Patreon Extra: 35 year old Pioneer HiFi Dealer Demo Laserdisc
I was capturing video from various laserdiscs for an upcoming video this morning. While I had everything set up, I took the opportunity to capture a laserdisc I bought last week. It's a 1983 Pioneer HiFi Dealer Demo. I bought this thinking that there might be something interesting on here, but bar a few animations that I could possibly 'borrow', it's so dull that it's almost unwatchable. I don't know how they made a topic that I'm interested in so utterly boring, but somehow they found a way.
Due to this, it's advisable just to just dip in and out quickly, looking at the components you're most interested in. To help with this I've put chapter timings in the video description on youtube.
Incidentally, believe it or not there were five separate music auto-content matches received on this video the second it finished uploading. Because of that it's been uploaded on my supplemental channel where I ring-fence all the dubious videos.
Comments (46)
I never knew about amplifiers that adjust their power supply voltage to the loudness of the music to save power. That's pretty cool.
The presentation and some of the music from this reminds me of the BBC TV show Look Around You. "Bless you laserdisc.... blaserdisc."
Oh boy, 5mins in and I already went and bought some of the music they used in it. Thanks for uploading this!
Been having trouble sleeping in this heat, I think you found the cure..
Holy horrific theme songs Batman! Makes me want to create and educational video and plunder that theme just to mess with people.
Drool....
Might be worthwhile to consider uploading to Internet Archive for future archival?
It wasn’t that boring,maybe if it was continuously playing in a department store it could have driven the employees mad.
Sounds like music from "The Tomorrow People" or "The Avengers". I'm not buying this "dynamic power supply" stuff - with very rapid transients, latency in the power switching would generate distortion. What's wrong with a little extra heat? Their "non-switching" amp is commonly called class-AB - I thought all decent power amplifiers worked this way - certainly any I ever designed did. Though in fairness, their quoted distortion figures are excellent - I wonder what percentage of full power that applies to. Ok, I've had enough muzak... Pioneer produced some good hifi.. Great vid Mat..
Thanks. I think. That 'music'. Enough to make me want to plug my ears with molten lead…
Well, thanks for posting it, Mat, but please don't be offended if I don't immediately add it to my faves!
Great Music.
Thanks, Matt, for taking the time to upload this one. Super-cheesy music, sort of Saturday Night Fever meets Star Trek. What a broad and deep lineup Pioneer had back in the day ... sure do miss that.
Between the wildly wobbling tone arm and the campy music I nearly lost it, haha.
That video cured my insomnia within 6 mins Zzzzzzzzz
Amazing that such a video gets so many music content matches.
I feel bad for the people that had to put this together. They probably did a week's worth of unboxing, staging, and lighting devices in a studio, then recording them on video in various ways, then tear everything down and start over with the next device. And then came the editing, no doubt using video tape. Not to mention writing the commentary, recording and editing the voice-over, and the animated sequences.
The music is pure 1970s, but the graphics are 1980s.
The cassette deck demonstrations had some really funky music. I dig it, man
49:47 Finished just in time! The wife is up and wants to watch the telly.
44:15 Nice music on this one.
You were right Mat. But.... 17 band graphic equaliser :-) those were the days.
33:20 The money shot! All the components they spent a lot of time talking about, stacked up, with the turntable on the bottom. Now I want a front-loading turntable.
Funny
28:55 Reloaded my web page. OMG! Methinks they are exaggerating the effects of tonearm resonance.
28:48 Playback froze at Dynamic Resonance Absorber. I may never find out what that is.
You should be getting sponsored for this. Let me know if anything happens.
26:56 Start of side B
19:50 Probably where the video got tagged. They play several real songs to demonstrate index scan.
I'm pretty sure that basically all the music in the video is library music (you simply wouldn't go to the expense of specially commissioning music for a promo video like this), and even if the music's hardly been heard since 1983 it's still there in their libraries.
Looks like it suffers from a little bit of laser-rot, either that or there are some scratches on that disk. Beyond that, it is crazy how poor the audio/video quality is for a laserdisc. I'm guessing the mastering methods used back in 1983 were not very good. I bought some laserdiscs in the 1990s and they looked MUCH better.
It's got a touch of rot - but overall it's really not fared badly. It's just a shame that the contents aren't more interesting.
18:10 Love the cassette with the reels that look like miniature reel-to-reel tape deck reels.
17:40 Computer Aided Convenience. I'm intrigued (especially after seeing your animations). Tell me more.
That really was quite dreadful. After “Real Dynamism” I was ready to be captivated by exciting news of interfacing with my surroundings. I interfaced with the skip forward mouse drags.
13:33 The narrator emphasizes "waves" in "38 kHz sine waves" instead of "sine." This should have been contrasting against the square waves used in a conventional FM decoder.
10:30 I know what this music reminds me of. That reminds me, the Radio Shack (Tandy) catalog was my porn in the 70s.
5:30 Spoiler Alert: Dynamic Voltage Supply is just a two-speed.
You got more than 5 minutes into it?
1:47 really sexy switches on that A-80!
I found it strangely cathartic 😀
This music goes places
Well, that's certainly a thing. Let's hope that in a million years when the human race is dead and aliens discover our planet, this isn't the only thing they find lol.
Spiffy music!
Now we're talking!
Hahaha you say boring, but remembering the 80's (as a kid), I would watch anything that was playing on the TV's in the store and be fascinated. Especially because during daytime most of the (dutch) channels where blank, so promo content got played all the time in the electronics store(s). I probably would have/have watched this content in fragments al year long while my mom was shopping for groceries. TLDR; Absolutely nostalgic, thanks for uploading.