You may have owned a LaserDisc or even a CED system…but the odds are that you’ve never seen a VHD. It’s time to put that right with this comprehensive look at the third videodisc system of the eighties.
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VHDs can be imported through eBay
UK:
US:
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—–INTRO—–
Special thanks to Jerobeam Fenderson for the intro animation.
—MORE MUPPETS—-
If you like the muppet outros – they are all collected in this playlist:
—-ANSWERS TO POPULAR COMMENTS——
Q) What’s that google translation app called
A) Google Translate
Revenge of the Jedi
(Insert Comic Book Guy Voice here)…Well actually George Lucas originally called ‘Return of the Jedi’ ‘Revenge of the Jedi’ but changed the name at the last minute as revenge didn’t sound like something a Jedi would do.
(Reply) Yep…that’s why I mentioned it – I just thought it was an interesting fact worth sharing that (according to the label on this disc) it appears the film was still known as ‘Revenge’ in Japan despite the name change.
Volume Large Dog –
Thanks to helpful Japanese fluent viewers – it seems that the translation app mis-read the symbol for Big as Dog
犬 = Dog
大 = Big
Thanks again to these clever people in the comments – the text on side two of the disc that was blank and inaccurately translated to “from been no”, actually says “Shuuroku sarete orimasen”, meaning “No recording”
Star Wars (again) – back to the Comic Book Guy voice…
‘Well actually you can only see Star Wars in it’s un-ruined original version on LaserDisc and VHD, so when you say that these formats aren’t really worth watching any more you couldn’t be any more wrongerer actually.
A) I’ll let you in on the secret (that any true Star Wars fan should already know)…Look up “Harmy’s Despecialized” – now That is the best way to see the original unchanged Star Wars…not in a 250 line low-res washed out 4:3 crop with Japanese subtitles.
Q) Whats on the blank side of the disc?
A) Interesting fact (but not interesting enough for me to include in the video despite shooting it)…the end of the caddy that goes in the machine has a series of notches on it that tells the machine what way up the caddy is and whether it contains a single or double sided discs.
So if you get a disc like the magazine that only has one side, the machine refuses to let you insert side B. Also the machine will not let you put a disc back in the caddy the wrong way up, it only ejects when the caddy is the right way up.
Like I said, not interesting enough for the video, but still a neat system. In comparison the RCA CED had no caddy orientation system so you could mess things up royally if you really wanted to.
(Comment) Those monitors aren’t cheap.
A) I must have got lucky – mine cost about £100
(C) Blimey that’s not cheap
A) It is compared to the original price
Q) “YOU ARE WRONG – BACK TO THE FUTURE WAS CROPPED FOR CINEMA RELEASE – IT SHOULD NOT BE SEEN IN A FULL FRAME VERSION”
A) A lot of movies of this period were shot open matte in Super 35. They were cropped to a widescreen format to be shown in the cinema and then when shown on 4:3 TV screens, they often used the full open-matte frame which revealed more footage at the top and the bottom of the frame. So both versions are right, neither is wrong. Each serves a purpose. It’s just that nowadays most of these old films will only be shown in their cropped versions given the proliferation of 16:9 screens in the home.
—-INTERACTIVE VHD—-
If you want to see some footage from the interactive VHD titles, just search for MSX VHD on YouTube…but here’s one example
If you want to see a capture of the Rainbow Disc animation
and here’s a short clip from Starview HCT-5808
