![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/RicardoMontalban.jpg\" "\\"RicardoMontalban\\"")
<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 ((KHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!))<\/p>\nWhen it comes to watching movies at home, two acronyms jump to mind immediately:\u00c2\u00a0 DVD and VHS.\u00c2\u00a0 DVD is morphing into Blu-Ray, and people remember (and laugh at) Beta.\u00c2\u00a0 If pressed, most people might even mention those “Big CDs”, called Laserdiscs.\u00c2\u00a0 However, we’ve already forgotten about HD-DVD and no one ever knew about 8mm tapes and CED Video Discs.<\/p>\n
Let’s explore some of these various home video formats, shall we?<\/p>\n
(And yes, I know this is a departure from the video games I normally talk about, but the name is ELECTRIC Curiosities.\u00c2\u00a0 Might as well expand the horizons a bit, eh?)<\/p>\n
Blu-ray<\/strong><\/p>\n Blu-ray is the FUTURE.\u00c2\u00a0 Bigger, better, hi-def, whatever.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I think you all pretty much know what this is, so I’ll save my typing fingers and just move on.<\/p>\n HD-DVD<\/strong><\/p>\n HD-DVD was a competitor format to Blu-ray.\u00c2\u00a0 It lost.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh well.\u00c2\u00a0 Moving on…\u00c2\u00a0 ((It failed so miserably, I couldn’t even find any Star Trek releases on the format, other than The Original Series, which would have been unsuitable for this post.))<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n DVD<\/strong><\/p>\n In the days before DVD, people had to spend hours of their lives painstakingly rewinding video tapes.\u00c2\u00a0 This was such a horrible experience that stand-alone tape rewinders were available for sale that would do absolutely nothing but rewind tapes faster than VCRs did.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d get charged a fine at rental shops if you failed to rewind before returning the movie. \u00c2\u00a0Forget about the incredible picture quality improvement, forget about the extra content, forget about multiple soundtracks, forget about instant chapter skips, forget about interactivity:\u00c2\u00a0 DVD took over because you didn’t have to rewind.\u00c2\u00a0 No, really, it was that big a deal.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n VHS<\/strong><\/p>\n I couldn’t figure out what in the hell this thing was supposed to be.<\/p>\n It didn’t fit in my XBox.\u00c2\u00a0 It must be broken.\u00c2\u00a0 Do I have to break it open or something to get at the movie?\u00c2\u00a0 I just don’t understand it.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Beta<\/strong><\/p>\n Before HD-DVD\u00c2\u00a0vs. Blu-ray, there was Beta vs. VHS.\u00c2\u00a0 ((Actually, even after HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, there’s still Beta vs. VHS, because HD-DVD was such a failure, it couldn’t even beat Beta in the “Biggest Loser Format” competition.))\u00c2\u00a0 It had better picture quality than VHS, but lost mainly due to recording time.\u00c2\u00a0 Initially, Beta did only one hour on a tape.\u00c2\u00a0 Sony, being arrogant ((See PS3’s $600 launch price tag…)), decided that people would buy it anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Then the two hour VHS tape came along.\u00c2\u00a0 By the time Sony got their act together and increased the recording time, people had already bought VHS VCRs, and because people bought VHS VCRs, rental shops stocked VHS tapes, and because rental shops stocked VHS tapes and not Beta, people bought VHS VCRs.\u00c2\u00a0 Beta == FAIL.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, while Beta failed in the home video market, it did quite well in the professional market, such as newscasts.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t really matter that you could only record an hour if you only needed to film fifteen minutes of B-Roll and a five minute interview on location every night.\u00c2\u00a0 What mattered there was picture quality.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Plus, Beta tapes were notably smaller than VHS tapes, so they were easier to carry around.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 8mm<\/strong><\/p>\n Even smaller than Beta, 8mm tapes were released in the mid-80’s as a competitor to VHS.\u00c2\u00a0 While they proved to be a popular format for camcorders (because they reduced the size of a camcorder from roughly that of a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher to something that could be used comfortably\u00c2\u00a0while handheld), 8mm never really took off as a commercial movie format.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t any better than VHS quality, and you still had to rewind, what’s more, it cost more than VHS.\u00c2\u00a0 Commercially sold 8mm movies were largely limited to creepy hotels and airplanes, largely due to their compact size.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, don’t confuse 8mm video tapes\u00c2\u00a0with Super8, which was a film format.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Super 8<\/strong><\/p>\n Don’t confuse this with 8mm video.\u00c2\u00a0 This is film.\u00c2\u00a0 A spool of see-through pictures and sprockets.\u00c2\u00a0 Film.<\/p>\n Super-8 movies came on one or more reels, roughly 15-20 minutes each.\u00c2\u00a0 The full-length version of\u00c2\u00a0The Godfather, for instance, came on 11 reels.\u00c2\u00a0 This particular\u00c2\u00a0film is a “selected scene edition” of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, condensed into a\u00c2\u00a012 minute run time on a single reel.\u00c2\u00a0 ((Interestingly enough, this version is the only one that’s actually watchable…))\u00c2\u00a0If you had the right kind of projector, Super-8 movies could have sound, thanks to a magnetic strip on one side of the film.\u00c2\u00a0 If you had the wrong kind of projector, you had to re-enact the voices, all Rocky Horror style.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Laserdisc<\/strong><\/p>\n Laserdisc was blindingly\u00c2\u00a0awesome.\u00c2\u00a0 Literally.\u00c2\u00a0 You could use its large shiny surface to reflect the light of the sun into the eyes of anyone who insulted the format.\u00c2\u00a0 LDs were a foot in diameter, and looked like a record-sized CD.\u00c2\u00a0 They offered better picture quality than VHS ((And some will say, better than DVD…)) and didn’t have to be rewound.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, you couldn’t record to them and\u00c2\u00a0they were much more expensive than VHS.\u00c2\u00a0 On top of that, the makers of the Laserdisc, in order to help\u00c2\u00a0prevent deep-vein thrombosis in the audience, decided that the viewer would have to flip or change discs at least once during the film, sometimes as much as three times in a two hour movie, depending on the encoding style.\u00c2\u00a0 Couch potatoes stuck with VHS, while rich people, exercise freaks, and snobs adopted Laserdisc.\u00c2\u00a0 Additionally, Laserdisc found popularity in schools, where the clear freeze-frame capability allowed video slide shows with instant random-access\u00c2\u00a0scan to a specific frame.\u00c2\u00a0 Laserdiscs also landed in arcades, where the random access video was used for graphically stunning games like Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, Time Traveler and Mad Dog McCree.\u00c2\u00a0 Too bad those all sucked as games.<\/p>\n UMD<\/strong><\/p>\n So…\u00c2\u00a0 I really don’t understand UMD.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s more expensive than DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 It has a smaller capacity than DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 It generally has fewer features than DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 It plays on one thing and only one thing, which nobody bought, and that one thing\u00c2\u00a0that has a four inch screen.\u00c2\u00a0 The library consists mainly of films made between 2000-2005, which no one really wanted to see to begin with.\u00c2\u00a0 So, uh, why can I walk into Best Buy and still find a UMD movie section?\u00c2\u00a0 It makes no sense to me at all.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like all the stores still have their entire original launch day selection, and they’ve completely forgotten that it’s there.\u00c2\u00a0 Sony’s even trying to kill\u00c2\u00a0the format\u00c2\u00a0for games, which is the only reason for it to exist.\u00c2\u00a0 Why hasn’t it died and gone away?\u00c2\u00a0 HD-DVD was completely out of stores within about two months of the Blu-ray victory.\u00c2\u00a0 Why do UMD movies linger so?<\/p>\n VideoCD<\/strong><\/p>\n A VideoCD contains MPEG compressed video on a standard CD-ROM.\u00c2\u00a0 It came out in the mid-90’s, around the same time as the first CD based\u00c2\u00a0game consoles.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of them, such as the Philips CD-i and the Amiga CD32, had add-on modules that allowed the console to play VideoCDs.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine that, a game console that could play movies.\u00c2\u00a0 The video on a VideoCD was compressed such that it could be played back in a\u00c2\u00a0single speed CD drive.\u00c2\u00a0 That meant that you could fit about 70-80 minutes of video on a single CD.\u00c2\u00a0 That, unfortunately, meant that a movie had to come on at least two discs.\u00c2\u00a0 The quality was generally better than VHS, if you didn’t mind the occasional compression artifacts.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the video is normal MPEG video, and because the disc is\u00c2\u00a0a standard CD-ROM format, PCs have no problem playing VideoCDs. ((Or borrowing the MPEG files for other purposes…))\u00c2\u00a0 Also, although you might not be aware of it, there’s a good chance that your DVD player will happily play VideoCDs, since the format is very similar to that of DVDs.<\/p>\n DIVX<\/strong><\/p>\n DIVX looks like a DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 DIVX uses the same disc format as DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 But DIVX is not DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 ((DIVX is also not related to the Divx codec, except in name, which is a sarcastic reference to this format.))\u00c2\u00a0 You see, when you buy a DVD, you get to watch it the night you buy it.\u00c2\u00a0 You get to watch it the next day.\u00c2\u00a0 You get to watch it over and over and over until the disc develops stress fractures and disintegrates.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the beauty of buying a movie.\u00c2\u00a0 DIVX didn’t see things that way.\u00c2\u00a0 The people pushing DIVX (Circuit City and, um…\u00c2\u00a0 Circuit City) decided that people would want to pay $5 for the disc ((Granted, DVDs were $30+ at the time, so that was a good cheap price.)) and\u00c2\u00a0be able to watch it for 48 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 After that time frame, if you wanted to watch it again, you had to pay again.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Basically, you had to\u00c2\u00a0rent movies that you owned.\u00c2\u00a0 The target market for this was apparently the people who had enough time to go pick up a movie from the store, but who were too busy to be able to take it back to the rental place when they were done and hated late fees.\u00c2\u00a0 If you wanted, you had the option to pay to upgrade the disc for unlimited viewing.\u00c2\u00a0 Controlling all of this was a telephone connection to the mothership, where every movie you watched and how often you watched\u00c2\u00a0was tracked by the system.\u00c2\u00a0 And if the mothership didn’t respond, your grand movie collection was worthless.<\/p>\n Yeah…\u00c2\u00a0 That didn’t work out so well for them.\u00c2\u00a0 The amazing part is that Circuit City survived for another ten years after this disaster.<\/p>\n You could try to play a DIVX disc in a regular DVD player, but all you’d get is a screen like this:<\/p>\n CED Videodisc<\/strong><\/p>\n I’ve saved the one that’s probably the most bizarre for last.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve given you movies on CD and movies on record-sized CDs, so why not give you movies on a record-sized record?\u00c2\u00a0 Seriously, the CED ((Capacitance Electronic Disc, if that matters.)) \u00c2\u00a0is vinyl and grooved and played back with a contact needle which reads the\u00c2\u00a0bumps and dips in a groove.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a record, the needle would wear out and need replacing over time.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, like a record, the movies would occassionally skip.\u00c2\u00a0 There are no known instances of early rappers “Scratching” a Videodisc, but you have to admit that the thought is awesome.\u00c2\u00a0 ((Actually, though, although you probably could “scratch” a CED, it’s likely that it would simply produce a strange shifting color display as the scanning beam displays the same color for a long time, and, on some TVs, a loss of vertical hold, causing the screen to flip.))\u00c2\u00a0 Video quality was roughly on par with VHS, although CED discs could only hold about an hour per side.\u00c2\u00a0 However, they were initially cheaper than VHS tapes and enjoyed limited popularity among those with\u00c2\u00a0lower income or who were just cheap.<\/p>\n While records spun at 33 1\/3 RPM, CED discs went at 450 RPM.\u00c2\u00a0 That means it’s spinning around 7.5 times a second.\u00c2\u00a0 NTSC Television signals are 60 frames per second\u00c2\u00a0 ((It’s slightly more complicated than that.\u00c2\u00a0 NTSC signals typically contain 30 distinct images a second, but each image is shown on two subsequent\u00c2\u00a0scans.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why NTSC is typically\u00c2\u00a0said to be 30 fps, even though it’s really refreshing the screen 60 times a second.\u00c2\u00a0 Read up on Atari 2600 programming if you really want to gain an appreciation of how TV signals work.)), which means that each rotation showed eight frames.\u00c2\u00a0 If you look at the closeup of a CED, you can actually SEE the frame spacing.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n The disc is divided into eight wedge-shaped segments.\u00c2\u00a0 Each segment is a frame, and the divider is the Vertical Blanking Interval.\u00c2\u00a0 If you look really closely, you’ll see narrow lines within each segment.\u00c2\u00a0 Those are individual scanlines separated by the Horizontal Blanking Interval.\u00c2\u00a0 Think about that for a second:\u00c2\u00a0 YOU CAN SEE THE MOVIE ON THE DISC.\u00c2\u00a0 ((Actually, you can see the same thing on a CAV Laserdisc even more clearly.\u00c2\u00a0 It has to be a CAV disc, though.\u00c2\u00a0 CLV discs don’t have the same\u00c2\u00a0nicely visible\u00c2\u00a0alignment.\u00c2\u00a0 With a CAV Laserdisc, you can see the VBI and HBIs for two frames per rotation.))<\/p>\n CEDs were designed so that they never had to be handled directly, since fingerprints and dirt could screw up the picture or gum up the needle.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, CEDs were designed so that you typically never even saw the disc.\u00c2\u00a0 Movies came in hard plastic caddies. The case was inserted into the player, and when it was removed, the disc stayed behind.\u00c2\u00a0 An hour later, when you had to flip the movie over, you put the case back in, the disc and plastic ring locked back into place, you pulled the caddy back out, turned it over, then stuck it back in.\u00c2\u00a0 In order to actually see the disc, you had to unlock the inner ring with\u00c2\u00a0screwdriver and pull it out.<\/p>\n Obviously, being vinyl, you couldn’t record on it.\u00c2\u00a0 But you also couldn’t fast forward, rewind, or pause and still see a picture.\u00c2\u00a0The needle made physical contact with the disc.\u00c2\u00a0 If you fast forwarded or rewound,\u00c2\u00a0 the needle had to be lifted in order to prevent damage, since the action was done not by speeding up the disc, but by moving the needle in or out, just like going to the third song on an ordinary\u00c2\u00a0record.\u00c2\u00a0 As for pausing, the needle also had to be lifted.\u00c2\u00a0 The disc was one continuous groove.\u00c2\u00a0 If you left the needle on the disc, it would track with the groove, so it would play the movie.\u00c2\u00a0 If you held the needle in place and prevented it from tracking, it would have to jump the groove wall, probably damaging both the needle and the disc.\u00c2\u00a0 At the time, the electronics required for keeping a frame in some kind of memory so that the video could be paused and still show an image were insanely expensive.\u00c2\u00a0 ((VHS\/Beta did it by simply rescanning the same frame over and over.\u00c2\u00a0 Most Laserdisc players\u00c2\u00a0only had a pause feature on the CAV style discs, because the physical layout of the frames on the disc allowed the laser to remain stationary and simply scan the same frame over and over and over.\u00c2\u00a0 CLV discs couldn’t be paused because of the variable frame alignment.))<\/p>\n One of the most interesting tidbits about the Video Disc is the fact that there were plans to produce an add-on for the ColecoVision which could drive a CED player for games.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine how that could have changed EVERYTHING about the video game industry.\u00c2\u00a0 Affordable, random access, full motion video games in your living room, in 1983.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, there would have been a lot of Mad Dog McCrap, but I have one word for you:\u00c2\u00a0 Myst.\u00c2\u00a0 In 1983.<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 It wouldn’t have been a\u00c2\u00a0computer-generated photo-realistic world, but there would have been games that were just as\u00c2\u00a0immersive and beautiful.\u00c2\u00a0 We would have had the CD-ROM revolution ten years earlier.\u00c2\u00a0 In that world, would Super Mario Bros. even have existed?\u00c2\u00a0 How could low-res blocky 16 color graphics compete?<\/p>\n That concludes the tour for today.\u00c2\u00a0 For scale comparison, here’s a couple of shots with the different formats, all happily coexisting.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n