MUSE Hi-Vision Laserdisc: The Blu-ray of 1994
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
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1080i in 1994. Wow. Really, perhaps as early as 1993, but it seems the first player was released in 1994. Anyway, what better way to end the saga on Laserdisc than by talking about MUSE Hi-Vision discs. And some other stuff, too!
Here’s a link to the entire Laserdisc playlist:
• The Story of Laserdisc
Technology Connections on Twitter:
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Here are many sources for your eyes to see:
www.nhk.or.jp/...
--This source has a lot about how MUSE works-
ura.caldc.com/s...
www.laserdiscar...
www.hdtvmagazin...
Most importantly, the forum posts!
www.avsforum.co...
forum.lddb.com/...
www.avsforum.co...
www.cedmagic.co...
forum.lddb.com/...
forum.lddb.com/...
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"The Laserdisc of Laserdiscs" just killed me LOL
The laser-y-est!
weehawk Yeah me too, that’s brilliant.
how about the sound of that thing turning on? lol...omg, next to that little tv lol
Because it was a disc moving at 95 miles per hour
Many years ago, I worked at Pioneer Video Manufacturing in Carson, CA. I mastered many of the Pioneer Laserdisc Karaoke discs you mentioned. And since we were Pioneer, we had a prototype and original LD-R machine, where we would make "one off" LD-R discs as customer proofs before mass duplication. Thanks for covering this topic, was a great trip down memory lane.
Imagine having a stack of LDRW disc's on your desk instead of cd rws when burning movies off lime wire
@@pepeshadilay if LDR and LDRW actually existed in the consumer market, laser disc would have beat VHS in every single department possible, and would've saved it from being exclusively high end format. also if CLV discs should've needed to hold 2-4 hours and CAV discs to hold one to two hours for convenience sake. i know it's super unrealistic but it would've helped laser discs tremendously for the masses.
It's an important part of modern human society. We need a truely permanent data storage medium. One with a half life in the tens of millions of years. How else will we preserve our consciousness and Facebook memes in the distant future?
@@ChillingCrowley i agree tenfold when the internet eventually dies out, the aliens that find this planet would have something to see and learn from after were gone.
That's very cool
I never want the LaserDisc series to end....
I wished there was more, and there is. But some are not entirely LD and not part of the series. Like Video CD (VCD), Philips CD-I (Digital Video with optional DV cartridge).
NUON the DVD with games capability. And everyone's favorite rare duck the Panasonic 3DO with optional VCD module.
Ahh the 80s through the early 2000s, a great time for experimental formats.
Laserdiscs are my entire childhood.
"Imagine this but 50% faster"
Me, watching the video at 1.5x speed for the lols": Done
I watch most non-music videos at 1.5x to save time. It's a good life hack.
Nice
Perfect for longer videos where you're watching to answer one question and you already know 90% of everything else being said
Back in the day some friends were dealing with a group that was experimenting with cutting laser disc glass masters. Really heavy stuff being spun at high speeds as they were being encoded. The tech my friends knew was watching the disc with a scope as they asked questions about the stability of the system when the tech said something like "Funny, it just went gray." at that point one of the people grabbed him and everybody dived for the ground.
Glass was embedded into the concrete wall all around them.
Later visits the device was encased in bullet proof lexan.
Holy Hell, that's pretty insane.
To think in only a few years that something like that had become a novelty, is both sad and impressive.
You know what they say about experimenting with freebase laser discs!
Holy shit! 😱 That's f---ing scary, and so lucky that people were on top of their sh-t well enough to get everybody safe! Whoa.
This is why CD-R capped at 52x. The discs that went faster than that sometimes went to shrapnel mid-burn so they pulled them from the market. I remember seeing 64x in stores for a few months, then they vanished.
Wild Blunt Hickok there was a 72x speed one made by kenwood
"Honey, where's the disc?"
"It's playing right now, why?"
// Disc tray open and window broken. Sirens in the distance //
"My God...."
"Surrender now or i will play this muse disc!"
I would love to have seen that, I am actually thinking about doing a similar thing if I can find one of my better motors to do that with (I have a lot of spare parts lying around on my desk and on work shop style shelves at home)
High speed (48x) CLV CD recorders has been known to shatter the disks to pieces. Then variable speed recorders appeared on the market and the problem went away.
Yeah, but those discs were so solid that even if it were to crack, it shouldn't escape the player. I remember dropping a laserdisc on asphalt once and because it was two solid sides glued together, one side cracked, the other didn't.
Also I once had a CD explode in my CD-ROM drive and that was spinning faster than 50x (or at least sounded like it). I was sitting right next to it and nothing flew out. The inside of the drive got killed and I had to buy a new drive and CD-ROM disc, but that's about it.
The Slo-Mo Guys did a video about spinning up CDs until they exploded, and recently did a similar video with vinyl records.
I remember watching on a hi-fi store, circa 1994, a widescreen CRT TV playing Terminator 2 in very high resolution (well, at least compared to VHS). Only years later I became aware that it was a MUSE LaserDisc.
ganymedeIV4 Actually, 1080i CRTs aren’t that good for old 240p games. They are still far better than LCDs though. What you want is a good, 1990’s Trinitron.
Hernán Álvarez Were you in Japan when you saw it? Then it might have been a MUSE LaserDisc. If it was outside of Japan, you just saw regular LaserDisc. They were still a lot better than VHS.
Just Another TH-cam Channel my old 32 in Trinitron weighed probably near 200 lbs. it was advanced at the time, but as soon as I got an HDTV, I said I’m never moving this tv again and so left it in the apartment when I moved out.
David I completely can’t blame you for that, they are stupidly heavy. I’ve only got a little 21-incher 4:3 set and it is nearly the limit of what I can’t carry, but even bigger sets are monstrous. My family has a 2002 576i SD Widescreen Trinitron, which was also like 32-inches, but it wasn’t HD. It cost 2 grand when brand new, but was one of the heaviest things ever, and it took half my family to move it. We carried it up the stairs when we moved it from the living room, and then moved it down again years later, and eventually chucked it. I wish we hadn’t thrown it away now since I love Trinitrons, but damn was it heavy.
@@justanotheryoutubechannel "What you want is a good, 1990’s Trinitron."
No, what you want is a 1990s or 2000s CRT with an ordinary spherical tube which has an ordinary RGB triad shadow mask, which is the same type of tube that nearly everyone actually had when those games were new. Trinitrons, with their cylindrical or flat tubes and aperture grilles instead of shadow masks don't look right with classic ~240p games.
For classic consoles I use a 32" RCA 32V430T TV that I bought new in 2005 (and it's still like new because I've never used it all that much) which looks spectacular. It looks great with VHS tapes or DVDs too, especially DVDs because it has component (YPbPr) inputs, though you need a DVD player than can output 480i over component because it's a standard ~15 kHz TV (my DVD player can).
Sony CRVs did indeed store component video. The BBC used them extensively to play the BBC One and BBC Two station idents (the bits that go between shows) both in London and the national and regional centres. The English regional centres also often used them to play their local news opening titles (and because the format was component you could do a good quality chroma key from them)
They were also extensively used by BBC News to provide the backgrounds for the early 'not-quite-virtual-reality' 1990s BBC News studio - which was all blue and cut glass. A number of CRVs were driven, alongside a Questech Charisma DVE, under external control to play foreground fill alongside key/matte rolls in sync, with the Charisma DVE inserting a camera shot into the end of the titles, in a frame accurately tracked box! All quite clever for the era. A daily finance show called working Lunch used them extensively for all chroma key backgrounds - allowing near-instant recall of numerous animated backgrounds, and nicely integrated DVE moves.
By the 00s the discs were beginning to suffer drop out, and by the mid 00s were replaced with solid state key and fill sources or video servers playing file-based media.
I worked in TC7 at BBC TV Centre between 2000 and 2005. We had a CRV player to play the fill (video) signal of the opening titles of BBC Breakfast, Working Lunch, Newsround and Newsnight. We also had a prototype hard disk player (serial number 0001) that would play the key signal for the titles.
(Edit - just noticed the name of the person posting above - we used to work together in TC7 and TC10!)
"The engines! They cannae tak' it captain!!"
"Warp 9.8 Mister Scott! I'll watch that movie it if kills us!"
"WE DONT. HAVE. THE POWEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR!!!'
I cannae change the laws of fysiks captain!
This series is how I discovered this channel. As a teenager, I was (and still am) really interested in the history of anime, so LDs come up a lot.
Now that I have acquired a Laserdisc player from a local thrift store, I have returned to this series of videos. It made me pretty nostalgic.
Never stop explaining technology to me! I may not understand most of it, the the humour is spot on for me haha
Laserdisc was one of those formats that I dreamed of when I was a kid. Like my own personal unobtanium.
ganymedeIV4
Mindblown
ganymedeIV4 My Dad was like that with audio. For the longest time, a pair of Bose 901 up front and 501s in the back. Nice 4channel setup with reel to reel, record player, cassette deck... just straight up 70’s hifi.
Same here but my father as many opted for practicality as opposed to the super cool thing.
Laserdisc, Neo Geo and one of those rear projection TVs.
The first time I heard of laserdisc was in college back in the 90's. A professor had one and played a movie with it. I never understood why anyone would want one. It's the only time I have ever heard of or seen one other than these TC TH-cam videos.
I was really hoping to see a live demonstration of the picture resolution and quality... But I suppose you are excused in this case :D
Yeah. Machine seems to be broken.
I think in his older videos, that specific player is not one of the higher definition players. It's just a model he's wanted since he saw a picture of it in an ad he saw long ago. He has one now, but it doesn't work, as that model is supposedly easy to break.
Well, this is kind of it th-cam.com/video/-3wTaixrdB4/w-d-xo.html
My first introduction to Laserdisc was at an AV fair my dad went to, they had an 80 inch tv playing the Michael Keaton Batman as a demo. At the time, 30 inch CRT’s were big, and VHS was the best we’d ever seen.
@@ShogunGin0 Yes, the player on his desk is an early-model regular LD deck with the unreliable gas laser.
I feel like I'm watching a PBS special. "This program was made possible by support from viewers like you. Thank you!"
As a kid i was always like "what is this Viewers Like You outfit? Seems weird, is it like a advocacy group or something?"
@@weatheranddarkness *an advocacy (because "advocacy" starts with a vowel sound)
"The CRV other than being a midsized crossover" omg I died 😂
There was an amazing video on TH-cam (which was recently taken down sadly) of a NHK broadcast of the 1988 Seoul Olympics in true high definition.
You could see the deficiencies of the MUSE format in that any part of the video in motion was quite blurry, while still images were quite good in terms of detail.
Plus there's the whole weirdness of looking at a scene from 1988 in HD...
There is a video from the year 1900 that is in hd but it has some film degradation but it still looks way better than 99% of videos from the 80s
You better have a channel full of malt liquor reviews......so much potential, drink more or something
I think the way MUSE worked was that each transmitted or recorded frame only contained a third of the actual lines of the image, and the rest were interpolated based on previous frames. Sort of an extreme version of interlacing. Hence a picture in motion would be limited to 345 lines of resolution.
There's a video called "Good Night Tokyo" from 1992 in HD, but I'm not sure if it's MUSE or an early test for the HD format.
There's a 1992 episode of BBC's music show 'Top of the Pops' that was a co-production with NHK as a HD test. It was produced with 4 D2 format tapes running in sync, each one recording the fourth pixel along (tape 1 - pixel 1, tape 2 - pixel 2, tape 3 - pixel 3, tape 4 - pixel 4, tape 1 - pixel 5, etc). Really hope we see that some day (BBC are repeating every acceptable episode of the show - one of the hosts was a pedo so those aren't shown - but who knows if the HD version of that episode still exists and if they'll use it when they get to the correct time)
There better be a BONUS FACT on your next video
So much respect for actually writing your own subtitles. Love all of the sassy descriptions
Techmoan has just brought a CRVdisc machine, so we might be able to determine if it does operate with component signals rather than composite. *EDIT:* I just watched his video, and yes, it does use YPbPr component to store video rather than composite.
Of course the real reason why HDTV started taking off in 2005 was because as of July 1st, 2005, all televisions over 36 inches were mandated by law to include a built-in DTV tuner (followed by all TVs over 25 inches in 2006, and finally _all_ new TVs in 2007.) Prior to then, most new TVs -- even large-screen ones -- were only "HD Ready" and did not include a built-in HDTV tuner.
I've noticed that Americans tend to conflate widescreen, digital, and HD, presumably because they spread in the US at the same time. But they're not inherently related, as is demonstrable from the UK where digital TV was already widespread before HD started to make an impact. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding you.
Where was I conflating any of that? The U.S. has had digital satellite TV since 1994 and digital cable TV since 1996. It's just over-the-air digital broadcast TV that took a lot longer to catch on here.
I would say at least one of the reasons why HDTV started taking off in 2005 is because of the Xbox 360. I know that's why I ended up getting an HDTV. Couldn't see the HUD and text in most games on an SDTV.
EDIT: Oh. Apparently by "HDTV", you actually meant HD broadcasts and not HDTVs (you know, the thing everyone thinks of when you say HDTV because that's what an HDTV is). Please get your terminology right, no wonder the other guy started talking about how Americans conflate things.
Oh, by HDTV you meant HD Displays and not HDTVs? (you know the thing everyone think when im being a youtube pedantic shit)
@@vwestlife Yes... but digital T.V. does not necessarily mean *_HDTV,_* as "digital T.V." - whether it be via satellite, cable or over-the-air - can still only mean *_SDTV (or_*_ _*_*Standard Definition*_*_ _*_T.V.)_* in digital (as opposed to analogue) form. Therefore, "digital T.V." has been around much longer than HDTV *_even in America!_*
very informative. I love your channel because I learn so much from each and every of your videos. Your channel is truly a treasure on TH-cam.
One video on this channel is more informative than 10 LinusTechTips + 10 Techquickie videos
My morning dump is more informative than a LinusTechTips video.
Yeah, they have gone the way of a lot of channels, so self referential with idiot guests stars from other pointless channels
There's nothing wrong with TQ videos, they just get hated on because of the main channel.
"Yeah, they have gone the way of a lot of channels, so self referential with idiot guests stars from other pointless channels"
How appropriate that the day I find this comment is the day they uploaded a video with iJustine in it.
mjc0961 How the hell is she still relevant?
No muppet outro again!!!
Sorry wrong channel
LMFAO! 😂
Why?
Gilbert TheRegular Techmoan.
The muppets make it better
The best part is, you knew it wasn’t right. You didn’t even edit
Did I just learn about some weird video format that techmoan hasn't already covered?
I'm pretty sure Techmoan did mention Hi-Vision and recordable discs in his video about LaserDisc, although not in such detail -- as did the Oddity Archive.
I think he covered it one and a half months after this video - and he actually got a player, decoder and discs, although the player died before he could finish his tests. Still, he definitely went above and beyond to actually try the format. Spent quite a bit of money, too, as these things (probably due to their rarity) aren't exactly cheap.
That Techmoan hasn't stolen from other channels*
And Techmoan revealed that the format used four fields per frame!
I have really enjoyed these. Please make more videos on whatever interests you.
Dude, you don't "suck at this", I like how you're not cramming social media down our throats. You're channel is refreshing in that it doesn't adopt the 'standard format' TH-cam videos seem to follow these days. Just keep doing it how you do, it's great.
*Your (possessive)
you're = contraction of "YOU aRE"
Another great video. Keep making these, and keep having as much fun as you're having when you make them. It really comes through.
If you think 2700 rpm is much, what do you think about the 10,400 rpm of a 52x CD-ROM drive? Yes, the CD is smaller, but still, the linear speed at the circumference is around 145 mph. Since the centrifugal force scales only linearly with radius, but quadratically with rpm, the forces on the CD are much higher. I've personally had a CD explode in the drive, it's quite an event. Ripped the tray about halfway out, and some pieces of the CD went flying even though the drive was fully enclosed (typical internal CD drive).
Some computer hard drive can reach reach 15k rpm. I only had 10k rpm hard drive and it wasn't loud at all. HDD platters are probably much heavier than CD, so I think forces should be even higher.
blahfasel2000 That sounds insane; a disk exploding in the drive.
The peak forces probably are higher, but the platters are metal. Also, I suspect the manufacturing tolerances are much tighter on a hard disk, so it would never be out of balance as much as a cheaply produced plastic CD.
@@MJ-uk6lu 1. the HDD platters are either metal or glass, not plastic
2. they are made to far, far higher tolerances - the only way that an HDD head tracks the disk is a cushion of air under it, the active components only do left-to-right tracking
@@666Tomato666 That's even worse. It will be much heavier and therefore has to stand much worse centrifugal forces. Plus it can't vibrate and velocity with air is high. Also stress on bearing will be much higher and spin up time will be longer, which will make random writes more sluggish. Noise at higher than 15K rpms will not come from bending of disks, but from air turbulence (or helium turbulence), other vibrations, motor, faster head movements and etc.
The segment on widescreen reminded me of the time I was watching a DVD film with family. The disc was with letterbox but they insisted we watch it 'full screen' on their 4:3 TV using the zoom function on the player, the result? Something which resembled an NES game but they insisted we 'watch' it this way.
My parents used to do that
This brings back memories of early 1990s Japan... I vaguely recall chest-height TVs in cabinets (sometimes on wheels) with Laserdisc jukeboxes below them that took up most of the remaining space between the TV and the floor. They could be found in karaoke boxes as well as many one-room bars/clubs. Customers could browse all available titles (there were a lot) in a multicolor brochure. The video quality was pretty decent, audio was excellent, and access time wasn't bad either - I seem to recall it taking no more than 30 seconds to queue up a title. I don't recall, but I think they could play a karaoke version of the audio as well as a version with the original singer. And yes, they had text on-screen, which I think was directly encoded in the video feed as opposed to a caption. If it was possible to turn off the text, nobody ever did.
And yes, I distinctly recall Pioneer logo all over the place at these karaoke / pubs.
New LDs were pressed for karaoke machines for a few years after the last movie was released on the format.
can you imagine how much space a blu-ray the size of an LD could have?
But is the "ray" in "Blu-ray" capitalized?
No. No it is not. Time to change the title :)
That profile picture is my favourite at matching the comment.
Marph, what are you doing here? Is for research about some mythical copy of HL on LaserDisc that was only used in the JP market, played on karaoke machines?
That's what I've been saying! Never capitalized! Also, the "Blu" is pronounced Bl'uh, not Bl'oo.
Hello.
Do you think cockroach AI programming in modern games should be important?
I'd just heard about the Japanese HD laserdisc format a few months ago but couldn't find much detail on it either. Thanks for covering the obscure format.
I love how your Laserdisc videos take us "back to the future" of home entertainment.
“the laserdisc of laserdiscs” is the most accurate description of a niche I’ve ever heard.
I appreciate the mild Honda CRV pun you squeezed in there. 👌🏽🤣
I was the lead video tech for the team that implemented prototype Sony HiDef laser discs in the three Mission Bermuda Triangle simulator rides at SewWorld, Orlando in 1993. The players were $32,000 each! But the system was cheaper to operate that the film loops originally proposed.
You should do a video about Blu-rays. I know the basic differences but your level of detail is so good the I'm sure I'll learn a lot.
I recently found your channel and really enjoy your in-depth videos. In this one I noticed your 35mm cameras on the shelf. Looks like a Canon F-1 and I think a T90? I am a huge camera buff and collector. I also have a soft spot for vintage digital cameras. I would love to see you put together a video on the subject of the film to digital
revolution. Although film still rules in my eyes.
Vintage Video cams...I've got a Zenith that was new in 1985, uses the old vacuum tube imaging and tiny CRT color monitor! You had to lug around the heavy tape deck and 12 volt batteries too... cameras back then didn't have a built in cassette drive...well, maybe the huge 3/4" tape/cameras they used for live news recordings...
MUSE was more of an industrial policy thing, it never had high adoption rates (the TVs cost as much as a car) and only NHK implemented it (and only on satellite, it didn't work well OTA). Mainstream HD adoption in Japan actually lagged the US by a few years.
There was a MUSE VHS format too, called W-VHS. Nicovideo (japanese site) has some demos.
Thanks for a trip down memory lane! I was one of those the small percentage that loved laser disks.
That was a-MUSE-ing
grunt
Ba-dum pshh!!!
Funny, I had a Widescreen Pioneer RPTV in 1992 and my CLD-1080 had no problems playing back ALL of my Widescreen Edition Laserdiscs in the correct aspect. I was trained by Pioneer on the theory of operation and repair of these very machines. You leave out some key info on them. The MUSE machines were the Cadillacs of the LD world, but most lower players did play these back correctly.
Huh...a half pound lazer disc traveling 95mph launches. Yeah. I do not want to be hit by that. Reason why there are lids on those machines.
They wouldn't really "launch" since all that inertia was rotational and balanced. If they failed the disc would break apart and throw fragments out in a circle like a grenade.
ToastyMozart Oh, well, that's a relief! 😄
From the late 90's many European televisions supported the anamorphic 16:9 picture format via the SCART-plug. This includes 4:3 televisions sets, that could squeeze the scanned lines into a 16:9 area.
The pin 8 of the SCART-plug was used by the video recorder or DVD-player to signal that it was playing. The voltage was 10-12V for 4:3 format and 5-7V for anamorphic 16:9. Most DVD players and set-top-boxes could be set up to utilize the anamorphic 16:9 format. The SCART-plug also included RGB chanels, which also was widely supported by DVD-players and TV-sets. This made a quite good picture, on both 16:9 and 4:3 TVs.
Late 90s North American Trinitrons also had squeeze mode! you had to select it in the menu
The SCART plug was magical.
why didnt the US have SCART
Hang on, if Anamorphic Widescreen leads to stretched 16:9, then why would you want it? It’d make everything look awful like when you stretch a 4:3 SNES game to a 16:9 screen.
this guy is a good storyteller,
definately because I enjoy the many topics about tech he has opinions about
I'm going to watch the playlist now
great content, thank you! I learnt a lot and enjoy it very much.
I just finished watching your "Story of the LaserDisc" series. Very informative and a few things that even I didn't know. I adopted the LD format in the early '90s after finishing college. My mom and dad bought me a Pioneer machine (the model info is not handy) for Christmas. It was one of the dual side capable players. I really wanted the one that had the two LD trays but it had just come out, I think, and was really high priced so I settled for the one that I got. I certainly didn't want to have to get up and flip the disc over. One thing that I didn't hear you mention was the fact that film buffs were a main factor responsible for the LD format lasting as long as it did. I, like many other buffs at the time, was extremely hungry for films to be presented in their original aspect ratios. For me it was from seeing "Lawrence of Arabia" on a special 'widescreen' collector's edition VHS. Also, the exclusivity of some of the content, as you mentioned, that have never been issued on any other format. I still have my copy of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" special collector's edition that included the 'work print' with the alternate "Be Our Guest" scene. One other thing I wanted to mention was that I DID rent LDs. There was a high end AV store in town that rented them out and may have had around 150 titles. I also rented some thru the mail from a library that specialized in renting obscure and collectable releases like documentaries, art films or Criterion titles. It was a good thing too, I was able to rent The Criterion Collection release of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", getting to see the different versions and other behind the scenes footage. It was never priced to where I could afford to own a copy.
Some years ago I managed to bag a player and large disc collection for 70 quid from a charity shop, which included Close Encounters, SW trilogy and The Abyss (among others).
Do you have the T2 LD special edition? Pretty sure it's the most uncut version, though it may be the same as the VHS "T1000 Edition".
@@mapesdhs597 Yes, I have that edition of "T2" still in my collection but I also have the theatrical/director's cut releases on Blu-ray. I could sell off my LD version but I don't think the same supplementary material comes on the Blu-ray release.
@@thedvdking6455 That's what I wondered, whether the LD version had additional extras by comparison. Is the BR director's cut any longer? I can't watch the theatrical version anymore, too many bits I really like are missing, though that might be because I also read the book which is rather good as it includes details which line up nicely with the extended edition, especially with regard to how the T1000 actually works.
It was the LD version I saw in a Richer Sounds store (hifi place mainly, TVs aswell later), their fancy separate-room setup for showcasing surround sound. My bro & I watched it for a bit and realised, hey, this has scenes we've not seen before. Was so glad to get the same version on VHS later, despite the lower quality, but surprised it took so long for the same to appear on any digital format (was it ever on DVD? I suspect not). I don't have it on BR yet.
CDs shatter at high RPMs, presumably laserdiscs are thicker and, therefore, stronger, but even so, if one DID shatter at that speed I would expect that a trip to a hospital would be next.
Techmoan did a great video about recordable LaserDiscs, going into their history in the broadcast TV world with some UK examples. Definitely worth a watch if you're more interested.
Thanks for the great content as always.
I worked in IT at a bank in the late 80's and early 90's. We actually used recordable Laserdisks that actually came in a case that treated them exactly like the case of a floppy disc. It was a big square case that had the two side by side sliding doors that opened up in the machine. The disk spun in this case. We used these for high capacity data storage.
BTW, I had a few 8" laserdiscs.
I actually saw MUSE at the Tezuka museum in Kyoto. They had a custom installation and documentary. The success in Japan was not just due to karaoke feature, but because tape doesn’t survive well in the humidity of East Asia. VHS was very much a rental format for most people only. Along with the ease of piracy, this is why video CD was also a successful, more affordable, but much worse quality format, limited to 352x240 and low bitrate MPEG-1.
I used to work with Sony CRV discs in the motion simulation industry about 20 years ago. They do indeed record and output component video, though the picture isn’t a great improvement over laserdisc. The players themselves were much like an industrial laserdisc player (which some of our simulators also used), and were interfaced to the motion control computer (a 386DX, no less) via RS232. This meant the computer could instruct the CRV player to start playing, read back the frame count, and synchronize each frame to a preset X, Y, and Z coordinate for the hydraulics to follow, so the simulator’s motion matched the video. Prior to the CRV disks we had U-Matic tapes, with the motion synced to an SMTPE time code, and after CRV, everything moved to windows and MPEG video.
"Because that's what it's called." Alright, that made me laugh, caught off guard.
Japan also had a "Clear-Vision" format. It was a backward-compatible extension of broadcast NTSC, with support for full-res widescreen and progressive scan, all watermarked into and then recovered from a standard NTSC signal with a letterboxed picture. If you're using an incompatible TV, your only real tell that it's a Clear-Vision signal seems to have been maybe noticing a slight shimmer in the black bars of the letterbox, as much of the extended encoding was done into the colorbursts of those lines.
The SONY recording flavor was probably a HDVS (uncompressed MUSE) LD recorder.
Yes... ANOTHER LaserDisc oddity :-)
Thank you for quoting the great explanation posts from the late Disclord.
Ohhhhh! HDVS would make for a nice episode! Someone I know, who worked in broadcast, has an HDVS hi-res broadcast widescreen CRT (model HDM-3830). Basically like a widescreen BVM except it cannot do 15kHz. The 1080i picture on it is out of this world... he took some pics of Studio Ghibli anime blu rays playing on it and it was so gorgeous. He said that these HDM crts were used to display the olympics of the time in HD(first one broadcasted in 1080i) in some showroom, can't remember where they was setup.
I've seen other broadcast equipment with the orange HDVS logo as well. Always wondered what exactly was that standard from Sony.
EDIT : found the video : th-cam.com/video/NvX_yWdltiM/w-d-xo.html
hey alec, what about mega-LD? SEGA tried to make it a thing for a little bit.
Although the technology was licensed by Sega, Sega did not support the format directly.
So apparently according to some googling those 1135 lines actually get cut down similar to 480i NTSC video, resulting in a real-world resolution of 1080i. Fascinating!
I feel like this and lazer disc were more common in a television store show room to persuade you to buy a tv, then you would get home and hook your vcr up and wonder why the quality didn't look as good as it did at the store.
There were actually a few squeeze LDs released here in America, but only as a bundle with early widescreen tvs
as a european, i really appreciate that you give measurements in metric aswell.
As a Brit who was only ever taught Metric and gets totally confused by "English" measurements; I do, too! ^_^
@@ddragon8154 An oddity to consider though: road signs in the UK are still Imperial. I was curious as to whether there was ever a time in your schooling when this was explained.
Many Brits are a tad schizo when it comes to the two systems, it depends on the topic. Take temperature for example, specifically the weather. If it's hot then many people (especially those older than 40 or so) will use Imperial, but when it's cold, especially below freezing, those same people will switch to metric (I do this, for whatever reason it just seems normal to me). For DIY I use both, depends on what I'm doing, but when in a car the distances naturally come to mind in miles; switch to astronomy, it's back to metric and SI. :D
Btw, to add to the fun, there are metric units which are rarely mentioned, such as decimeter (10cm IIRC) and hectare, and it's odd how few metric-reared people know what a micron is, but then there are Imperial units which many older Brits either never use or have long forgotten about but which are still used in the US, such as the quart, plus of course some of the Imperial units are not quite the same, so to clarify I refer to the US system as Freedom Units. :D I recently sold a house on a Scottish island, its original 1957 property boundary description uses Poles.
TC should do a series on these systems because it's so much more complicated than most people imagine. My favourite was the attempt within certain industries to try and unify the two systems, such as the metric foot (10 inches; Kodak tried to use it, total disaster of course, didn't last long, employees on both sides of the Pond thought it was dumb as it just confused everyone). Beyond that, just fun facts like the below-freezing temp where C and F are the same number, where the F scale came from (he properties of formaldehyde or somesuch IIRC, not sure offhand), and how to make anyone's head explode by trying to explain aviation and seafaring units.
Doing some DIY recently, I was amused, when measuring something that needed to be exactly 50", to note that such on the tape measure was also exactly 127cm. Not surprising of course given the conversion ratio is 2.54, but it made me giggle.
My favourite Brit schizoid measuring oddity: milk jugs & cartons. Although in theory adopting metric in order to comply with EU rules (which we no longer need to do of course), the UK instead just showed both units but metric had to be more prominent. And so the standard larger milk jug ends up being?... well 2.272 Litres of course, because that happens to be exactly 4 pints. :D Likewise the 568ml carton (half-pint). We are quite the batty country and I love it.
So when next on the road somewhere, feel free to glare at those road signs which remain stubbornly Imperial. :D Unrelated road fun: red signs that say "WORKS EXIT" in the middle of nowhere on motorways are usually access points for military bases. Check on Google Maps and usually the land next to such locations is blank. Another giveaway is that sometimes one can see far enough along such roads to spot the first stage guard post and barrier crossings, which would be complete overkill for anywhere that was nothing more than a civilian buiding site.
Btw, I never understood why so many find it hard to convert weights, ie. for kg to lbs, just double the number and add a tenth, easy. Likewise, for F to C, it's just five nineths of F minus 32. Maybe though my school days were the closing era when some effort was made to enable pupils to be comfortable with both systems, since in the real world of the UK one kinda needed to be.
Hmm, I wonder if UK road signs are manufactured using metric or Imperial units? I should check sometime. Would be hillarious if the production is actually via metric. :D
Actually, the first "HDTV" broadcast in the States was in 1985, but it was an analog system similar to Japan's.
HDTV as we know it now hit the markets in 1998, at a mere $10K for a basic rear-projection model requiring an HDTV receiver.....sold separately.
On top of that, the quality wasn't that hi-def, being only about 800 lines of image, with a width of about 1200 or so.
extremely underrated comment.
I found your channel while looking for a laser disk documentary. You rock
New fan to the channel, loved the laserdisc series. I might suggest a video on RCA CED Videodisc? Super obscure precursor to laserdisc would be fascinating with your level of research and detail!
I wish I had a head of hair like his
I'm around al's age I got as much hair all be most of it grey I wish it was his colour again, just for men springs to mind
11:06 See? This is why I love the internet. If this person had asked this question in the design meeting when this format was being nailed down, maybe all of the whole future we share might be different. Ford decided to put a bullshit automatic transmission in its Fiesta because apparently nobody this bold and intelligent was in the room. Keep doing exactly this.
You are easily one of my favorite content producers on TH-cam. Keep on rockin'
I'm holding onto my Mitsubishi HD-2000u due to that format's relative rarity. I wish I had those HD laserdisk players :(
“CRV, which rather than being a midsized crossover”
Why do you always say what I’m thinking
Love the videos, keep them coming.
My old Sony Trinitron had a 16:9 mode.
I still have my old Laserdisc player. It's been several years since I've played it. I think I keep it because I also have the Star Wars trilogy on disc in its original, unaltered version.
Ditto. :D Though my player needs a bit of repair (a later model so hopefully not too difficult). Bagged the player and a massive stack of discs from a charity shop way back for 70 quid (a small Bethany shop IIRC). My brother spotted it, phone me to say ya gotta get here right now. The collection also included special editions of The Abyss and Close Encounters.
After watching this playlist on laserdisc, its so satisfying to finally watch you get to the point where you got a better mic, a better set, better, funnier script writing, and doing the whole video while comfortably sitting down
For a second, I thought you had somehow transferred the playlist onto a Laserdisc and watched it on the laserdisc
What's interesting to me is that this leapfrogged DVD in video quality by several years. Surprised it didn't spur DVD to become an HD format, or at the very least, prevented the release non-anamorphic DVDs that were so common early on.
If you think that's scary, a 16X DVD±RW will spin at up to 9,120-25,600 RPM and the theoretical maximum for DVDs is 32,000 RPM.
True, but a DVD is nowhere near as large as a Laserdisc. A DVD weighs about 15g, so about 1/14th as much as a Laserdisc.
Might be smaller but is like a bullet Versus a brick bullet is smaller but no less deadly.
Yep. Though it's kind of interesting that I can't really find any evidence of LaserDiscs shattering, but CDs, and to a lesser extent DVDs, really had an issue with that, especially in the beginning.
52X CD speed also proved to be a bit too much for the occasional disc - that's about 10400 rpm or a bit faster than 16X DVD. I am pretty sure that operation at these speeds is always CAV so RPM doesn't actually go any higher, it tends to make quite the racket as-is!
Oh, missed a comment further down that was discussing pretty much just that.
I had an LD that fell out of the case onto asphalt once. Because it was two sides glued together, one side cracked (albeit barely), the other didn't. Even at those high speeds, the disc never shattered.
those old machines spinning up a Laserdisc sound like a jet preparing its engines for takeoff.
Man, your delivery, professionalism, videography, it's all so spot on, so consistent. You are one of my favourite TH-camrs.
Actually there was one even rarer variant of widescreen Laserdiscs and those were PALplus Laserdiscs. Since Laserdiscs store composite video, they don't actually care what standard you have (as long as the sync pulses are within what your player expects). PALplus was a compatible extension to PAL which vertically low pass filtered an anamorphic video, then squeezed that low pass signal into an anamorphic rectangle, take the lost information, modulate it onto a color subcarrier frequency and put that into the "black" bars. This could be stored on virtually any composite medium and be transmitted via unmodified transmitters. I would joke that there were more encoders sold than decoders... but I fear that wouldn't be to far from reality. PALplus had some success with broadcasters in part because there were European subsidies for it. TV-sets with it were very rare and only the most expensive ones had those decoders. Public TV broadcasters actually still ran signals in it until either they stopped their analogue signals or they ran out of working encoders. I honestly have to say that I've seen more HD-MAC TV-sets than PALplus ones. (HD-MAC was the backwards to D2-MAC compatible European analogue HDTV standard, D2-MAC failed (at least in Germany) since the proposed Direct to Home satellite system TV-Sat had a launch failure so they were stuck with 5 transponders while Astra had 16)
You can actually find PALplus Laserdiscs and the decoders on ebay.
I remember when you had 17K subscribers. How do I keep forgetting that last number from it!?
That old Magnavox (looks a lot like 1970s Philips?) player really reminds me of the cartridge module disk drives you could find in larger computer systems of that era. Those metal platters were heavy and they spun scarily fast.
Excellent, as always.
How about making videos on the rise, use and fall of the BUD? You know, the Big Ugly (satellite) Dishes few families had. I was always curious about how they worked to get all those channels. And how the development of the small dish killed the BUD.
I saw a Blu Ray at the Atlanata Aqarium.
Of the 1700 or so LaserDiscs that I own, I own some pressed by 3M but not for commercial sale, such as "National Civil Rights Museum NCRM disc 2." Some I've entered into the LaserDisc Database, but I have others that I'm not sure who they were made for, although I can say that they have 3M Mint Marks and are in 3M jackets. I also have some Test Pressings made in The Netherlands in the PAL standard. These are tests for releases that were cancelled. I even have some Test Pressings for intended releases in The Netherlands that were pressed in Japan in PAL. These were going to be released by Casgar, but weren't.
I wanna play a Dragon's Lair arcade cabinet, just once. I only ever had the Sega CD version.
The Sega CD Version was a bad version (very low quality video), but there are number of very reasonable ways to play.
You can get "Dragon's Lair Trilogy" of the PS4 for $19.99, and the video quality is actually better than the arcade. The Steam PC version is also good according to many people.
I obviously don't know where you're from, but if you search around you can find an arcade with the game, such as Ground Control on Portland, OR. Many Retro game fairs will also have the game on display for free.
The most exciting thing about the cabinet to me was always the attract mode. The game pulled you in like nothing else. Yes, we all knew pretty quickly there was no game play there, but when it was new it was irresistible, even though it cost 2 whole quarters.
I had the actual LD player from that game given to me from a arcade operator that was refurbishing the cabinet for a newer aftermarket game board. I remember it being a rather plain white top loading unit that had a warning on the lid that indicated that you must wait for the disk to slow down before opening the lid as he speaks about at 3:30.
I wound up destroying the unit to get the HeNe Laser tube from it. I didn't have a proper laser power supply and used a photocopier corona wire power supply and it ran it for a short time. But it was rather cool to walk around the neighborhood in the 80s with a portable laser running off a 24vvolt D-cell pack that was salvaged from a getto blaster... Ah the good old days.
Too bad, that player is worth a small fortune now. Probably couldn't have known it at the time, though.
I played it a few times in the arcades back in the day. I always thought it was overrated. More fun to watch than play.
@@RCAvhstape I felt the same way.
10:52 made my inner car geek so happy lol
BONUS MEME 👍
Maybe it's just me, but I have no memory of these as a child in the 80s and 90s in the UK. I knew about Betamax and VHS but never Lazer discs.
When HMV used to have a big store on Oxford Street, I can remember them having a laserdisc section; all I can really remember about it is that it seemed quite futuristic, and very expensive, and certainly niche.
8:54 ...so basically what most BluRay Discs are doing due to the 21:9 Aspect ratio. Those Discs essentially don't even have 1080p, but something around 900p.
Approximately 1920x800
Remember how we hated letterboxed DVDs and were thrilled when anamorphic DVDs came out? Well, now letterboxed video is cool again and for some reason non-square pixels are revolting since the Blu-ray format does not support them.
Actually, 2.39:1 "Scope" video in Full HD has a vertical resolution of just over 800 lines, not 900.
I'm actually still a bit mad that they didn't put the ability for anamorphic Scope content even on BD 3D or UHD-BR, but I imagine there are virtually no 3D or 4K anamorphic DIs anyway.
Edit: Simon Christensen beat me to it.
What about film shot in 2.39:1 with Panavision lenses?
They usually have full frame source material, but the digital intermediate usually has square pixels. From a resolution standpoint, 4K letterbox is plenty (plus, VFX are typically only rendered in 2K), and there are a dwindling number of theaters that actually project anamorphically, *especially* digital screens (there are actually no anamorphic options in the DCP standard, so you have to use non-standard playback equipment for digital anamorphic). So you would never really get to use the extra resolution. And since the much larger resolution of anamorphic video takes more time and ressources to process, why bother?
That disc spinning up sounds like a HYDRA jet.
Not going to lie, came here for Muse (the band). Was disappointed...
Cool videos :) Hope when you take this full time there will be more graphics :) although You have very cool voice and gift for explaining things :) greetings from Poland :)
If standard LD is read better by the red laser, is there a good explanation on why DVD's are not using a single red laser for reading CD's as well? I don't think i've ever taken apart at DVD-sled and have found only a single laser diode.
It's funny you bring this up because my knowledge on MUSE laserdisc is exactly why I thought CDs are read with the red laser in a DVD player. I knew it was possible to read a standard LD with the red laser in a MUSE machine, so I figured it would extend to CDs as well. I think it might have to do with the analog nature of LD, but that's doesn't really explain it that well. Pits are still pits.
Perhaps it's a misconception that MUSE machines use the red laser for standard LDs, but everything I've ever read about them suggests they use the red laser for both disc types. Either everyone is wrong or Pioneer had some clever engineering at the time. It could be that it's just a lot easier to have two diodes than to use one, and Pioneer went the hard way. You remember the CLD-M301--Pioneer's a little crazy!
I'm no expert on lasers or optical discs. But I was thinking it may be related to the difference in pit size and distances (pitch) from DVD vs CD. The wave length of the red laser is shorter than the infra-red used for CD to allow for the smaller pits to be read from a DVD disc. If the DVD red laser would need to read the larger pits of a CD I imagine it would need to focus differently, requiring a more advanced lens / focus system. I think is was simply easier and cheaper to add to the DVD player a standard infra-red CD laser instead.
There's a relationship between the size, but more specifically the depth of the pits on a disc and the wavelength (colour) of the laser needed to read it. The pits are allmost as reflective as the parts in between. The player sees the pits due to destructive interference between the incoming and reflected beam. The pit dimensions must be such that the incoming and reflected beams interfere destructive at the pits, but not on the parts between pits. It's not just simple scattering of light.
CD's, DVD's, and Blu-ray's have their data stored a significantly different depths from the surface of the disk. This makes it difficult for the same laser to read the different formats. Instead different lasers with different focal lengths are used.
I assume the MUSE Laserdisc disks and lasers were configured with the same or similar enough focal length so that the same laser could be used for MUSE and regular Laserdiscs.
Bonus fact: HD-DVD was designed to use a very similar focal length as that used on standard DVD's. This made HD-DVD players less expensive as manufacturers could reuse a lot of the equipment used to build DVD players. But it also significantly limited the amount of data that could be stored on each HD-DVD (compared to blu-ray)
The ultra-thin protection layer of blu-ray was only possible because of stronger protection layer formulas.
Thanks for this great series! Brings back many memories. I had 2 players (Pioneer and Panasonic) and close to 200 movies. I loved the picture quality and the packaging. Here's a story you might enjoy. I was in a music store looking through the laserdisc bins, and a young couple approached and the girl said "Oh look they still have albums!" It was all I could do to keep from laughing and saying something like "yeah but they're all movie soundtrack albums!" LOL
I was pleased to hear the thanks to DiscLord, I've found him very knowledgeable in quadraphonic music circles. In case you weren't aware, he died on 6 Sept 2014 after years of health problems. His postings are still regarded as reference material in quadraphonic music circles, and I suspect the same applies to his laserdisc knowledge.
Wow you got one of these before Techmoan. He is going to be jelly. Try W-VHS next!
My favorite part of my laserdisc player is when you push the Play button. Slowly a hum builds in the entertainment center, and gets louder, the cabinet begins to shake... Is that the THX into fading in?? No, that's a half pound of glorious LaserDisc spinning at 1,800 RPM!
As for recordable media. There was a non-linear editing system called the CMX-6000 (successor of the CMX-600) which was used to edit some films as well as some episodes of Beverly Hills 90210
There was another widescreen format for Laserdisks, and that was, of course, PAL-Plus. Video encoded this way looks like normal letterboxed video. However the black bars on top and bottom of the screen include special helper signals to reconstruct the full vertical resolution. Essentially you have a special filter which turns 576 vertical samples into 432 low-passed samples and 144 high-pass samples without loss. Those high-pass samples would then be modulated onto the chroma subcarrier phase to be less obvious. This was widely used among public TV stations in Germany until the switchover, though from about 2000 on stations stopped replacing their encoders.
There were LaserDisks in that format, as I've seen at least one in a PAL-Plus demo.
Finding TVs which supported it was much harder. Not even all widescreen TV-sets supported it. I have no idea if modern TV sets have any support, however given the stellar quality of modern PAL decoders, they could potentially support it.
Two German LDs were produced with the PAL Plus format, the most common being Microcosmos : www.lddb.com/laserdisc/38070/
I still love my laserdisc player