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Ha haaa! NO, I have a decent-sized 45 collection and there's no confusion about their awesomeness! Most of them sound better than the dynamically-compressed-to-

Ha haaa! NO, I have a decent-sized 45 collection and there's no confusion about their awesomeness! Most of them sound better than the dynamically-compressed-to-shit streaming "remasters" of the same songs today. I also have a few 3-inch CDs, which were supposed to be the successor to 45s but record companies just weren't down for seriously selling singles at that point. Another historical curiosity: I have a couple of "video CDs," which were regular-sized (5-inch) CDs with a digital section containing the song (playable on any CD player) and then an analog video section with the video for the song (playable on later LaserDisc players).

wolrah 3y ago
> Another historical curiosity: I have a couple of "video CDs," which were regular-sized (5-inch) CDs with a digital section containing the song (playable on any CD player) and then an analog video section with the video for the song (playable on later LaserDisc players). That is a "CD Video" or "CD+V", which supported up to 20 minutes of CD audio and around 5 minutes of LaserDisc-style analog video. There was also a variant that skipped the CD audio and was just LaserDisc video on a CD-size disc called "Video Single Disc". "Video CD" or "VCD" was a later all digital format that used MPEG-1 compression while also disabling error correction for more data capacity to fit more or less the same amount of VHS-ish quality video on a given disc as it could support CD audio. VCD never even reached the level of success of LaserDisc in the US but most standalone DVD players could play them. I believe they were a lot more popular in parts of Asia.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Fair enough; I didn't go hunting around for my discs to check the order of "video" and "CD" in the moniker. "Video-CD" was widely used in China long after DVDs came out, lasting almost until the HD era (when the Chinese attempted to introduce their own HD disc format that still used a red (insert "communist" wisecrack here) laser. I always thought that those Chinese discs were CD-I, which failed miserably in... well, everywhere else. But in fact CD-I was a bastardization of Video CD that was incompatible, although it offered slightly higher (but still crappy) resolution. In the end, the format that prevailed all those years in the east was presumably Video-CD. Oh yeah, I have a few examples of yet another obscure disc variation: the 8-inch LaserDisc. If I remember correctly, I have "I Want to Break Free" and "Radio Ga-Ga" by Queen, and "Salt in My Tears" by Martin Briley. The back sides of those are opaque white plastic.
  - wolrah 3y ago
    > Fair enough; I didn't go hunting around for my discs to check the order of "video" and "CD" in the moniker. Yeah, sorry, I forget how to people sometimes. Just a nerd who burned a LOT of VCDs back when DVD burners were expensive yet DVD players that read VCDs were cheap so it's one of those details buried in my brain that just came out.

wolrah 3y ago

> Another historical curiosity: I have a couple of "video CDs," which were regular-sized (5-inch) CDs with a digital section containing the song (playable on any CD player) and then an analog video section with the video for the song (playable on later LaserDisc players). That is a "CD Video" or "CD+V", which supported up to 20 minutes of CD audio and around 5 minutes of LaserDisc-style analog video. There was also a variant that skipped the CD audio and was just LaserDisc video on a CD-size disc called "Video Single Disc". "Video CD" or "VCD" was a later all digital format that used MPEG-1 compression while also disabling error correction for more data capacity to fit more or less the same amount of VHS-ish quality video on a given disc as it could support CD audio. VCD never even reached the level of success of LaserDisc in the US but most standalone DVD players could play them. I believe they were a lot more popular in parts of Asia.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Fair enough; I didn't go hunting around for my discs to check the order of "video" and "CD" in the moniker. "Video-CD" was widely used in China long after DVDs came out, lasting almost until the HD era (when the Chinese attempted to introduce their own HD disc format that still used a red (insert "communist" wisecrack here) laser. I always thought that those Chinese discs were CD-I, which failed miserably in... well, everywhere else. But in fact CD-I was a bastardization of Video CD that was incompatible, although it offered slightly higher (but still crappy) resolution. In the end, the format that prevailed all those years in the east was presumably Video-CD. Oh yeah, I have a few examples of yet another obscure disc variation: the 8-inch LaserDisc. If I remember correctly, I have "I Want to Break Free" and "Radio Ga-Ga" by Queen, and "Salt in My Tears" by Martin Briley. The back sides of those are opaque white plastic.
- wolrah 3y ago
  > Fair enough; I didn't go hunting around for my discs to check the order of "video" and "CD" in the moniker. Yeah, sorry, I forget how to people sometimes. Just a nerd who burned a LOT of VCDs back when DVD burners were expensive yet DVD players that read VCDs were cheap so it's one of those details buried in my brain that just came out.