Techmoan


Matthew "Mat" Taylor, better known by his stage name Techmoan, is a YouTuber and blogger active since May 2009, featuring consumer tech reviews and "RetroTech" documentaries.
Apart from reviews and tests, videos often include taking products apart and, in the case of older technology, going over the product's history plus 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. His statements have been quoted by The Daily Telegraph and Gizmodo. By ratings on Reddit, MarketWatch 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 the affiliate marketing associates program of Amazon Services LLC, and a Patreon membership keep the channel alive.
Bonus outro skits often feature a trio of muppet-like puppets, and frequently skewer the inanity and pedantry of YouTube viewer comments.
His videos are referenced by sites such as The A.V. Club, Gizmodo, Hackaday, El Español and Popular Mechanics.

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 May 31, 2009, uploading a tour of a 2009 Piaggio MP3, taken at 480p and very basic sound quality. For additional non-tech videos, in 2015 he started another channel, called the "Youtube Pedant". In 2016, while during a video covering the DVHS format, he uncovered 1080i video of New York City filmed in 1993. This footage was uploaded separately to his "Youtube Pedant" channel where as of December 2019, it has gained 3.8 million views as well as being shared widely on sites such as Reddit and The Verge. As of June 2020, the main channel has over 987,000 subscribers and over 211 million views. Some videos have had over 4 million views.

Later documentary videos

Documentary videos about forgotten magnetic tape recording formats show the OMNI Entertainment System 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 for dictation machines or Cantata 700 background music system. Further videos show other former ¼-inch-tape cartridge formats like the Sabamobil 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 with another compromise of playtime and sound quality, oddities and gimmicks on Compact Cassettes 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.
Further documentaries show the mechanical Curta calculator, devices with Nixie tube displays, wire recording, and the WikiReader.