8 mm video format

The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats for the NTSC and PAL/SECAM television systems. These are the original Video8 (analog recording) format and its improved successor Hi8 (analog video and analog audio but with provision for digital audio), as well as a more recent digital recording format known as Digital8.

Their user base consisted mainly of amateur camcorder users, although they also saw important use in the professional television production field.

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.

Technical overview

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. This gives a measure of backward compatibility in some cases. One difference between them is in the quality of the tape itself, but the main differences lie in the encoding of the video when it is recorded onto the tape.

El Chavo del Ocho

El Chavo del Ocho (often shortened to El Chavo) is a Mexican television sitcom that gained enormous popularity in Hispanic America as well as in Brazil, Spain, United States, Venezuela, and other countries. It centers on the adventures and tribulations of the title character—a poor orphan nicknamed "El Chavo" (which means "The Lad"), played by the show's creator, Roberto Gómez Bolaños "Chespirito"—and other inhabitants of a fictional low income housing complex, or, as called in Spanish, vecindad. The show's theme song is "The Elephant Never Forgets" by Jean-Jacques Perrey based on Beethoven's "Turkish March" Op. 113.

El Chavo first appeared in 1971 as a sketch in the Chespirito show, which was produced by Televisión Independiente de México (TIM). In 1973, following the merger of TIM and Telesistema Mexicano, El Chavo was transmitted by Televisa and became a weekly half-hour series, which ran until 1980. After that year, shorts continued to be shown in Chespirito until 1992. At its peak of popularity during the mid-1970s, El Chavo was the most watched show in Mexican television and had a Latin American audience of 350 million viewers per episode.