ColdFusion - Forgotten Tech | LaserDisc - The DVD of the 1970's!

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Hi, welcome to another Cold Fusion video. When we look back on technology history, we often see great stories of human innovation, but sometimes there are those little inventions of genius that slip through the cracks of time for one reason or another. Laser discs were one of those inventions. So we're all aware of the compact disc, a technology that upon its release in 1982 was nothing short of revolutionary. Unlike wax records or cassette tapes, CDs meant that your music didn't get worn out when you played it back. The quality didn't deteriorate over time, so sound could now be digitally stored forever.

Starting point is 00:00:48 And what you've just been listening to is the ultimate in recorded sound. It will make all conventional disc and cassette systems obsolete. It's dustproof, scratch proof, digitally recorded, read by a laser, and it's called the compact disc. Considering its quality and size, the compact disc most... certainly will become a part of our everyday lives in the future. In the line run, it's going to become a revolution. Just pop it and play it, sit down and relax, enjoy the music. What many younger people may not realize today was that the CD was actually based on an

Starting point is 00:01:21 earlier technology that was extremely advanced for its time, the laser disc, a home video format far superior in quality than the VHS standard of the day. In this video, we'll take a look at the forgotten technology that started a revolution. Let's begin. So what is a laser disc? The laser disc was the first commercial optical disk storage medium. It was basically the DVD of the late 1970s. Each movie disc was huge measuring 12 inches or 30 centimeters in diameter.

Starting point is 00:01:54 These discs were played on laser disc players from manufacturers such as Phillips, Magnivox and Pioneer. A record player that produces beautiful sound and pictures through my TV. Optical laser scanner and Magnivision was the first. consumer product in our galaxy to use it. Now that is an entirely new dimension in entertainment. The technology for the Laserdisc was first developed in the late 1950s by David Paul Gregg. He figured out how to record digital information onto an optical transparent foil while working for Gauss Electrophysics, a Californian

Starting point is 00:02:29 company. In 1968, Greg's patents were purchased by Music Corporation America and And in 1972, the first demonstration of the video disc took place after a partnership with Phillips Corporation. Six years later in 1978, the first mass-produced industrial laser disc player was released. Its name was the MCA Disco Vision PR7820. The Disco Vision bit was later rebranded Pioneer. In North America in the 1970s and early 80s, this unit was used by General Motors at their dealerships as a source of training videos and for presentation. of their new line of cars and trucks.

Starting point is 00:03:08 For context, 1978 was two years after the introduction of the VHS VCR and four years before the introduction of the CD. It was in the same year that the first Laserdisc home movie title was released, Jaws. From 1978 to 2001, there were over 30,000 titles released. So how did they work? Here's a 1978 video by Music Corporation America, showcasing some of the technical basics.

Starting point is 00:03:36 This is a microscopic photograph of the surface of a video disc. The craters you see are really minute pits, the information source of the system. On a typical half-hour disc, there may be as many as 14 billion of these tiny indentations. A beam of light focused down to 1.30,000th of an inch, passes through the plastic layer, striking the pits, which interrupt the reflected beam.

Starting point is 00:04:01 This on-off-reflected beam is then translated into the light, to electronic impulses. Each of the 54,000 circular tracks is equivalent to one television frame. When the optical reader head is programmed to play the same track over and over again, a freeze frame results. There's another remarkable thing about laser light.

Starting point is 00:04:21 It's capable of carrying enormous amounts of information, simply because the light is of such short wave length. I'll show you. Let's assume this is the information that you want to send out over electromagnetic waves. Here's a carrier of relatively long waves. That's the amount of information it could carry. Here's a carrier of much shorter wavelengths. See the long waves missed some of the information while the shorter waves

Starting point is 00:04:55 carried much more of it. In other words, the shorter the wavelength the more information it can carry and the greater detail. And a laser beam is of such short wavelength it can carry unbelievable amounts of information. I think it's amazing that the thing worked at all. They were really pushing the boundaries of the available technology at the time. Because the laser discs looked like a giant CD, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's digital, but actually the signal was analog. So, how did the laser disc compare to its main competitor, VHS? Well, still images could be seen on laser discs without wearing out a tape on a rotating

Starting point is 00:05:33 video drum, unlike VHS systems. The discs also had a much longer lifespan because there was no physical contact needed to read. Tapes on the other hand could easily be stretched and warped. It's only when you record from one tape to another a few times that the electronics have problems and the imperfections start to show up. This is an original recording. The quality is really very good but unlike broadcast machines the quality of the second and subsequent generations quickly deteriorates. First the picture gets less sharp then the colour stops fitting the picture and the vertical lines get more

Starting point is 00:06:24 ragged. Then the sound quality deteriorates and the colour which is recorded separately disappears. Finally, the picture and the sound break up completely. Laser discs had almost twice the horizontal resolution of cassette tapes. The discs could also store multiple audio tracks which was impossible on VHS. This allowed for extras such as director's commentary and other bonus features, very new at the time but is now common practice for DVDs. Okay, so what about laser disc versus DVDs? It has to be said that by the time the DVD came around, the Laserdisc had already declined. But, when DVDs first came out, the high-motion scenes in movies often suffered from blockiness due to digital encoding and compression. Funnily enough, since Laserdiscs were analog, there was no digital compression, so sometimes Laserdiscs were actually preferred.

Starting point is 00:07:26 Of course, as DVDs improved, there was no competition. Okay, so almost at the end of this video, but there's one question that you might be asking, and I ask myself, Why didn't laser disk take off? It seemed like from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, LaserDisc would have had a clear run before DVDs took over. It was a technology that was far superior to tapes, so what happened? Well firstly, the disc were heavy, weighing about half a pound or a quarter of a kilo each. They were also cumbersome and more prone to damage if mishandled than VHS tapes.

Starting point is 00:07:58 Also, because of their size, greater mechanical effort was required to spin the disc at the required to spin. This resulted in much more noise generated than other media. To make things worse, manufacturers refuse to market record recordable laser disk devices on the consumer market, even though the competing VCR devices could record onto cassette. This hurt sales worldwide. And probably the worst thing of all? The discs could only play 30 to 60 minutes per side, depending on the format. So some movies could require two or more discs.

Starting point is 00:08:29 In most players, when one side finished, you had to get up and manually flip it over. This all isn't to mention that a movie title would sell for around $80 in today's currency. In summary, even though the Laserdisc was promising, the inconvenience size, the high cost of both the players and discs, and the inability to record onto those discs, all combined to take a serious toll on sales, making it forever forgotten in the history pages of technology. The last Laserdisc movie release in the US was in the year 2000. But interestingly enough, LaserDisc is a series of technology. players were made until the year 2009. So there you have it. The once promising technology of the future that just didn't quite make it to the mainstream, but still eventually led the groundwork for the CD. It's quite a little interesting piece of technology history, and I thought I might as well share it with you guys. All right, thanks for watching. Don't

Starting point is 00:09:22 forget to give this video a thumbs up if you liked it. Hit that subscribe button if you've just stumbled across this channel. And I'll see you guys again soon for the next video. Thanks guys. Have a good one.

ColdFusion - Forgotten Tech | LaserDisc - The DVD of the 1970's!

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