Techmoan

Matthew "Mat" Taylor, better known by his YouTube handle Techmoan, is an British YouTuber and blogger, specializing in consumer tech reviews and retrotech documentaries about technology of historical interest.[2]

Techmoan
Personal information
Born
Matthew Taylor
OccupationYouTuber
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2009—present
Genres
Subscribers1.32 million[1]
(September 2023)
Total views319.56 million[1]
(September 2023)
Associated acts
100,000 subscribers
1,000,000 subscribers

Apart from reviews and tests, Taylor's videos often include disassembling (and repairing when possible) products and, in the case of older technology, reporting on the product's history and reception via references in publications of the time. For audio and entertainment devices this is often Billboard magazine, which at the time covered both consumer and trade electronics devices through articles and old advertisements. Bonus outro skits often feature a trio of muppet-like puppets, parodying YouTube viewer comments.[3]

Taylor's videos have been referenced by sites such as The A.V. Club,[4] Gizmodo,[5] Hackaday,[6] El Español[7] and print publications such as Popular Mechanics[8] and The Daily Telegraph.[9][10][11][12] By ratings on Reddit, MarketWatch listed the YouTube Channel 6th in its "binge-watching" top ten.[13]

Current product reviews on miscellaneous tech items, mainly on consumer products like action and dashcams, sometimes sponsored or donated, participating in the affiliate marketing associates program of Amazon Services LLC,[14] and a Patreon membership, are how the channel is funded.[15][16]

History

In 2006, Taylor started a YouTube channel called "Vectrexuk", with videos of similar tech items like installing a home cinema and controlled toasters[17][18] "just to prove a point that people will watch anything on YouTube".[19][20]

The channel "Techmoan" started on 31 May 2009, uploading a tour of a 2009 Piaggio MP3, taken at 480p and very basic sound quality.[21] For additional non-tech videos, in 2015 he started another channel, called the "Youtube Pedant".[22] In a 2016 video covering the D-VHS format, he uncovered a 1080i video of New York City filmed in 1993.[23][24] This footage was uploaded separately to his "Youtube Pedant" channel where as of December 2022, it has gained 6.6 million views as well as being shared widely on sites such as Reddit[25] and The Verge.[26][27] As of March 2022, the main channel has over 1.2 million subscribers and over 277 million views.[28] His videos often get millions of views, and his video on the Nixie watch has had more than 5 million views.[29]

Later documentary videos

Documentary videos about forgotten magnetic tape recording formats show the OMNI Entertainment System[30] which used 8-track tape storage, the HiPac, a successor of the PlayTape and related applications of it. Other videos show some of the smallest and largest analog recording tape cartridges ever made like the Picocassette[31] for dictation machines or Cantata 700 background music system.[32] Further videos show other former quarter-inch-tape cartridge formats like the Sabamobil[33] which used existing 3-inch open reels for mobile use, and the portable Sanyo Micro Pack 35,[34] as well as the RCA tape cartridge[35] and the Sony Elcaset[36] with another compromise of playtime and sound quality, oddities and gimmicks on Compact Cassettes as "reinventing the reel",[37][38] several ways of autoreverse,[39] automatic multiple cassette players,[40][41] endless loop cassettes,[42] and cassette mass production technology.[43][44]

Documentary on formats of vinyl recording show the Tefifon[45][46] endless cartridge, or the Seeburg 1000 background music system,[47][48] vertical turntables,[49] and other audio encodings CX and dbx for noise reduction on vinyl analog recording.[50]

Other documentaries show the mechanical Curta calculator,[51] devices with Nixie tube displays,[52] wire recording,[53] and the WikiReader.[54]

Techmoan was referenced in a Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed strip in Beano, with Dennis referring to Techmoan as "total Dad-Tube".[55]

See also

References
  1. "About Techmoan". YouTube.
  2. "Techmoan/about". Retrieved 24 July 2018 – via YouTube.
  3. Comments IRL, 13 August 2018
  4. Henne, B.G. "Behold the Tefifon, the unholy German union of vinyl and 8-track". News. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  5. Menegus, Bryan. "There's a Good Reason This Weird, Old Cassette Format Didn't Work Out". Gizmodo. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  6. "Teardown and Repair of a Police Recorder". Hackaday. 2 November 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  7. "Llega el vídeo en vinilo, la experiencia más retro posible". Omicrono (in European Spanish). 18 September 2018. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  8. "The Strange Machine That Played Paper Instead of Records or Tapes". Popular Mechanics. 12 April 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  9. Why a dashcam could save you money on your car insurance, The Daily Telegraph, 11 April 2016
  10. Bryan Menegus: Yup, This Vertical Record Player Is Rad 6 May 2016
  11. Bryan Menegus: There's a Good Reason This Weird, Old Cassette Format Didn't Work Out, 31 August 2017
  12. Rhett Jones: Music Designed for an Oscilloscope Looks and Sounds Cool as Hell, 24 November 2016
  13. Shawn Langlois: 10 YouTube channels for binge-watching, 19 July 2017
  14. Archive.org capture of www.techmoan.com/about/ as of 17 April 2017
  15. "Techmoan Youtube Channel". YouTube.
  16. "Techmoan Blog / Website".
  17. Techmoan (25 July 2017), Techmoan - Not the 10th Anniversary Show, retrieved 12 November 2018
  18. "Vectrexuk", YouTube, retrieved 6 May 2019
  19. "About Techmoan".
  20. Techmoan - Not the 10th Anniversary Show, 25 July 2017
  21. "Youtube -Techmoan's First Video". YouTube.
  22. About the YouTube Channel "Youtube Pedant"
  23. Retro-Tech: When HD Movies came on VHS, retrieved 4 December 2019
  24. "Techmoan - Techmoan - Retro-tech. That time when HD came on VHS". www.techmoan.com. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  25. "r/videos - New York City in 1993 recorded in High Definition". reddit. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  26. Plante, Chris (25 April 2016). "Holy schnikes, this HD footage from 1993 NYC looks like it was filmed today". The Verge. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  27. "This footage of New York in 1993 will make you miss New York in 1993". Boing Boing. 20 August 2019. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  28. "Techmoan - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  29. The Nixie Watch, retrieved 11 March 2022
  30. MB OMNI Entertainment System - The 1980s 8-Track games machine., 6 August 2017
  31. The Picocassette – Smallest Analogue Cassette Tape ever made, 2 August 2015
  32. Retro Tech: This 1960s BGM Machine played the Biggest Cassettes ever made, 11 May 2016
  33. Forgotten Format: The Sabamobil, 22 June 2017
  34. Forgotten Format: SANYO Micro-Pack 35 Tape Recorder, 31 August 2017
  35. RetroTech: RCA Victor Tape Cartridge - A trailblazing failure, 22 September 2016
  36. Forgotten Audio Formats: DCC & Elcaset 6 May 2014
  37. TEAC O'Casse Open Cassette - Reinventing the Reel, 16 May 2015
  38. Audio Craft Cassette Cartridge: More music per pocket., 12 April 2017
  39. Auto-Reverse: The Hard Way, 26 February 2016
  40. What a 10hr music playlist looked like in 1992, 30 December 2015
  41. Retro-Tech: The 1972 Desktop 'iPod', 14 August 2016
  42. Cassettes: Lenticular Classics & Endless Loops, 13 September 2016
  43. Cassettes - better than you don't remember, 1 February 2016
  44. Pre-recorded Cassettes' Last Stand 24 January 2017
  45. Vintage Electronics - The Tefifon, 6 April 2015
  46. Tefifon Update - more info, more music, bigger.... and smaller. 4 May 2015
  47. RetroTech: Seeburg 1000 BMS1 Background Music System (1959-1986), 28 February 2017
  48. Seeburg 1000 BGM Part 2: The DIY version, 1 March 2017
  49. Rescued 1980s Relic: The Sharp RP-114 Vertical Turntable, 9 June 2014
  50. CX Discs : Better, Worse & the Same as a normal record - A Forgotten Format, 19 October 2017
  51. 1950 Curta Calculator, 24 December 2014
  52. The Nixie Watch, 15 March 2010
  53. Retro Tech: The Wire Recorder, 3 July 2016
  54. WikiReader: the Internet without the Internet, 3 September 2018
  55. "Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed". Beano: 10. 19 February 2022.
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