Videophone '93
After a bit of juggling around, the video I had originally planned for next week is now embedded above. This one just felt a bit more interesting as I was editing it. Although that being said, the other video is still going to be coming out next week now so there’s no escape from it. I'm definitely not cut out for this hype business.
Anyway this video features a great old piece of tech provided by patrons Adrian & Janette. It started out as a simple ‘hey look at this’ type of video but then expanded out into something with a bit more meat on the bone. Hope you enjoy it.
To appease any viewers with ears that are ultra-sensitive to the whine of a CRT I’ve run the audio through a filter that should in theory remove this. However I just can’t hear it at all either before or after - so if there’s any noise still there…then there it will have to remain because my shortcomings mean that I’m not the right chap to tweak it.
Perhaps when CRT whine gets categorised as an illegal sonic weapon, I’ll need to employ a youngster to listen out for it and if they fall to the floor rolling about and screaming...I’ll know that I’ve left a telly on.
Also those who are interested I’ve further tweaked the outro - hopefully this will alleviate the issues regarding font size.
UPDATE: 29 Jan 2020 00:30 I’ve had to re-up the video. George noticed a typo in a Logo for H265 that I’d nicked off the ‘net. So I’ve replaced that logo. This also gave me a chance to close a bracket I’d accidentally left open on a caption as well as add a 0.2 sec gap to space out some audio that was bugging me. I’ve also tweaked the thumb so the youtube play icon doesn’t interfere as much with the background image.
Comments (79)
Just catching up on videos I missed earlier. This was so incredibly entertaining, Mat. Certainly fascinating, but also just so incredibly funny! :D
Have you ever noticed how they never say goodbye on star-trek video calls?
I didn't realise video was transmitted down toilet rolls
It explains a lot of the content on the internet.
I wish i could like a video twice!
"I wonder what happened to that chap ... Think he went off to prison." Brilliant! A gem of a video, and informative at the same time. If your average public school teacher presented fact with humor and enthusiasm like this, we'd be a tad less bleak about our futures.
This must be one of your funniest videos I've ever seen! Every time you banged your hand I laughed out loud, and the "promotional" video was hilarious. Was that the music from Look Around You?
Oh yes, the Look Around You bit's been answered.
Do you have access to an IBM Simon phone? It would be an interesting subject for an interesting video.
I don’t - I just checked the price of some on eBay and it seems unlikely I’ll be featuring one any time soon.
Great video, made me smile on a grey morning!
This was a great video!
Tech 93 man needs his own spin-off series. 😁
Agreed! :-D
Thank you for this brilliant video!
Thanks for watching it.
I do sometimes use Facetime, but it’s not for everyone. Also: if you got a PABX you could demonstrate it (provided you had another compatible device).
An absolute masterpiece.
Bang On, Mate!
I like the shortened Patreon list. An honor to see my name there. Thanks for all the videos, keep ’em coming!
I’m glad you’re happy with it - it looks good to me as well, clearer than before.
Bit late to this one. I was hoping for wig. You did not disappoint!
An instant Techmoan classic (perhaps not so instant from your perspective?). Thanks so much Mat.
Great vid Mat.
Was that Keith Lemon’s older brother? Brilliant.
Most entertaining video I've seen in a long time. Edutainment at its finest !
A friend of mine who works for BT and is responsible for the microwave transmitters told me that the banks have recently paid a lot of money to have new equipment installed in the BT Tower so that the banks can relay trading to the city and to France using the BT Tower. I know that not relevant to the video phone Mat. Thank you for a great video. I do remember the days of Prestel and video phones and ISDN lines.
Wow. That Tech ‘93 segment was brilliant. I’m currently trying to teach my former TV repair man father in law, who’s an analogue man in a digital world, about video compression. Shrinking the VHS cassette to fit through the pipe will be the perfect way to get him to understand the concept.
I think it might skim over some of the technical stuff.
I would glue that gosh darn receiver to the friggin phone. xD
Nice to see Sir Clive Sinclair, anyhow.
Now you just need to find someone else with one and someone with a BRI simulator.
I do remember people saying that video phoning was going to be the killer app. It turns out that people are just not really interested in it, now that it is pretty mainstream.
Fantastic work. I love anytime we get to see those self made infomercials. Seeing you doing acting bits is delightful, speaking of which, any chance we see another TRoMI anytime this year??
Due to decreasing lack of interest on the first two parts - Part 3 was cancelled - it just didn’t seem worth taking a week out to make another. I would still like to finish off the series though.
RE portable....of course today with tablets and smart phones we don't think of this as portable. But the advertising of this being portable reminds me of the first "portable" computers. They didn't have batteries and were what we'd call "luggable". I also think it's neat to see they had a precursor video standard to HD and now UHD encoding formats.
I always think of portable devices as anything with a handle. This has no handle and when you pick it up everything on it falls off. I tape it all together to move it around the house. Maybe it came supplied with duct tape and a hernia belt.
At work I have an IP phone and when making calls, it says "G.722"! Something I noticed on the screen on your videophone.
Now that was informative and funny.
I was showing my nephew some old Sega Saturn games on a CRT and he complained about the CRT whine. I told him he was faking it and he can't keep lying about everything. After 20 mins or so I let him off the hook and said yes, it was a real thing, but once you get old (like 30) you can't hear it anymore - and in any case he needs to toughen up. So basically he lost that conversation on all levels, although he didn't believe that I couldn't hear it.
Of course we heard it every day for decades - hours at a time, at home and then work and it wasn’t a big deal. Now you play it for three seconds in a video and you’ll get written complaints. Just to think I’ve got relatives who were bombed out in the war...but they never sent anyone a written complaint about the noise.
Let your young hipster brother know that his beard trimming could stand some improvement 😂
"...think he went to prison." 😂 Was fully expecting the 1993 science television presenter guy to accidentally knock the receiver off its hook. 😃 Fantastic video. Loved it! Surely there must be an adapter for ISDN to Ethernet or USB somewhere, though? 🤔
The only time I’ve made a video call was back in 2003 when I got a 3G phone. It was a short call - a test to see if it worked. Since then I’ve never felt the urge to make another.
I, too, enjoyed the repeated banging on the desk to make the handset fall. From what I recall here in the States, the video phone was an even bigger flop here than you describe it being in the UK.
Brilliant. The explanation of video compression had me laughing hard. And the banging the desk to make the receiver fall down too. Genius :)
Seriously enjoyed the bait-and-switch on the start and your frustration with the phone receiver. I think there was a typo in about 9:15 (unless this is from the original, in which case, what??): H.265 is described as "High Effecieny Video Coding". Sorry to point that out, it's just the way my reading works ( I guess I would have made an excellent newspaper editor back in the 80s)
Dammit - that’s not even my logo - I nabbed it off the internet because it was the highest resolution one I could find. - Thanks for spotting it now though - I'll do a quick fix and re-upload the video.
A delightful tangent. Thanks.
😂 You're a very silly person Matt. Love it! My introduction to ISDN videophones was funnily enough in 1993 when Nextbase (the makers of AutoRoute), got bought by Microsoft. I was working for them and did an interview over ISDN with an ageing hippy in Redmond in the USA. It was very jerky which hid a multitude of my fluffs and stalling for time to answer questions! Later on he told me it was October 31st when we did this and he was going to come into work in a devil costume, but was dissuaded by his wife who told him if he didn't hire the person he was interviewing, they may have thought he wasn't taking it seriously!
Nextbase is the brand used by Halfords for their dashcams. I guess it’s another zombie brand now - offloaded by Microsoft for a few $.
I half expected the Tech 93 presenter to accidentally knock the handset off the device at the end--that would have been icing on the cake of a brilliant bit. You say this phone won't work, but maybe it would if you tried to call the office of Heydrich & Struggles, I hear they have offices in New York, London, Paris and Munich.
That's brilliant! Love the humour! The old video had me fooled for a second until I realised it was the intro video!
I'm just tired, on to go to bed, and then seeing the receiver drop off every time and the hilarious fake beard completely suits my mood and makes my day, thanks a lot Mat!
I think your assessment of the Relate 2000 (which used an ordinary PSTN phone line) is spot on. On the other hand, ISDN-based video conferencing systems were in widespread use until surprisingly recently. The rationale for using them is that the 64 Kbps seemed limited, even when bonding multiple channels, but at least you were guaranteed that bandwidth. The same couldn't be said for solutions that relied on Internet traffic.
That recurring joke with the receiver falling off all the time by just banging the table was hilarious. We both were laughing our butts off. Well done!
You were on-form for this one, Mat! Thanks for the genuine LOLs right from the start. A mate of mine who ran the TV studio at Imperial College got hold of two of those BT video phones and I had one in the house for a few months. Trouble was, the only person I could use the video part with was him and vice versa. We found it was better if laid on their sides, as for this purpose a portrait screen was more useful.
Yes now you mention it - portrait would make a heck of a lot more sense. 2001 A Space Odyssey had it all figured out.
That thing is exactly what 90's me would have envisioned "high-tech" would look like in THE FUTURE
Mat reaches another level. Nice one.. nice one..
What a bizarre device, especially the handset. Is it possible there used to be some sort of little plastic nub or something to hold the handset in place, but has rubbed or broken off? And yeah, I'd probably retrobrite that phone for you if there was some way we could actually make them work and have a conference call on them! that would be fun!
The receiver must surely have originally held on better - perhaps there was originally a bit of adhesive backed rubber on it. I was a bit sad to find that both the Relate 2000s had failed in the same way. I’d have happily sent you one for a collaboration - that would have been fun.
What a fun and informative video, Mat! I have two immediate thoughts: 1) I think a patch of Velcro is in your future to get that handset to stay in place 2) Thanks to my enduring love for "Look Around You" I know the vibe you were going for with Tech 93!
Definitely a Look Around You series two vibe. Serafinowicz and I are similar ages and appear to share a very similar UK TV viewer experience.
TECH 93 did an excellent description of the bandwidth problem! On youtube, there are several channels with the name Tech 93, but unfortunately not the one I want to subscribe. ;-) Try to catch the receiver with the knocking hand.
Great video Mat. Very informative and entertaining as always. Loved the '93 insert, brilliant.
Wonderful - that really is a cool looking device! I loved your video insert - I assume you deliberately off-synched the sound and vision - or is my Bluetooth setup getting worse? Interesting what you say about hardly anyone doing face time now that everyone has a videophone in their pocket. When I was working, multi-centre video-conferences were all the rage, but I remember that once the introductions were done, most participants hardly bothered to look at the screen at all. Super video, thanks, Mat!
There’s no deliberate sound sync mis-match. Where does it occur?
Great video. Have you tried to track down the dude in the Tech '93 clip? You could do a "where are they now" type of show, maybe. Thank you!
I’ve heard he looks a bit like Colonel Kurtz nowadays.
Absolutely brilliant! Really funny and informative.
"The internet it's a series of tubes" Interesting that in the USA ,I believe the first remembrance of the video phone as a consumer product came by a show called "At The Movies " with Siskel and Ebert .I remember them advertising it ,sort of ,on their show as a Christmas gift idea I believe.
Is anyone else having issues with a missing video thumbnail. It keeps disappearing on me.
On my iPad and iPhone the Patreon app stopped showing any video thumbnail whatsoever. I have opened a support request with Patreon. Maybe they know what’s wrong.
I love that explanation of video compression!
Now if we can just find one more of these. Along with two people in the world that still have ISDN lines.
It Still Does Nothing.
Don’t you have a million spectrum analyzers that can show if The Whine™ is still there? 😂
I’m not sure I’d know what to look for.