Matthew "Mat" Taylor, better known by his channel's name Techmoan, is a YouTuber and blogger active since May 2009, featuring consumer tech reviews and retrotech documentaries about technology of historical interest. 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 A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' 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. Taylor's videos have been referenced by sites such as The A.V. Club,

Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite ''io9'', whic ...

, Hackaday, El Español and print publications such as Popular Mechanics and The Daily Telegraph. By ratings on Reddit,

MarketWatch MarketWatch is a website that provides financial information, business news, analysis, and stock market data. Along with ''The Wall Street Journal'' and ''Barron's'', it is a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp. Histor ...

listed the YouTube Channel 6th in its " binge-watching" top ten. 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, and a Patreon membership, are how the channel is funded.

History

In 2006, Taylor started a YouTube channel called "Vectrexuk", with videos of similar tech items like installing a home cinema and controlled toasters "just to prove a point that people will watch anything on YouTube". The channel "Techmoan" started on 31 May 2009, uploading a tour of a 2009 Piaggio MP3, taken at

480p 480p is the shorthand name for a family of video display resolutions. The p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The ''480'' denotes a vertical resolution of 480 pixels, usually with a horizontal resolution of 640 pixels and 4:3 ...

and very basic sound quality. For additional non-tech videos, in 2015 he started another channel, called the "Youtube Pedant". In a 2016 video covering the D-VHS format, he uncovered a

1080i 1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the screen. ...

video of New York City filmed in 1993. 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 and The Verge. As of March 2022, the main channel has over 1.2 million subscribers and over 277 million views. His videos often get millions of views, and his video on the Nixie watch has had more than 5 million views.

Later documentary videos

Documentary videos about forgotten

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

recording formats show the OMNI Entertainment System which used 8-track tape storage, the

HiPac HiPac (stylized as HIPAC) (pronounced as high-pack), is an audio Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, tape cartridge format, introduced in August 1971 on the Japanese consumer market by Pioneer Corporation, Pioneer and discontinued in 1973 due to l ...

, a successor of the

PlayTape PlayTape is a audiotape format and mono or stereo playback system introduced in 1966 by Frank Stanton. It is a two-track system, and was launched to compete with existing 4-track cartridge technology. The cartridges play anywhere from eight to ...

and related applications of it. Other videos show some of the smallest and largest analog recording tape cartridges ever made like the Picocassette for dictation machines or

Cantata 700 The Cantata 700 is a commercial background music system and corresponding cartridge format developed by 3M that was in common use from 1965 until the 1990s. Cartridge The nearly square-shaped cartridges are among the largest built. More than ...

background music system. Further videos show other former quarter-inch-tape cartridge formats like the

Sabamobil Sabamobil was a magnetic tape audio cartridge format made by SABA that came to the market in 1964. It used already-available four-track ¼ inch tape on 3-inch reels (7.62 cm), with two mono channels per side, using a tape speed of 3¾ ips (9.5 ...

which used existing 3-inch open reels for mobile use, and the portable Sanyo Micro Pack 35, as well as the RCA tape cartridge and the Sony

Elcaset Elcaset is a short-lived sound reproduction, audio format jointly developed by Sony, Panasonic, and Teac in 1976, building on an idea introduced 20 years earlier in the RCA tape cartridge. In 1976, it was widely felt that the compact cassette w ...

with another compromise of playtime and sound quality, oddities and gimmicks on

Compact Cassette The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...

s as "reinventing the reel", several ways of autoreverse, automatic multiple cassette players, endless loop cassettes, and cassette mass production technology. Documentary on formats of vinyl recording show the Tefifon endless cartridge, or the Seeburg 1000 background music system, vertical turntables, and other audio encodings CX and dbx for noise reduction on vinyl analog recording. Other documentaries show the mechanical Curta calculator, devices with Nixie tube displays, wire recording, and the WikiReader.

In popular culture

Techmoan was referenced in a ''

Dennis & Gnasher ''Dennis the Menace and Gnasher'' (originally titled ''Dennis the Menace'' and currently titled ''Dennis and Gnasher)'' is a long-running comic strip in the British children's comic book, comic ''The Beano'', published by DC Thomson, of Dundee ...

'' Unleashed strip in

Beano Beano may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Beano, another name for the American version of Bingo, a game of chance * Beano, a character on the American television sitcom ''Out of This World'' * ''The Beano'', a British children's comic featuri ...

, with Dennis referring to Techmoan as "total Dad-Tube".

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.techmoan.com
Techmoan - Not the 10th Anniversary Show
with an about introduction YouTube channels launched in 2009 Comedy YouTubers Technology YouTubers Living people English puppeteers Year of birth missing (living people) English male YouTubers

History

Later documentary videos

In popular culture

See also

References

External links