Outmoded Home Media Formats

Discuss North American DVDs and Blu-rays or other DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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domino harvey
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Outmoded Home Media Formats

#1 Post by domino harvey » Mon Oct 05, 2020 3:31 am

Very cool demo disc for Sony’s HDVS system, presenting uncompressed analog footage shot and released in 1990 (!) in 1035i resolution. Lots more details in the YT video description

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MichaelB
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Re: Outmoded Home Media Formats

#2 Post by MichaelB » Mon Oct 05, 2020 7:09 am

Prospero's Books was finished in 1035i at around the same time, so I'm assuming the two formats are connected.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Outmoded Home Media Formats

#3 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Mon Oct 05, 2020 1:19 pm

Prospero's Books was probably made with HDVS equipment. HDVS was compatible with NHK's analog HDTV system Hi-Vision/MUSE (and Prospero's Books was actually co-produced by NHK), but since NHK wasn't really in the business of manufacturing and selling equipment, Hi-Vision video was usually produced with Sony's cameras, recorders, etc. HDVS systems recorded a higher-fidelity wideband signal that would be compressed to a more manageable baseband signal for wider dissemination (e.g. via NHK's Hi-Vision satellite channel).

There was actually a good amount of material shot in the 1035i format, including multiple Olympic games starting in 1984, and the satellite channel operated right up to 2007, long after the format had been supplanted by digital HD systems. There's a now mostly forgotten Italian film from 1987 called Julia and Julia that was shot on HDVS cameras and then transferred to 35mm for theatrical distribution. The copy on Youtube (I won't link to it but it's easy enough to find) is clearly not from a good recording, but the video-y "soap opera" look is very evident. I think Prospero's Books avoided this by shooting on 35mm, then transferring the footage to 1035i for post-production before outputting it all back to 35mm.

Sony's 12" HDVS discs were never marketed to the general public—not too surprising since they were limited to 15 minutes and retailed for about $8,000 each, though that figure also included broadcasting rights. The consumer equivalent were Hi-Vision LDs, which were physically identical to laserdiscs but with an analog HD signal instead of boring old PAL or NTSC. Those retailed for a more manageable ~$200 and the LaserDisc Database inventories 167 releases for the format, including Hollywood films like Lawrence of Arabia and Showgirls (!!!). The Youtube account linked above has some footage from these Hi-Vision LDs, like this demonstration video. There's also a two-part video that goes into a lot of detail about the format's history and offers split-screen comparisons between various versions of Back to the Future, including the Hi-Vision LD and the Blu-ray. The format's pretty far from the standards of modern digital HD, but all things Hi-Vision LD still go for heavy sums in the secondhand market, partly because the players are considered to offer superior picture quality for standard NTSC laserdiscs.

For lucky ducks with Hi-Vision TVs who wanted to record HD content—like a copy of a Hi-Vision LD or an NHK satellite broadcast—JVC released W-VHS players and tapes that could record and play back analog HD content. Unfortunately there was no pre-recorded content for this format except a demo tape packed in with the decks. Some off-air recordings made on W-VHS are circulating on Youtube, like this test broadcast from the first day of NHK's regular Hi-Vision service (featuring various types of footage, including in-studio, movie clips, baseball games, etc.) and a half-hour big band special. And here's some vintage catalogs for the Hi-Vision LD and the Sony HDVS lines that are all in Japanese but still neat to flip through.

If it's not obvious, I'm kind of fascinated by Hi-Vision/MUSE/HDVS, which were genuinely ahead of their time: NHK began development in the late '60s, public demonstrations were held in 1980, and test broadcasts began in 1989. HDVS is even mentioned in the 1981 press kit announcing the upcoming launch of the Compact Disc format. Part of the reason it didn't catch on is because NHK had pretty much come up against the limits of what was possible with analog compression, and while it was practical to transmit an analog HD signal via cable or satellite, the required bandwidth was too much for conventional over-the-air broadcasts (the European HD-MAC system ran up against the same issue). There were moves in the U.S. to adopt the NHK system, but those were abandoned in favor of developing a more compressible digital standard, partly due to pressure from broadcasters who realized that the NHK standard would mean the end of OTA broadcasts and thus the government would take back all their valuable space on the radio spectrum. That meant HD launched a lot later in the U.S.—test broadcasts in 1996, regular service in 1998—but ended up being more future-proofed. Someone who bought a first-generation U.S. HDTV can still use it today to watch HD broadcasts, or even Blu-rays if they have the appropriate connectors, whereas $30,000 Hi-Vision sets from the '90s are basically useless now without converter boxes that may or may not exist. And I think the continued existence of OTA broadcasts has inadvertently benefited consumers in the streaming era, since it's nice that I can cut the cord and still get a bunch of free TV channels with only a $20 antenna.

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