Readers with long memories may recall the Fisher-Price PixelVision toy from the late 1980s which recorded black-and-white video on a conventional cassette running at many times normal speed.

Cassette tapes were a major way of listening to (and recording) music througout the 1980s and 1990s and were in every hi-fi stereo, boom box, and passenger vehicle of the era. Their decline was ...