BEFORE Laserdisc There Was TeD

[@rick420buzz]

I have a feeling you beat Techmoan to this one.

[@BilisNegra]

I guess so, did not find a video with that in the title by him doing a quick search. He might have mentioned the format somewhere in passing but has not done a full video on it.

[@inuliger]

@@BilisNegra He has indeed mentioned it in a previous video or two

[@theshadowman1398]

He beaten techmoan on VHD as well

[@grochomarx2002]

Both guys do a fine job at making KZbin videos.

[@capolaya]

Richard Edwards I was thinking the same. But Brad Databits has beaten Techmoan with the strangest formats a few times already.

[@ChristianKoehler77]

When I was a kid in the 80s my grandfather still had one of these. Picture quality was totally fine, maybe like VHS. But back then the discs weren't worn out, the capacitors weren't worn out and the thing ran of clean 50 Hz sinusoidal power from the mains and not some crude inverter and the picture was shown on an actual PAL color CRT without conversion. Greetings from Berlin. Btw: Flora Soft is still commonly available.

[@lindendrache8998]

OK, das hätte mich wirklich gewundert, wenn das die Original-Bildqualität gewesen wäre. ^^ Ich habe leider noch keinen solchen Spieler in echt gesehen. Flora Soft kenn ich aber gar nicht ;-)

[@und4287]

what is flora soft

[@xaverlustig3581]

@@und4287 Flora Soft is a German margarine brand, there's an advert for it at 17:45

[@Colddirector]

Holy crap, somebody is finally actually covering this thing. The only channel I’ve ever seen cover this thing in any detail is Oddity Archive, and he isn’t even a tech channel.

[@SO_DIGITAL]

I know, right! Thank you

[@sam_loomis]

I absolutely love the CED & Laserdisc formats, and I am happy to collect and watch them. TED fascinates me, but it seems nothing more than a novelty in terms of collecting today. Great video though! One thing I would have done though is show how CED uses a caddy to protect the disc from any damage.

[@brun20]

Wow! this is by far one of your finest videos. Databits the only channel covering a forgotten video disc format from Germany. Keep up with this content who shows who was the pioneer on a tech channel on KZbin.

[@traxonwax]

Would make techmoan take note 4 sure!

[@jamesbennettmusic]

you might need a 75 ohm resistor in the chroma line - the LCD TV looks like it's overloaded with signal, or you're getting some signal bounce

[@niino4329]

That's true. You can't just directly take the video signal going into the RF modulator.

[@jamesbennettmusic]

@@niino4329 Yeah, it would be wise to try decoupling it, and maybe compare it on a scope with a 'good' video output to see if there's any weird peaking or DC shift going on

[@t0nito]

I agree, that 75 ohm resistor is a must.

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

Yeah. That could be the reason why the chroma looks like a messy SECAM signal..

[@TheMediaHoarder]

Modern Sharp TVs can accept both PAL and NTSC signals through all inputs.

[@cheriksoft]

Picture quality reminds me how analogue TV broadcasts looked like in suburb area in 90s, with weak signal, far from TV tower. Same noisy and doubled image with sometimes disappearing color.

[@JessHull]

love the design aesthetic of that machine! Especially that big turn dial. Reminds me of the gauge cluster on my old 1987 BMW 535is and 1988 325i !!!!!

[@rogervd666gamer]

Great vintage tech channel. Love the way you explain and show this tech. Greetings from the Netherlands and keep on going.

[@electronash]

That disk loading mechanism is ridiculous. I want one. lol

[@dhpbear2]

13:20 - The picture quality looks like it's going through the RF modulator (ghosting) with the fine-tuning on the TV misadjusted!

[@_Thrackerzod]

Should probably mention that Telefunken's grooved "Mini Disc" has no relation at all to Sony's later optical Minidisc format.

[@taiga1295]

You're right. That part was confusing.

[@clurkroberts2650]

No... that’s just logical.

[@duncansharpe3222]

And many people said VHS has bad picture quality. Well, now they should reconsider after watching this video.

[@heinzk023]

0:33: "Bildplattenspieler" means video disk player, not video disk. Video disk is "Bildplatte" (literally "picture disk")

[@TheBigMclargehuge]

ist gut commenten, ya

[@CM-mo7mv]

@@TheBigMclargehuge beachte blinkenlichten

[@NuGanjaTron]

@@CM-mo7mv Ziss Video is fullfilled mit special electronische Equippement. Fingagräbbing und pressing ze Knoeppkes nur für die Ekspertz! So all die Lefthänders stay away und do not stören die Brainstörming von den hier working Intelligencies. Udderwise you will be out thrown und kicked anderswo! Also: please keep still und only glotzen erstaunished die Blinkenlights!

[@Madness832]

The PBS-style opening cracked me right up!

[@baaelectronics]

Same! I heard the "Viewers Like You" line and immediately thought of my childhood growing up watching that channel on live TV.

[@SLLabsKamilion]

Me too, for a moment I was caught off guard until he said patreon dot com out loud.

[@Wenlocktvdx]

There's a lot of ringing in the picture caused by impedance mismatch, should be fixed by putting a 75 ohm resistor acro the video lead. Signal to ground. Interesting system indeed

[@t0nito]

Try putting a 75 Ohm resistor on that composite video line, I've seen other videos of this format and none of them showed that ghosting effect, even on worn discs, the quality was much better. There may another issue though, as the inverter is most likely modified wave, the motor movement may not be as smooth and that issue may reflect in the image.

[@mfbfreak]

Seconding this. The motor is an AC-motor, which relies on having a correct 50hz frequency and a undistorted sine wave to run smoothly. Often, they don't run at all on inverters.

[@Puddin]

Wait so the biggest thing I learned... Those grooves on the front of the battery is to hook jumper cables on??? Genius. Thank you sir.

[@nazcaplain]

Re. the ghosting, it's likely thanks to bleed through of the previous + next grooves - in other words the grooves before & after the one currently being played are adding a slight bit of signal too. Some cheaply pressed LP's exhibit this effect, where it's possible to faintly hear what's ahead or behind in adjacent grooves. Very cool tech, thx for reviewing it!

[@cyberwolfe]

10 minutes per side.... AMAZING! 😃

[@traxonwax]

At 1500 RPM, good thing it wasn't out in the open like a traditional re The DAT machine from 1979 looked beatiful to me. Very professional looking.

[@CommodoreFan64]

I agree that machine looks very nice, and more like something from the early - mid 80's then something from the late 70's.

[@turbinegraphics16]

Really interesting piece of history, hope you fix it up. Can imagine the original owner paying a fortune and they still have to watch ads.

[@VideoHuman1]

I still remember when this unit was demonstrated in the Kaufhof department store in Hagen, Germany, located south of Dortmund, in 1972. A childrens movie was played. It kept on skipping frames or occaisonally got stuck on one frame. Picture and sound quality were satisfactory as the medium was fresh.

[@crazyivan030983]

This is a quality video. Greetings from Poland :)

[@mgeyer1370]

If you have a PAL machine you have to convert the signal of course to NTSC. You can not expect to have a good picture by ignoring different TV standards!

[@michaelturner4457]

It's a mains synchronous motor, that's why it had to be 50hz mains. Most modern things don't really care about frequency, 50hz or 60hz.

[@rarbiart]

synchronous motors are the real pain in appliances of that aera... noisy and quite ineffective... you find them in record players, typewriters, even computer printers from centronics (not "with centronics interface, but real centronics make) an off course early 8 inch floppy discs as hub motor.

[@KenjiTech]

modern things don't care because they usually have switching PSUs wich create their own frequency anyways but are a pain to repair

[@mfbfreak]

@@rarbiart Disagree. The ' aussenlaufer' motor as shown here, as well as the motors in german record players, are pretty quiet and very reliable. The most common problem is dried up grease after 30...60 years of use. You also find lots of them in tape recorders. I dislike Philips 1950s syncronous motors because they're harder to service, but later ones very often run perfect after a few drops of light machine oil. They don't have high torque, but they're much more reliable than the tiny DC brushed motors of the 80s/90s.

[@rarbiart]

the capacitor issues with synchronous motors can be off course easily repaired, but the humming 50/60Hz resonnances are prettymuch everywhere in such machines. maybe tolerable for office equiment but for audio that's not pretty.

[@mfbfreak]

@@rarbiart If you have problems with that, than your equipment is defective. Aside from cheapo record players with idler wheels, the motor vibration is not audible, unless there's a problem like bad rubber mountings. There are some mediocre quality products with noisy motors, but it is simply not true that synchronous motors categorically make more sound or vibration than other types. Especially record player motors are very quiet, and synchronous motors are still used in even the most high end players there are.

[@SeanDamonGreene]

Absolutely Fascinating !

[@Charlesb88]

I glad to find this video because I’d read about this format many years ago but could no longer remember the name of it and was beginning to think I had imagined it. I recalled it being German-only product that used some sort of disc format for storing short pieces of video but couldn’t find any mention such a format online. Then today I ran across its Wikipedia article by Chance when looking up something else and went OMG that’s the format I was trying to remember the name of. I knew it was related to VHD and CED but too little info exist on compared to those other formats so it really stumped me for a while.

[@fsfs555]

Interesting format. I may have a look out for one. The thing with the wear grooves seen on the CED is that they (and VHDs) have a finite number of plays (some sources say as few as 500) before wear becomes noticeable. With kids' videos or anything else where a selection is played repeatedly or continuously (training, karaoke, demo reels, etc), that number comes quickly and ultimately the disc wears beyond usability. Plus the cartridges were only good for about 1000 hours themselves.

[@xsto01]

Thats awesome im german and thats thats cool history. Record all disks u have pls and upload them id like to watch them!!!! At the same time ur contributing to save german history.

[@Heymisterbadguy]

WooooooW this is an underrated gem channel

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

13:00 this looks like a SECAM signal, not PAL. Too much blue and red/pinkish noise. Happens to me a lot with SECAM Betamax and VHS tapes.

[@TonyFleetwood]

the vertical blanking line on the CED is also the DAXI or digital auxiliary information. it contains the time stamp and other information :) also i would like to add; i cant believe you got an actual ted machine, that functions. i thought thats something you'd hope to see in a book or a museum if you were lucky ( besides seeing it on the internet )

[@kcj1993]

This video is jam-packed with vitamin F.

[@scratchpad7954]

What does Vitamin F do in the body?

[@marcrhsn]

The red and blue picture is typical if you try to view a PAL Signal on a SECAM TV. It's known as SECAM-fire and also appears on black&white broadcasts. That's one of the biggest flaws of SECAM. They switched of the colour carrier during black&white movies to prevent this. Try switching the TV to PAL if it is on automatic. The player needs to be overhauled, the picture was much better when they were new.

[@gavincurtis]

Perhaps the ghosting of the video is caused by the stepped waveform output of your inverter into that synchronous motor? I didn’t catch if it was true sine wave or not.

[@roberthorwat6747]

I was thinking exactly on these lines.

[@davidkellerfreeman]

I really enjoyed this video. Thank you so much. :)

[@srfrg9707]

Those plugs are not specific to Germany. Most european and african countries have the same.

[@cheycheyc]

A lot more countries than the North American plug standards. I grew up in the Dubai and visited family in India they use the same plugs as well.

[@inuliger]

South Korea also uses them

[@oclockerz]

Argentina and Uruguay too. I think most of South America.

[@nordin_gh]

Use a lots in Asia too.

[@aretard7995]

Turkey uses it too.

[@-VCO-]

So that's why KZbin videos were originally limited to 10 minutes in length?

[@hteekay]

It's like it's designed for techaddict like us, easy to open up so that we can see how it work. I love it.

[@kaiokendo]

16:44 can you explain the ghosts and the bw??

[@JessicaFEREM]

discovision sounds like a light machine for parties

[@Sierra747]

Great video. I love vintage electronic.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

Incredible! I never thought I’d see one of these in action! It’s even crazier that you shipped yours all the way from Germany, and made it work with your weird American power supplies. It looks awful thought, the picture I mean. That can’t be working right, your machine must be practically dead.

[@ansstr]

The machine probably is well OK, but at 12:33 you can see that the disc is damaged, the little horizontal lines are marks of the disc loading mechanism (from bad machines); also discs beeing stored lying flat and being put weight on will damage the grooves over time. Even little damages will result in very bad picture quality. If a disc is in good shape, the picture is way better (but of course not "good" to modern standards)

[@richardhudson3014]

They were way ahead of there time with a "digital disc format" but I'm glad that eventually others improved the quality of the true digital media that said this video was interesting and informative and I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to more videos from databits keep up the excellent work and keep the videos coming and rock on 🎸

[@mgeyer1370]

Richard Hudson If you have a PAL machine you have to convert the signal of course to NTSC. You can not expect to have a good picture by ignoring different TV standards!

[@QsTechService1]

Pretty awesome technology thanks for sharing 👍

[@thedungeondelver]

Absolutely subscribed.

[@ramakrishnamishra8179]

Please please please recap the machine and show us the high quality video!!!! I really want to see how the video is being stored in such a floppy kind of disk!

[@Fluteboy]

I remember typewriters! Was using one up until 1998.

[@EmberwolfXR]

wow, in the first 15 seconds you had me hooked...great voice overs....nice and clean

[@TheMediaHoarder]

So what was wrong with the external PAL TV tuner? I want one of these but the lack of AV outputs is a setback; I don't trust myself to tap in and get my own outputs from any machine.

[@EeveeFromAlmia]

The narration feels like a computer was used but it’s just that polished.

[@catoblepag]

As an italian, the last video I expected to see here was a music video from Coro SAT 😂 The SAT Choir is the best and most popular "a cappella" choir for traditional italian mountain songs, and I think they still exist today. They're really, really good, if you like this particular folk music, of course. Thanks for this video, I had no idea the TeD existed... it's incredibly fascinating.

[@markmarkofkane8167]

Yes, I put paper and ink ribbons in typewriters. :) Cool unit! We have a CED player. And dozens of discs. Bought in 1982.

[@imonit1177]

If you want something built right, ask a German to do it. Master engineers. This is very impressive for being purely mechanical. It's even more impressive that it still functions albeit poorly after all of these years.

[@mgeyer1370]

If you have a PAL machine you have to convert the signal of course to NTSC. You can not expect to have a good picture by ignoring different TV standards!

[@hakemon]

That model TV supports PAL and NTSC. It's multi-standard.

[@mgeyer1370]

Mike MacEachern If this is the case something with your setup must be wrong nevertheless or your machine is simply broken. The picture quality is equal with VHS really...

[@hakemon]

@@mgeyer1370 He did mention this in the video. You must have forgot that part where he did mention it could use some capacitor replacements.

[@mgeyer1370]

Mike MacEachern, You’re right, thank you Mike!

[@video99couk]

Do they still sell TVs in USA which can't handle PAL?

[@lowerquadrant2309]

Thanks for covering this fantastic piece of machinery! I own one myself and I just love the fact that you can actually see what's going on inside. Picture quality's not great, I agree, but this here doesn't do it justice. There must be something wrong with your setup... The mark on the disc shown at 4:20 was caused by the locking mechanism crashing down on the disc while it wasn't properly placed on the turntable and thus ruining it. The system wasn't foolproof! TeD disappeared from the market quickly, afaik as soon as 1977. I guess you could ask 100 random German people at age 50-90 and you wouldn't find one who has ever heard about TeD let alone owned one. I wonder what made Telefunken believe that people would accept a format that cost around 1500 Marks (600 $ US back then) and was limited to 10 minutes per disc.

[@databits]

Thanks Lower for your comments!

[@Zarkovision]

I've donated my TED player to the International Radio and Phono Museum in Dormagen, together with a some discs. I hope it will be there some day in an exhibition. :) Very interesting those TV ads during the soccer match on the discs. It seems those discs were for free and the commercials were there to sponsor it. Now those are rare examples of 1970s TV commercials in Germany. :)

[@databits]

Thank you, I wish mine had worked better.

[@audio01]

I don't think that this is even remotely the original video playback quality. The discs are surely very worn, the device is out of aligment/bad capacitors/has other issues. Even the power supply may be inadequate, specially with a cheap inverter, that doesn't give true sine wave power. (BTW, as you said, it's "football" for all the world but the U.S.A., and that "funky" power plug is/was the standard for the biggest part of the world, including Europe, South America and Asia). Cheers!

[@SketchTurnerZero]

+1.

[@ToenS]

absolutely! i have a perfect working machine with perfect discs.. well.. of course, its not as „good“ as VHS, but i can confirm, that the quality is WAY better, than shown in this video! anyway thumbs up for the video.. finally somebody did a video about this beautiful machine 😊 👍🏻

[@davidsucesso2419]

Thank you for this odd video formats. Very interesting ...

[@cardgamesonly]

The lullaby in German was a nice touch.

[@FLUFFSQUEAKER]

I am always really impressed when people pronounce german words right :o

[@NevsTechBits]

Thanks for the video sir. I had no idea these things even existed.

[@johnathin0061892]

I can help simplify your power conversion setup. You can get a 120v US AC adapter to 12v car DC which supports up to 5A. Look for "Coleman AC adapter" on eBay. You can plug your 12V to 230V inverter into that. The car inverter won't give you true sinusoidal output though, which may cause problems as others have noted.

[@TeDBildplatte]

Great Video! Thank you very much! The picture quality is for sure not the best, but it can be much better than your device plays ;) You can see some videos from a fully recapped device, also with never used styluses, in my channel. The Colargol intro is captured from a sealed disk, played for the first time. Unfortunately both of my players broke again and I have no time to fix them... :(

[@Bendew]

Yay! New databits video!

[@ReneSchickbauer]

10 minutes per disc. So, on a "Lord of the Rings Directors Cut" movie night, you basically have to run a full marathon from the sofa to the player just for disc swapping? I wonder why the format never took off?

[@chuffpup]

Funny how the recorded video is always "Back to the future" on these obscure video formats.

[@ivok9846]

that power inverter is making something that is not sinusoidal, but reminds of square wave... perhaps some picture problems would disappear with proper voltage, perhaps not

[@charleschamp9826]

I'm going to guess that line on the side was something the manufactures never bothered to remove or "fix" because it was hidden by the overscan in older televisions and they figured no one would see it anyway. It might have even contained some data that more "deluxe" players could read in order to display closed captions, let the player know what chunk of the video is what, or who knows what else. Assuming the format lasted long enough for such players to even be released in the first place. As others have said the discs are probably worn with age and there's no telling what else the condition of the player is doing to the video and sound quality either. Hope there was nothing released exclusively on this format, I doubt anyone with these would be really into recording the contents and uploading them online for preservation's sake.

[@kandigloss6438]

This makes sense and actually was the first thing I thought of when seeing that. I've seen something similar in rips of old japanese anime Laserdiscs from the 80s, only at the bottom of the screen instead. Though the size of it seems a bit large for an overscan and does seem to intrude one the picture it's self, so I'm going to guess that though we probably aren't wrong, there is probably other issues going on.

[@5roundsrapid263]

I see that all the time with older TV shows. The camera stops at the overscan, especially in the corners.

[@radionoakmont7756]

oh staticool it is like classic analog tv even a lil staticy too im in love with this oh id love to have one someday i loooove the first disc so much liek sweet rabbit ears tv thank you for posting this i hope someone posts actual video from these on here too

[@YS_Production]

We gotta admit though, the seeking is flawless! Instant and really good picture quality (well, the same as during normal playback). Speaking of quality, are there any specs as for the number of lines and so on?

[@databits]

Check out the description of this video for the most specs I could find.

[@telkentexas4053]

datadits needs to learn more electronics. That setup was straight out of Frankenstein's Castle.

[@GigAHerZ64]

How can you assess the video quality when your machine is broken??? Fix it, then look at it again!

[@databits]

I'll send it to you and you can fix it!

[@xaverlustig3581]

13:00 This looks like exaggerated SECAM artefacts. Apparently your monitor misinterprets the distorted PAL signal as SECAM giving weird colours. That used to happen a lot in the analogue era with bad video signals. When the colour gets reasonable at 13:30, it apparently knows it's PAL. If possible, set the monitor to PAL instead of auto, that should prevent it from mis-guessing the colour standard.

[@walt3223]

your standard is 117 v ac at 60 Hz sometimes shown as 120 v ac at 60 Hz.

[@NuGanjaTron]

And Never The Same Colo(u)r!

[@stevef6392]

Hey, a format that makes VHS look high def in comparison!

[@colmiga]

When I imported an NTSC RCA CED player into Australia, I made sure to get a model with a quartz timed motor so I could plug it into a step down transformer that passed through the 50hz, to avoid the frequency issues you are going through. Luckily. I got a bargain deal on an SJT-300 with liquefied belts which is quartz timed. I can imagine with the limited release and time period of this format that they only made player models with mains timed motors.

[@martinbrewer7629]

I've never seen one of these things in action before. I read about them on a website called Total Rewind: The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRs... When I saw the thing about the loading mech, I think I probably laughed for a full two minutes...

[@TerryJonesPrinterRepairs]

you may need a pure sinewave 230v inverter to get it to play better

[@aprilfaith765]

I used to see those sitting in my neighbors garage back in the 90's when helping her clean it out. She told me that it was the first Betamax of it's time. She had me out it in her attic then seven years later before she moved had me out it in the goodwill box because she had no need for it

[@IAdryan]

We are so spoiled with digital video :)

[@jamesvalentine925]

Would an old computer power supply work with a few of the 12v and ground wires bound together to give enough wire thickness to pass the 12.5A limit of the invertor. It may not be pretty, but could be a bit neater. (the input limit will likely be more than 12.5A to account for losses).

[@ChristianPinnock-u5c]

Rca were working on a similar format ced aka capacitive electronic disc

[@hicknopunk]

So that's what the TeD in TeD Talks is.

[@NuGanjaTron]

See? Telefunken hosted them even way back before anybody attended! ;^)

[@ClausB252]

Haha my German mom sang me that bedtime song. Later I learned the meaning of the last line: tomorrow morning, if God wills, you'll wake up again. 😮

[@sashayakubov6924]

The quality was much lower after the commercial, as opposed to the beginning, I guess it's because of an angular speed. Also, if you ignore the awful ghosting - the sharpness is nice, I expected something extremely blurry :)

[@akella728]

something wrong with your item or power. the quality should be like vhs

[@Dutchreason]

I've got one of these TED machines. Brand new. The box fell apart, but the styrofoam is there. Plus the manual and two included discs. Not going to plug it in. This machine is just a few months younger than I am...

[@senilyDeluxe]

I spotted one capacitor you might want to change. At 19:43 on the extreme right that metal cap there. That's made by Hydra and I rarely found one that wasn't bad.

[@BertGrink]

That motor looks very similar to motors from the brand PABST which used to power many german reel-to-reel tape recorders when that was a thing.

[@NuGanjaTron]

Papst (not Pabst) is still around, primarily manufacturing fans for IT equipment, power supplies, and industrial applications. They are extremely quiet and very reliable. My first Grundig VCR has these as direct-drive motors. I regularly swapped out many of the loud junk fans in my computers with Papst ones.

[@aaronberns8485]

Watching the video from the disc feels like watching old clips of TV DXing LOL.

[@johneygd]

That soccor match really did make me curious, especially since i also can speak germany a little bit.

[@moshezaharia4666]

Very interesting format. I believe that most of the video quality issues are caused by bad capacitors, pay attention that as the player works more time, the "ghost" becomes severe, the lines on the right are bad capacitors in the sync circuit. I have a German tv (Blaupunkt) from 1982, and ALL the capacitors in it were crappy (they were branded FRAKO) and all of them to the last one were boiling up, so I believe this player suffers the same problem. Bulk recapping my improve picture quality, but don't expect VHS quality.

[@Renatodonadio]

9:05 That's not a "german" plug, that's the generic two prong european plug, the "german" plug is the Schuko plug, the "round" plug that should be fitted in the receptacle on your power supply ;-D

[@andrewdupuis1151]

so cool i never seen one before

[@SuperCrazyDiscoKangaroo9001]

That TeD player with a Europlug to AS/NZS 3112 adaptor would had worked without a voltage convertor in Australia as they also use 230 Volts 50 Hertz

[@iamnobody2]

why is that german guy singing about morgan freeman at the end?

[@f3liscatus]

😂 He's singing "Guten Morgen, gute Nacht". ("Good morning, good night.") It's an old folky lullaby... But I guess it would be much better if Morgan Freeman was singing! ;-)

[@meikollekschn6470]

I ❤ your video on TED. REGARDS from Berlin

[@williamvillasboa6834]

That Bram's Lullaby song at the end is beatiful can you tell us the name of the performer?

[@kevinh96]

Pretty cool, and a format I'd never heard of. The mechanism to move the stylus is almost identical to that used in Technics linear tracking turntables of the 80s too, probably not that surprising as this appears to be a liner tracking format itself. I am surprised at the hoops you had to jump through with the voltage and to get any video displayed. Step down transformers to allow us in the UK to power US and Japanese electronics are quite easily available, including on Amazon here as are various NTSC to PAL converters, although they generally aren't needed as pretty much any half decent TV sold here in the last 10/15 years is multistandard and will accept an NTSC signal direct, assuming it has analogue inputs.

[@michaelturner4457]

Yeah, the jumping through hoops with the inverter and car battery was because the TeD player requires 50hz mains, and the US is 60hz mains. Most modern electronics is okay with both 50hz and 60hz power. And is only really older devices that have main synchronous motors in them, like some record players and tape recorders.