HD-VMD : The other HD videodisc (UPDATED)
You might have noticed there’s been a longer than usual gap since the last video. That’s because this one has been a bit of an epic to assemble.
In a way it all started back in 2015 when I bought a HD-VMD machine. The real work on this video though started in earnest eleven days ago and hasn’t let up until just now.
Delving into the history of this format felt at times like I was back doing my old auditor job. Hopefully I’ve managed to condense all the research down into something worth watching. Perhaps it’s even slightly interesting in parts too.
My head is spinning from spending too long sitting in front of a computer screen. Naturally to recover, I’ll be spending this evening watching the TV instead.
Take it easy and look after yourself.
UDPATE - Now with new happier ending - see this Patreon exclusive video for more info https://youtu.be/oCiYnU7mWIA
Comments (126)
"Just pretend I'm Canadian." ROFL! I was in Costco today and my buggy was blocking the access to the potatoes. A lady wanted a bag of potatoes so she said sorry to me so that she can get a bag of potatoes and I said sorry because I was blocking her. Sorry if this comment was too long but anyways, great video Mat!
I laughed out loud, really loud, when you said, "y'know, this bit would have been better with the puppets..."
We could be waiting a while. YT's delighful algorithm assumes that all videos with Muppet-style puppets in them are made for kids. Whoever came up with that algorithm has obviously never seen Avenue Q or Meet The Feebles.
My God! Best intro ever 👍😆 I can’t wait for the day we get a “mixed media” one with those barflies and the puppets - that’s a whole new channel there 😜 Well, made my day - thank you!
James May hosts quiz night at the pub? :D
The intro is awesome!
Great intro! Now you need to re-do it with the puppets as a Patreon only clip! Seems so weird that this company thought they were in with a chance at all to be honest, most odd.
Best intro ever.... Mainly because it's so bad, but quintessentially you
I also love it.
This really would have been better with the puppets! LOL....literally!
Is it possible that the VMD disc could theoretically work in the classic DVD player if one of the layers was a DVD-style layer? And VMD player would only use the other layers of that disc. (Still watching the video so maybe that’s addressed later. :·) I’m reacting to the remark that maybe they don’t understand their technology.)
There’s a bit I want to add at the end - but I’m waiting on a disc in the post and the buggers are being insanely slow at shipping it.
I'm surprised that the Nine Network in Australia signed up for HD-VMD. I can't see there being a massive worldwide market for box sets of The Block and Underbelly.
The other thing Sony seems to have learned from Betamax losing to VHS that they applied to Blu-ray was that having the higher-capacity format counts for something. VMD wanted to do that but couldn’t make it work.
I found something really interesting regarding those lazytown discs. They hadn't actually gotten the rights to the show in the USA so they had to refund a bunch of people. source:https://www.lazytown.eu/forums/forum/the-lazytown-episodes/general-lazytown-episodes-discussion/1602-buying-hd-vmd-player?1351-I-may-be-crazy-(for-buying-HD-VMD)=&langid=5
The promo discs are especially unimpressive, given that you can pretty much do the same thing with AVCHD discs, which use better compression (H.264 instead of MPEG-2), and thus achieve similar quality at a lower bitrate, and most Blu-ray players will accept it.
Really interesting. It illustrates the brilliant business strategy of hardware makers buying up content producers and distributors. It's not as if the success of Sony's HD format was guaranteed, but Blu-ray was going to be a front-runner at launch.
You can really see them applying the lessons they learned from DAT and MD and even Betamax. In 2006 I was rooting for HD-DVD, given it was the only one that came out fully realised. Blu-ray wasn't even half-baked at launch. In the end I feel everyone lost this format war as it made people wait until they saw who won which resulted in many just sticking with DVD until streaming took over, Then again it quite likely was the last format war - so there's that.
I took great delight in buying the only HD-DVD disc in CEX recently (March Of The Penguins, incidentally) just to see if the staff could find it. Annoyingly, they could. I do have a player, mind you. My mother's staying with me at the moment, and I nearly woke her with laughter at the opening sketch!
The very first movie I saw in HD from a disc was on HD-DVD. It was Seabiscuit on the Xbox 360 add-on drive.
Great stuff as always. It's certainly debatable what constitutes a "format" because the way VMD got released, it's not a unique disk that can only be read in WMV players. That in itself seems to be a sub-story that their original disk format was apparently not achievable and they just went with HD MPEG2 on a DVD-ROM. However, because it's just physically a DVD, that means that it isn't the "format that came in last" in this context. That would be a format I don't think you've covered yet -- Microsoft's WMV HD. WMV HD placed high-def WMV files on DVD format, and since WMV is a much better codec than MPEG2, would have undoubtedly been better quality than VMD. It included DRM that required internet connectivity, and was playable on Windows Media Center HTPCs, Xbox 360 and PS3. There were 12 titles released including Terminator 2, which I believe is the title released on more formats than any other film (e.g. PSP UMD, D-VHS, Video 8). Heck, T2 and all of its formats may merit its own episode. But I'd love for you to cover WMV HD at some point.
It sounds like you may have watched the first version where I made a poor job of explaining the difference between the pre-production discs on DVD from a year prior to launch and the final VMDs that came out in November 2007. There’s more info in the post above about where to find the new re-clarified sections in the video.
Hi Mat, Really great video. A format I knew absolutely nothing of and now I feel I know everything thanks to your incredible level of research. Loved the silly pub quiz intro, great humour and well made.
My goodness, you do your research, don't you! I had never even heard of that format. An amazing tour de force.
The research on this one nearly did me in - I ended up with 150 screenshots of information to wade through.
Loved the bit at the beginning and the puppet-hater jab!
It's no jab - just a knowing nod to an expected response.
Given that the technology under study was a total fail, I laughed so much at your humour in this episode. By the end I'd almost forgot about the pub quiz at the beginning. Feel free to do more of that.
Oh Joy, the old fogeys down the pub doing the quiz, TERRIFIC. Love the wigs. Great colour matching :D Never heard of VMD so thanks for the history lesson. Can we have a Puppets Special sometime? Any subject will do.
I second the call for the puppets. You can't please everyone, I get why you stopped doing them, but I do miss 'em.
In the video description, you mentioned that the demo discs were sent out in 2016 which probably should be 2006.
Thanks - I'll fix it. I've been transposing those a lot.
Watching this giving me a sense of deja vu of the DataPlay format. A small company, a too ambitious product, releasing a product in a rapidly changing market (In dataplay's case, prices of flash storage was reducing year after year with increasing storage capacity), pre-production hardware breaking after several uses and the company itself went bust after the launch of the product. This whole HD VMD is another example of how not to launch a product or its another DataPlay but for movies.
Just so you know, all that nightmarish glitched shit you get from putting in LazyTown is normal. Thats all I ever saw whenever id seen that show.
Only a few mins in and I just need to say, that you make the "bad actor" joke a lot, but seriously, your delivery on the line "you know this bit would have been better with the puppets" was masterful. Took me totally off guard how confident you were with that line. Also the snappy editing really helped it, you have a knack for comedic timing!
Love the pub quiz
Thank you for the video, especially the pub quiz, hahaha :)
This is very interesting. Thanks for the video :-)
Spent a few hours poking the files. They are MPEG2 files of some kind. Not like they reinvented the wheel. But the file header is weird. I shaved off the first 2kB to leave the 0x000001BA file header to start the file, but I hadn't had any luck editing the header to make it work better. The closest I can get (and you can too?) is in VLC, go to Preferences > Show All > Input / Codecs > Demuxers select Demux module > Avformat demuxer. It at least shows kind of a file. Right length, but playback is janky similar to your best efforts from the player itself. Made for an interesting evening at least :P
I am kinda surprised there isn't any way to play them. But then again, 3rd place..
Its not just about economies of scale with someone like Sony. They also have the power to run the whole show at a loss as a way to starve out any small competition.
Loved the intro; no need to apologize! I still miss the puppets though. I had a similar problem with my D-VHS VCR where the screen would be black or flickery and the audio would stutter when connected over HDMI. Have you tried the component outputs? I ended up buying one of those "HDMI splitter" boxes that strip HDCP encryption and that fixed the problem for me. My situation was just an incompatibility with very old and relatively new HDMI devices.
Now there was a alternative to DVD in the USA. It was the Circuit City Digital Video Express (DIVX) format. Not the same thing as the DivX codec! Same size discs as dvd but a rental only format with a special player. It was a terrible failure although arguably quite a good idea.
enjoy the relaxation time :)
Brilliant intro!
I wonder if connecting the newer player to a Standard Definition display, and toggling a setting on the player (if one exists) can make it play a little bit more than digital noise?
I love the intro. Good video.
I am dying to know why the production unit has the FDA logo on it –– the US Food and Drug Administration.
I had this before once ages ago and when you look at their remit it includes a lot more than food and drink. I think consumer electronics are in there somewhere.
Given the limited success of physical media in the HD video era, I doubt coming in last place is that much more humiliating than first. In fact, ironically Sony probably saw the best return from their investment in Blu-ray from its use as a medium for their high revenue, profit dominating video games business. And by that light, HD DVD should retroactively look more successful as powering Microsoft's most successful console, even if it wasn't really used for software in that case, and unlike Sony Microsoft still hasn't see a light at the end of the tunnel for bothering to invest in game software. So HD-VMD probably was right initially in their vision focusing on software, and died when they stayed from that, assuming they could ever make their tech really work for a 100GB disc which is highly questionable.
My only complaint on this video, and in fact the only complaint with any video you've made that I've watched, is that you seem to apologize too much for your perceived missteps. I mean, I know what it's like as I'm guilty of it too, but just know that there are at least some of us out here for whom stuff like minor audio glitches or the fact that you didn't get the end result 100% don't bother us. We watch your content because we enjoy the spin you put on it. If not we could just RTFM, so to speak, haha. So I guess what I'm trying to say is thanks!
That's just Mat. We all love all his videos, and hopefully he's internalized that (lord knows we've told him enough) ... but ... that's just Mat. :-)
I'm really pleased to see that our Patreon support has been used to give otherwise unemployed -- perhaps unemployable -- actors work in your shows. Good job! What a story. Glad I didn't get sucked into investing ...
I think even back then (and after a few pints) you would have seen that this was an idea destined for failure. There's a section I cut for length where I read NME's statement of risks and perils to potential shareholders. Here it is: 'We have no revenue history and therefore we have not achieved profitability. We expect to continue to incur operating losses for the foreseeable future at least until such time the first generation products are commercialized, and only provided we are able to generate fees through royalty agreements and joint venture agreements. Any fees we could potentially generate would most likely not occur until and unless the actual products are produced after validation of the industrial prototype. We have never generated any revenues or profits, and there is no assurance that, in the future, we will be profitable on a quarterly or annual basis. We anticipate that we will continue to incur losses until, at the earliest, our first generation of products achieve commercial acceptance and we generate enough revenue from the sale or licensing of our products to offset our operating costs. We have limited capital resources.'
Did you try putting the .VMD files onto a USB stick and reading them that way on either machine?
That's really what was happening with the second machine at the end with the DVD-R - it loaded it as a data disc but ignored the VMD files as it was just looking for the usual .jpg .mp4 etc.
Excellent video as always! I can't help thinking that the "Interim CEO" would claim that HD-VMD was in second place to blu-ray after HD-DVD withdrew from the market, not last. Well, or so a pedantic muppet might say! As if they were ever in the race at all of course.
I considered the same, but most consumer electronic companies would use sales numbers as a key metric and HD-VMD sold about half a dozen give or take (including the discs) with revenues of about £5.
What a really fascinating video. Please never stop making content like this.
None of your efforts are lost on us - another fascinating and cracking video.
I'd wonder if the VMD was encrypted, which was a key feature of DVD - later, the HD wars kicked it up a notch. In that, you can copy the files, but the encryption leaves the data scrambled and separated from the original media - basically junk data at that point. If it uses the same encryption as DVD, maybe a DVD decryptor tool would work on it? Not sure how that works - if it relies on the DVD structure or if it simply makes the drive do the work. Still, with the player not even being able to play its own format, but able to play DVDs, that's ... strange. Hopefully you can find someone that can fix it, with the help of YouTube! :) btw, that intro was excellent, well done. 😂
Yes it’s encrypted - well copy protected if that’s the same thing - they made a big deal about it in the specs - the usual protecting publisher’s content stuff.
Wasn't 2007 around that time where some really dodgy electrolytic capacitors were being used? I can't imagine that they were using the best caps with their budget.
The capacitors that usually fail in DAT and DCC machines are SMD types and are indeed difficult to replace. But in this device I see only normal ones; those usually don’t fail that often and if they do are replaceable quite easily. I would suspect the board to have some cold solder joints, which are not uncommon on cheaply produced machines, regarding their age and possible rough handling. Anyway, great video, Mat! I never thought you still have more exotic video formats up your sleeve!
Ultimately it’s all just guesswork unfortunately. I can’t fix this, I know of no one local who could - and I only want to play one disc of public domain HD so it likely wouldn’t be worth paying more than 27p to fix it.
Another format i didn't know existed. Love the comedy intro. I am one sticking with physical format and own many bluray and ultra hd discs. No laserdisc player yet lol. Lazy town available in format for £5 if u want another disc you can't play
I bought a few of those the other week - back when I thought my discs might be the issue. They’ve yet to arrive.
Great video. Was there something different about the audio in this one? Sounded a bit less clear than your recent ones to me
Yep - it’s knackered - but you should have heard what it sounded like before.
That bit at the beginning must have been produced by the same people that made the movie "McQ." All the characters look alike:)
That’s a deep back-catalogue reference.
Kind of a sad story. It seems to me in most of your stories of failed audio or video formats, there was an earnest attempt by a company trying to create something new, interesting, innovative or useful and for whatever reason, the format failed. With this one, it didn't appear that that NME were doing any of that, but were just trying to find a moneymaking operation and that if it struck their fancy they may just as easily tried to develop a new toaster or other random device.
Yes this felt similar to a Kickstarter for the 2000s…with a similar chance of the end product being what was promised.
Bad idea? That was one of the best sketches I’ve seen for a while! I nearly missed the ‘real ale’ joke
I was watching some of your old videos, and it dawned upon me just how many things you must have, if you don't sell them off like you say... A significant percentage must be items that you've never made the star of a video - since you do have so many props and ancillary devices during shows. How do you organize them and what's the full extent of the collection? Maybe a topic for the monthly chat.
Unfortunately there’s no organisation, I think that’s something that comes with having space. I keep losing and then finding things again that I’d forgotten about. One day I hope to have more space and then perhaps I’ll properly catalogue what I have. It’s probably not as much as you’d think.
A great video, as usual. If history was taught like this, I'd have passed it at O level! Lead on, MacDuff, or is it MacDuck... either way, I can't wait for the next patreon instalment.
I love the intro segment :D, reminds me those you did for Mission Impossible tape recorders as well. Oh, and I noticed a typo at 29:12 (af instead of at), but I doubt many people will notice.
Thanks - I think I'll leave that one. I've already uploaded this twice as I noticed a section where the first syllable from a word had been cut off the audio.
I loved the intro it was very funny. I learned something new today.
I must have mislaid my invite to Tri-Techmoan Trivia at the Techlounge. One night only, but the cover charge was outrageous. And you say you cannot act (scoffs), that cheered me up so much! Thank you for that! Sadly, I have to get back to work, but tonight I look forward to learning more about another format lost to the ether.
I finally got to watch it all and that was quite interesting! I appreciate your diligence to get to a point where you could create a video on the subject. I had no idea this existed, and that is what fascinates me about the topics you cover - both the new and old tech. I'm quite happy to learn about anything and everything.
I love how, for continuity, you carefully added the beard to the image of the earlier video.
There were some great details in the whole video. Loved the jingle after the workout joke, too.
"Can use the same production equipment as DVD" I seem to remember that that was the selling point of HD-DVD too, back in the day. You say HD-VMD came out before HD-DVD and BD; I wonder if HD-DVD based their technology on HD-VMD.
HD-VMD ended up coming to market about a year and a half after HD-DVD. I think HD-DVD just did their own thing with a blue laser. HD-VMD was a pie in the sky idea that never really worked.
Brilliant journey into the past.
There's some distortion in sound at the peaks throughout the video
Oh there's a whole story about that - production was an utter nightmare. I initially had an apology overlaid on the video for the sound issues - but in the end thought that this would just have the effect of making more people listen out for them - so I just relegated it to the video description.
It's like the two muppets made a wish to be real boys and they woke up as contestants at a pub quiz 🤣
So, did I get the joke of the whole story? Even the machine made in the final days only had a standard DVD-drive in it, so they never actually managed to launch their 4+ layer format? All they did was putting HD MPEG2 on a DVD9? At the same bitrate as a standard SD DVD (for feature-length movies)? Which would have resulted in terrible quality? For short content they probably bumped up the read-speed to 4x or something to get the ~40MBit/s for decent quality, but at that rate you'd also only get like 30 minutes of video on it. Which might explain why even the Demo Disc had two discs.
I think the final movies (which I don't have) should have higher capacity. I just have Demo discs that were made earlier. What capacity the final discs were and what their maximum playtime was - I just don't know
The opening sketch was fantastic You are a bit too hard on yourself, assuming we will get bored, we love this stuff!
Once again Mat, you've managed to make an interesting video about a format I've never even heard of! My kids used to like Lazy Town years ago, and it is particularly ironic that show was included as a demo disc as the premise of the programme was encouraging kids NOT to sit and watch excessive amounts of tv every day!
If you can and are willing to upload one of the video files somewhere, I'd love to take a look at it and see what the format might really be.
That's a good idea - I'll leave this in the hand of an expert. Let me know if you can view anything. Here's a link https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=kZz1mxXZ1s2aOudJCnfvio2t2ulb1y7XevEX
Brilliant pub quiz parody. I wonder; what are the odds that that question has been asked in one of them? Excellent vid Mat.
Never heard about VMD before, but the pub quiz bit was dead on the money.
Great video, really enjoyed the opening and jokes throughout. Keep up the amazing videos!
Now to something completely diff... eh, the rest of the video: I've never heard of HD-VMD, I only knew of the two others, from which I have at least one player each. Got the Toshiba HD-DVD Player very cheap at the end of the "war" with a stack of Films on top... and at least it also plays DVD. Very interesting to see the history of the third "competitor", thank you for the journey!
I picked up a HD-DVD the same way. I later sold it on, however a few years ago I bought a couple more and a load of discs for next to nothing. Purely with the intention of using them in a video at some point.
Looking forward to watching this when I get home. Mat, I’ve seen a couple of nice looking VCD players in your videos in the past (namely a portable one in the miniDVD video) - do you intend to do a video on them?
Yes - I've got a whole story I want to tell about VCD and how it was massive for me. But I know it'll take a lot of work to put together.
This video was very interesting, I haven't heard about this format even though I had all the other formats since Laserdisc. Thanks.
Loved the return of the (intentionally) comedic segments in your videos!
Haha, the opening scene, so bad that it's hilarious! 🤣 And another format I had never heard of... How this is possible 😁
The format that lost to the format that lost.
Haha, I was getting strong Stella Street vibes with the video production at the start.....and I very much mean that as a compliment :)
HD-VHD will win the format war!
I like the pub quiz section! Great comedy!
Frighteningly true-to-form ... :)
As Lionel Jeffries says in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," "Oh, there's magic in the wake of a fiasco!" And the dramatic prologue was epic.
I love Lionel Jeffries - a class act.
Hahaha, that intro is f***ing hilarious. Those wigs. ROFL.
Absolutely smashing intro!!! Still laughing at the quiz leaders hair!!! Great show.👏
Love the intro 😂👍 and the rest to, of course 😊
Oh and I forgot to mention the cameos at the beginning by Rick Lagina and Henry Cole. Or at least that's who I thought they looked like. You might have to Google them.
You’re probably not talking about the Henry Cole that was the first in 1843 to send printed christmas cards 😅. I do love Google!
If it was the puppets we wouldn't have seen this amazing routine.
Out of curiosity oh, do Brits pronounce the word beveled like you pronounce betamax? "bee-veld" or "beh-veld"?
Beh-vld. Stick this in the Google Search box "pronounce beveled" and you get a blue face that pronounces it when you click on it (make sure it's set to British Pronunciation )
The first thing I thought about was 'where are the puppets'...the second thing was 'how did you hire Captain Slow to ask questions?'
You can be as humble as you want, you definitely have actor skills. What great first 2 minutes.
The sketch at the beginning is hilarious! Now, let me watch the rest.... ;-)
Outstanding! I love the comedy bits you sometimes drop into your videos. Always make me laugh!
Indeed. If we can't have The Moans (muppets) at least we can have some cheesy comedy sketches.