My Sony DCR-TRV9, the other sony's big brother, is my first camcorder ever! I got it for only 160 yen (I wasn't even the only bidder) and it felt pretty great to win my first auction item at such a low price, back when I was a rookie bidder. It was heavily water damaged, you don't really see it when it's powered off but the screen has this horrible damage that seems to be caused by an additional factor other than time? It's kind of as if someone tried cleaning it with an acidic solution, is what my dad said when I showed it to him. The viewfinder is busted too, so you have to squint real hard at the screen if you want to take some footage. As for the footage itself, the audio is completely fucked and sometimes the microphone records like two seconds every once in a while and the footage all melts into the next frames, which makes for some pretty cool organic glitch/damage effects. Despite all the damage I cherished with care and love, took it to so many places an recorded a lot with it, especially considering it was my first time hanling a camcorder, all was right and good... until it wasn't. Very recently, something like October 2023, this beloved camcorder of mine decided to die on me. The battery wasn't just exhausted (it might be dead which I still haven't checked, and I hope it's only that), the camera shut down completely while it was on playback and in result, also ate one of my tapes which basically had all of my summer 2023 shenaningans!!! I could probably remove it since the tape mechanism isn't automatic but I still want to check if there's something that can be done before sacrificing it to the camcorder gods... Anyway, fly high angel, not really sure if you're actually dead but I miss your evil startup sounds everyday. Here's some footage: