VHD in the UK - how 1980s UK missed out on this interactive video & games format
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 เม.ย. 2019
- VHD was a home videodisc format never launched to the public outside of Japan. However it was funded by a UK company and was due to come out here in 1982. This is the story of VHD in the UK featuring early demo footage and rare PAL discs.
Next Episode: • VHD in the USA: Videod...
My original 2017 video about VHD in Japan: • Movies on Vinyl - VHD ...
A ‘comedy’ re-edit of the VHD demo disc • AHD: Android Home Devi...
In case anyone is wondering - Yes I checked and captured all the contents of both sides of every disc I purchased. The UK demo disc is not in my possession. The seller did not own a VHD player or any other discs.
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“Unlimited potential” = the marketing department doesn’t know what anyone would use this for.
Me: "Nice, Techmoan has a new Video up. Must watch right now!"
[Video starts]
Mat: "A couple of years ago I made video about VHD."
Me: "Hm, I might wanna rewatch that video real quick as to not miss any information on VHD that might be relevant to this new video".
[click link to VHD video in the info section]
[VHD Video starts]
Mat: "A year ago I made a video about CED."
Me: "Oh my, this is going to be a LONG TH-cam Session"...
I love that rabbit hole TH-camrs send you down sometimes.
*LRM12o8:* I think you've nailed it.
Still, it means the enjoyment will last hours rather than minutes.
I have found that before watching a new Techmoan video, it is best practice to go back and watch all of his previous videos.
Especially the ones with the puppets.
And then, 8 minutes into the CED video...
"I made a video all about Laserdisc in 2015."
It got longer.
I'm a 50 yr old woman and this is one of my favorite channels.
Me to
@@egsab3You're a 50 year-old woman? ;)
@@rayfenwick8761 I'm not
But you think 😂😂😂
Whatever , I'm close to 50 , and although watching this
But not a woman
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Haha, knew he'd be wrong on that, everyone loves Techmoan!
You are abnormal. Statistically speaking.
"the chances of a woman in her mid 50s watching this channel are low"
Cue a loud "Oi!" from my wife, a woman in her mid 50s watching this channel. She still has her old Specify btw
2.54 GB of (even read-only) data storage is really impressive for the early/mid-80s.
@@dgpsf Marketing people in 1981 probably wouldn't know anything about bytes. I think it's just a misspelling.
Considering disks only had 360k or 720k yeah, this is impressive.
Impressive.....Most impressive...
@@herbiehusker1889 then if there was a writable disk it might even have at the very least 1.2 GiB (assuming its BYTES not BITS)
@@dgpsf A CAV laserdisc used for data (LV-ROM) stored 324 MBytes per side, so I'd say you're right.
Man the Japanese know how to name things,
‘DiscLord’
National (Panasonic) called their VHS products "MacLord", which made even less sense (I can't find an explanation for the "Mac" part)
Exactly what I was about to comment...
Discord
Sounds like a SyFy movie title:
D I S C L O R D
Perhaps it was some Japanese variant of the MAC satellite TV transmission standard (MAC - Multiplexed Analogue Components), which could mean those VHS machines had satellite tuners built-in.
I’m a mid-50's woman, and I love this channel ❤️ Especially the retro stuff like this 👍 Keep plying the Tech, Matt 😉
20:28
"Now, choose a club. (Beep)
You have chosen a three wood. May I suggest a putter? (Beep)
Three wood.
Now enter the force of your swing. I suggest feather touch. (Beep, beep, beep)
You have entered "power drive". Now, push seven eight seven to swing." (Beep beep beep)Ball is in...parking lot. Would you like to play again? (Beep)
You have selected, "No.”
Haha, there's a Simpsons ref for most things in life!
@@eddhick Simpsons did it
K
Thats 'Golf' We ran that in 1981 on a DEC VAX machine
Love the shoutouts to YMO- amazing and made a big impact on music as a whole in the 80s in Japan, where Europe had Kraftwerk, Japan had YMO and they really did help to shape many genres that we know of today including but not limited to videogame music!
Because of the time they were successful they were associated with a few emerging formats. Lots of collectible items out there relating to the band. I have to keep vintage kit just to watch / listen to some things.
Would be wonderful to get one of the complete sets with the shirts, but I really doubt it would fit me! Haha
That's girl has a pretty crazy hairstyle even for the 1980s.
That might be so but I'll bet you'd do anything just to at least "have" that hair David. XD
Was that even a style? As much as it was morning bedhead...
She's breathtaking though.. total bombshell
Get that London Look...she has the teeth for it too :)
The 80's were a scarey place for sure ;)
You must find this model and interview her about working on that demo.
techmoan is not just a youtuber but a highly curated media museum and archive
24:51 Haven't seen such a good acting since last Techmoan Mission Impossible tape video.
It would be interesting if you could track that girl down and interview her to see how and where the recording was actually done.
I think your replacement music made the game far more interesting.
It was less like a boring golf game and more like a slow walk through a stylish mall in the 60's
My mum is 63 and watched/thoroughly enjoyed your video! She also worked for EMI in London in the late 70's / early 80's and was aware of the VHD but said only select people were allowed to see it or enter the area it was worked on!
DISC LORD mother, mother...
The stuff in the segment starting around 17:00 : "Meruhen Denwa Bokkusu", "Märchen (fairy tale) Telephone Box", and the cartoon on the screen is "Arabian Naito Shindobatto no Bouken", "Arabian Nights: Sinbad's Adventure". The other titles are too small to read unfortunately.
if anyone else is wondering what the song the guy at 18:24 is singing is, it's Shikuramen no Kahori (The Scent of Cyclamen). yes, i typed in the Japanese lyrics and did a search. it looks like it was first released by Akira Fuse back in the mid-70s. you can search 布施明 シクラメンのかほり and see a live performance from 1975. quite a lovely song.
also, 52-year-old woman here. *waves*
This is my favourite Techmoan video in some time. Highway Star is amazing. It's like a glimpse into a parallel world where Tarantino made grindhouse video games.
And I'm trying to work out whether the golf game had a VERY restricted set of playable strokes, or if the poor guy in the video had to spend weeks being filmed playing every possible shot before doing it all again and deliberately messing them all up for when the player hit the hazards. In reality it's almost certainly the former, although in my head it most definitely isn't.
I was just re-watching some of the Technology Connections vids on CD and Laserdisc, and this pops up. Good timing.
Be honest... After his most recent video did you look up prices for radiant control toasters too?
@@Sammie1053 Maybe. lol
Soon only the display of the emi logo will cause a copyright strike.
Soon uploading almost anything to TH-cam, even for a fraction of a second, will cause a copyright strike.
Would you like to play Birdie Try again?
You have selected, 'No'.
Ball... In... Parkin lot
*P O W E R D R I V E*
LOL you have selected POWERDRIVE
25:16 (police) keep them talking, another 10 seconds and we'll have the kidnappers location...
Hahaha
LOL... And I was going to make a joke about the music in that part that seemed like it came straight out of a eighties porn video. But that was really hilarious.
I hope to God that section was not simply an excuse to have the model prank call the hotel and she actually stayed in that room.
@@alsatusmd1A13 Hope so. Although it also seemed like she was looking for availability and reasonable prices depending on the amount of hotel rating stars per night... Technically she was making a price evaluator. The same as anyone does before buying, looking for the best prices....
But I also hope that she has chosen that hotel and stayed there at least one night.
@@Nolroa well, she was booking the hotel room just for one night. 😉
The model at 16:18 - stunning!
NOICE
The musical score is a delight!
12:12 when I read "Arabesque" I immediately thought of Sandra's first group with which she got popular and then got to know Michael Cretu, who she married AND who we all know as one of greatest music producers of all time (Moti Special, Enigma and Sandra herself)... he's also one of my role models :D
Never in the history of human existence has someone gone to so much effort to watch "Convoy".
I predict the VHD demo disc will turn out to be an unlabelled copy of Physical.
@@TerminalWorld Same thing really th-cam.com/video/t7Vebe--uOw/w-d-xo.html.
@@noobiesmurf link doesn't work, UMG strikes again.
@@LairdDeimos works fine in Australia, where are you?
Murcia.
Or the disc from the empty caddy....
I truly appreciate you making your videos. Always interesting and fun to watch. Thanks so much.
EMI is a name known across youtube for their viscous and ruthless copyright trolls. It's weird to think of them as important innovators dedicated to new technologies.
Wonder if it was emi that gave techmoan the copyright strike.
And the eu now signed a law making it even worse. Everything has now to be censored and filtered . Thanks emi
Thick and gooey copyright trolls are the worst kind!
DingDongBells - ‘viscous’? That’s a sticky situation!
EMI mostly doesn’t exist anymore. They got bought up by UMG (with some parts of EMI (mainly the Parlophone label) having to be sold to Warner Music in order to please regulators) a few years back.
@@MysteryMii I think sony owns some parts of it as well.
Wow! This was a great one! I really appreciate how far you took this project!
That golf game is basically Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge from the Simpsons.
I wonder what "Alice in Chemical Reaction" at 18:47 is like?
Apparently it was an educational game, nothing to do with Alice from Alice in Wonderland, is another girl named Alice learning about basic chemistry and chemical reactions.
www.generation-msx.nl/software/victor-co-of-japan-jvc/alice-in-chemical-reaction-alices-chemical-laboratory/373/
"you have selected: no"
It was so ahead of it's time, it combined Alice in Chains with My Chemical Romance, and walla!
Did they have BoneStorm on the system, too?
@@beitie "walla?" Are you an Australian trying to write 'voilà!' (or even 'voila').
Interesting story about Thorn EMI and the VHD. As you probably know, Thorn EMI was a home video distributor in the US after putting electronic stuff from around the world, it started with the home video craze. Beginning in 1981 right up until 1984, they put a series of UK and foreign films as well as cult films, family films, and B-movies. Right up until 1985, it became Thorn EMI/HBO Video where they put out newer material, as well as reissues of previous Thorn EMI Video library titles, by 1986, it became HBO Cannon Video where they put out the same, let alone the Cannon films, and finally by 1987 or 1988, it became HBO Video. I guess right before the acquisition, HBO was the first cable movie channel in the US to acquired Thorn EMI by around 1984 or 1985.
EMI was behind the record label that signed and issued most of the Beatles records. That must have made plenty of profits which they could used for expansion
yes i've got Deadly Intruder from Thorn/EMI which still has not gotten a DVD or streaming release.
This is fascinating. I have to say, this channel and Ashens are two of my favorite channels. Great content. Cheers y'all.
my favorite part of this channel is the live clips of tech write ups @:50. periodicals from any source are hard enough to come by, let alone being able to find a source that specific. idk if techmoan has a library or literal stacks of japanese hobby mags from the last 30 years but however they do it, its pure gold. getting eyes on vintage articles *chef's kiss* itsa real deal gabagool
So happy you did the first video after I bugged you a ton on Twitter!
But I had no idea there was a UK version!!
When you added a murderous android clip with that "AHD" logo, I was sure that some sort of a VHD update is on its way. Glad to see it!
An interesting look at the forgotten predecessor to the DVD. One can only imagine if that format caught on, edging out other disc-based video media at the time. Thanks for a very informative video.
Best quality video and information, as ever :) Your videos never arent a good watch!! This was so much fun, i had no idea of the excistence of this and your information was so thorough!
Great video - old tech nerds like myself appreciate your output Sir
I'm in my late 50,s and I watch everything you make.
Thank you for putting a link in the description of the comedy edit.
25:18 - The "What have I done with my life!?" look!
There was also the ADHD disc. Very interesting idea but it failed because
Very good! Lmao 😂
T damn ritalin stole another mind...
When I can`t stop fiddlin, I just take my Ritalin....
AstronomyToday It kind of messes up a particular brain function that's already broken in true ADHD sufferers. There are about 4 different legal substances tested for this, and Ritalin is the most addictive. One of the others got caught in a testing SNAFU at a bad time, leaving a bad reputation with many doctors. So currently the two remaining substances compete for becoming the non addictive treatment option of choice. One competition factor is the effect of giving the drug to the thousands of kids misdiagnosed with ADHD as opposed to those with the actual disease.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 yeah, drugging perfectly fine kids to make them compliant, then they don't know poop when they graduate and are off the free supply of drugs.
I haven’t laughed this much about an old tech video in a long time. Very enjoyable video!
Thank you so much for posting this Mat. I'm lucky enough to own a National DP-830 VHD player and a few movie discs. I shall definitely be on the look out for some demo discs now though.
You've taken it on the chin quite a few times with your eBay purchases- good on you for chuckling it off so well!
Female model on 16:16 looks very much alike to Deborah Ann Gaetano, female model from british QVC Channel.
OH MY GOD! If someone has that demo VHD, please send it to him!
I imagine it probably got left in a machine which then got thrown away.
Somewhat bizarrely, the first place I ever heard of the VHD disc system was in a 90s anime called Moldiver. I thought they'd made the thing up as a gag. Literally only discovered differently thanks to this channel.
You ought to consider making the entirety of the demonstration disc available online somewhere, in proper interlaced PAL (or NTSC, whichever is applicable). For posterity. ;p
Asterra2 Raw bit stream also interesting for future digital archeology. Perhaps some way to seal the archive until the official current copyright end date, like other sealed records in places like the British Library.
Mr. Moan, just wanted to comment that I really appreciate all the research and work you put into these vids Sir.
I worked at the Blackburn plant for a few months but it was after VHDs were made, they only did CDs when I was there.
No one:
Arabesque: "We're big in Japan!"
Fun fact: Arabesque's lead singer is Sandra, better known after her biggest hit "Maria Magdalena" as a solo artist. But that wasn't her first song after leaving Arabesque, before that she sang a cover of Alphaville's "Big in Japan" in German, which sold very few copies. It's called "Japan ist Weit", search for it! I happen to have one of the 7" single copies.
Bands like Arabesque could have been an influence for the modern Jpop idol bands... I guess.
@@HambertHM , I prefer Guano Apes version of Big In Japan. th-cam.com/video/Q9jJufz9RNE/w-d-xo.html
Arabesque were big there, but YMO were and still are huge.
...tonight
Thanks Mat. I really enjoyed this video and look forward to part 2.
Brilliant work, absolutely fascinating and hilarious! One of your best vids!
36 mins of Yootuubes on a product I never owned, hardly remember, did not care for then, still dont care for now ........
....... *LOVE IT* !!
Now you got me caught on to what the VHD disc in the clear case would show! Make it sooner pleaseeee~~
24:51 classic screen acting "talking on the phone" - watch the head and subtle eye movements 🤗
Thanks Techmoan your videos are awesome as usual!
Weirdly, the average pair of Asics sneakers costs pretty much the same in Tokyo today (that's exactly what I paid last month). Just goes to show how stagnant inflation has been here. Great video, as always!
Wasn't there a notorious period of deflation in the late 90s/early 2000s even?
@@markpenrice6253 Yes indeed - the end of the bubble period here. Just before my time. I moved to Tokyo in 2005.
16:15 Yes, I have feelings for that model. too! 😂
Fascinating as always, thank you for the video!
Every time your tefifon "theme song" makes a cameo in a new video it makes me smile :)
13:05 - My god, it's like something out of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This man is very classic, and gentleman !
As always, thanks for POSTING!!
Yay! New Techmoan video!
Amazing episode! Thank you for sharing these incredible finds. If you ever dump all the video off that demo disk, be sure to let us know as I would love to watch it from beginning to end. Also, how great is 80s hair? Fantastic!
Wow didn't you recognize the Arabesque main singer? She turned into a very popular pop singer of the 80's - Sandra.
I wish I could turn into sandra.
@AlexGRFan97 She was pretty well known in Brazil, Africa and somewhat in the US as well, but yeah people in UK usually don't remember her. She did try to reach the UK market. There is an interview of her talking about it on British television. You should check her other hit songs like "In the heat of the night" and "Heaven can wait". Pure 80's vibes and synths.
@AlexGRFan97 Here's an example th-cam.com/video/ss7_U0vcrUo/w-d-xo.html
Never heard of her... presumably she was very popular in Germany, but nowhere else. Are you familiar with Sinitta, or Tiffany?
@@markpenrice6253 I remember both of them from the 80's but didn't know their names (I was just a little kid). Brings back memories, I think I still have a Snitta's video on a betamax tape somewhere.
Great piece again :) and thanks for mentioning Yellow Magic Orchestra "release" on VHD! :) didn't know that one exists....
jerometv there’s a commercial release of that title on VHD and also VHS. It was later included on DVD releases.
@@rymerster Thanks a lot for the info :) checking it out, but its cool to see it on VHD too :)
Fantastic Video as always, love these deep history dives.
you never cease to amaze me. kudos!
Wow! I would love to have that VHD with the Yellow Magic Orchestra sampler!
Wow two and a half gig sadly read only pressed so not so impressive. But imagine the amount of terrible FMV gaming that could have happened.
Great video sir. Thank you for some more high quality edutainment.
2.5 Giga BITS not Giga Bytes!
A whole 317.5mb!
Atak Snajpera I deliberately left out the GB (gigabytes) and left it as gig as this was naturally a light hearted comment.
@@ataksnajpera gigabytes
Josuel Servin So half a video CD?
10:50 for anyone interested:
評価 (hyouka): assessment, inspection
現象 (genshuu): phenomenon, observation
反転 (hanten): turning over
Most of the notes are about whether issues are 小 (small), 中 (medium), or 大 (large). Some of the handwriting was too sloppy for me to read.
The music on that demonstration disc is incredible.
Okay that massive terminal with the comedy phone and built in fax is the most aggressively 1980's thing I've ever seen AND I LOVE IT. I want 10
It almost seems like something out of Look Around You, doesn't it.
13:56 It's a really crazy hairstyle even for standards that existed in the eighties, but apparently it had a clear intention: Demonstrate the sharpness of the image in a VHD video. (Remember, is a Demo Disc destined to be projected in electrical appliance stores or in shopping centers or maybe projected in business meetings looking for markets in other countries.)
The way the camera focuses on it, the way backlighting applies to the hairstyle in all her shots. It's an indirect way of saying:
*_"Hey, you can see it, right?, You will not be able to see it so clearly on a VHS or Betamax tape, now look all things that VHD can do but videotape can't.”_*
But sharpness and clarity (for the end user) also depends on how the original footage was processed or through which Transfer processes went through. (mostly Telecine since the image was not retouched and /or digitally restored until the early nineties)
Oh that YMO disk is one of the coolest things you have ever featured. That is SO COOL
BRILLIANT ! Thanks for such a superb explanation of an important but forgotten technology.
WE.MUST.FIND.THAT.MODEL. Fan out...
anyone notice that at 33:15 in the article, under the picture, its written "Pioneer also presses a series of hard-core sex discs, which have the added appeal to some customers of slow motion and a very clear freeze-frame!" ?
The 2-frame stutter (a variation of which also sometimes affected CAV Laserdiscs and the "true freezeframe" VHS decks, when showing TV material rather than filmed) would seem to make that claim rather fragile, unless they actually encoded the slow-mo right onto the disc (duplicating each frame so that when shown as rapidly alternating pairs they appeared still) and actually played back at 2x speed for normal viewing...
Very interesting video! My NATIONAL DP-830 does exactly what you are showing with that PAL disc, except it does it on all of my Jp discs. I have not found a way to get it to work, but you have just given me a new area to check. Thanks!
Thank you for this amazing VHD history which I never knew it once existed. Our first JVC HR-3300 VHS cassette recorder that my dad purchased from a store in Edgware Road in London was in 1978 which we enjoyed for many years on till the VCD was born.
Definitely one mid 50s woman watching this...
despite being put out by Palace in the UK, Evil Dead was put out by Thorn/EMI in North America in the early 80s (at least my copy is from them)
***The More You Know***
Well done. Looking forward to part 2 :)
This thing is pretty genius for its day. Love the combination of overlays and real video. I'm surprised these things didn't take off!
Dry and slow in places? My kind of video!
Could you make a video on the crystal radio? Their is a lot of videos about how to make them, but not much information beyond that.
It's a very simplistic analogue AM radio that uses either one (or a very small number of) transistor(s), or - hence the name - a germanium crystal and needle-point conductor (the combination of which forms a basic semiconductor and was indeed the inspiration for the construction of the first transistors) operating in place of it/them, as rudimentary discriminators and draws its power entirely from the aerial (thus works better on LW than MW or SW, and generally uses an extremely low quality but high-gain earpiece as its only output), as opposed to the valve-type amplifier radios that perform a similar task and can produce much louder output but require a relatively powerful source of electricity to run their circuitry. What else is there to tell? That's basically the entire story, short of a couple of tidbits such as the needle contact (and effective tuner) being called the Cat's Whisker, etc. All up you could go start to finish in about three minutes. That's about how long it took me to build a working one using a second-hand electronics workbench set I picked up during my schooldays, using the supplied instructions and integrated parts.
Really good video thanks. I enjoy seeing the tech from that time :) the what could have beens. good job as always!
Thank You for this great Video! Cant wait to see part two
We had a Thorn-branded VHS video recorder, bought from Rumbelows I believe.
According to the Bank of England inflation calculator. £499 in 1981 as shown in the advert is the equivalent of £1879 in 2018. I also got my first video recorder from Rumbelows but by the end 1984 they were down to just £340. Of course people didn't have umpteen subscriptions for Satellite TV and Mobile phones back then.
26:39 "TWO POINT FIFTY FOUR JIGGA BITES !!" Great Scott! 🚪🏃♂️💨 😂
BG Hoody It’s a play on Back to the Future. 1.21 Jiggawatts!
BG Hoody Muh bad. Well played.
Hi I found this to be of great help, I have just purchased a Thorn 3D01 VHD player with several different demos and about 70 juke box discs ( it was bought as laserdisc lot ) learnt a lot, thanks
22:24 "I suggest feather touch.... you have selected POWER DRIVE!.... ball is in.... parking lot... would you like to play again?... you have selected, no."
Thumbs up for Lee Cavalho reference.
@@cllewis1 I wondered if anyone would get it lol
You know that reminds me of a CD but on vinyl and that's pretty cool 😎 stuff!!!
That other "physical" disk could be the karaoke one, you never know.
I just had a flashback to his cover of "Get Lucky"... Maybe it's best we leave that to the imagination
So many names from my childhood. I was only 3 in 1982 but those names stayed around for quite some time.
Always a treat when TechMoan lays down a new vidjeo!!!