Obsolete Video Formats

[jeep]

Lately, I've been intrested in obsolete video formats like ced (see cedmagic.com for info), Laser Disc (search wikipedia), and the rarest TED. I want to know if anybody has or had any of these things and their experiences with them.

 

[AshleyAshes]

I remember this thing called 'AVI'. It was great, in 1992, it's 2008 and if needs to die already.

Remember when DivX and XviD came about? Both implimentations of what is formally known as 'MPEG-4 ASP' (Advanced Streaming Profile). It came with it's own container format, MP4... What did people do? They hacked MPEG-4 to fit into AVI resulting in what's called 'B Frame Decoder Lag' even. Now instead of adopting the MP4 container, the container MADE for MPEG-4 video, people are jumping to MKV. ...MKV being a container that almost NO hardware supports. It can only be implimented by software but it's NEVER seen in other hardware. It has no industry support or dedicated video hardware support unless it's hacked in.

It's a god damn shame. :/

 

[Point]

Personal rant thread yay!

 

[Vladimir]

MKV works pretty well on my computer. Are you sure it's not a codec problem?

AVI is nice, but MKV is truly beautiful.

 

[jraff]

I remember laser discs! We had them in my elementary school... so that was a while ago. They were so cool though - didn't have to be rewound, you could jump to different spots, and they were the size of a record ;-)

Granted, now we have all that in DVD. It was just neat seeing the whole deal evolve.

 

[Kams]

Kinda funny to think that HD DVD is already obsolete, ever since Blu-Ray won the 'war' between the two. You can hardly find HD DVD's anywhere here, but if you do, they're usually used or really cheap because everyone has switched to Blu-Ray. Thank God I have a PS3

 

[Fire2box]

Kinda funny to think that HD DVD is already obsolete, ever since Blu-Ray won the 'war' between the two. You can hardly find HD DVD's anywhere here, but if you do, they're usually used or really cheap because everyone has switched to Blu-Ray. Thank God I have a PS3

Yet everyone is still using DVD's or downloads and blu-ray sales haven't even gone up since it won. In fact I think they have gone down a little.

 

[AshleyAshes]

MKV works pretty well on my computer. Are you sure it's not a codec problem?

AVI is nice, but MKV is truly beautiful.

No no no, MKV is not a format. It's a CONTAINER. It's basicly a BOX you put stuff in. Most MKV's look nice because they use h.264/AVC video, that being MPEG-4 AVC video. Which agian is MENT to be inside an MP4 container. The problem with MKV is it has NO support outside of PCs basicly with a few minor exceptions. The only difference is, MKV supports SSA, ASS and SRT subtitle formats natively where as MP4 is only ment to us MPEG-4 Timed Text but a nonstandard subtitle stream could be put inside assuming the demuxer/splitter used supported it.

The issue is, **** ALL else supports MKV. Not the PlayStation Portable, not the PlayStation 3, not the Xbox 360, not countless handheld video players, not the iPod video. What DO they support for h264/AVC? The MP4 container.

The MKV container is an execize in redundance.

 

[kevintje]

hmm, knowing what laser disk is, I've seen those used by the 'sunfly karaoke system'... they look funny tho ^^

 

[jeep]

I remember laser discs! We had them in my elementary school... so that was a while ago. They were so cool though - didn't have to be rewound, you could jump to different spots, and they were the size of a record ;-)

Granted, now we have all that in DVD. It was just neat seeing the whole deal evolve.

They still have them at my school.

 

[jeep]

(Yes, double post but it's unrelated)

Here some demo of all three formats I mentioned.

CED demo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LhO4cweRnfE&feature=related

Laser Disc Demo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZovevjYqPEY

TED Demo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DuLj_lE_uJM

 

[andysetra]

jeep, I have a CED player (RCA 100 series...one of the first players ) as well as about 15 movies. I love old video formats! I also have a couple betamax VCR's (both are in mint condition, one remote still has the original "toshiba" brand batteries in it..and they work!). Also have a bunch of Beta movies, and original shrinkwrapped blank L500 and L750 tapes. I also kept my old Mistubishi-made VHS VCR (about $3500 usd in 1983...has some amazing features and quality, even by today's standards...).

I'm still looking for a good condition laser disc player & movies, but where I live laserdisc was very uncommon, so there's nothing in the used market There is someone on another diaper-related site I visit who posts his laserdisc collection every once in a while (and other cool old-school thrift store finds....)

I've read briefly about TED players, but I doubt I will ever get my hands on one....I've also been meaning to pick up a HD DVD player..they're so cheap now, and it will eventually join the ranks..

 

[kite]

.mod files

oh how do i love my tracker files and winamp supports them so i'm happy.

 

[Customizer]

hmm, knowing what laser disk is, I've seen those used by the 'sunfly karaoke system'... they look funny tho ^^

When laser disc first went mainstream in the 1980s, my father, a communications specialist, received a steel and chrome laser disc briefcase at a business convention as part of educational video promotions.

The briefcase is lined in red, padded felt with chrome corners, reads "LaserDisc" on the side and has a locking latch. It sits in the sliding closet to my right.

I wonder how much it is worth now if I sell it to a collector of old media devices.

Quiet a popular format for Vietnamese and Chinese karaoke and as a primitive PowerPoint-like presentation.

 

[Fire2box]

When laser disc first went mainstream in the 1980s, my father, a communications specialist, received a steel and chrome laser disc briefcase at a business convention as part of educational video promotions.

The briefcase is lined in red, padded felt with chrome corners, reads "LaserDisc" on the side and has a locking latch. It sits in the sliding closet to my right.

I wonder how much it is worth now if I sell it to a collector of old media devices.

Quiet a popular format for Vietnamese and Chinese karaoke and as a primitive PowerPoint-like presentation.

I'd say I'd willing pay maybe 350 bucks for that just because it would be so freaking awesome to have. Thats if it still worked and I had things to play it with. With out anything I might pay 200 bucks. I know others with more money to throw around will pay more then me.

 

[andysetra]

When laser disc first went mainstream in the 1980s, my father, a communications specialist, received a steel and chrome laser disc briefcase at a business convention as part of educational video promotions.

The briefcase is lined in red, padded felt with chrome corners, reads "LaserDisc" on the side and has a locking latch. It sits in the sliding closet to my right.

I wonder how much it is worth now if I sell it to a collector of old media devices.

Quiet a popular format for Vietnamese and Chinese karaoke and as a primitive PowerPoint-like presentation.

It'll be worth quite a bit, but don't ever sell it! Keep it and pass it down the generations... 50 years from now that'll be unheard of

Oh, and by the way...the CED player shown at the beginning of jeep's youtube link is my player, and here's the movies I have:

Goldfinger
Return of the Jedi (2 disc, stereo)
Airplane
The Man with the Golden Gun
The Guns of Navarone
The Graduate
Night Patrol
For Your Eyes Only (2 disc, stereo)
Shogun
The Evil that Men Do
Ordinary People (2 disc)
The Odd Couple (2 disc)
Star Wars (stereo)
Bad Boys
Young Frankenstein
Raiders of the Lost Arc (stereo)

It's funky cause the stereo discs are in a blue caddy, and the mono discs are in a white caddy. Too bad my player is mono...and only has an RF (coax) output

 

[Zeit]

I'm pretty sure I have a Goldstar 3DO somewhere in my garage that's beyond repair. I also have a multitude of Betamax players sitting around in my dad's shop somewhere. Cant' say I was a laserdisc junky but I've watched at least 2-3 movies on one that my dad had on loan for a while.

Personally though, I'd love to use .mkv more (H/X.264 and AC3 audio) but unfortunately, my computer is on par with an AppleTV so playing anything that requires processor capability causes me to drop too many frames or lag my video hard.

I wish VCDs had gotten bigger, I heard somewhere that they can run on Playstations.

 

[andysetra]

I loove watching mkv/h.264 videos. ~250mb gives you an excellent 720p, 22min long TV show

I just got a new TV, and even though traditional xvid files look decent on it, 720p mkv's are just amazing...

...and they actually play great on my media center (P4 2.4ghz, 1GB ram, Radeon 9200...). You just have to make sure you have ffdshow and haali's media splitter installed. I found any other codec combination would play choppy no matter how fast a system I used

BTW VCD's are definitely an obsolete video format..MPEG1 with a 352x240 resolution is on par with a EP-recorded VHS..

 

[betagame]

i just installed the VLC media player to play MKV files

 

[r0bino]

I find matroska to be a very nice container to use. Why should I use some proprietary container with fewer functions if I can have it open source, free, and fully functional?

Furthermore, changing containers shouldn't be too hard. I'm sure you can find a nice procedure to get your h.264 videos into a mp4 container if you want to watch them on your iPod or dvd-player. It's mostly a "copy-and-paste" procedure, isn't it?

BTW, hardware-manufacturers should slowly be starting to adopt matroska, it's free for everybody to use. And you will ultimately benefit from an open standard with no patents or other restrictions applied to