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Another system was D-VHS [0], a digital video version of VHS with a max capacity of 50GB. For a time it was the highest quality digital video solution for consu

Another system was D-VHS [0], a digital video version of VHS with a max capacity of 50GB. For a time it was the highest quality digital video solution for consumers, until BluRay and HD-DVD came along. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-VHS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-VHS

retrac 3y ago
Don't forget D-1 [1], which was a hybrid monstrosity. In the 1980s, it wasn't really yet feasible to handle digital video in a meaningful way. No true colour framebuffers at 720x480 pixels and no way to move that many bits in and out of a framebuffer fast enough, either. But digital electronics could run > 50 MHz even back then, and there were fast analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. So why not digitize the entire analog video signal, directly? D-1 does just that, sampling the the entire video signal at like 14 MHz, writing hundreds of megabits of data per second to tape uncompressed. In other words, a perfect digital copy of the analog video waveform. Same signal the camera generated. D-1 was rather widely used in production in the late 80s and 90s, and for broadcast playback. Surviving material on D-1 is quite rare today - it was a very expensive tech and tapes got reused. Here's an example though - Depeche Mode performing Personal Jesus on German TV in 1989 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELRR7rPDvh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELRR7rPDvh0 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-1_(Sony) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-1_(Sony)
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I love that format. I wish it would have survived and been extended instead of all the compressed pixel heaps we got for two decades. :) Looking at that video reminded of what it looked like to watch analog live broadcast from a high quality camera, or high quality film (Hollywood) on an analog TV set through broadcast. It wasn't bad. Todays cable MPEG-2 SD channels actually have worse quality. (Some cable and satellite HD channels have worse quality today even, when they crank the compression too hard!)
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Hard to believe this is from 1989, looks really good.

retrac 3y ago

Don't forget D-1 [1], which was a hybrid monstrosity. In the 1980s, it wasn't really yet feasible to handle digital video in a meaningful way. No true colour framebuffers at 720x480 pixels and no way to move that many bits in and out of a framebuffer fast enough, either. But digital electronics could run > 50 MHz even back then, and there were fast analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. So why not digitize the entire analog video signal, directly? D-1 does just that, sampling the the entire video signal at like 14 MHz, writing hundreds of megabits of data per second to tape uncompressed. In other words, a perfect digital copy of the analog video waveform. Same signal the camera generated. D-1 was rather widely used in production in the late 80s and 90s, and for broadcast playback. Surviving material on D-1 is quite rare today - it was a very expensive tech and tapes got reused. Here's an example though - Depeche Mode performing Personal Jesus on German TV in 1989 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELRR7rPDvh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELRR7rPDvh0 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-1_(Sony) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-1_(Sony)

actionfromafar 3y ago
I love that format. I wish it would have survived and been extended instead of all the compressed pixel heaps we got for two decades. :) Looking at that video reminded of what it looked like to watch analog live broadcast from a high quality camera, or high quality film (Hollywood) on an analog TV set through broadcast. It wasn't bad. Todays cable MPEG-2 SD channels actually have worse quality. (Some cable and satellite HD channels have worse quality today even, when they crank the compression too hard!)
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
Hard to believe this is from 1989, looks really good.