***** They all could play MPEG-1 but only in the. .pss format and if you didn't have the SCPH-5903 you had to get an add-on and that was only supported on pre 700x units because of lost serial port.
I had no idea VCDs ever went anywhere in the first place! Wow. Watching Mad Max & San Andreas's city shots in 240p 4:3 definitely feels like the 90s lmao
+EposVox They are still booming in Asia, especially China where DVD never really took off because of a combination of the Chinese Government and the stupid region codes. VCD even got upgraded to Super VCD which the Chinese copied and turned into CVD (China Video Disc)... It's a crazy bizarro world thing! :)
+Simon Butcher they aren't booming, they are dying pretty quickly now. Fewer and fewer new titles are getting VCD releases....we are very much in their twilight years. They've had a good run though.
Techmoan Even for the black market? I have to admit it's been a while since I've been in those parts, but streaming and torrenting isn't all that easy and CD fabrication is still cheap. Maybe things have changed though.
@@benespection No, just no. In asia the biggest market for movie are DVDs. It's has been like that since 2006. VCD exist but not booming. And if you talked about the black market... They doesn't even want to touch VCDs, it's just not profitable. DVDs are as cheap and quicker to manufacture.
Actually, VCDs could certainly have chapters. But I think it just depends on the company that made it. A better comparison is VCD vs. VHS. Both from the same time period but each having some advantages.
The 8-Bit Guy omg, I just recalled you and your channel when watching this video. I wonder if you could make a review of earlier graphic accelerators like the voodoo and stuff. keep up the good work mate.
I don't really think the VCD's was a fair comparison, and not for obvious reasons. Those looked like vcd burnt by some vietnamese teen at home in his basement using some kind of cd burning software. I've never seen an official vcd release of anything, and if I had I'm sure the quality would of been better than what was shown, basically I'm pretty sure those were all some kind of home made illegal bootlegs made to look "official". If a vcd is done right and I mean really mastered, it doesn't look horrendous, only just slightly awful :)
it has just inside. dvd and bluray are a lot smaller in the inside. the problem with disk is the outer part is the one with the most data so making them small is inefficient. but making them tol big is cumblersome
DG TV no idea how big is a laserdic, but simply as an aproximation get the proportion between the radius from a bluray and a laserdisc and the square it. wikipedia says they were 30cm wide, dvds are 12vm in diameter so 30/12= 2,5, squared thats 6,25, so if a single layer bluray has 25GB one the size of a laserdisc would have about 156,25GB, 312,5GB for a dual layer one. Another problem with huge disc is the speed, as they cant spin too fast because of the eccentric force. Theres also some occilation problems too with the material, you can see that in those videos where they accelerate a CD until it blows appart. So maybe you could have 300GB in a disk but it would run really slow, something like a DVD i suppose, and it takes like 10 minutes to burn a 4gb dvd at 16x, now do 100 times that, it would be like 13 hours to burn 300GB. At that point you are better off buying an hdd, plus you can erase it and write stuff to it as much as you like. I stopped buying DVDs (and never had blurays) when the price per gb on a hdd became close to that of a dvd, nowadays it's cheapper to buy an hdd than the same capasity in blurays so why even bother
+Laharl Krichevskoy apparently laserdiscs could run upto 1,800rpm which is a snail pace compared to what bluray can write at: 15,000rpm. I stopped buying dvds a few years ago and didn't bother with blurays until this month funnily enough (bought a 4k tv), but all the ones I've been buying have been £1.50 - £3.00 from eBay and Amazon, obviously not new releases but that doesn't bother me, I'd prefare to wait a few years to watch a film again anyway. I'm not willing to pay anymore than £5 for films these days although, I did buy Apocalypse now with the redux version included for £8.50 haha.
+Laharl Krichevskoy There were no "layers" with LaserDisc, there were 2 SIDES. I was the size of a vinyl record, 12 inches in diameter, about twice as thick, and weighed at least 5 pounds!
VCD was the biggest thing back in 2003 here in Paraguay. Every bootleg movie came in that format. For some reason DVD's were not as popular back then for bootlegs up until the rise of the "mp4" movie collections some 5 years later; you get 4 or 5 movies in one DVD (with VCD quality, ironically). HD is still not a big thing around here, only us young people with the "internet knowledge" care about quality, most people are still using CRT's. update 2020: it's the internet era now. people either pay netflix or watch sketchy streaming sites in badly encoded 1080p so yeah, they still don't care about quality lol.
SladeBallard that's sad, here in Brazil HD is becoming more and more a standard thing, analog signals are starting to be turned off in lots of cities and there's no CRTs selling anymore since 2013, and about the vcds, as Paraguay is really close to Brazil, I remember getting lots of those, they were really cheap but way more reasonable than buying an original one.
"VCD was the biggest thing back in 2003 here in Paraguay. Every bootleg movie came in them." You might be the reason why DVD players started shipping with DivX playback (and yes, the i and v are lowercase and *YES* it matters!)
It is funny, there are new DVD Movie collections coming out here in the USA that also have many movies on them on very few discs. While they are true DVDs and meet the standards, some of them also are low VCD resolution, though encoded in MPEG2. MPEG1 is also allowed in the spec however. What can you expect with 3 - 5 movies per disc?
Acá en Argentina el Blu Ray nunca fue popular y de hecho la gente sigió viendo dvds hasta ponele 2017, desde mas o menos ese año hasta ahora todos ya se pasaron al streaming
I’m kindof questioning life when I heard people play movies on vcd. A few months ago I got my first (4K) Blu-ray reader for PC, and I’ve been collecting UHDs and cheap BDs, it’s awesome. But pretty sad where things are going.
Brings me back to my days of pirating 700MB movies, and cheering because the download speed exceeded 100Kb/s for a brief moment. Ah, those weren't the days...
yify is piece of crap, you want quality you better get as much bitrate for the resolution, runtime and aspect ratio as you can. As a rule of thumb if you don't want to bother checking runtime and aspect ratio download 720p at over 5GB and 1080p at over 10GB. SPARKS is a great choice for 720p.
many people are still using VCD in Indonesia too. Especially for karaoke and children movies. Even my mother still buy some VCD collection for my 1 year old nephew. Yes, so much DVD here also but VCD isn't dead plus the price is really cheap and not the issue for my little nephew.
Like Andian Bandibas and D Jann said, VCDs are alive and well in Southeast Asia. There's a reason why they still sell them in 4:3 there as well. It's because many people in these parts still have old CRT sets. I've been to the Philippines myself and I've seen old TV sets in people's homes and businesses. I've checked out different electronic stores that sell high definition television sets and it seems that the price is always set to the suggested retail price. There's hardly any sales and hardly any competition between electronic retailers. Prices are controlled there.
+Philip vB - Correct, and probably why it didn't take off in Europe when they tried to flog it here in the early 90s. Unlike DVD, it didn't really offer anything over the established VHS format except random access. Who was going to spend another few hundred quid on a read-only player that was arguably inferior to their VHS machine?! (It enjoyed a brief surge in popularity for pirated movies around the turn of the millennium, when recordable CDs were becoming affordable, but DVD-R was still expensive, but that was short-lived). Apparently the reason it did better in South East Asia was that video recorders weren't so established and had problems with the humidity there. Along with the cheap and/or pirate media!
+Philip vB Yes it does. VCD isnt popular over in south east asia because of its quality, it is popular because of its survivability in that climate. VHS tapes quickly degrade over there while VCDs last longer.
+Philip vB VCD has half the vertical resolution of VHS or almost any other home video format for that matter. VCD has much better chroma resolution though.
Philip vB Well, you didn't say anything about archival. With the marginal price difference between blank CDs and DVDs using VCD is a bit bonkers. Either way use whatever format you expect least likely to break down on you down the line
Na dude, composite cables are the same in every way, the video cable (Yellow) could be used for a red composite cord as long if bolt ends of the yellow cord are connected to the same port on bolt devices. Got It? I have tried it once
I actually worked for Philips CD-i division when the VCD was released, I've still have the player plus some old movies Star Trek on 2 discs. Total crap resolution.
50 Ducks In A Hot Tub I can make vcd look as good or better than dvds...maybe I should work at a vcd pressing plant back cuz many Asia markets still buy vcd
"Forced Trailers" - Oh the bane of my existence! I seriously hope they go away, and never come back again. I hate having to wait 5 minutes just to start a movie for my grandmother. All just so I can hear "Coming to theater in 2007!" or "Now on DVD!". They just made things super inconvenient.
+Sypran I forget what disc it was, but when I put in the blu-ray of one of these films, it had a forced trailer...but the UHD didn't. Hopefully they'll only put junk like this on the 2nd disc if they keep issuing UHDs in this UHD & blu-ray two disc package format.
+Techmoan Meh, they'll eventually catch up to it as they always do once a format hits the mainstream. Every 90s VHS I have has at least 2-3 minutes of trailers, very early DVDs have a very fast menu (at best) before they became a total clusterfuck.
I actually like seeing trailers for things from like 2007 or whatever. I think its neat to see what was coming out around that time and what trailers back then looked like. But I agree they shouldn't be forced. Luckily, most trailers can be skipped using the menu button(but not all unfortunately)
AND in any PC with a CD drive. You can't even do that with regular blu rays, you'd need Licence (and expensive) Software and an HDCP capable Monitor/GPU and (ofc.) a blu ray drive. DRM ruining everything!
Plenty of free BluRay software. A BD-Drive isn't terribly expensive, most monitors and practically all GPUs are HDCP compatible. It's kind of a moot point. Not to mention with the HD download code most 4kBluRays come with, that'll work just fine on any PC. Kind of a moot argument. Not to mention a BD-Drive will play dvds and should be able to do VCDs as well.
I sadly haven't found any good free blu ray player software, witch one do you recommend? also I don't think there is any Playback software for UHD 4k Blu rays yet.
joejoe4games If you have enough spare hard drive space, MakeMKV and your video player of choice (I use MPC-HC) that can play .mkv files. Completely free and will make just about every Blu-ray into a DRM-free file for you to watch freely on anything you own. The one downside is that a full movie that it spits out is between 20 and 30 GB, and even transcoded they're about 10 GB. Also, occasionally some manufacturers put multiple scene orders on the disc, so you have to do some looking to find the correct file. PowerDVD 17 will plays UHD Blu-rays I believe, but you have to have certain computer specifications and Windows 10. The DRM hasn't been cracked yet, so nothing free for now.
I have a soft spot for the old VCD. When I was in the Navy and visiting Hong Kong, VCD was the most convenient means for me to collect movies. I did have and LD player at the time, but since the LD market was alive and well at that point, the prices were up there. For the price of one LD movie, I could buy 5 or 6 VCDs. Plus, I could watch them on my Sega Saturn with the VCD attachment which I had with me on the ship. Thus, I could watch the VCDs right then and there, whereas I had to wait until we got back to Japan to watch any LDs I bought. But man oh man, was the format ever so limited!! Video artifacting galore and barely MP3 quality audio! Still, for being the first consumer digital video format, got hand it to the old VCD for still hanging in there after all these years. Who would have thought that it would outlive VHS and Laserdisc?!?
The fact that the dimensions of the physical media are the same from audio CD forward is quite remarkable ! Of course everything else has changed about how the data is stored and read, other than it is still optical and a laser, but my how the amount of data has progressed!
VCD is absolutely capable of chapters and I believe there were western released that had them. Producers of low-budget bootleg releases probably just don't care to include them. Would be weird if the format wasn't capable of that, since it's basically the video version of the audio CD which obviously had chapters from the beginning.
They absolutely DO support chapters, it just takes extra work during the encoding to have that chapter mark set properly for the bookmark code which sits on a different track. Plenty of DVD players don't bother to support it because why should they (over here it's targeting a non-existent market)) but the format does indeed. I used to make home movies in VCD to easier share with family that were completely computer illiterate but nevertheless had DVD players, so I did actually do the occasional menu and title screen to, but some players would just ignore it and play the whole thing in one go.
Many dvd players used there own kind of menu control to play or display chapters if there were any. For example my Marantz dv 6500 has its pbc or what it called it, as videocd's architecture had to be read by a cdi player with mpeg module back in the day and dvd and bd players don't have that architecture so kind of simulated or compensated that with an own playback menu. My bd player Sony S 790 can play vcd's but not svcd's. I bet there will be an Oppo player to come out that will play uhd 3d, bd dvd svcd sacd dvd-a and the whole rimram (except laserdisc).
it’s important to add that we used to watch these on old style TVs where the resolution looked great ! used to love the moment my cousin would return from her trips in Asia with piles of new movies
It's amazing that you can still buy VCDs. They were still around in the early 2000s, but this is incredible. I've got a Philips CDi. Also, my Sony BlueRay player can play VCDs, even though it says it can't in the manual. It may have been a software update.
I'd be interested in a VCD VS Laserdisc comparison, since in the 90's they were both prevalent. Although we already know laserdisc is better, it would be another little fun comparison.
Does anyone remember that you actually had to buy a dedicated MPEG1 decoder ISA card to play VideoCDs in a PC in the early 90s? (because PCs of the time had too weak processors to decode MPEG1 fast enough to have watchable video without stutter).
I do remember - I once had a Reelmagic hardware mpeg decoder ISA card inside my 80286 PC-AT (16MB RAM, Oak 4MB VGA card and 120MB hard disk). The CDROM player used a caddie for the disk. I got all this so I could play a '80s arcade game call Dragon's Lair. That game was based on a (Philips?) laserdisc, and ported to CD.
i remember using an old computer at my Nana's house my uncle gave it to me to use when i was at her house it was windows 95 and if i remember it was 80mb ram can't remember what cpu it used i know it was a Compaq pc but it would run vcd video 100% fine in windows media player without lagging and it could also play divx avi files fine as long as they where 320x240 and had a lowish bitrate like 300kb or so
I remember bought third party converter for my PlayStation to play vcd back then. General Warning: just don't, my PSX broke down just a couple of months later and need a whole optical head changed. This was back in late 90s when I was a college kid. DVD still considered fancy stuff back then.
I remember VCD quite well. I remember when I was a kid, there was a guy selling VCDs he made himself from VHS rips of movies and TV shows, as well as Anime. All for pretty cheap if I remember right. I still have a few of them sitting around as well. And then I started making my own since I didn't have a DVD burner. It's quite the funky format.
7:30 when you have true 4k and Dolby vision they actually struggle to fit it all on one disc so you get a lot of movies like Dark Knight, Star Wars and Blade Runner 2049 being released without Dolby Vision and others like Gandhi and Lawrence of Arabia split over two discs
I think what's amazing is that the VCD can take a brand new, modern movie and make it look like it came out in the mid-80s. 240p resolution? I'm surprised the TV can even understand that.
I dont even know why this is. I tried to encode a VCD from a blueray source and the colors where the same. Just the res was between VHS and laserdisc Level. Also there are inofficial svcds that could fit full movies in 480x360 pixel with vbr encoding on one CD. ;-) DVD Player could even Play them even If the specification was non Standard.
As mentioned in other comments, VCD was huge in the Philippines (initially I assumed only we sold that kind of movie format). I've got a lot of VCD copies of films in varying condition, my faves being Speed Racer (2008) in slightly damaged condition, and Herbie Fully Loaded with severe condition in disc 2. I remember fondly going to the disc stores in my local shopping malls to buy VCD films as a youngster. But now those stores are all but gone now. Really gonna miss those times. Often times when I've nothing to do in life I go and view my VCD movies to check on how they're doing. Speed Racer and Herbie are the only ones I've viewed so far (first time in YEARS).
I still have a couple of VCDs. I don't remember the name of one VCD, but the other one is the original B&W classic Night of the Living Dead. Back in the early '90s, VCDs were sold in the computer section, rather than the video section, of my local department stores, because they were intended to be watched on a computer. (DVD players weren't out yet.)
That movie is kinda rare for it to be on VCD format... And believe me, I know my VCDs pretty well cuz I've been a collector for many years. What brand is the manufacturer, and does it contain any subtitles?
+mclaine33 DVD is a *lot* better than VCD. VCD is really an anomaly....an anachronism. It's a current format...but it is worse than VHS. That's why it fascinates me. It's alive, but it really shouldn't be.
+Techmoan VCD is very much an Asia thing, and before DVD players fell in price it was the format of choice for many Asians, especially if you don't mind being a pirate as blank CD media is vastly cheaper and take up less physical space than VHS. As VCD-capable DVD players became cheaper DVDs (and USB drives/torrenting) eventually supplanted VCD, but of course many of the poor still only have VCD players so that is why VCD is still available. AFAIK it's not popular in the West because VCDs have no copy protection - DVD's success has much to do with its DRM system. IIRC many older torrents you can find on pirate sites have ~600mb splits, or the whole film is limited to that amount. That is for the purpose of fitting into a VCD.
+mclaine33 - From what I've read, VCD endured in south-east Asia because it remained more affordable than DVD. But I can't believe that this would still be the case in 2016. Surely any differences in manufacturing cost- for both players or discs- is negligible by this point (and wiped out by DVD's economies of scale)? So who's still making or buying these discs? Maybe they're selling them to people who can't afford to- or don't want to- replace their VCD players?
NotATube You're right, no one's buying them anymore. But that won't stop the studios from making them because it costs next to nothing to make, and there's always that person who's still using his or her 20-year old CRT and VCD setup.
Avantime - Thanks! I notice you already covered that before I posted- sorry. :-( Reason is that I started writing my comment when there was only 1 reply (Techmoan's) but didn't actually submit it until some time later.
3:30 Disagree somewhat. Many Chinese movies released on VCD typically have two tracks: one Cantonese, one Mandarin. A language is on the left channel; another, on the right. Dual stereo would play two languages simultaneously, making the enjoyment horrendous, especially for an average consumer.
When you show the footage from Mad Max you mention that it looks like an episode from MacGyver... The funny thing is, the moment you said the word "episode", MacGyver was the thing that came up immediately in my mind, and a couple of frames later you mentioned the series! I guess it has the earthy colours of MacGyver's intro!
+Михаил Михайлов It will always be backwards capable until VCD's are as rare as gold. My Blueray Rom for my computer will play CD, VCD, DVD and blueray. I can also record, CD, VCD and DVD's. So not suprising that your aunts player can also play back the older formats. Have you tried sticking a normal music CD in it? Should play that without any issue.
There is navigation and menu in VCD, called PBC menu. Can be activate on player that support VCD 2.0 PBC, those features available on 90's VCD player or LD player that support VCD, on DVD player PBC inactive by default. If PBC active, menu loading is much slower than DVD or Bluray, sadly I am still using VCD right now.
I used to make VCDs of my home movies back in the day before I got a DVD recorder and a good capture card for my PC, I remember just how sh*t and blurry the quality was on VCD, especially when there was a lot of detail in the picture, it would also become slide-show city! Just watch TH-cam in 240p, you'll get the general idea of how it looked.
I love VCD, it is my fav format. I like old PD films so they are great for that sort of thing. The trick to being happy with how it looks is to use a SDTV for them. The reason for my comment is just to say thanks for the link to legal VCD, a REALLY hard thing to keep up with.
SNESIvan Agree, SVCD is great. My only problem is it is hard to find a DVD player that will play them. Still enjoy on my pc but I really like my ol'school 26"
i own over 80 legit vcd movies and about 4 bootlegs i got all of them from second hand stores like salvation army they where sold in the music cd section at all the stores and at one store it was 4cds for $1nzd and another store was 3cds for $2nzd and so on all the ones i have found have found have all been mint condition no scratches on any of the discs or cracks on cases ect i use a older 15" CRT tv that i got for free somebody down the road from my house had put out on there Kerbside has a built in dvd player and plays vcd so i use that to watch them and they look really good there is a shop by my house where i can pick up blank dvds for next to nothing and i use ConvertXtoDVD and set it to 352x288 4:3 and i can fit like 9hrs on one dvd and the video and audio are good as i use hq source files because it encoding to variable bitrate mpeg2 its much better then cbr mpeg1 and if i convert cartoons they look perfect on my 15 inch tv
Some so called Asian VCD online stores are not to legit, sometimes people were being sent bootleg versions and not licensed VCD versions. I seriously do not know any movie company who would allow their films to even be sold on VCD format in today's world, so most are likely copied from DVD's playing in 4:3 format.
VCD was pretty good for the time. And once CD burners came about anyone could make their own. So was a pretty good option other than VHS for keeping home movies etc. I remember early 2000s burning videos shot with a digital stills camera on movie mode onto VCDs with Nero Express! Given how terrible those early cameras were at video the VCD didnt really make it look any worse!
+Edward Bell No joke, here in Hong Kong, there's plenty of shops that still sell VCD format discs. Some rental stores also do the VCD format and are cheaper than renting the DVD counter parts.
VCD became very popular here in the Philippines. A lot of titles (both local and foreign) was released on the said format. Some were converted from Betamax or VHS (not really sure, but you can tell by the static stuff at the bottom of the screen) by different video distributors. While some came from the original masters designed for VCD release. It's the cheaper alternative to DVD back in the day. I still collect VCDs up to this day. Most of them were pre-loved ones, while some were just stocked for a long time. Don't really care about the resolution. VCD gives me the vibe of the past that DVD cannot really give me. It reminds me so much of my childhood. :)
Because pricing. Here in Indonesia I can pick up a genuine VCD for a few quid, a DVD is at least 3-4 times as expensive. Combine this with much cheaper players and often TV's in the size of 10-14 inches and a good VCD often hold up remarkably well.
***** I had no idea you can actually buy TVs that small anymore, the smallest I see in retail stores are about 30" or so and even cheaper 40-50" models can be picked up for less then 500€. The quality of VCDs looks terrible though. Where I live, prices for BluRays on amazon get down to about 10€ quite fast after the release and DVDs are even cheaper so it's no real need to even consider something like DVDs if you have a BluRay player which can be picked up for less then 100€. Personally I just use my "old" PS3 for that.
Behemothokun And this is obviously why we nowadays buy DVD and/or bluray in the west. But remember VCD is ancient and that many people in Asia still make less than 50€/month.
***** thinking about that, it's kinda weird really. Of course there are differences in wages, quite big ones actually, but also the cost of living and food also differs to great extend. but then for something like electronic goods and other "luxury" items the differnce becomes much more dramatic. On eanings like 50€ per day, not even a month, I wouldn't even be able to afford a small apartment and still be able to get something to eat for that.
Behemothokun Fully agree. A meal from a street vendor is less than 1 euro. At the same time a Galaxy S7 is closer to 1000 euro (because of import taxes). So a 1000:1 ration. Back home fast food is at least 6 euro and a S7 is 600 euro for a 100:1 ratio.
I remember going to India in ~2011 and VCD was STILL super popular there. Heck, they even sold dedicated VCD players. They didn't play DVDs (even though DVD players can play VCDs), but the price difference between DVD players and VCD players must have either been too much, or people just may not have known about it.
Ah brings me back to the day when ripping my DVDs to VCD before I had a DVD Writer. I then tried SVCD and the great compromise was CVD as that played in standard DVD players! Half res on the horizontal but full on the vertical. Miss those days!
+R33Racer Doesn't the CD-i and probably the Saturn as well need like some official multimedia decoder extension attached to it to play VCDs? Just need a refresher.
It's interesting to note that the actual manufactured cost of a VCD (essentially a CD) and a DVD is 6 cents for the VCD and around 8 cents for a DVD. I know Blue-Ray is a little more expensive, likely 12 cents, and UHD won't be more than 15 cents. That means most of the cost is in the bluster and packaging
@@OtomoTenzi oil prices are probably 20-40% of the cost but the process is highly mechanised so labour costs won't have moved much. Even if you double it it's still mostly bluster and marketing. New release DVD's are around $24 and Blue-ray $32 where I live and once the movie has been on TV you get as low as $5 for DVD and still makes money for everyone.
Great and very interesting review. Those vcd releases from Hong Kong are amazing. I've got some vcd releases myself, but I've never seen these Hong Kong releases before. In my opinion the design is just fantastic. They look so much better than standard DVD, Blu-ray and 4k releases. Just turning the case on its side and then design the inlays for this orientation. That's so cunning. I love it. I often order stuff from YesAsia (actually a few weeks ago I placed an order and I expect this to arrive soon), so next time I'm ordering something I should take a look at those Hong Kong vcd releases and buy one. Last year I also bought two vcds. One's from Taiwan and the other one from Indonesia. The one from Taiwan is just a normal CD case and the one from Indonesia is a DVD case with slipcover. Like I said, in my opinion the design of those Hong Kong releases is amazing and if I had to give points for this it would be the vcd to get the points, so that's: VCD: 1 - UHD: 0 Like I said, I bought two vcd releases last year. However, I bought only one movie on 4k (which was a Canadian release). So, again vcd gets the points, which means it's the winner with a score of: VCD: 2 - UHD: 0
One of the few good things about Video CD is that it's a doodle format to rip and archive. No stupid proprietary files and dozens of split files that needs to be joined together,no copy protection,no macrovision,no extra software. Just pop it in the PC and copy the biggest file in the MPEGAV folder mostly a single file copy per disc and voila you get your copy to watch on PC.
For a time in the early 2000s, I tried burning SVCDs. This was a DVD stream recorded onto a CD-R at higher speed. The benefit was DVD quality and picture formatting from cheaper equipment and disks. However, because this required high-speed use of the CD lenses of the DVD player, the player would sometimes have trouble keeping up with the bitrate and lock up after a minute or so. Not all DVD players are SVCD capable, but most are VCD compatible.
Well, i remember creating home-made VCD's and they did have sort of a menu (navigation via number keys) that could be used sort-of for chapters but then you would have like 30mins of video left and that was for the best resolution possible. Oh, and there was SVCD where res and sound were marginally better but every capacity was now halved. Oh well. Cheap DVD's, i guess...
I have a fairly large collection of VCDs, before I got my first DVD player i played them on my computer. I had a MPEG1 decoder card installed to take the load off the cpu. worded well. when I got my first DVD player I got a Sony 5 disk carousel player, that way i could load up both disks and it would switch automatically. while clearly they won't hold up to modern formats i think they held up well when compared to standard VHS.
They held up very well indeed... Imagine how much space at home you actually saved compared to owning an entire collection of movies on bulky VHS tapes!
Too bad almost none of the current available UHD Bly-Rays are true 4K ones. Most of current movies are still edited in 2K, and their masters are in 2K. Some time ago I checked all the available discs and if I remember correctly, only 2 of this 25 had 4K masters; rest was upscaled. You can chceck resolutions of the masters on imdb on the "technical specification" page. Edit: oh, I see now that you cover this subject in the second video.
+marcinoz97 I have read somewhere that there are some UHD blu-rays that have some scenes that are true 4K and other scenes that are upscaled. I will probably wait a year or so to get a UHD player. For now, Blu-ray will have to do.
@@ARCtheCartoonMaster 2k is normal HD. For some reason with the newest Ultra HD, the convention switched from describing it in the number of lines of desolation to the approximate number of pixels per line, probably because it sounds more impressive. But standard Blu-ray is 1080p, that is 1080 lines of resolution with progressive scanning where every line is completely redrawn every refresh of the screen (as opposed to interlacing, where only every other line is redrawn on alternating refreshes, which saves bandwidth for over the air transmission). Which, when 1080 is multiplied by 16/9 (the aspect ratio of modern TVs) gives 1920 pixels per line. When both the number of lines and the number of pixels per line are doubled, as in the case of Ultra HD, the lines become 2160, while the pixels per line become 3840, which is close to 4000 pixels per line, hence "4K". (For cinema projectors, the aspect ratio is the slightly wider 1.85 to 1, resulting in 3996 pixels per line, which is almost exactly 4000.) So long story short, standard HD = 1080p (lines) = 2k (approx pixels per line) = regular Blu-ray..
I remember making my own VCDs back in the day. They allowed about 80 minutes of video. You then had the SVCD (super video compact disc) which allowed you to hold 40 minutes. It was closer to VHS quality but not a patch on DVD when that became available.
@@OtomoTenzi SVCD uses a higher resolution of 480x480 and has a max bitrate to 2MBPS, whereas VCD is limited to 352x240 and the bitrate has to be 1MBPS. They both use normal CDs but with extra error protection disabled so you get almost 800MB from a typical 700MB disc. Since the max bitrate of SVCD is double that of VCD, you'll get half the runtime, but unlike VCD, they're not forcing you to stick to one bitrate, so you can turn it down to the same bitrate as normal VCD if you want. However, the video will look even worse than normal VCD if you do that because you're spreading out the same bitrate very thin over more pixels.
Perhaps convenience wasn't the best word. VCD wins on price. However, for 'playback ergonomics', UHD wins. For instance, The Fellowship of the Ring has 4 VCDs vs... Oh, there isn't a UHD version. Maybe UHD isn't that convenient after all.
And the good thing is, if you want to keep a copy of, say a weekly recording of a show off the TV, all the authoring software is open source and free, at least on Linux. And a platter of CD-R's are pretty cheap. I use Handbrake to convert the raw recording, Devede for authoring to Vcd, and k3b to burn.
vcds were super popular in malaysia in the late 90s. rampant piracy caused some movie theaters to close up shop. because vcds were dirt cheap, and those pirates almost always manage to get hold of the latest movie even before it was to be screened in the theaters. fast forward 20 years later, no one really buys vcd and dvds anymore in malaysia when you can stream it instead (legally and illegally)
Gotta admire the upscaling on your DVD player at 5:02 - the hard b/w outline of the headphones is near perfect. I am sure that takes some major math magic to happen from lo-rez material like VCD. On the bright side for the old format, though, ever since my first DVD I have really grown to loathe unskippable copyright warnings that accuse me of piracy even though I have just inserted the original disc with a valid licence that I *paid* for. Any pirated title, one might add, does not have *any* of these. I am still wondering why no bloody publisher has ever noticed this rampant irony...
i still have hundreds of VCDs, as i uploaded to youtube. the good things about VCDs were that 1) they're cheap 2) easy to use and copy in computers 3) yes the resolution is sligthly below VHS but it won't degrade/digital so no wear n tear 4) dvd n bluray player can play it and latest windows 10 still support VCD playback 5) its basically CD so you can expect the same longevity and no layer transition so no skipping or freezing 6) the jewel case is of course small and compact so dont take that much of space. 7) in many Asian countries old movies were released only on VCD, much like VHS only in the US and not all got rerelease to DVD. But i of course prefer DVDs and blurays because you cannot do upscaling with VCD and the best way to experience VCD is with CRT TV...
BoloYung Not really. I've had VCDs with menus and chapters on whole feature-length movies. They were still split on 2 discs, but both had them. Maybe it was because they weren't cheap Chinese editions.
First time hearing about this format. I had always wondered wether there was a way to put video on a cd and have it play normally like a music cd does (You could save the video as a file but it wouldn't play anywhere unless you copied the file to a computer) Love your videos as always!
Really? I'm not even 18 yet and until like a few years ago I used to watch a bunch of movies on VCD. Perks of living in a Third World Country I guess, heh.
To be honest, you could probably argue convenience in favour of the VCD because, well, how many people have players capable of playing back VCDs? Compare that number to the amount of people capable of playing back UHD blu ray, and all I can say is, well, if you want to take a movie with you to watch at a friend's house, take the one they're more likely to be able to actually play. Then again, you could also argue it'd make more sense for them to come over to the house with the better setup, so...
I didn't know VCDs were still being produced, that's pretty... shocking? :) Although I'm heavily oversimplifying it at this point, what I find interesting is that by the rough figures shown at 6:30 the bandwidth actually hasn't changed that much - we got roughly 10 times the resolution in width and height, so 10*10=100 times the area... and 100 times the bandwidth. Matches up nicely, maybe not at all that wrong to compare those formats. ;) +Techmoan Great and entertaining video as always; I'm looking forward to the proper VCD video. :) (In advance, for anyone not seeing the fun in making this poor comparison: No need to correct me here; of course consumer-ready codecs have become much much more efficient over the last ~15 years and there are much more content streams on the UHD format which again increase the size over just having the main movie as a simple video stream. Plus, increasing image size alone does not result in a linear scaling of bandwidth in these codes, so that's a pretty poor comparison which doesn't hold up as soon as you take a look at how the program as a whole is composed. But I thought it's still a little fun fact nonetheless, just as this video hasn't been meant to be taken serious.)
+Daniel Neugebauer I'm glad you're on board. You've fallen into my habit of trying to explain why this is fun to you...I'm just glad you understand. That's two of us.
Back when DVD R blanks were awfully expensive, I burned lots of VCDs to archive TV shows from VHS tapes (using a Pinnacle Movie Box to capture to PC.) The VCDs had pretty much the same quality as the VHS tapes, So it was an OK format for the task!
Honestly the VCD looked interesting. If you actually made a movie/video for the format, it could potentially even look great. Now… the actual resolution in general may be worse still, but it has a charm to it
I have an official VCD release of Cars 2, it's encoded in 16:9 but in fit mode to 4:3. So the result is i got smaller video. But i just surprised it still watchable in my 32" HDTV. Because of high bitrates i guess. It still better than 360p of youtube.
Interesting, but one thing that should be noted is even a 100GB UHD Disk (not all are) at the top 100Mbps data rate can only sustain that bandwidth for a little less than 2 and a half hours, and that is without audio, trailers and extra content. So in reality, the highest data rate on UHD rate will seldom be used; unlike VCD which could sustain it's highest data rate all the time, lol. Hopefully UHD will not do the same crap that some Blu-ray movies did, and that was put long films on a single layer disk with low data rates. A good comparison of this is the movie 'Crash.' If you compare the Blu-ray and DVD versions of this movie on a PS3, you will see that the DVD actually looks better. That is because the DVD has a much higher data rate for its resolution than the Blu-ray does.
+10p6 Yeah, it seems pretty strange to me that they did come up with this new resolution without any new physical format. H265 only has up to 50% smaller size than h264, where 4K has 4 times more pixels than 1080p. This basicly means that movies will have, in the best case, 2 times smaller bitrate per pixel than 1080p ones. And that not counting more advanced audio formats and higher bit depth.
+10p6 - To be fair, some older prerecorded DVDs were single layer as well. My copy of "The Long Good Friday" has some unpleasantly obvious blocking on the opening scene, and that turned out to be a single layer disc.
+marcinoz97 You can only compress data down so much without a noticeable loss in quality. Newer codecs would help with that, but right now h.265 is pretty much the newest one.
+10p6 Well, VCD *had* to have the video at the correct bitrate to meet the guidelines of the format. DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD Blu-ray allow for varying bitrates, so hours of content can be placed on a disc as long as the bitrate is lower. I don't see a problem with having a choice of bitrate as an option. I haven't seen 'Crash' since it was a "new release" (and I have no intention to see that piece of pandering, ensemble-based Oscar crap ever again), but a Blu-ray doesn't actually require anywhere close to 6 times the video bitrate to look better than a DVD. A case of a Blu-ray looking worse than its DVD counterpart certainly sounds like a problem with either the film source for the Blu-ray or faulty mastering... or both. After looking up a review of the disc, I see that it was both a single layer disc AND it was encoded in MPEG-2. AVC/h264 encoding is quite a bit more efficient than MPEG-2 and, now, HEVC/h265 is even more efficient than AVC/h264. I don't think any UHD Blu-ray discs make the mistake of encoding 4K video in AVC/h264 on a 25GB or 50GB disc, which would be the equivalent of the same problem with the 'Crash' disc. The fact that the master was very spotty and appears to be the result of two different-quality transfers doesn't seem to have helped the matter, either. EDIT: Almost forgot: the fact that extra features aren't going onto the UHD Blu-ray discs also helps quite a bit with keeping the quality about as high as it can be! Gotta get those movies that were finished in 2K to look as good as possible when upscaled to about 4 times their actual resolution!
+10p6 VCD is CBR, it always use the same bitrate. DVD, Blu Ray and UHD are VBR, meaning it can adjust bitrate based on how much is needed. Always using the highest possible bitrate is pointless, you're just wasting bits where it is not needed.
play delay is entirely down to the player you're using (and how fast you press play once you're in menus). I've had a DVD player which could load a disc into the menu in only 5 seconds, and I've had several which would take 20 seconds, and up to a minute to load. I've only had the one bluray player, and it takes a good 30 seconds to load the menu.
Play delay is definitely one of the biggest issues with blu-ray, and why I still like DVDs as well. I often stop a TV series or film and come back to it later (days, weeks, months) and I love that my DVDs jump back to exactly where I left off, without having to even go to a menu or wade through any unskippable sections (even if there were some in the beginning). With Blu-ray, I can count maybe a half dozen discs/sets where it actually asked me if I wanted to start back where I left off (but that still involves a button press, and it still takes a very long time sometimes to load). BD has come a long way though and I think is making improvements, heck, my copy of Se7en (must have been the first BD release) has no menu, no subtitles and no scene select.
I can't believe that your BD copy of Se7en doesn't have ANY menus or options since the DVD version would mostly likely have it all... Perhaps it was all crammed to the maximum disc capacity and they didn't have anymore space?
UHD blu-ray prices are ridiculous, i would actually consider getting one but that's just obnoxious. It doesn't cost any more to make but there's a £13 mark up on it...
+MrcabooseVG You do get the blu ray too :D But since blu rays cost £15 anyway they should do this as standard. Lower DVD'S TO £5 Lower Blu rays to £10 And make UHD'S £15 Thats more than fair imo
I didn't buy them either, i had a PS3 and a HD TV at the time but it just wasn't worth it. You can go to the cinema, take a friend and buy some food and have a better experience for the same price joshua powell
So, I'm assuming you're not comparing UHD to laserdisc because LD is a completely different beast to digital optical media, right? And, no doubt, VCD beats out LD because it's so much more compact than the latter that that's what the C stands for. In any case: I'd still prefer to watch older movies on VCD than any 3rd or 4th gen media because Sword in the Stone on Blu-Ray is infamous for its grotesque colour saturation and the BR release of Batman '89 is atrocious because they cranked up the gamma so high that it ruins several pivotal moments in the film.
Scrunchy Howard What are you even talking about? LaserDisc is far superior to VCD, and properly remastered Blu-Rays look dramatically superior to both. Two poor releases do not a format make.
Uh.. Yeah, I'd have to contend that they do. Do you know how scientists count the population of fish in any given body of water? Obviously, they can't just find every fish, pluck them out, and tally them: they have to collect a representative sample size (for the purposes of this argument: let's say 100 fish), tag them, release them, and catch 100 more. If there happen to be 10 previously tagged fish: that means that there's an estimated 1000 fish in that particular pond. If one were to do the arduous and thankless task of doing it the hard way: they'd find that the initial estimate is very close. Now, those two movies I mentioned are a representative sample size of badly remastered movies because, as the saying goes, 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me'. So, I can reasonably assume that Blu-Ray releases of older movies will tend to be badly restored or remastered. And, about LaserDisc: it's not "far" superior to VCD because of two factors: availability and the sheer physical size of the damned things. They don't make them any more (hence why they aren't considered an "active" media) and, for a size comparison, VCDs are to Chips Ahoy biscuits as Laserdiscs are to Mrs. Fields cookie cakes. Oh, and sometimes, movies are split across either side and multiple discs so you will occasionally have to flip them over or replace Disc 1 with Disc 2. Their visual and audio quality may be superior but there's a reason why Laserdiscs fell out of favor and VCDs became the big thing after that.
Scrunchy Howard Imagine the first time you had an apple, it had a worm in it. Does that mean all apples have worms? No. Your "logic" is bullshit. You can't "reasonably assume" anything based on two crap releases, when there are thousands of Blu-Rays out there. When talking media formats, I care about quality first. The size of the discs doesn't factor into it, especially when DVDs and Blu-Rays are the exact same size and have considerably better video quality.
Well, some people can't prioritize quality over value, Mr. Cornelius Oldmoneyford Trustfundbabyberg III with his two fancy million dollar Blu-Ray machines that he keeps in his highrise penthouse in Chicago and stately villa in Tuscany.
I've got a lot of nostalgia for VCD - when I got my first PC in 98, DVD players were pricey and my PC only had a CDRW (£220!) in any case So I got this nifty portable CD player off of Amazon for £99 - did MP3 and VCD amongst other things. Used to swap VCD movies via post using people on newsgroups and later on forums Also backed up a load of VHS and saved TV capture card files on VCD - still have a few knocking about today, but gradually they've been ripped onto my hard disk Looking forward to your video on the subject
You know what the best part about VCD's is?
The Sega Saturn can play them.
+Dick ”FullMetalJackass” Huntz PS1 too, right?
+b0bber Only one or two specific models. (mainly Asian units)
***** They all could play MPEG-1 but only in the. .pss format and if you didn't have the SCPH-5903 you had to get an add-on and that was only supported on pre 700x units because of lost serial port.
+Dick “FullMetalJackass” Huntz needs an addon to do so, as a former owner i badly wanted and couldnt afford it :(
blind io Thare are a few bootleg aftermarket cards you can get but unfortunately although they are cheap they are very rare.
I had no idea VCDs ever went anywhere in the first place! Wow.
Watching Mad Max & San Andreas's city shots in 240p 4:3 definitely feels like the 90s lmao
+EposVox
They are still booming in Asia, especially China where DVD never really took off because of a combination of the Chinese Government and the stupid region codes. VCD even got upgraded to Super VCD which the Chinese copied and turned into CVD (China Video Disc)... It's a crazy bizarro world thing! :)
+Simon Butcher they aren't booming, they are dying pretty quickly now. Fewer and fewer new titles are getting VCD releases....we are very much in their twilight years. They've had a good run though.
Techmoan
Even for the black market? I have to admit it's been a while since I've been in those parts, but streaming and torrenting isn't all that easy and CD fabrication is still cheap. Maybe things have changed though.
@@Techmoan
Especially in Indonesia, when previously movie even personal documentation released in VCD, now it released on DVD
@@benespection No, just no. In asia the biggest market for movie are DVDs. It's has been like that since 2006. VCD exist but not booming. And if you talked about the black market... They doesn't even want to touch VCDs, it's just not profitable. DVDs are as cheap and quicker to manufacture.
Actually, VCDs could certainly have chapters. But I think it just depends on the company that made it. A better comparison is VCD vs. VHS. Both from the same time period but each having some advantages.
The 8-Bit Guy omg, I just recalled you and your channel when watching this video. I wonder if you could make a review of earlier graphic accelerators like the voodoo and stuff. keep up the good work mate.
Why does this always happen: you have a person who posts a comment and then another person replies that has nothing to do with either comment.
The 8-Bit Guy But now we have 10 times more pixels. Even I can see the difference. THIS is a upgrade what you can jump to. Next step 40k at 2040 😁
I am a wizard and made of butter.
I don't really think the VCD's was a fair comparison, and not for obvious reasons. Those looked like vcd burnt by some vietnamese teen at home in his basement using some kind of cd burning software. I've never seen an official vcd release of anything, and if I had I'm sure the quality would of been better than what was shown, basically I'm pretty sure those were all some kind of home made illegal bootlegs made to look "official". If a vcd is done right and I mean really mastered, it doesn't look horrendous, only just slightly awful :)
I find it staggering how the actual size and general execution of disc media hasn't changed since CDs
it has just inside. dvd and bluray are a lot smaller in the inside.
the problem with disk is the outer part is the one with the most data so making them small is inefficient. but making them tol big is cumblersome
+Laharl Krichevskoy imagine the data you could store on a UHD disc the size of a laserdisc :-o
DG TV
no idea how big is a laserdic, but simply as an aproximation get the proportion between the radius from a bluray and a laserdisc and the square it.
wikipedia says they were 30cm wide, dvds are 12vm in diameter so 30/12= 2,5, squared thats 6,25, so if a single layer bluray has 25GB one the size of a laserdisc would have about 156,25GB, 312,5GB for a dual layer one.
Another problem with huge disc is the speed, as they cant spin too fast because of the eccentric force. Theres also some occilation problems too with the material, you can see that in those videos where they accelerate a CD until it blows appart.
So maybe you could have 300GB in a disk but it would run really slow, something like a DVD i suppose, and it takes like 10 minutes to burn a 4gb dvd at 16x, now do 100 times that, it would be like 13 hours to burn 300GB. At that point you are better off buying an hdd, plus you can erase it and write stuff to it as much as you like.
I stopped buying DVDs (and never had blurays) when the price per gb on a hdd became close to that of a dvd, nowadays it's cheapper to buy an hdd than the same capasity in blurays so why even bother
+Laharl Krichevskoy apparently laserdiscs could run upto 1,800rpm which is a snail pace compared to what bluray can write at: 15,000rpm.
I stopped buying dvds a few years ago and didn't bother with blurays until this month funnily enough (bought a 4k tv), but all the ones I've been buying have been £1.50 - £3.00 from eBay and Amazon, obviously not new releases but that doesn't bother me, I'd prefare to wait a few years to watch a film again anyway. I'm not willing to pay anymore than £5 for films these days although, I did buy Apocalypse now with the redux version included for £8.50 haha.
+Laharl Krichevskoy There were no "layers" with LaserDisc, there were 2 SIDES. I was the size of a vinyl record, 12 inches in diameter, about twice as thick, and weighed at least 5 pounds!
VCD was the biggest thing back in 2003 here in Paraguay. Every bootleg movie came in that format. For some reason DVD's were not as popular back then for bootlegs up until the rise of the "mp4" movie collections some 5 years later; you get 4 or 5 movies in one DVD (with VCD quality, ironically).
HD is still not a big thing around here, only us young people with the "internet knowledge" care about quality, most people are still using CRT's.
update 2020: it's the internet era now. people either pay netflix or watch sketchy streaming sites in badly encoded 1080p so yeah, they still don't care about quality lol.
SladeBallard that's sad, here in Brazil HD is becoming more and more a standard thing, analog signals are starting to be turned off in lots of cities and there's no CRTs selling anymore since 2013, and about the vcds, as Paraguay is really close to Brazil, I remember getting lots of those, they were really cheap but way more reasonable than buying an original one.
"VCD was the biggest thing back in 2003 here in Paraguay. Every bootleg movie came in them."
You might be the reason why DVD players started shipping with DivX playback (and yes, the i and v are lowercase and *YES* it matters!)
It is funny, there are new DVD Movie collections coming out here in the USA that also have many movies on them on very few discs. While they are true DVDs and meet the standards, some of them also are low VCD resolution, though encoded in MPEG2. MPEG1 is also allowed in the spec however. What can you expect with 3 - 5 movies per disc?
Acá en Argentina el Blu Ray nunca fue popular y de hecho la gente sigió viendo dvds hasta ponele 2017, desde mas o menos ese año hasta ahora todos ya se pasaron al streaming
I’m kindof questioning life when I heard people play movies on vcd. A few months ago I got my first (4K) Blu-ray reader for PC, and I’ve been collecting UHDs and cheap BDs, it’s awesome. But pretty sad where things are going.
Brings me back to my days of pirating 700MB movies, and cheering because the download speed exceeded 100Kb/s for a brief moment. Ah, those weren't the days...
the pirate bay was THE pirate bay
+Sebastian Szebrat but they never upload anything with surround sound
+Sebastian Szebrat but now with hevc for video and aac for sound, you can squeeze in 1080p and surround sound in ~700-900 MB
yify is piece of crap, you want quality you better get as much bitrate for the resolution, runtime and aspect ratio as you can. As a rule of thumb if you don't want to bother checking runtime and aspect ratio download 720p at over 5GB and 1080p at over 10GB. SPARKS is a great choice for 720p.
i used the original napster on a single channel 64k isdn line
"It's ludicrous, and that's why I'm doing it." And that's why your channel is great.
Wow, releasing 240p 4:3 movies in 2016 is crazy. I can't imagine many people in Hong Kong actually want to watch these things.
Haven't seen VCDs for a long time on the streets tho, you mean DVDs?
many people are still using VCD in Indonesia too.
Especially for karaoke and children movies.
Even my mother still buy some VCD collection for my 1 year old nephew.
Yes, so much DVD here also but VCD isn't dead plus the price is really cheap and not the issue for my little nephew.
I've been to Hong Kong so I can.
Like Andian Bandibas and D Jann said, VCDs are alive and well in Southeast Asia. There's a reason why they still sell them in 4:3 there as well. It's because many people in these parts still have old CRT sets. I've been to the Philippines myself and I've seen old TV sets in people's homes and businesses. I've checked out different electronic stores that sell high definition television sets and it seems that the price is always set to the suggested retail price. There's hardly any sales and hardly any competition between electronic retailers. Prices are controlled there.
It actually makes sense if they're still running an old 21" CRT tv in their home.
VHS actually has a better resolution than VCD
+Philip vB - Correct, and probably why it didn't take off in Europe when they tried to flog it here in the early 90s. Unlike DVD, it didn't really offer anything over the established VHS format except random access.
Who was going to spend another few hundred quid on a read-only player that was arguably inferior to their VHS machine?!
(It enjoyed a brief surge in popularity for pirated movies around the turn of the millennium, when recordable CDs were becoming affordable, but DVD-R was still expensive, but that was short-lived).
Apparently the reason it did better in South East Asia was that video recorders weren't so established and had problems with the humidity there. Along with the cheap and/or pirate media!
+Philip vB Yes it does.
VCD isnt popular over in south east asia because of its quality, it is popular because of its survivability in that climate. VHS tapes quickly degrade over there while VCDs last longer.
+Philip vB VCD has half the vertical resolution of VHS or almost any other home video format for that matter. VCD has much better chroma resolution though.
+Phredreeke I'll stick with S-VHS for archival anyway.
Philip vB Well, you didn't say anything about archival. With the marginal price difference between blank CDs and DVDs using VCD is a bit bonkers. Either way use whatever format you expect least likely to break down on you down the line
You guys, it is neither a *composite cable* nor a *RCA cable*! Everybody knows its technical name is "thingy with the three thingies at the end".
KastaRules lmao XD
Mine has a red thingy and a black thingy but my TV has no black thingy plug!! So I only have sound on the right. :(
;p
Brackynews boi they do that some times the black will work for the white port try it.
no it won't, they're different colors lol
Na dude, composite cables are the same in every way, the video cable (Yellow) could be used for a red composite cord as long if bolt ends of the yellow cord are connected to the same port on bolt devices. Got It? I have tried it once
I actually worked for Philips CD-i division when the VCD was released, I've still have the player plus some old movies Star Trek on 2 discs. Total crap resolution.
+50 Ducks In A Hot Tub I remember seeing VCD's demoed in a store. Looked really bad, even then. Thought this was funny comparing them to UHD. :-)
50 Ducks In A Hot Tub I can make vcd look as good or better than dvds...maybe I should work at a vcd pressing plant back cuz many Asia markets still buy vcd
Lol, I remember seeing the CD-i in the store and thinking the interactive videos were pretty cool. Then looked down the games list and saw... Tetris.
"Forced Trailers" - Oh the bane of my existence!
I seriously hope they go away, and never come back again. I hate having to wait 5 minutes just to start a movie for my grandmother. All just so I can hear "Coming to theater in 2007!" or "Now on DVD!". They just made things super inconvenient.
+Sypran I forget what disc it was, but when I put in the blu-ray of one of these films, it had a forced trailer...but the UHD didn't. Hopefully they'll only put junk like this on the 2nd disc if they keep issuing UHDs in this UHD & blu-ray two disc package format.
+Techmoan Meh, they'll eventually catch up to it as they always do once a format hits the mainstream. Every 90s VHS I have has at least 2-3 minutes of trailers, very early DVDs have a very fast menu (at best) before they became a total clusterfuck.
yeah I remember doing that
I feel like Disney was the worst at this. Constantly pumping out ads for Fantasia.
I actually like seeing trailers for things from like 2007 or whatever. I think its neat to see what was coming out around that time and what trailers back then looked like. But I agree they shouldn't be forced. Luckily, most trailers can be skipped using the menu button(but not all unfortunately)
I think the Convenience category there was a draw because the VCD plays in any DVD and CD player. The UHD otherwise requires a specific device.
AND in any PC with a CD drive. You can't even do that with regular blu rays, you'd need Licence (and expensive) Software and an HDCP capable Monitor/GPU and (ofc.) a blu ray drive. DRM ruining everything!
Plenty of free BluRay software. A BD-Drive isn't terribly expensive, most monitors and practically all GPUs are HDCP compatible. It's kind of a moot point. Not to mention with the HD download code most 4kBluRays come with, that'll work just fine on any PC.
Kind of a moot argument.
Not to mention a BD-Drive will play dvds and should be able to do VCDs as well.
I sadly haven't found any good free blu ray player software, witch one do you recommend?
also I don't think there is any Playback software for UHD 4k Blu rays yet.
cyberlink? put that one isnt free (although there is a trial version i think)
joejoe4games If you have enough spare hard drive space, MakeMKV and your video player of choice (I use MPC-HC) that can play .mkv files. Completely free and will make just about every Blu-ray into a DRM-free file for you to watch freely on anything you own. The one downside is that a full movie that it spits out is between 20 and 30 GB, and even transcoded they're about 10 GB. Also, occasionally some manufacturers put multiple scene orders on the disc, so you have to do some looking to find the correct file.
PowerDVD 17 will plays UHD Blu-rays I believe, but you have to have certain computer specifications and Windows 10. The DRM hasn't been cracked yet, so nothing free for now.
I have a soft spot for the old VCD. When I was in the Navy and visiting Hong Kong, VCD was the most convenient means for me to collect movies. I did have and LD player at the time, but since the LD market was alive and well at that point, the prices were up there. For the price of one LD movie, I could buy 5 or 6 VCDs.
Plus, I could watch them on my Sega Saturn with the VCD attachment which I had with me on the ship. Thus, I could watch the VCDs right then and there, whereas I had to wait until we got back to Japan to watch any LDs I bought.
But man oh man, was the format ever so limited!! Video artifacting galore and barely MP3 quality audio!
Still, for being the first consumer digital video format, got hand it to the old VCD for still hanging in there after all these years. Who would have thought that it would outlive VHS and Laserdisc?!?
The fact that the dimensions of the physical media are the same from audio CD forward is quite remarkable ! Of course everything else has changed about how the data is stored and read, other than it is still optical and a laser, but my how the amount of data has progressed!
VCD is absolutely capable of chapters and I believe there were western released that had them. Producers of low-budget bootleg releases probably just don't care to include them. Would be weird if the format wasn't capable of that, since it's basically the video version of the audio CD which obviously had chapters from the beginning.
Well that's weird. I have like 200+ original VCD's and none of them have chapters.
I'm pretty sure “The Firm” had chapters. Maybe this was only explored by companies later in the life of the VCD.
They absolutely DO support chapters, it just takes extra work during the encoding to have that chapter mark set properly for the bookmark code which sits on a different track. Plenty of DVD players don't bother to support it because why should they (over here it's targeting a non-existent market)) but the format does indeed.
I used to make home movies in VCD to easier share with family that were completely computer illiterate but nevertheless had DVD players, so I did actually do the occasional menu and title screen to, but some players would just ignore it and play the whole thing in one go.
Many dvd players used there own kind of menu control to play or display chapters if there were any. For example my Marantz dv 6500 has its pbc or what it called it, as videocd's architecture had to be read by a cdi player with mpeg module back in the day and dvd and bd players don't have that architecture so kind of simulated or compensated that with an own playback menu.
My bd player Sony S 790 can play vcd's but not svcd's.
I bet there will be an Oppo player to come out that will play uhd 3d, bd dvd svcd sacd dvd-a and the whole rimram (except laserdisc).
@@nikkoXmercado And I have literally like a THOUSAND of them... I think only the Karaoke VCDs have chapter selections. 🎤🎶
it’s important to add that we used to watch these on old style TVs where the resolution looked great ! used to love the moment my cousin would return from her trips in Asia with piles of new movies
It's amazing that you can still buy VCDs. They were still around in the early 2000s, but this is incredible. I've got a Philips CDi. Also, my Sony BlueRay player can play VCDs, even though it says it can't in the manual. It may have been a software update.
Man, I remember getting a bunch of anime on VCD, it was pretty awesome for 1997.
VCD also supports menu and chapter and featurettes navigation, but not like DVD or Blu-ray, instead of arrows it uses numbers
It's called Tracks
I'd be interested in a VCD VS Laserdisc comparison, since in the 90's they were both prevalent. Although we already know laserdisc is better, it would be another little fun comparison.
Does anyone remember that you actually had to buy a dedicated MPEG1 decoder ISA card to play VideoCDs in a PC in the early 90s? (because PCs of the time had too weak processors to decode MPEG1 fast enough to have watchable video without stutter).
i bought a phillips cd-i back in the days and you couldnt watch movies or play dragons lair witgout that extra mpeg metal box adapter for it
I do remember - I once had a Reelmagic hardware mpeg decoder ISA card inside my 80286 PC-AT (16MB RAM, Oak 4MB VGA card and 120MB hard disk). The CDROM player used a caddie for the disk. I got all this so I could play a '80s arcade game call Dragon's Lair. That game was based on a (Philips?) laserdisc, and ported to CD.
same thing if you wanted to watch vcds with a Saturn
i remember using an old computer at my Nana's house my uncle gave it to me to use when i was at her house it was windows 95 and if i remember it was 80mb ram can't remember what cpu it used i know it was a Compaq pc but it would run vcd video 100% fine in windows media player without lagging and it could also play divx avi files fine as long as they where 320x240 and had a lowish bitrate like 300kb or so
I remember bought third party converter for my PlayStation to play vcd back then. General Warning: just don't, my PSX broke down just a couple of months later and need a whole optical head changed. This was back in late 90s when I was a college kid. DVD still considered fancy stuff back then.
I remember VCD quite well. I remember when I was a kid, there was a guy selling VCDs he made himself from VHS rips of movies and TV shows, as well as Anime. All for pretty cheap if I remember right. I still have a few of them sitting around as well. And then I started making my own since I didn't have a DVD burner.
It's quite the funky format.
I have just hooked up the old DVD player and watched "Platoon" on VCD on a 32" FHD TV, and you know what? It's very enjoyable. Thanks for the vid!!!
yeah...if you don't know any better I suppose.
7:30 when you have true 4k and Dolby vision they actually struggle to fit it all on one disc so you get a lot of movies like Dark Knight, Star Wars and Blade Runner 2049 being released without Dolby Vision and others like Gandhi and Lawrence of Arabia split over two discs
I think what's amazing is that the VCD can take a brand new, modern movie and make it look like it came out in the mid-80s. 240p resolution? I'm surprised the TV can even understand that.
Ellen Madden 352 x 240...a 1080 screen size squeezed into 352 looks outstanding...most companies can't make vcd better than me
I dont even know why this is. I tried to encode a VCD from a blueray source and the colors where the same. Just the res was between VHS and laserdisc Level. Also there are inofficial svcds that could fit full movies in 480x360 pixel with vbr encoding on one CD. ;-) DVD Player could even Play them even If the specification was non Standard.
@@worldsendace yes if you know settings or have right proticals you can make vcds look amazing
I'm surprised the format even still exists.
I'm surprised the format even still exists.
As mentioned in other comments, VCD was huge in the Philippines (initially I assumed only we sold that kind of movie format). I've got a lot of VCD copies of films in varying condition, my faves being Speed Racer (2008) in slightly damaged condition, and Herbie Fully Loaded with severe condition in disc 2. I remember fondly going to the disc stores in my local shopping malls to buy VCD films as a youngster. But now those stores are all but gone now. Really gonna miss those times. Often times when I've nothing to do in life I go and view my VCD movies to check on how they're doing. Speed Racer and Herbie are the only ones I've viewed so far (first time in YEARS).
VCD is common in Southeast Asia and China Region Back then.
I still have a couple of VCDs. I don't remember the name of one VCD, but the other one is the original B&W classic Night of the Living Dead. Back in the early '90s, VCDs were sold in the computer section, rather than the video section, of my local department stores, because they were intended to be watched on a computer. (DVD players weren't out yet.)
That movie is kinda rare for it to be on VCD format... And believe me, I know my VCDs pretty well cuz I've been a collector for many years. What brand is the manufacturer, and does it contain any subtitles?
I can't believe VCD is still around! I though DVD was getting old... wow. How does VCD compare to DVD? Surely DVD has to be better?
+mclaine33 DVD is a *lot* better than VCD. VCD is really an anomaly....an anachronism. It's a current format...but it is worse than VHS. That's why it fascinates me. It's alive, but it really shouldn't be.
+Techmoan VCD is very much an Asia thing, and before DVD players fell in price it was the format of choice for many Asians, especially if you don't mind being a pirate as blank CD media is vastly cheaper and take up less physical space than VHS. As VCD-capable DVD players became cheaper DVDs (and USB drives/torrenting) eventually supplanted VCD, but of course many of the poor still only have VCD players so that is why VCD is still available. AFAIK it's not popular in the West because VCDs have no copy protection - DVD's success has much to do with its DRM system.
IIRC many older torrents you can find on pirate sites have ~600mb splits, or the whole film is limited to that amount. That is for the purpose of fitting into a VCD.
+mclaine33 - From what I've read, VCD endured in south-east Asia because it remained more affordable than DVD. But I can't believe that this would still be the case in 2016. Surely any differences in manufacturing cost- for both players or discs- is negligible by this point (and wiped out by DVD's economies of scale)? So who's still making or buying these discs?
Maybe they're selling them to people who can't afford to- or don't want to- replace their VCD players?
NotATube You're right, no one's buying them anymore. But that won't stop the studios from making them because it costs next to nothing to make, and there's always that person who's still using his or her 20-year old CRT and VCD setup.
Avantime - Thanks! I notice you already covered that before I posted- sorry. :-(
Reason is that I started writing my comment when there was only 1 reply (Techmoan's) but didn't actually submit it until some time later.
3:30 Disagree somewhat. Many Chinese movies released on VCD typically have two tracks: one Cantonese, one Mandarin. A language is on the left channel; another, on the right. Dual stereo would play two languages simultaneously, making the enjoyment horrendous, especially for an average consumer.
Took me right back to when VCD's were the thing to have, and I still do have a few. Great video thanks .
Big in Asia apparently, but they were nice and cheap on eBay and ran on a normal CD drive in a PC instead of DVD.
You have been putting out some seriously awesome format videos lately! Great work man!
So you're telling me I could watch a 2016 movie on my SEGA Saturn? I'm oddly interested
When you show the footage from Mad Max you mention that it looks like an episode from MacGyver... The funny thing is, the moment you said the word "episode", MacGyver was the thing that came up immediately in my mind, and a couple of frames later you mentioned the series! I guess it has the earthy colours of MacGyver's intro!
My aunt has about 40 VCD films. And suprisingly, her Phillips soundbar with built-in Blu-Ray player supports VCD.
+Михаил Михайлов It will always be backwards capable until VCD's are as rare as gold. My Blueray Rom for my computer will play CD, VCD, DVD and blueray. I can also record, CD, VCD and DVD's. So not suprising that your aunts player can also play back the older formats. Have you tried sticking a normal music CD in it? Should play that without any issue.
My UHD HDR Blu-ray still plays VCD
Love all your videos. There's just something so nostalgic and interesting about older formats and tech.
There is navigation and menu in VCD, called PBC menu. Can be activate on player that support VCD 2.0 PBC, those features available on 90's VCD player or LD player that support VCD, on DVD player PBC inactive by default.
If PBC active, menu loading is much slower than DVD or Bluray, sadly I am still using VCD right now.
I used to make VCDs of my home movies back in the day before I got a DVD recorder and a good capture card for my PC, I remember just how sh*t and blurry the quality was on VCD, especially when there was a lot of detail in the picture, it would also become slide-show city! Just watch TH-cam in 240p, you'll get the general idea of how it looked.
In 23 years video encoding formats did improve quite a bit, so on a 2 CD setup (1400MB) you could easily do 1080p HEVC with a reasonable quality.
It's even better now! Ha.
Yep, now we even have H.266 :D@@mycoinsyourpurse2244
I love VCD, it is my fav format. I like old PD films so they are great for that sort of thing. The trick to being happy with how it looks is to use a SDTV for them. The reason for my comment is just to say thanks for the link to legal VCD, a REALLY hard thing to keep up with.
SVCD is really good too. Encoding them using custom ffmpeg settings also gives a huge improvement!
SNESIvan Agree, SVCD is great. My only problem is it is hard to find a DVD player that will play them. Still enjoy on my pc but I really like my ol'school 26"
i own over 80 legit vcd movies and about 4 bootlegs i got all of them from second hand stores like salvation army
they where sold in the music cd section at all the stores and at one store it was 4cds for $1nzd and another store was 3cds for $2nzd and so on
all the ones i have found have found have all been mint condition no scratches on any of the discs or cracks on cases ect
i use a older 15" CRT tv that i got for free somebody down the road from my house had put out on there
Kerbside has a built in dvd player and plays vcd so i use that to watch them and they look really good
there is a shop by my house where i can pick up blank dvds for next to nothing and i use
ConvertXtoDVD and set it to 352x288 4:3 and i can fit like 9hrs on one dvd and the video and audio are good as i use hq source files because it encoding to variable bitrate mpeg2 its much better then cbr mpeg1 and if i convert cartoons they look perfect on my 15 inch tv
Nfn Roach really? I have around 5 or 6 cheapo(30-50€) noname dvd players and each is playing svcd just fine
Some so called Asian VCD online stores are not to legit, sometimes people were being sent bootleg versions and not licensed VCD versions. I seriously do not know any movie company who would allow their films to even be sold on VCD format in today's world, so most are likely copied from DVD's playing in 4:3 format.
VCD was pretty good for the time. And once CD burners came about anyone could make their own. So was a pretty good option other than VHS for keeping home movies etc. I remember early 2000s burning videos shot with a digital stills camera on movie mode onto VCDs with Nero Express!
Given how terrible those early cameras were at video the VCD didnt really make it look any worse!
wow people still making VCD and still using them
+Edward Bell yeah, and... why? Why buy a VCD instead of a DVD? WHYYYY??????
+Edward Bell No joke, here in Hong Kong, there's plenty of shops that still sell VCD format discs. Some rental stores also do the VCD format and are cheaper than renting the DVD counter parts.
+sixtopian +Edward Bell Pirated movies? Super cheap? Well... can't beat such good arguments! I rest my case! ;-)
+Edward Bell I know what you mean, that's quite a lifespan.
+k3ntris but DVD is super cheap to make copies...renting VCD in 2016? oh c'mon!
I remember having a lot of "ilegal" VCD's back in the middle 2000's. They were just dvd rips. VCD's looks nice on a CRT TV
Interesting thing - MPEG1 (which uses VCD) actually can be 4K (4000 x 4000 if be correct). So resolution is just a matter of disc size.
Looking forward to the VCD video. Don't forget to mention the Sega Saturn.
Actually, VCDs were also thing here in Europe during the early 2000s. Especially on the pirate market.
VCD became very popular here in the Philippines. A lot of titles (both local and foreign) was released on the said format. Some were converted from Betamax or VHS (not really sure, but you can tell by the static stuff at the bottom of the screen) by different video distributors. While some came from the original masters designed for VCD release. It's the cheaper alternative to DVD back in the day. I still collect VCDs up to this day. Most of them were pre-loved ones, while some were just stocked for a long time. Don't really care about the resolution. VCD gives me the vibe of the past that DVD cannot really give me. It reminds me so much of my childhood. :)
I had no idea video CDs were still a thing. Why not just buy the DVD if (even a standard) BluRay is too expensive.
Because pricing. Here in Indonesia I can pick up a genuine VCD for a few quid, a DVD is at least 3-4 times as expensive. Combine this with much cheaper players and often TV's in the size of 10-14 inches and a good VCD often hold up remarkably well.
***** I had no idea you can actually buy TVs that small anymore, the smallest I see in retail stores are about 30" or so and even cheaper 40-50" models can be picked up for less then 500€. The quality of VCDs looks terrible though. Where I live, prices for BluRays on amazon get down to about 10€ quite fast after the release and DVDs are even cheaper so it's no real need to even consider something like DVDs if you have a BluRay player which can be picked up for less then 100€. Personally I just use my "old" PS3 for that.
Behemothokun And this is obviously why we nowadays buy DVD and/or bluray in the west. But remember VCD is ancient and that many people in Asia still make less than 50€/month.
***** thinking about that, it's kinda weird really. Of course there are differences in wages, quite big ones actually, but also the cost of living and food also differs to great extend. but then for something like electronic goods and other "luxury" items the differnce becomes much more dramatic. On eanings like 50€ per day, not even a month, I wouldn't even be able to afford a small apartment and still be able to get something to eat for that.
Behemothokun Fully agree. A meal from a street vendor is less than 1 euro. At the same time a Galaxy S7 is closer to 1000 euro (because of import taxes). So a 1000:1 ration. Back home fast food is at least 6 euro and a S7 is 600 euro for a 100:1 ratio.
I remember going to India in ~2011 and VCD was STILL super popular there. Heck, they even sold dedicated VCD players. They didn't play DVDs (even though DVD players can play VCDs), but the price difference between DVD players and VCD players must have either been too much, or people just may not have known about it.
Ah brings me back to the day when ripping my DVDs to VCD before I had a DVD Writer. I then tried SVCD and the great compromise was CVD as that played in standard DVD players! Half res on the horizontal but full on the vertical. Miss those days!
Nice comparison! It's a shame neither format increases the watchabilty of the actual film itself.
I thought that Mad Max was actually a good film.
Actually proper VCD players have the facility to use menus. I got a few that have them and they work on my Philips CD-i player.
Oh and my Saturn.
Still rocking the CD-i huh? Nice.
+R33Racer Doesn't the CD-i and probably the Saturn as well need like some official multimedia decoder extension attached to it to play VCDs? Just need a refresher.
+JackNet Productions I know the Saturn does for sure, the dreamcast has it built in I believe
+JackNet Productions - Yes, the CD-i also requires an add-on for Video CD (MPEG-1) support.
Aw man, I bought my first Anime series on VCD. Fan-subbed, lackluster quality (even for 16 years ago), but I loved every minute of it.
VCDs used to be my portable movie format of choice, because they played in my iBook back in the day…great for long trips.
It's interesting to note that the actual manufactured cost of a VCD (essentially a CD) and a DVD is 6 cents for the VCD and around 8 cents for a DVD. I know Blue-Ray is a little more expensive, likely 12 cents, and UHD won't be more than 15 cents. That means most of the cost is in the bluster and packaging
Do you think those prices may have gone up or down in recent years?
@@OtomoTenzi oil prices are probably 20-40% of the cost but the process is highly mechanised so labour costs won't have moved much. Even if you double it it's still mostly bluster and marketing. New release DVD's are around $24 and Blue-ray $32 where I live and once the movie has been on TV you get as low as $5 for DVD and still makes money for everyone.
Great and very interesting review. Those vcd releases from Hong Kong are amazing. I've got some vcd releases myself, but I've never seen these Hong Kong releases before. In my opinion the design is just fantastic. They look so much better than standard DVD, Blu-ray and 4k releases. Just turning the case on its side and then design the inlays for this orientation. That's so cunning. I love it. I often order stuff from YesAsia (actually a few weeks ago I placed an order and I expect this to arrive soon), so next time I'm ordering something I should take a look at those Hong Kong vcd releases and buy one.
Last year I also bought two vcds. One's from Taiwan and the other one from Indonesia. The one from Taiwan is just a normal CD case and the one from Indonesia is a DVD case with slipcover. Like I said, in my opinion the design of those Hong Kong releases is amazing and if I had to give points for this it would be the vcd to get the points, so that's:
VCD: 1 - UHD: 0
Like I said, I bought two vcd releases last year. However, I bought only one movie on 4k (which was a Canadian release). So, again vcd gets the points, which means it's the winner with a score of:
VCD: 2 - UHD: 0
There were some very rare and obscure movies that NEVER got released on any other format except VCD... Foreign Moon (1996) is perhaps one of them.
One of the few good things about Video CD is that it's a doodle format to rip and archive.
No stupid proprietary files and dozens of split files that needs to be joined together,no copy protection,no macrovision,no extra software.
Just pop it in the PC and copy the biggest file in the MPEGAV folder mostly a single file copy per disc and voila you get your copy to watch on PC.
One of the reason Why I love VCDs
For a time in the early 2000s, I tried burning SVCDs. This was a DVD stream recorded onto a CD-R at higher speed. The benefit was DVD quality and picture formatting from cheaper equipment and disks. However, because this required high-speed use of the CD lenses of the DVD player, the player would sometimes have trouble keeping up with the bitrate and lock up after a minute or so. Not all DVD players are SVCD capable, but most are VCD compatible.
Well, i remember creating home-made VCD's and they did have sort of a menu (navigation via number keys) that could be used sort-of for chapters but then you would have like 30mins of video left and that was for the best resolution possible.
Oh, and there was SVCD where res and sound were marginally better but every capacity was now halved.
Oh well. Cheap DVD's, i guess...
I have a fairly large collection of VCDs, before I got my first DVD player i played them on my computer. I had a MPEG1 decoder card installed to take the load off the cpu. worded well. when I got my first DVD player I got a Sony 5 disk carousel player, that way i could load up both disks and it would switch automatically. while clearly they won't hold up to modern formats i think they held up well when compared to standard VHS.
They held up very well indeed... Imagine how much space at home you actually saved compared to owning an entire collection of movies on bulky VHS tapes!
Okay, so what I got from this is that VCD is the objectively superior format. No arguments.
It uses a CD case, and that's just awesome.
Too bad almost none of the current available UHD Bly-Rays are true 4K ones. Most of current movies are still edited in 2K, and their masters are in 2K. Some time ago I checked all the available discs and if I remember correctly, only 2 of this 25 had 4K masters; rest was upscaled.
You can chceck resolutions of the masters on imdb on the "technical specification" page.
Edit: oh, I see now that you cover this subject in the second video.
+marcinoz97 I have read somewhere that there are some UHD blu-rays that have some scenes that are true 4K and other scenes that are upscaled. I will probably wait a year or so to get a UHD player. For now, Blu-ray will have to do.
2K is still better than normal HD, though, right?
@@ARCtheCartoonMaster 2k is normal HD. For some reason with the newest Ultra HD, the convention switched from describing it in the number of lines of desolation to the approximate number of pixels per line, probably because it sounds more impressive. But standard Blu-ray is 1080p, that is 1080 lines of resolution with progressive scanning where every line is completely redrawn every refresh of the screen (as opposed to interlacing, where only every other line is redrawn on alternating refreshes, which saves bandwidth for over the air transmission). Which, when 1080 is multiplied by 16/9 (the aspect ratio of modern TVs) gives 1920 pixels per line. When both the number of lines and the number of pixels per line are doubled, as in the case of Ultra HD, the lines become 2160, while the pixels per line become 3840, which is close to 4000 pixels per line, hence "4K". (For cinema projectors, the aspect ratio is the slightly wider 1.85 to 1, resulting in 3996 pixels per line, which is almost exactly 4000.) So long story short, standard HD = 1080p (lines) = 2k (approx pixels per line) = regular Blu-ray..
I remember making my own VCDs back in the day. They allowed about 80 minutes of video. You then had the SVCD (super video compact disc) which allowed you to hold 40 minutes. It was closer to VHS quality but not a patch on DVD when that became available.
Why is the storage capacity of SVCD even less than regular VCDs? I thought that you can fit like at least 1 GB on a SVCD. 🤔
@@OtomoTenzi SVCD uses a higher resolution of 480x480 and has a max bitrate to 2MBPS, whereas VCD is limited to 352x240 and the bitrate has to be 1MBPS. They both use normal CDs but with extra error protection disabled so you get almost 800MB from a typical 700MB disc. Since the max bitrate of SVCD is double that of VCD, you'll get half the runtime, but unlike VCD, they're not forcing you to stick to one bitrate, so you can turn it down to the same bitrate as normal VCD if you want. However, the video will look even worse than normal VCD if you do that because you're spreading out the same bitrate very thin over more pixels.
Like every format that I collect, my VCD collection is huge. They all play fine in my Sony Blu-ray UHD player.
I am watching this UHD video on my 21" crt tv with VGA to S-VIDEO converter both look about almost same!
s-video...*vomit *
Ohh..dont vomit on my cables!
nhs2008NC not your cables!
you cant see the diffrence between fhd and uhd on 21" at least not in an aceptable distance
i feel like vcd should have won on convenience, you only need a $20 dvd player and with ultra hd you need a $400 4k tv to see it in 4k
Perhaps convenience wasn't the best word. VCD wins on price. However, for 'playback ergonomics', UHD wins. For instance, The Fellowship of the Ring has 4 VCDs vs... Oh, there isn't a UHD version. Maybe UHD isn't that convenient after all.
By the way if your wondering i meant 4000
MrBenjamino I didn't notice. I misread it as you referring to the new UHD player. Unfortunately, I don't have that or a 4K TV so :(
MrBenjamino with the recent Xbox One it's a lot less cheaper to own one...
And the good thing is, if you want to keep a copy of, say a weekly recording of a show off the TV, all the authoring software is open source and free, at least on Linux. And a platter of CD-R's are pretty cheap.
I use Handbrake to convert the raw recording, Devede for authoring to Vcd, and k3b to burn.
Vcd looks like a bad cam copy
It usually does.
The thing to remember about VCD is it came out before DVD. It was competing with VHS and was a lot better than that.
vcds were super popular in malaysia in the late 90s. rampant piracy caused some movie theaters to close up shop. because vcds were dirt cheap, and those pirates almost always manage to get hold of the latest movie even before it was to be screened in the theaters.
fast forward 20 years later, no one really buys vcd and dvds anymore in malaysia when you can stream it instead (legally and illegally)
Gotta admire the upscaling on your DVD player at 5:02 - the hard b/w outline of the headphones is near perfect. I am sure that takes some major math magic to happen from lo-rez material like VCD.
On the bright side for the old format, though, ever since my first DVD I have really grown to loathe unskippable copyright warnings that accuse me of piracy even though I have just inserted the original disc with a valid licence that I *paid* for. Any pirated title, one might add, does not have *any* of these. I am still wondering why no bloody publisher has ever noticed this rampant irony...
That's all nice and good, but the real head to head is Betamax vs VHS!
+tommytomthms5 hundreds
+mrpositronia ... Or VHS vs V2000 ...
+tommytomthms5 Over 300 movies came out on betamax between 1977 to 1990
+tommytomthms5 Still more than 12-15, and at higher quality. Too bad they were too small for an entire film. :(
CJ Betcher Um...what? Lol. Starting in about 1979 they already had beta tapes that could hold well over 100 minutes.
Took me a few minutes to realize that VCD meant Video Compact Discs. Not even the CD case gave it away
i still have hundreds of VCDs, as i uploaded to youtube. the good things about VCDs were that 1) they're cheap 2) easy to use and copy in computers 3) yes the resolution is sligthly below VHS but it won't degrade/digital so no wear n tear 4) dvd n bluray player can play it and latest windows 10 still support VCD playback 5) its basically CD so you can expect the same longevity and no layer transition so no skipping or freezing 6) the jewel case is of course small and compact so dont take that much of space. 7) in many Asian countries old movies were released only on VCD, much like VHS only in the US and not all got rerelease to DVD. But i of course prefer DVDs and blurays because you cannot do upscaling with VCD and the best way to experience VCD is with CRT TV...
The VCD is actually in the 22:15 aspect ratio. That means it’s slightly wider than 4:3, but only by a small margin.
+Techmoan Would be cool to see VHS vs VCD comparison too.
+ShadowsThe1 +1
Actually, you *can* have menus and chapters on a VCD.
+Aᴍᴀʀᴛʜᴀʀ Dʀᴀᴋᴇsᴛᴏɴᴇ Only on short movies.
BoloYung Not really. I've had VCDs with menus and chapters on whole feature-length movies. They were still split on 2 discs, but both had them. Maybe it was because they weren't cheap Chinese editions.
First time hearing about this format. I had always wondered wether there was a way to put video on a cd and have it play normally like a music cd does (You could save the video as a file but it wouldn't play anywhere unless you copied the file to a computer)
Love your videos as always!
Really? I'm not even 18 yet and until like a few years ago I used to watch a bunch of movies on VCD. Perks of living in a Third World Country I guess, heh.
cool12y Me too but the format was always DVD. You learn something every day.
You can count The Rocks facial hairs on UHD but on VCD you can't even see his face
There were also SuperVCD, I just remember. It’s so amazing to see how technology evolved since we were teens.
To be honest, you could probably argue convenience in favour of the VCD because, well, how many people have players capable of playing back VCDs? Compare that number to the amount of people capable of playing back UHD blu ray, and all I can say is, well, if you want to take a movie with you to watch at a friend's house, take the one they're more likely to be able to actually play. Then again, you could also argue it'd make more sense for them to come over to the house with the better setup, so...
+Tetsuron
As for the USA, I bet you that other than computer drives, more people _already_ have UHD Blu-rays than VCD players!
Happy May Day!
+Harry Starzec I mean UHD blu ray players, not regular ones.
+Tetsuron most people can playback a dvd, which is much better than a vcd,
Well that much is obvious. If anyone has a device that can play a VCD, it's probably going to be a DVD player anyway.
So UHD doesn't force you to watch adverts then... yet(?)
I didn't know VCDs were still being produced, that's pretty... shocking? :) Although I'm heavily oversimplifying it at this point, what I find interesting is that by the rough figures shown at 6:30 the bandwidth actually hasn't changed that much - we got roughly 10 times the resolution in width and height, so 10*10=100 times the area... and 100 times the bandwidth. Matches up nicely, maybe not at all that wrong to compare those formats. ;)
+Techmoan Great and entertaining video as always; I'm looking forward to the proper VCD video. :)
(In advance, for anyone not seeing the fun in making this poor comparison: No need to correct me here; of course consumer-ready codecs have become much much more efficient over the last ~15 years and there are much more content streams on the UHD format which again increase the size over just having the main movie as a simple video stream. Plus, increasing image size alone does not result in a linear scaling of bandwidth in these codes, so that's a pretty poor comparison which doesn't hold up as soon as you take a look at how the program as a whole is composed. But I thought it's still a little fun fact nonetheless, just as this video hasn't been meant to be taken serious.)
+Daniel Neugebauer I'm glad you're on board. You've fallen into my habit of trying to explain why this is fun to you...I'm just glad you understand. That's two of us.
Back when DVD R blanks were awfully expensive, I burned lots of VCDs to archive TV shows from VHS tapes (using a Pinnacle Movie Box to capture to PC.) The VCDs had pretty much the same quality as the VHS tapes, So it was an OK format for the task!
+WAQWBrentwood I think we all did.
Love this channel. The technology and media formats you collect are are really interesting!
VCD was huge in Asian markets. Probably still is. Cheap and usually pirated!
I have a few VCDs and I don't regret.
I've never even heard of VCD before... somehow. Time to research!
In Germany they were called Mpeg Movie Discs or Mpeg-1 Discs.
Honestly the VCD looked interesting. If you actually made a movie/video for the format, it could potentially even look great. Now… the actual resolution in general may be worse still, but it has a charm to it
I have an official VCD release of Cars 2, it's encoded in 16:9 but in fit mode to 4:3. So the result is i got smaller video. But i just surprised it still watchable in my 32" HDTV. Because of high bitrates i guess. It still better than 360p of youtube.
Interesting, but one thing that should be noted is even a 100GB UHD Disk (not all are) at the top 100Mbps data rate can only sustain that bandwidth for a little less than 2 and a half hours, and that is without audio, trailers and extra content. So in reality, the highest data rate on UHD rate will seldom be used; unlike VCD which could sustain it's highest data rate all the time, lol.
Hopefully UHD will not do the same crap that some Blu-ray movies did, and that was put long films on a single layer disk with low data rates. A good comparison of this is the movie 'Crash.' If you compare the Blu-ray and DVD versions of this movie on a PS3, you will see that the DVD actually looks better. That is because the DVD has a much higher data rate for its resolution than the Blu-ray does.
+10p6 Yeah, it seems pretty strange to me that they did come up with this new resolution without any new physical format. H265 only has up to 50% smaller size than h264, where 4K has 4 times more pixels than 1080p. This basicly means that movies will have, in the best case, 2 times smaller bitrate per pixel than 1080p ones. And that not counting more advanced audio formats and higher bit depth.
+10p6 - To be fair, some older prerecorded DVDs were single layer as well. My copy of "The Long Good Friday" has some unpleasantly obvious blocking on the opening scene, and that turned out to be a single layer disc.
+marcinoz97 You can only compress data down so much without a noticeable loss in quality. Newer codecs would help with that, but right now h.265 is pretty much the newest one.
+10p6 Well, VCD *had* to have the video at the correct bitrate to meet the guidelines of the format. DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD Blu-ray allow for varying bitrates, so hours of content can be placed on a disc as long as the bitrate is lower. I don't see a problem with having a choice of bitrate as an option.
I haven't seen 'Crash' since it was a "new release" (and I have no intention to see that piece of pandering, ensemble-based Oscar crap ever again), but a Blu-ray doesn't actually require anywhere close to 6 times the video bitrate to look better than a DVD. A case of a Blu-ray looking worse than its DVD counterpart certainly sounds like a problem with either the film source for the Blu-ray or faulty mastering... or both.
After looking up a review of the disc, I see that it was both a single layer disc AND it was encoded in MPEG-2. AVC/h264 encoding is quite a bit more efficient than MPEG-2 and, now, HEVC/h265 is even more efficient than AVC/h264. I don't think any UHD Blu-ray discs make the mistake of encoding 4K video in AVC/h264 on a 25GB or 50GB disc, which would be the equivalent of the same problem with the 'Crash' disc. The fact that the master was very spotty and appears to be the result of two different-quality transfers doesn't seem to have helped the matter, either.
EDIT: Almost forgot: the fact that extra features aren't going onto the UHD Blu-ray discs also helps quite a bit with keeping the quality about as high as it can be! Gotta get those movies that were finished in 2K to look as good as possible when upscaled to about 4 times their actual resolution!
+10p6 VCD is CBR, it always use the same bitrate. DVD, Blu Ray and UHD are VBR, meaning it can adjust bitrate based on how much is needed. Always using the highest possible bitrate is pointless, you're just wasting bits where it is not needed.
I love physical discs..Digital films are nonsense 😎
Are you going to do a video on VCD tech?
play delay is entirely down to the player you're using (and how fast you press play once you're in menus). I've had a DVD player which could load a disc into the menu in only 5 seconds, and I've had several which would take 20 seconds, and up to a minute to load. I've only had the one bluray player, and it takes a good 30 seconds to load the menu.
Play delay is definitely one of the biggest issues with blu-ray, and why I still like DVDs as well. I often stop a TV series or film and come back to it later (days, weeks, months) and I love that my DVDs jump back to exactly where I left off, without having to even go to a menu or wade through any unskippable sections (even if there were some in the beginning). With Blu-ray, I can count maybe a half dozen discs/sets where it actually asked me if I wanted to start back where I left off (but that still involves a button press, and it still takes a very long time sometimes to load). BD has come a long way though and I think is making improvements, heck, my copy of Se7en (must have been the first BD release) has no menu, no subtitles and no scene select.
I can't believe that your BD copy of Se7en doesn't have ANY menus or options since the DVD version would mostly likely have it all... Perhaps it was all crammed to the maximum disc capacity and they didn't have anymore space?
@@OtomoTenzi That was just the norm for early BD releases, they would often have barely any menus or options.
@@Ponimaju Hmmm... Then I supposed it was probably for the sake of cutting down on labor and costs! 🤔
UHD blu-ray prices are ridiculous, i would actually consider getting one but that's just obnoxious. It doesn't cost any more to make but there's a £13 mark up on it...
+MrcabooseVG You do get the blu ray too :D
But since blu rays cost £15 anyway they should do this as standard.
Lower DVD'S TO £5
Lower Blu rays to £10
And make UHD'S £15
Thats more than fair imo
+TheMysteriousKnight well in about 1 or 2 years it will probably be that price
Hanniffy Dinn
I don't really care if it's dropping, there's no excuse for charging so much for it...
***** think yourself luckey, when blu-ray first came out it was even more expensive than current uhd blu-rays
I didn't buy them either, i had a PS3 and a HD TV at the time but it just wasn't worth it. You can go to the cinema, take a friend and buy some food and have a better experience for the same price joshua powell
So, I'm assuming you're not comparing UHD to laserdisc because LD is a completely different beast to digital optical media, right? And, no doubt, VCD beats out LD because it's so much more compact than the latter that that's what the C stands for.
In any case: I'd still prefer to watch older movies on VCD than any 3rd or 4th gen media because Sword in the Stone on Blu-Ray is infamous for its grotesque colour saturation and the BR release of Batman '89 is atrocious because they cranked up the gamma so high that it ruins several pivotal moments in the film.
No...it's because I'm comparing the oldest *active* video format with the newest...there are no new releases on LaserDisc.
Scrunchy Howard What are you even talking about? LaserDisc is far superior to VCD, and properly remastered Blu-Rays look dramatically superior to both. Two poor releases do not a format make.
Uh.. Yeah, I'd have to contend that they do. Do you know how scientists count the population of fish in any given body of water? Obviously, they can't just find every fish, pluck them out, and tally them: they have to collect a representative sample size (for the purposes of this argument: let's say 100 fish), tag them, release them, and catch 100 more. If there happen to be 10 previously tagged fish: that means that there's an estimated 1000 fish in that particular pond. If one were to do the arduous and thankless task of doing it the hard way: they'd find that the initial estimate is very close.
Now, those two movies I mentioned are a representative sample size of badly remastered movies because, as the saying goes, 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me'. So, I can reasonably assume that Blu-Ray releases of older movies will tend to be badly restored or remastered.
And, about LaserDisc: it's not "far" superior to VCD because of two factors: availability and the sheer physical size of the damned things. They don't make them any more (hence why they aren't considered an "active" media) and, for a size comparison, VCDs are to Chips Ahoy biscuits as Laserdiscs are to Mrs. Fields cookie cakes. Oh, and sometimes, movies are split across either side and multiple discs so you will occasionally have to flip them over or replace Disc 1 with Disc 2. Their visual and audio quality may be superior but there's a reason why Laserdiscs fell out of favor and VCDs became the big thing after that.
Scrunchy Howard Imagine the first time you had an apple, it had a worm in it. Does that mean all apples have worms? No. Your "logic" is bullshit. You can't "reasonably assume" anything based on two crap releases, when there are thousands of Blu-Rays out there.
When talking media formats, I care about quality first. The size of the discs doesn't factor into it, especially when DVDs and Blu-Rays are the exact same size and have considerably better video quality.
Well, some people can't prioritize quality over value, Mr. Cornelius Oldmoneyford Trustfundbabyberg III with his two fancy million dollar Blu-Ray machines that he keeps in his highrise penthouse in Chicago and stately villa in Tuscany.
Was really pulling for the VCD!
you can make ones right now using a cracked version of the up to date NERO burning rom on a blank cd and a cd writer for less than $0.25
I love how honest this guy is, especially in recognition of anoraks (like me) who like to differentiate between DCI 4K and UHD.
I'm so glad I randomly stumbled upon this channel.
I've got a lot of nostalgia for VCD - when I got my first PC in 98, DVD players were pricey and my PC only had a CDRW (£220!) in any case
So I got this nifty portable CD player off of Amazon for £99 - did MP3 and VCD amongst other things.
Used to swap VCD movies via post using people on newsgroups and later on forums
Also backed up a load of VHS and saved TV capture card files on VCD - still have a few knocking about today, but gradually they've been ripped onto my hard disk
Looking forward to your video on the subject