Sony's forgotten ‘80s Picture Phone

if this thing was any more up my  street we'd be sharing a letterbox   i mean just to give you some ideas of the kind  of things i'm talking about brand new inbox   new old stock comes from a company you might have  heard of called sony it's got a little black and   white crt in it and it looks like something out  of space 1999. i mean this is just this is amazing   i mean you've seen it in the thumbnail i don't  know why i'm doing all this preamble you already   know what i'm going to show you so let's get it  out it is the sony pct-15 this is a video phone   from 1988. now for a brief period in the 1980s  there were a few devices similar to this made   their way to the market they weren't successful  but perhaps the best remembered one now is the   mitsubishi luma phone and the reason that that  is known about more than others in retro tech   circles is because of its connection to atari  atari developed the technology but then sold it   on to mitsubishi with the whole Warner takeover  thing but i've got one of those as well brand   new inbox the reason i haven't shown it to you is  because a video phone on its own isn't very much   use you could do with having two if you want to  demonstrate anything so this time i came prepared no these come from a chap in the netherlands his  name's Koen and i'm very much indebted to him for   spotting these on a local auction he saw them he  sent me a link he said have you ever seen these   before you want me to bid on them of course we had  a discussion and now i've got two of them to show   you so let's open one of these boxes up and have  a good look at it i'm so excited about opening   this up i've noticed on the top it mentions the  one in here is white and that picture there looks   black to me so maybe it looks even more like  something out of space 1999 once we get it open   all right so we've got the instruction manual  in the top you can see this was made for the   netherlands market we've also got  the english instruction manual there   warranty card i wonder if there's a date on  here no no date all right let's get in here oh yeah it's a definitely a white body  on there let's get that out of the way   oh look at that oh man it's like a giant  sony watchman that's a beautiful device   that could have come out today well it has done  as far as i'm concerned now the idea behind this   is that it doesn't replace your traditional  telephone instead it's an accessory   that sits between your phone and the  landline socket and provided that the   person you're calling at the other end also has  the same setup you're able to send and receive   video to one another now with this being  a product that was developed in the 1980s   there's some limitations we're talking about black  and white video but we're also talking about just   still images yes the ability to send and receive  moving colour video down a standard telephone line   was something that would only really become  possible in the early part of the 1990s   with the development of digital video compression  technologies so just to be crystal clear on how   these were expected to be used you'd be having a  telephone conversation with someone just as normal   but during the conversation provided they had  one of these units at their end you could say   oh i'll tell you what i'll just send you over  a still picture you'd press the button it would   transmit the picture to their device during which  time you wouldn't be able to speak to one another   but once a picture had received you could just  carry on talking as normal now bear in mind these   things don't have a video input on the back the  only input is that camera on the top any image   you wanted to send to the remote end you'd have to  hold up in front of the camera but it's a little   bit like sending a fax mid telephone conversation  it's interesting to see this labelled up with   english language because the only version i'd seen  before now had been in a us magazine article in   1988 and for that article they'd imported one  from japan and of course that had japanese text   here instead apparently it came out in japan in  late 87 that u.s magazine article was from 88   but this is a little bit later than that because  it says here copyright 1989 by sony corporation   so the odds are that this was put in a box in  1989 and sent over to the netherlands to be sold   or rented by ptt telecom they were the national  telecommunications provider for the netherlands   in a very similar way to british telecom here in  the uk and in a similar way they were privatized   and the year they were privatized in was 1989.  so i think that explains what's happened to this   for whatever reason this fell between the cracks  and ended up getting stuck in a warehouse for 30   odd years until it was sent to me but it's lovely  to see this white plastic looking brand new like   it just left the factory but let's turn this  around because on the back here we've got a couple   of sockets so let's see what those are along the  bottom here we've got the sockets you'd expect   power input one going after the telephone socket  on the wall and then the telephone being plugged   into that one on the right but along the top a  bit more interesting because the images are sent   in the form of audio that means you can record  and play them back so we've got three rca plugs   here so the one on the left says tape record that  means you could record the audio as it comes in   and then play it back through the middle one to  see the images at a later date on the right hand   side that says print it out but it's also got  a yellow socket on there which indicates that   it's a composite video output so you'd have to  have a video printer attached up to this and i   do happen to have one of those somewhere so i'll  see if i can dig that out later but you could also   attach this up to a television screen to get a  larger image on the right hand side here we've   got a slider to adjust the brightness of the  camera image and that camera is located at the   top right here and it looks like there's a shutter  covering it over at the moment yes i presume that   moves out of the way automatically and just to the  right of the camera there's a warning sticker here   to not aim the camera at the sun and to avoid  prolonged exposure to bright scenes and that is   because the camera is a saticon image pickup tube  and the visual resolution 160 by 100 dots normal   or 96 by 100 quick i'll explain more about that  later and we've got 64 grey scales and it takes   for a normal image about 10 seconds to send it and  six and a half seconds to send a quick image ah so   we've got a power brick in here and that's it i  think hold on no i've got a rj11 cable i believe so of course because you'd normally plug your  telephone into the wall instead you plug it   into this then you need this wire to go from this  device to the wall but i'll be using that to plug   two of these together hopefully in a moment right  so i'll plug the power in the back and whilst i've   got it turned around i'll also plug the rj11 into  the middle here ready for connecting to the other   one but before we do that let's just check that  this is working right i've plugged it in here goes   ah the shutter immediately moved away there  where i turned it on and there i am on the screen   yeah i mean contrast isn't great you always wonder  how much of these things are down to age and how   much uh down to the actual technology of the time  but uh um not many grey scales there it looks very   pasty like a ghoul on the screen i've adjusted  the brightness down in here a little bit i'm   getting a much better image now so let me just  freeze myself in the middle of this screen here   press the button at the bottom okay so that  is the image that i'd be sending to the other   end but we mentioned before how we've got  a button here which switches between normal   and quick send and the quick obviously  transmits the image a little bit faster   and the way it does that is by pressing it you  see it cuts off the edges it removes a third of   the image so it's just sending the center part  here and therefore it transmits it in less time   but notice what we've got here is vertical  video so yes people with this sony device in   the late 1980s were sending each other vertical  video long before the smartphone came along   however at the moment i can't send anything to  anyone because i've just got it stuck inside this   device so let's unwrap the other one i'll plug  it in hopefully that one's working too and then   we'll transmit something from one to the other now  i thought everything was working fine but there's   a little bit of a problem with this so let me  just zoom you in yeah the geometry is out on   this i've got a big Mekon* (*out of Dan Dare) head  look at that brilliant and if i press the normal   slash quick button you'll see the the bars that  should be vertical either side are cutting inwards   fortunately i didn't buy just two of these  i suspected there might be an issue so i've   got another one unfortunately i took it to my  locker the other day so it's going to be a bit   of a short drive out and i can go and pick  it up and hopefully that one works properly   right well that was fun let's turn  this one on hopefully this is oh no   it stays well so the other one  look at that this is terrible   okay well the image on this left hand screen is  distorted but it doesn't matter we're still able   to demonstrate how these work the cameras are both  working fine now bear in mind the live video that   you're looking at on the screen at the moment  is just what the person would see of themselves   they're not looking at the remote end we haven't  sent anything through yet so let's get on and do   that so i'm going to hold up this piece of paper  here and press freeze so this person now has   frozen that image and can now send it to this end  so let's press send it says sending there lights   up receiving here you can see the image coming  through notice it was mirrored on that one but   on this one it shows the correct way round and  i can bring this one back to the monitor display   and there you go that's what you missed out on in  1989 by not getting one of these okay now let's   mix things up a bit i'll send a quick image across  so i'm going to hold this piece of paper up again   press the quick button and freeze it on the screen  there and the reason you might want to send across   a quick image rather than a normal one is because  whilst the devices are sending and receiving   neither of you are able to talk to one another  it blocks out the audio because of course it's   using that to send their image right so let's go  back to the monitor on here and now if we go back   to the monitor there i'll send across goodbye  to the other end so freeze that one and send it   and what you'll see now is that they've both got  an image stored in memory that has been received   so this one has got goodbye on it and it'll pop  back to the hello i think on this one there we go   so there you go they can both store one image in  memory before it's overwritten with the next one   okay now let's plug a tape recorder in the  back and we'll try to store and play back   an image and we'll also be able to hear what  the images sound like whilst they're being sent   so if you're interested this is the sound that  gets recorded to tape when a message is received   i'm only going to send a quick message though  so you don't have to listen to it too long   and there you go okay i've got the  cassette recorder attached now i've   already sent some images across to this one  and i recorded them as they were coming in   and now i'm able to play them back as a little  bit of a slideshow for you so let's have a look yeah it seemed only right to display some  images from space 1999 for anyone who hasn't   seen the show they used black and white tvs as  communication devices and when i first saw this   it was the thing that it reminded me of most  okay i've managed to find my video printer   and it just so happens to be from sony as well i  bought this a few years ago for a project that i   never got around to doing now i'm going to send an  image from this one on the left here i'll just uh   send it over you don't have to press freeze by  the way that's just so you can get the perfect   image i've just pressed send there so it's coming  across a bit of a dopey looking image there but   once that's received let's try printing  that out so i've got a print button here   hopefully this is going to do something  oh that was quick look at that   tear that off there you go now a bit bright  there so we've got controls on the front here   for brightness and contrast let's turn the  brightness down a bit the contrast up a bit yeah getting better not bad at all that last  one so there you go that's your video printer   so somebody could be sending your images on here  and say you're definitely not saving these are   you and you go oh no i'm definitely not saving  them at all and you save them to tape and you   print them out on your video printer i'm sure  nowadays there'll be all sorts of controls in   place to stop people doing things like that i  think the best way was not to buy one of these   in the first place which is what most people  decided to do there was just one thing left to   do and that was to connect it up to an external  display so you can see that i've done that now   the image on the tv doesn't look too brilliant  though i've been playing around with the settings   and this is as good as i can get it to display  it's a bit bleached out and it's quite blurry   i think that little crt over there hides these  sins just due to the fact it's smaller and down to   the nature of the technology but also bear in mind  that the image we're looking at here on the screen   is the live video feed from our own camera just  watch what happens when i send an image from the   remote end so i'll press send on the other  device now it's coming through and whilst it   looks fine on that little display there when you  look at this you can see it is really quite blocky   no complaints though i'm just saying  that it looks better on a smaller screen   so the little crt that's inside the device itself  actually does the image quite a few favors there's   just one button left to press it's this top  one and it's labeled there slash here and the   idea behind this is that it displays an image that  you've stored locally or an image that's been sent   to you from the remote end and you can alternate  between those so if i go to this one over here   i haven't sent anything to this so as you  can see there's nothing displayed for the   there option and the here is the one that i  stored earlier on with a thumbs up so let's   go back to this one now and i'm going to freeze  frame the image we've got on the screen here so   that's our here image and if we press this button  that's there so there you go that's what that does   but i think the only other thing to do now  is to open one of these up and the one we're   going to open is this because we've got this  issue with the screen geometry and if i bring   a magnet near to it you can see we can't adjust  that but whether or not there's a control inside   that will stretch this out permanently i do have  my doubts i think it's more a component that's   gone beyond its usefulness however if we open  it up at least we get to have a look inside so   let's do that now so i've flipped it over here's  the base it looks like we've just got the two   screws we can remove hopefully that will enable us  to get inside the serial numbers on here it says   one double zero six two zero let's have a look  at the other one see what that serial number is   one double zero six five four and i've got one  double zero nine one nine as well those seem like   pretty low serial numbers i wonder if they made  many more well i've gotta say it's a bit naive   of me to expect to find a nice easy pot to twiddle  there's nothing that's showing up near the picture   tube section here so the wires are going into the  back of there and that's the bottom part and it   just goes up to the screen behind here at the top  you might be able to make out that which is the   tube for the camera module and it's all very nice  and neat in here very well put together this is   the part that faces towards the back of it and um  you can see a couple of things here we've got some   dip switches at this point and i've got to  imagine that they're to do with the communication   standards depending upon what country this  is going to be used in i only guessing here   yeah i think i'm right because that one says  send level adjustments on it i'd imagine these   other ones are a similar control so yeah i think  this whole section here is to do with the modem   and all over it there's little marks to say that  this was made in japan and that was made in japan   and so was this so yeah all assembled in japan  i'd imagine this flat crt display component the   fdm 46 is the same unit that you'd find inside  the larger sony watchman portable televisions   yeah unfortunately i don't think i'm going to be  able to effect any quick fixes in here today so   i'm just going to put it back together again so  there you have it the pct-15 or the face-to-face   sony's 1980s attempt at a video phone and i very  much doubt you've seen one of these before i   certainly hadn't it's always a joy to bring  something like this and show it off to   more people and i really do like this design  there's something i always find very appealing   about a small black and white crt but then again  of course it also dates it very much but even back   in the 1980s i would not have been interested  in one of these even if it cost half the price   because like most people i don't think i'd want  to be able to send a black and white still image   every now and then while i was making a telephone  call and it seems like that market just didn't   really exist and believe it or not as well as sony  mitsubishi were bringing one of these things out   and initially there was going to be a format war  between different devices that weren't compatible   with one another and then somewhere along the line  they decided that they'd make them compatible so   if you had one of these under mitsubishi  device you'd be able to send your photos   back and forth but even teaming up like that still  wasn't a big enough market for something like this   when the technology improved and we got into  moving video of course you've got abilities to   do things like send sign language so you've got  accessibility benefits to something like this   but as far as still images go and one every few  seconds not too much use to all that many people   but they did keep trying this idea for quite a  while these are the later ones i mentioned that   mitsubishi luma phone that was a bit earlier the  one that was developed by atari and when i went to   the locker i took the time to pick the box up for  that so i'm going to just show it to you but we're   not going to do anything with it today but there  you go that's the lunar phone so yeah developed   by atari sold on to mitsubishi who then went on to  develop the later version and that was the rival   to this sony pct-15 but i hope you've enjoyed  having a look at these here today i certainly   have enjoyed showing them to you but that's it  for the moment as always thanks for watching

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 407,930

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, Sony PCT-15, Videophone, video phone, sony, picture phone, pct-15, video, phone, 1980s, face to face, photo phone, still image transceiver, retrotech, retro, tech, gadget, history, BNIB, NOS, flop, photo, tape, cassette, digital camera

Id: 8_Yz0TT439Q

Length: 20min 38sec (1238 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/69thAccount]

Hmm would be fun to hook these up between college dorms or something similar. Maybe someone could figure out how to do it longer distance than a cable without the need for phonelines few people have...