. In the US, while all these possibilities coexist, the commercial broadcasting and entertainment systems inevitably devise ways to make the most profitable use of the medium.

Hence, home video stays at home, while consumer camera sales go up. Activists can use video to create community and have their messages heard, but are confined to limited constituents. Artists will find small grants and museums open to their new pursuits.

Hollywood will have the best machine to produce the most expensive images, mesmerizing the audience with the mystique of technologies. The Internet sites that get the most hits mean bigger companies and the richest Internet companies will have the largest capacities for the transmission of video data in cyberspace. The marketplace is not only an economic phenomenon, but also a cultural one. Technologies are intertwined with the market, channeling money, talent and other resources, and benefiting the owners of the means of such production and distribution.