Video Toaster

Sweet a piece of technology I can get behind, video while I cook my toast, right? Is that what you are thinking when you hear “Video Toaster” But, it isn’t what I was thinking it was. So what exactly is the Video Toaster?

What is it

If you add hardware and software together you can do some video editing. Yes, video editing in the year 1990 something. Nowadays you would you think that this would be commonplace, but back in the 1990s this was something, new for computer users and could provide connectors to something common as analog video sources that were common like VHS.

Professional systems costings 3 times as much as video toaster did which ran a few thousand dollars and it compared to the desktop publishing put out by Macintosh.

Topeka, Kansas

Dana Carvey, a comedian has a brother named Brad, built what is called the wire wrap prototype, along with Tim Jenison designed the Video Toaster and Steve Kell wrote the software, there were others that worked on it, don’t get me wrong, the three mentioned were the major ones.

When the Toaster was announced in 1987, at the World of Commodore expo and then they released the commercial product at Christmas time, well in December in 1990.  It had something called LightWave 3D, which is a 3D modeling, rendering, and animation program. It became a standalone product separate in 1994.

Generations

There were several generations of the video toaster and it ran on Windows in the later versions. But it started to decline and in 2010 the discontinuation of Video Toaster was announced. By the time 2012 came around it was the end of Video Toaster. So no more watching video’s on your toasters.