CD Video (Not Video CD) - when Videodiscs went gold

[@Techmoan]

Links and answers to any FAQs can be found in the video description text box.

[@iMadrid11]

I believe there’s another format called CD+ (if I remember it right) which have extra multimedia content that’s playable on PC. The audio track is playable on regular CD players.

[@4_am]

Nnoooo now I miss Everett :(

[@JohnParishPhotos]

Techmoan, do you remember the Philips vcc240 viedo tapes and player. It was a double sided video tape, I remember a mate of mine having one of the players. Never seen one since.

[@superhavi]

@Postie: The VCC240s were 240min "Video 2000"-cassettes. Those things lasted only for about five years and died around 1984.

[@FrankRincon]

Back in the 80s I saw a salesman preform a demo of these gold disc. I was fascinated by the color of disc and that video was also on a CD. Thanks for the retrospect.

[@EposVox]

Disc rot makes me so sad :(

[@neoasura]

For real, back when CDs came out, we never thought they could ever "rot". Of course we didn't understand the tech then, and it was still a new media...just figured if they never got scratched, they would last forever theoretically.

[@PBRStreetgang]

I understand the sadness well! I thought I had backed up my cassette and vinyl collections by burning to CD-R in 1998; a smart decision I told myself. Even in an dark, dry, and undisturbed basement for 15+ years, surely they would be perfectly preserved. Only the gold Maxells remained untarnished. TDK and Memorex - completely ruined.

[@ralphrichardson6044]

Isn't that what killed Kenny Everett?

[@EposVox]

Except not everything that's at risk of disk rot has been preserved or backed up yet

[@voltcorp]

Game collectors are keenly aware of your pain

[@ronvolbrecht4195]

I remember the very mad customers we had when they found out that CDs would not play on DVD players, at first. It took the engineers almost a year to solve the reverse engineering problem, but they wouldn't let it happen a second time. When Blu Ray came out, they made sure that CDs & DVDs would also play.

[@RadioForYahweh]

Exactly. Great point.

[@dereine385]

PS4 cant Play Cd's.

[@Temperjames]

@@dereine385 That's entirely down to stubbornness by Sony, its all in the software and nothing to do with the hardware. They could patch it in seconds if they wanted. Ive never once had an urge to put a CD in my PS4 or Xbox One and i imagine most people are the same anyway

[@dereine385]

@@Temperjames i know,they force you to use Spotify

[@Temperjames]

@@renakunisaki There's no hardware reason it can't. The laser and array isn't some kind of futuristic setup... remember it's not even capable of reading UHD Blu-Ray... and the Xbox One S and Xbox One X can read everything from CD, through DVD to UHD Blu-Ray

[@paulnash9851]

Seriously, is there no format/tech/player/gadget that Techmoan isn't really well informed about ? A true gem of information + education online. Hats off, + a virtual pint for that man. Simply great.

[@abigguitar]

It really doesn't take that much to become informed about an older format, especially when you go looking to buy it. Though, I haven't yet seen TechMoan do a segment on the 3" CD single format that became popular during the late 80s.

[@Havanacuba1985]

abigguitar I have a 3” cd of beat the bullet by sleaze metal band Vain, I had a Gary Moore one too but sold that

[@marcinagy6468]

Also, He's a man wit a good sense of humour, editing skills, and a bitchin' blazer.

[@spuds6423]

You hit the proverbial nail square right on the head!!! I look forward to Mat's vids.

[@spuds6423]

The Atomic Punk Vain had potential... big following on the west coast.. Never really heard of them on east coast until Eddie Trunk mentioned them a while back.

[@FranLab]

Ugh.... Laser Rot. Many of my 80's era laserdiscs came apart like this... It seems that they changed the laminating process in the 90's as my later discs have fared quite well.

[@yfs9035]

Fran!

[@Bubu567]

It really is hit or miss. I found my CD gase with cds from the late 90's and half of them are rotted while the other half are in perfect condition.

[@frazerbrennan9245]

@@yfs9035 is that you fran?

[@indiana2096]

I had to hunt for a good copy of "Let It Be" LD an earlier release ("Disc Vision") as rare as it was, with the Laser Rot problem made it so expensive to find a good one.

[@marioboi323]

That’s why I plan on trying to get the South Park movie on laserdisc.

[@MrRoccoMarchegiano]

they hooked me with that Tears for Fears though.

[@ethanjman5868]

I was so happy when I heard that

[@Kiwi_As]

That song takes me back to the 80's.

[@nikkeilol1938]

SPEAKERMAN THEME ALERT

[@simplyalonso]

​@@nikkeilol1938 shut up

[@fortitude9932]

The 1987 mpeg1/cdi/vcd breakthrough was made by 2 coders in a garage, who proved to the host industry (who invented it) a cd could hold 72 minutes instead of 5 minutes of digital video via compression codec. You should make a video on those 2 guys !

[@MattMcIrvin]

I remember reading Stewart Brand's 1987 gee-whiz book on the MIT Media Lab (hey, there's a name that's in the news again, not for good reasons) in which he mentioned their Holy Grail of figuring out a way to compress video enough that they could put a feature film on a CD. They had all kinds of blue-sky ideas like "semantic compression" and representing everything with Barnsley fractals. Ultimately data storage got exponentially cheaper and pushing compression that far became kind of moot. But I suppose VCD was close, albeit with garbage quality.

[@ApolloIVtv1]

Sometimes I think I’ve gone as far as I could go in terms of obscure audio and video format knowledge but then a Techmoan video comes out and drags me down even deeper

[@spiff2268]

Yep, whenever you try to get out they keep pulling you back in!

[@ApolloIVtv1]

spiff2268 I’m already on eBay at this very moment looking at video cds this shits like the plague

[@musaran2]

It is truly amazing just how many were tried. And how bound-to-fail some where.

[@FinalBaton]

We tend to think of laserdisc as a failed format but... it had a pretty good run. It outlasted that CD Video format. It was on market pretty much as long as VHS was (and that was a lot of years). Not bad, really

[@VinchVolt]

It didn't really fail, but it didn't exactly succeed either; it just fell into its own little niche among videophiles, kinda like Blu-ray today.

[@mymangodfrey]

The comparison to Blu-Ray is way off. Laserdiscs were a rare sight even at their peak. When I worked at Tower Records in the 90s, I was surprised and kind of fascinated by the existence of its tiny laserdisc section; at that point, I hadn’t seen a laserdisc for ten years. They were never present at any video rental store I went to, even the ones that stocked Betamax. But yeah, any format with 20K-odd releases gets big points for its survival skills.

[@JuanDaMajikOne]

All I know is that I only saw a laserdisc once, at my buddies house. We watched the "Warriors" on laserdisc and I never saw this format ever again and vhs tapes were all over the place by this time.

[@jamesslick4790]

@@DTBootlegs Blu Ray, granted is more "mainstream" than Laser Disc. But (even as both declined) Blu Ray has never outsold DVD..and to this day STILL doesn't out sell DVD. Many people STILL tolerate SD resolution to save a few bucks.

[@jamesslick4790]

@@JuanDaMajikOne Hardcore movie buffs who BOUGHT movies, rather than rented had Laser Disc. They were the type who had large screen projector TVs connected to their sound system in the 80s. The audio equivalent would be those who stuck to open reel audio tape in the 70s and 80s after the cassette became the dominant audio tape format. Niche, maybe, but not really all THAT rare.

[@MusicalBox]

I'm 54 and I'm amazed at the amount of audio and video technology I never heard a word about. Is it because I'm Canadian and these products never made it to our market ? Anyways, thank you Techmoan for filling these voids.

[@sypialnia_studio]

MusicalBox I am 37 and I grew up in Poland and I am equally amazed by how many audio and video formats existed that were never seen in my country.

[@antaresautomatyka9288]

Yeah but you can blame mother russia for that :) I'm also from Poland. From what I know for audio we had: vinyl, reel to reel, then compact cassette and CD's. For video: VHS, Video CD and DVD (I think it was introduced in the same time because I remember my parents buying Video CD with crappy quality thinking it was DVD).

[@gunkyzip]

Here in the USA they were available in the music CD department, typically next to the high-end gold MFSL CDs. They cost about $15 each.

[@sonickrnd]

Why Russia? O_O

[@antaresautomatyka9288]

I mean no offence to Russia. I just mean that during the 80s and early 90s (during communism and shortly after) we all had hard times here in middle and eastern Europe. People were poor and we didn't get all the new technology from the west. Again I have nothing agains modern Russia :) I even have a few very close friend that are Russians and live in Poland. Best Regards

[@tripdefect87]

Kind of reminds me of the time when "Enhanced CDs" were a thing. I had one for the Backstreet Boys and it let you play quiz games and watch terrible, low quality mpegs of some of their music videos.

[@lemonslice2233]

They take like a minute to load with my player. (just for the audio CD part of course, the enhanced part is for Mac/PC) Also have a few CDs with some copy-protection nonsense that doesn't let you play the actual high-quality audio in your computer, instead have you listen to shitty-quality MP3s with their own shitty player.

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

@@lemonslice2233 And the player those CDs wanted you to install was usually a rootkit

[@oggaming2988]

tripdefect87 yes I had one that let you have ringtones for your mobile device and see some photos of the band

[@georgehill8285]

I had two Star Trek soundtracks as an Enhanced CD. One of them had a VR Enterprise you could walk around

[@NiGHTSaturn]

“HI WE’RE THE BACKSTREET BOYS, 🎶🎵And you’re watching us...🎵🎶 LIVE FROM OUR... 🎶🎵EEEENNNHAAANCCEDD CEEE DEEEEEEEEeEeEeE🎵🎶”

[@MaxStax1]

Just when you thought you were safe, along comes DISC ROT!!!

[@VinchVolt]

My guess is that CD Video appears to be so vulnerable to disc rot specifically because it's made similarly to vanilla LaserDiscs, which themselves are no stranger to literally falling apart at the seams. Vanilla CDs seem to be better though, with pressed discs being able to last indefinitely if stored properly (CD-Rs and CD-RWs though are a bit of a different story).

[@forzaguy1252]

Ive had a xbox 360 game fail to to read because of disc rot

[@lemonslice2233]

My optical mediatrician always scolds me with "Brush your discs!"

[@giles852002]

HD DVD’s are getting Disc Rot, especially the Warner Bros ones but Warner are replacing those with Blu-Ray copies apparently.

[@giles852002]

Forzaguy125 I do find 90% of old 360 games I buy are scratched to hell due to misuse by previous owners or the faulty 360 consoles damaging the discs which makes them more likely to get disc rot. Never bought a used 360 game that has no scratches on it.

[@GobotWars]

The fully rotted one is a creepypasta in the making.

[@boxman139]

GobotWars “I turned on my favorite video cd only to find the video corrupted with hyper realistic blood trickling down their faces. They then turned towards the camera at a 67.3 degree angle and screamed at me to clean my room!”

[@Vitorio582]

I too watch OneyPlays

[@boxman139]

Vitorio Pedrelli Mario says the fuck word should be on a rotting CD video.

[@RIlianP]

Nah, having to explain what exactly CD Video actually is will kill the mood

[@MillywiggZ]

That BBC doomsday thing. Imagine the last ever broadcast being stored on a disc completely destroyed by disc rot.

[@circattle]

Which was why they dug them all up again several years ago, panicking about losing the data along with rapidly diminishing software and hardware availability.

[@Kalvinjj]

@@frother Yes, true, but still if it's technology from before they knew about disc rot, it might still happen, maybe later than consumer grade stuff. Also as you said that they're not stupid, that's why they would pick it back up and store it again on more reliable media.

[@jdatlas4668]

@@Kalvinjj yeah, either way as a general rule you need to get back every (n) years and convert stuff to keep anything archived actually useful. With digital files it’s slightly less of a concern as stuff like TIFFs and raw PCM audio are reasonably universal and could presumably still be decoded by future technology but it’s still a concern for a variety of reasons, and with physical formats it’s definitely necessary as hardware able to read those formats becomes hard to find.

[@snotspat]

Åå

[@gymnasiast90]

*Domesday, as in the Domesday book, not doomsday.

[@Maniac536]

Disc rot was a serious issue with laserdisc back in the day. In fact most people assumed DVD would suffer from the same issue when the format launched. There was a lot of information pamphlets that assured consumers DVD used a better something (I can’t remember what it was, might have been plastic or glue) that didn’t share laserdisc’s fate

[@indiana2096]

DVD Rot is rare, but it does happen. I had one the even looked fine but would not load. I bought the movie new, and it played fine, about 2 years later it was dead. I looked really closely, no scratches but a faint look about it.

[@QLTD]

I remember in the 90s the VCD was very popular in the Middle East were it allowed u to play movies as well as playing pirated Famicom games, most VCD players had joysticks and came bundled with a CD full with ROMs of 8-bit games

[@Szpagin]

VCD was popular in the Eastern and Central Europe in the mid-2000s. They were often added to magazines as bonuses.

[@OofusTwillip]

Kenny Everett, a true techno-geek, and the ideal host for a promo video for a new video technology.

[@numbers9to0]

I knew it. I knew it, there lives a little man in the CD-drive!

[@adamheywood9983]

OMG have you got Kenny Everett in your CD drive????

[@video99couk]

I read at the time that there was another reason for the format's failure: Making a music video was horribly expensive (it still is). So some very successful bands might know that a song was going to be a hit and would make a music video upfront to go with a new release. But a lot of songs were released without a video, and that would be shot later if the track was a success, to be used on TV. By then of course it would be too late to get it to market on CD-Video. So the very nature of the music business may have had a role in preventing enough material being released in time.

[@paulinaz3477]

"Pining for the fjords." - nice pull. You always do great work.

[@jimfields860]

Beautiful plumage, Governor.

[@jamesslick4790]

Calling a 12 inch disc a "CD" was the first mistake. Or had Phillips forgotten what the "C" stood for? LOL.

[@diogoleonardo7848]

Doesn't make any sense.for sure lol

[@Ralph-yn3gr]

Clearly it stands for cabinet size. Everyone knows that!

[@ian_b]

Phillips: "It means, um, er, "collectable"..."

[@oblivion2755]

then it's a D

[@jamesslick4790]

@@oblivion2755 LOL, Yep a 12 Inch "D". 😛

[@CPPRODUCTIONS1001]

Discrot is scary. I have all orginal cds from the 80s and they will be the first to go. I have them ripped to files but thats not the point.

[@xureality]

yep, lost my CD-Rs from the early 2000s, all of them, to disc rot. It's way worse with heat and humidity.

[@Thorpe]

I've got CD-R from the early 2000s and they all work fine. So it's down to how good quality the manufacturing materials were, storage conditions (probably not good if you live in very humid areas).

[@CPPRODUCTIONS1001]

Yeah that is true. In the 80s i assume due to the popularity they tried to cheapen production a lot so they cut corners. I am younger than most and I was never born when these early CDs existed so instead i had to listen to the ones my parents bought and they were all stuffed up in a loft for 30 years and so you can imagine the damage to them. I got the blame naturally because they were told back then that these discs were indestructable

[@CPPRODUCTIONS1001]

Extended NCS And More Music yeah they would have been pumped out by the number so cut corners would be regular

[@RealLuckless]

Personally I think one of the most beautiful things about digital formats is that their original storage medium is kind of irrelevant - maintain good data management practices with redundant copies, and there is no fundamental change in information. Copying an analog track will introduce error that can be hard to detect and correct properly, and will change the information over repeated copying, but digital files can be reduced to literally a defined number and compared to an intact original file. While an original storage device may have long since died, the information itself may be saved if it was transferred to a newer medium in time. Which are getting cheaper and denser all the time. (I've lost multiple micro SD card containing copies of the core of classical English literature... Stupid easily dropped micro SD cards...) Sadly that doesn't really work so well with mixed analog and digital storage medium. And I wonder if that distinction was ever really noted by manufacturers at the time.

[@LaserGryph]

"Gone are the days of fuzzy records" **laughs at disc rot in vinyl**

[@honzam.1953]

I've never seen any of these formats on the market. Until mid-2000s, many people still used only VHS

[@Takeshi357]

What a coincidence, I was just looking up local Laserdisc listings and I saw a Deep Purple CD Video disc and I was like "huh, what's this? Looks like a laserdisc, but what's with the name?" and then Techmoan puts this video up the next day.

[@chrysanth.5700]

He's got you tapped up. Be super careful, friend. The puppets will be there any minute now.

[@mattkennedy6115]

::whispers:: he knows.....

[@willgregg1076]

Deep Purple, huh?

[@ynotw57]

Your videos of older and obscure technologies never cease to amaze me. Thanks for yet another wonderful trip.

[@DavidGreen_au]

I had quite a fondness for VCD. I have a few which I have collected for Hong Kong films which could not be otherwise sourced. Playing back was tricky without the correct player and many of the discs had split audio, the left track in mono Cantonese, the right track in mono Mandarin, or vice-versa, standards were a bit of non-existent in this area :) I don't play them these days as I converted them to DVD format for ease of playback.

[@Ron2600_]

My Sony blu-ray player can play video CDs without any problms.

[@Anagnostis79]

Honestly, i had never even heard of this format ! A very nice, informative video, greatly appreciated. Thumbs up !!

[@lenajesse]

Kenny Everett...just the person I didn't know I needed to see today:)

[@peters7949]

I was a cd video mastering engineer in the late 1980s. The biggest problem was syncing up the single’s digital audio master with the promo video made for TV etc, invariably they ran at slightly different speed, I developed a novel way of fixing his problem. The idea was the CDV would replace the CD single, it had the same music as the single plus the promo video. However the CDV was classed as a promotional device so it’s sales did not contribute to chart position, thus the CD single was sold alongside. If the CD single had been replaced with CDVs at he same price, eventually people would have had a pile of disks & then bought a CDV player, but like so many developments the record Cos got greedy and as a result the format failed.

[@Rik.B]

All these formats are just nostalgia for me. I had all of them, and still have the cdvideo disks, but like yours no matter how well I have looked after them they suffer from bad disk rot. I had loads of CDI videos until last year, never had a CDI dedicated player, always used a PC with MPEG cards in the early days. Had to lose all my Laserdiscs too when we moved last year, as they weighed an absolute ton! It was surprising how much a small collection of videos could weigh! Loved the video!!!!!!

[@berkkarsi]

That advertisement at the start was gold.

[@gwernette5971]

Not to be confused with CD +G (graphics)

[@Rainer67059]

Thank you. I just confused it. It was the only of the three formats I ever had.

[@gwernette5971]

Rainer67059 I personally had only a couple of CD + G discs, but they were very cool. They played on my gaming console, so I could switch back and forth between music, games, and animation. One of the discs I had was called, Night at the Movies. It contained animation of movei themes, popcorn music, intermission music, and old theater posters from way back. if you were spending a movie night at home, you could use it to insert 'leg stretches' with entertainment. Very cool idea, but it did't seem to last long on the (US) market.

[@marthaperkins1845]

never had a disc, but i have a karaoke machine with a built in b+w crt that could play cd+g

[@fszabika123]

WHAT THE F*CK

[@meetoo594]

My MegaCd could play those. They were used mostly for displaying lyrics for karaoke IIRC. There was also Photo CD which was a bizarre still image format where you could ask your film developer to burn your filmstrip to CD at multiple zoom levels etc. My 3d0 handled those quite well.

[@TheAllMightyGodofCod]

First time I have seen a laserdisc was in the summer of 2002, just when we were getting dvd all over the place. That is just for show how much they sold in Europe.... Barely nothing. @Techmoan your videos are amazing! You have far better quality in terms of production (and content) than must shows on tv with what I can imagine, are far bigger budgets! Congratulations on that!

[@andriealinsangao613]

At least Mat was right about VCD being big here in Asia! Besides movies, VCD is also used for Video Karaoke.

[@andriealinsangao613]

dandanthetaximan Wow, cool! I didn't know VCDs are still used in the West!

[@ChaosPod]

Also VCDs was used for a lot of cheap pirated movies in Asia. (I don't know if that's still the case as people can stream or download nowadays). Both VCDs and Laser Discs never took off in Australia we just went straight to DVDs. The people I know of who had VCDs or Laser Discs got them overseas from places like Singapore at that time.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

Andrie Alinsangao Heh, I was buying VCD's in the early 2000's to play in my DVD player.

[@stephenpalmer4052]

also VCDs were big in asia because they could carry seperate audio tracks (albeit 2 mono ones). So for example in Hong Kong you could get Cantonese out of the left and Mandarin out of the right. But as ChaosPod said, really it was powered by the cheap piracy market. I remember when I was in Thailand about 10years ago, you couldn't move for market stalls and hawkers selling clear knock offs on VCD

[@andriealinsangao613]

I'd have to agree that VCDs were commoly pirated! I, myself (or me and Papa, anyway) bought a lot of pirated Karaoke VCDs that you could fit all of them in a small box!

[@canturgan]

If you can find Kenny Everett on KZbin, his humour still stands up today. Funny and clever, a sad loss.

[@WestleyWolf]

Wow. the picture quality looked like 90s Analog Basic Cable.

[@pierrejeanf.dupuis4150]

I had a full-size CD-video player briefly. Got it from the bargain corner of the Philips employee store (dad was middle management at the Philips head-office in Eindhoven) when it turned out that the high-end portable CD player I had gone back for was sold out. My parents were fairly crossed with me for having spend my money on a different product, despite my argument this would play audio-CDs as well. Having been offered as a 'repaired' device it didn't really work, so I returned it and got a lower budget (new) mobile CD-player instead that lasted me for quite some time. This was around 1988 and was my first digital audio experience. I do own a fairly large number of movies on CD-video (12"). Bought Star Trek the Motion Picture in the 90's at a discount store. After I already owned my first DVD player, I also got a Pioneer Laserdisc player. It's still in my living room right now, although it may not survive the next upgrade round; I have the original theatrical Star Wars releases on the ltd. DVD release now. But when I got my Laserdisc player ('98/'99?) there was a specialist DVD shop in Eindhoven that also still sold Laserdiscs (a Rotterdam firm orginally - Eindhoven was their second shop). Got a bunch of 2nd hand NTSC Laserdiscs from them, but they had loads of old-new stock CD-video discs as well. Bargain base prices. Talking maybe two Guiders (HFL) a piece. Less than a pound, about a dollar at the time. Most titles were older CIC titles - Paramount and Universal. 4:3 of course and with embedded (Dutch) subtitles. But the masters they used... the old tapes they had used to copy off a few thousand rental tapes. It looked like VHS - and at that premium price? No wonder CD-video was an instant failure in Philips' home market.

[@pierrejeanf.dupuis4150]

The Rotterdam company was Ro-disc. Historically they are important as having lost the parallel import trial(s) - DVDs got released in the US about 6 months before Europe - so RoDisc imported US DVDs (as did many other stores, yet RoDisc went to trial). I still own my original Pioneer DVD player from them with hardware region-switch modification. Thanks to Robert from RoDisc for supporting the little people back then!

[@harrystevens3885]

Remember seeing a large metal wire basket full of CD Videos being sold off cheap in my long gone local Dixons store.

[@JuanDaMajikOne]

Are you saying that this format was here in the states?

[@chrislox1]

Love those company logos from the 80's, really takes me back.

[@cactussmitho9875]

*One minute into the video* Ah yes Phillips, that explains it all

[@babalfish]

I bought a used copy of the David Bowie Sound + Vision box set came with a CD Video disc that has 3 live audio tracks and the audio and video for Ashes To Ashes. In Canada the format was totally unknown but the CDV disc was still included the Bowie box set . I never saw any other CDV discs sold. I finally got to view the ashes to ashes video after visiting my friend's family owned stereo shop that still sold Laserdisc players (this would have been 1999 and haven't viewed it since). Now that Bowie box set has since been reissued with a CD-ROM instead of the CD Video and eventually it was reissued again with a standard CD in place of the CDV/CDR disc.

[@sawarunan]

FYI the CD player / recorder device @ 3:08 is a Superscope PSD300

[@gl_tonight]

so nice of Photonic Induction to drop in for a cameo

[@BillyNoMates1974]

can you make a video about video cd / philips CD-I ? id be very interested in this

[@ollieb9875]

heh, that would be interesting.. .. I recall we had a Phillips CD-i and I seem to remember 3 games. "Voyeur", "Caesar's Boxing" (or something like that) and "Kether" the latter of which I spent far to much time playing for some reason. And that awful controller like a TV remote with a joystick at the top.

[@BillyNoMates1974]

I was probably the only person to use it more for watching CD-I movies than playing the games. lol I know by today's standard the video quality was terrible but the fact it was digital and skipping around a movie was a doddle. plus no rewinding either. this was the days before DVD of course.

[@ollieb9875]

It did feel somewhat revolutionary.. good times.

[@BillyNoMates1974]

I guess Philips CD-i failed because of bad games and bad timing of release of the CD-I. If memory serves, it was less than two years later and DVD came out. no more changing discs half way through a film and a proper menu system helped. the downside to DVD's was the shear amount of film adverts before playing a film. Does Blu-Ray suffer this as well (I dont have a blu-ray player) ?

[@ClaireClown7]

BillyNoMates1974 It depends on the movie and when it was released. I believe some of the earliest Blu-rays lack them (I don't remember seeing them with the copy of Spider-Man 3 that came with my PS3 many moons ago) As for 4k Blu-rays they're void of them. At least with the discs I've got.

[@leem4017]

Thanks for the video, very interesting! Having owned Laserdisc players for years I haven’t purchased any of these 5 inch CD Video’s discs. I have some of the 7 inch discs without the audio tracks. I’ve just ordered my first 5 inch CD Video :) I’m looking forward to checking this 5 inch disc out in my Pioneer 925. Intrigued to see how good the video quality is!

[@jonothanthrace1530]

From that less-than-2-seconds segment, I recognized Level 42's late-era hit "Heaven In My Hands."

[@Tvsnumber1fan]

For the people who get Video CD and CD Video confused here is a little trick that can help you remember the formats. CD Video = Analog Video, Digital audio with five minutes of analog video with an digital sound track and 20 minutes of CD audio. Video CD = Digital vídeo encoded with MPEG-1 and a digital audio track. However I can understand the confusion since Phillips just flipped CD and the word video around when they introduced Video CD in the early 1990s. And the other two sizes of discs, well that’s just Phillips being Phillips. When Laserdisc wasn’t selling well in Europe Phillips decided to try one last hurrah with Laserdisc. Well as we now know this was not a success and Phillips pulled out of Laserdisc for the most part soon after. This reminds me a little bit of when V2000 wasn’t doing well in the early to mid 1980s and Phillips was able to convince the EEC to add tariffs and taxes to each VHS and Betamax machine sold in the EEC in order to keep the prices high for those particular formats so V2000 would last longer and hopefully win the format war. This was done because Phillips wasn’t happy that the Japanese companies were dumping VHS and Betamax machine at below cost. Also if I remember right Phillips even had the EEC set minimum prices for VCRs within the EEC in order to keep prices artificially high so V2000 could last just a little bit longer. However V2000 was already dying by that point and it mostly disappeared from the marketplace soon after.

[@trailersic]

Yay something I actually own on techmoan

[@Knochenbrigade]

I had one of these. It was from Glam Rockers Cinderella and was released in 1988, if i remember correctly. It was included in a collection i bought in 2016.

[@moiretallegiere794]

Great work, as usual! I am always fascinated by these old and failed formats. If only I had the funds and the space, I would collect them like mad. Oh, well, I`ll settle for watching someone else tell me about them instead.

[@ronniepirtlejr2606]

I used to work in a CD/ DVD Factory. We would actually melt the pellets down & assemble the disks right there at the factory. They used a lacquer then dispense it on the spinning disc before sandwiching the foil part together under high pressure. It seems like yours has became un sandwiched.

[@AmigaRob]

There is a notable later set of releases that approximate CD Video discs; The David Bowie Rykodisc reissues from 1990/1991. Certain titles (from memory at least Diamond Dogs and Low, possibly Heroes, ChangesBowie and Scary Monsters) have a laserdisc layer. I own several of the them but have never had a laserdisc player to try them on. They are standard CD sized disc in silver, sold as redbook CDs, containing the whole album and bonus tracks, but with an additional Laserdisc layer which is only referred to with the 'Sound and Vision' logo on the back of the box, and possibly on the disc. I think there could be several video included with the Sound and Vision box set as well. As far as I am aware these had analogue audio. I think the Diamond Dog's video was supposed to be something odd, like some outtakes of a camera flying over a set for an never realised Diamond Dog's project. I think 'Low' had the 'Be My Wife' video.

[@wojiaobill]

It's amazing to me that you know about so many different obscure formats. Great video!

[@id104335409]

They should have marketed it as Gold back in the 80s. Makes more sense.

[@VinchVolt]

Funny you should mention that, because there's actually such thing as Gold CDs; they're basically just like regular CDs, except they use a reflective layer made from 24 karat gold instead of silver or aluminum, meaning it's virtually immune to degradation (as gold is inherently inert).

[@simontay4851]

Probably worth more in gold content than the music or video on the disc.

[@VinchVolt]

Did CD Video discs actually use gold for the reflective layer? I was just under the impression that it was just yellow-tinted aluminum.

[@firstsurname9893]

I'm fairly certain it was dye in the polycarbonate that was responsible for the color unlike the gold CD's and CD-Recordables that actually are made of 24 karat gold.

[@tonybossaller4074]

Thanks for clarifying (towards the end) about LaserDiscs adding Digital Audio back in. I was very confused when you talked about CD Video creating that market. I was one of those folks who bought LD in the early 90s when the collector's editions and such came out and almost every disc I own has the PCM Digital tracks, so I was very confused for a bit. :) Awesome video. :)

[@JMLRetroRoom]

I never even knew about VCD until around ‘06 or ‘07. Got my first computer in ‘06 and someone at work showed me how to copy protected DVD’s (main movie only) and then mentioned you could convert video to a cd. I thought it was so awesome I wanted to put all sorts on a cd but then realized it made no sense at the time of blank dvd being all over the place. 😁

[@kadiocalc]

It still amazes me how you remind me of the tech I have long forgotten from my youth. Keep up the great work

[@TheMrMarkW]

I had both the cameo and INXS discs (I remember seeing the Cameo one at Laskys in Birmingham), and they were just analog laserdiscs with digital audio. Also, many of the Philips Dupont Optical manufactured compact disks suffer from disc rot - they were the ones that had the rounded edges and were slightly gold. I've some Beautiful South disks which have started to rot badly, and some compilation albums. Interestingly of all the 'silver' laserdiscs I have, none of them have had issues with laser rot. Only the PDO created gold CD-Video disks have suffered, much like the PDO created CD's.

[@botz77]

Wow. I have never heard of these and when I saw you play it on a Laserdisc/CD player thing that looked just like mine I went and took a close look and "Yep" I have a player for those and will start collecting them now. Depending on what they cost.

[@JMacQ77]

I have Duran Duran's "Dancing on the Valentine" on CD-V. It still plays perfectly with the couple of working LD players I have left.

[@Culturedog]

Pretty sure that's one of the lucky titles to have been manufactured by Pioneer instead of PDO UK.

[@JMacQ77]

You're right. It took me a few minutes to dig the thing out of my closet and take a photo of the disc and its sleeve. The disc's main label area displays "PIONEER ARTISTS," and in very much smaller (also all-caps) letters along its bottom arc, reads "MANUFACTURED BY THE PIONEER VIDEO DISC CORPORATION." The back of the jacket reads "PIONEER ARTISTS, a division of PIONEER VIDEO, INC." The corporate address is reported to be in New Jersey, rather than in the U.K. I highly doubt that anyone will care about this nuance of labeling and manufacture, but just in case, I uploaded a photo of my CD-V and the rear of its jacket here: tinypic.com/r/2zrf9kp/9 Thank you, Culturedog, for bringing this to my attention.

[@adamheywood9983]

I've got Dancing On The Valentine - I think this was was of those oddities also released on 8mm cassette?

[@cup_and_cone]

My [public] grade school in USA used CD Video in the early 90's (although VHS still dominated). I vividly remember those big gold 12" discs very well.

[@Grimwriggler]

1:13 ''Gone are the days of naff and fuzzy records'' I wonder how many vinyl records from the late 80s have now got vinyl rot now?..Yup Not one.

[@buenogoodlive]

Nah, not rotted at all. Just warped and/or badly scratched.

[@FloydPink23]

Grim wriggler disc rot is pretty rare

[@xureality]

Axxonn it depends on the disc itself and the storage conditions. quality pressed discs will last ages, CD-Rs from the early 2000s in a cake box in hot and humid environment will have all rotted away by now.

[@keithbrown7685]

Kindof like me, at this point in my life.

[@davmar9923]

@@commietube_censorship_sucks Yes it is the format's fault. The playback surface is unprotected and directly exposed to physical damage and the stylus itself wears the grooves every time they are played. The LaserDisc actually was the perfect solution for those who claim that analog audio is superior to digital audio. The playback surface was under a protective layer and there is no contact with the playback surface during operation. It would be entirely possible to resurrect analog audio in such a format (forget analog video), but it will never happen because the claim that analog is superior to digital audio is total nonsense.

[@rigomortisfxstudios]

the best flash back videos of gear .....you rock! you need to be on the front page of youtube

[@pafnoocy]

"...pining for the fjords..." you made my day!

[@OGM_OriginalGameMusic]

''gone are the days of naff & fuzzy records! these are the days of bit crush & artifacts!'' i know it was to do with disc rot but still. The irony was not lost on me XD

[@matthewedwards2046]

Was pretty cool to see laserdisk in the late 90s and short videos on the ps1 games console to never would have thought the technology was out many years before then pretty amazing

[@xyrzmxyzptlk1186]

That was awesome. Nice job Techmoan! You’re one of my favourite channels.

[@frazerbrennan9245]

Rest in Peace Kenny Everett

[@WedgePee]

Shame. I’ve seen his Thames series and it had some great sketches.

[@frazerbrennan9245]

@@WedgePee me too. My mum showed me him growing up

[@EricAtRandom]

Kenny Everett brings back some memories! In the US, "THe Kenny Everett Video Show" was on very late on Saturday nights after Saturday Night Live.

[@randyhavard6084]

Gone are the days of daft and fuzzy records, now you can have a daft and fuzzy compact disk

[@MarkHarmer]

I love CD when it works though. As a classical music listener, hated vinyl with a passion. Too much to go wrong.

[@velvetpilot2008]

My David Bowie box set came with a 4 track CD Video containing some live tracks and the video for "Ashes To Ashes". Love that box set.

[@Kafei2006]

I always watch Techmoan, but this time I clicked because of the INXS thumbnail :P.

[@willgregg1076]

Me too, INXS is good.

[@JuanDaMajikOne]

Hahahaha! When I first saw that album I read " Inks" not " In -Ex-Ses" hahaha! I kept calling it Inks until some one corrected me. " It's pronounced In-Ex-Ses you idiot!" Hahaha!

[@redshift1976]

Well, I'm glad you hung around for the full episode.

[@NoBrakesGarageTheOriginal]

Me too I miss them

[@mattelectro78]

Thanks Techmoan, I vaguely remember these from childhood, but was starting to wonder if I'd imagined them, as no one else seemed to remembered the things. I certainly didn't know about the link with laserdisc. Really interesting vid! :-)

[@redacc007]

Can you do a video on the Disk Rot? Love the videos. Look forward to them every week.

[@lemonslice2233]

I believe his LaserDisc video spent some time on the subject.

[@samanthacortes7120]

:::: The 'Franklin' Pionner AD at 10:19 , I remember have seen it on the pages of a Rolling Stone Mag back in 1987 where the Cover had a Huey Lewis pic as he was the #1 act thanks to the Fore! album

[@JohnSmith-ze6jm]

Techmoan, what would you say in your experience is the most durable and reliable medium to store content on? I've never heard of disc rot before this video and have always wondered if we were to compare vinyl, magnetic tape, CDs and an MMC card, which would last the longest with 100% of the content still being able to be retrieved? I'm specifically asking with data storage in mind. Thank you for providing us with great content!

[@iduncan5424]

LTO tape is very reliable and has a long self life but is expensive. cds are cheap and can last a while too if stored in dry dark conditions. something like a 1TB ssd should last quite a while too.

[@Clint_L]

The best part of this video was seeing classic albums. Thanks Mat. That was fabulous #memories

[@djhaloeight]

Gotta love when you’re binge watching Techmoan vidos and you get a notification that Mat just dropped a new one 🙌🏻😁

[@tobiasfenslv6428]

Thank you for another brilliant video. Interesting, entertaining and very professionally put together. Well done!

[@ScarredRealist]

I would love to see you do a video on the BBC Domesday Project (which I remember from my school days), since you mentioned it in this video..

[@tomrhardwick]

An amazing gathering together of information. We'll done Mat.

[@denimadept]

Definitely pining for the fjords.

[@jimfields860]

Beautiful plumage, Governor.

[@GoldenGuy444]

Just when I thought you have gone through a majority of interesting forgotten formats you end up finding another one, another great video!

[@TheTreyBlue]

Can you do a video on Enhanced CD’s ?

[@megano2000]

pierre11167 Oh please do! Especially cover the stupidness of web links.

[@TheTreyBlue]

I never got the damn free ringtones :(

[@simontay4851]

Enhanced CDs are just regular audio CDs with a data track on the end readable on a PC.

[@ichabaudcraine2923]

I think you've missed the point.

[@TheTreyBlue]

Still an interesting thing

[@StiffPeak]

It’s funny, the only time I’ve ever came across disc rot was on the CD-i version of Burn Cycle, that came on those gold coloured discs too, it’s the only CD-i disc that I’ve seen in that colour!

[@maxheadrom3088]

Rock'n'Roll is a way of life ... the white zone is for loading and unloading only.

[@denonhd8]

It looks just like a Telefunken U-47. You’ll love it....

[@applescruff1969]

If you gotta load or unload, go to the white zone.

[@MarkFreak12]

Fascinating watch as always lad, thanks for all your hard work.

[@netsurferx1]

Pinin' for the fjords?!? What kind of talk is that?!?

[@circattle]

It is an ex-format. It has ceased to be.

[@sihaz1969]

That disc wouldn't play properly if you put 4 million volts through it...

[@MrWombatty]

Norwegian-Blue!

[@soriacx]

It's stunned. You stunned it just as it was about to play. Remarkable format, eh? Beautiful plumage!

[@HowlinMadMurD0C]

Plumage don't enter into it! This format is stone dead.

[@macartm]

Ah! So now I know what the speeded up outro noises are. I always thought it was some song sped up, and one day I'd get around to capturing the audio and finding out what it was. Thanks Mat for saving me a wasted effort ;)

[@Treblaine]

Jesus... that presenter... Lindy-Beige's ancestor?

[@ptonpc]

Kenny Everett. A fantastic comedian and DJ of the 1980's

[@ChozoSR388]

LINDYBEIGE!

[@zuurbekje3125]

What have you done that is so great?

[@ChozoSR388]

Zuurbekje Seriously, the presenter could be a relative of Lindybeige's. Go take a look at one of his videos.

[@christianmiller9980]

Makes me sad Kenny Everett obscure today. He was a very funny man.

[@bitrot42]

Wow, I forgot all about CD Video! I have a couple I bought as a curiosity around 1989 or so. I only saw them in ONE store in the northeast US, and that store didn't last long. Nice, thorough job as usual!

[@griftereck]

hey...I had Forest Gump on VCD. got it from the charity shop

[@paulhayes5724]

I enjoyed this video, an interesting story, well told and excellently put together. Thank you for making it! This is the first time I've seen one of your videos, but I will definitely be having a look at some of the others.

[@mikemoos]

Are you James May's brother?

[@jimfields860]

Not sure if he is from west Nobnol.

[@78zappaf]

Surprised to see Kenny Everett! Miss him dearly. Most of these promos should be archived. Sadly lots of early digital recordings are being lost.

[@Flyingpapaya]

I've got an unopened copy of E.T on Laserdisc.

[@MitchQuadrupleTree]

Love how you slipped in a Dead Parrot sketch reference. Pining for the fjords, indeed.

[@redtails]

Buy digital they said, the content won't fade over-time they said :'(

[@VinchVolt]

It's not the digital data's fault, it's the fault of whoever the hell decided to build CD Video discs so cheaply. Something that's also of note is that while the audio on these discs is digital, the video on these discs is analog due to it reusing LaserDisc technology.

[@lemonslice2233]

Hence why the video is still watchable. Analog audio/video/images can degrade waaaaaaaaaay more than digital data before it becomes unusable. Many of the bigger software companies have their source codes microfilmed as text.

[@redtails]

It doesn't matter who's fault it is. Whether it be disc rot, players becoming unavailable, yellowing plastic, region locking, DRM, you name it. In 50 years from now, the digital stuff will all be unreadable and the LP is still cracking and buzzing and reproducing the music.

[@firstsurname9893]

redtails I hate to tell you this but given enough time everything dies, even death itself.

[@lemonslice2233]

Lovecraft's collection of shellac records is still playable y'know.

[@kyles7087]

Here’s my non essential engagement comment just to say I appreciate the algorithm dishing this up tonight, cheers mate ☺️