in the last video we took a look at the
early history of laserdisc if you
haven't seen that you can find a link
down below or up there in short
laserdisc was the first optical storage
format storing analog video on 12-inch
reflective discs and it was released at
the end of the 1970s featuring many of
the noteworthy features of DVD it may
seem surprising that it didn't become
that popular its market adoption barely
reached 2% of video cassette recorder
sales in North America and was even
worse in Europe its most successful
market was in Asia but even that wasn't
fantastic only 10% of Japanese
households had a laserdisc player and
Japan was considered the healthiest
market in this video we'll find out why
laserdisc just sort of stayed in the
background its entire life let me begin
by saying that the problem is more
nuanced than simply they cost too much
because initially laser discs were far
cheaper than video cassettes and it's
also more nuanced than laser discs and
ability to record I began the previous
video with a product with an unknown
purpose that was both a few years too
late and way too far ahead of its time
those statements are interrelated but
let's start with the first one an
unknown purpose to understand that you
need to put yourself in the mindset of a
consumer in the mid-1970s at that time
there were essentially two types of
media you could purchase to consume at
home print media that's books newspapers
etc and music for nearly a century you
could purchase music to play on a
phonograph and indeed this was the first
way we could listen to music at home
Radio came later providing a source of
free nearly continuous programming but
radio is a fleeting thing and unless you
have the patience to record the
broadcast with a tape recorder
go back and find the songs you actually
want dub them on to another tape which
requires a second tape recorder and then
finally enjoy music uninterrupted you
would just buy the album from your
favorite artists farm disk to play at
home
indeed radio was pretty much how new
artists were discovered and albums were
sold some of that still happens today
but we all seem to use streaming
services or other means of getting our
music on-demand anyway due to the short
nature of musical radio content
generally only three minutes or so for a
song the programming on a radio station
wasn't usually organized beyond an hour
of such-and-such music maybe you'd have
a host for the afternoon Drive but the
content being broadcast would repeat
multiple times during the day as after
all what's popular is popular this
created little incentive for a radio
listener to record the broadcast which
again made the sale of music and record
stores a logical convenient thing this
was especially true for less popular
genres of music where would be rare to
hear it on the radio anyway for all
these reasons the consumer of 1975 was
used to buying record albums to play at
home and indeed wanted to now if someone
wanted to watch moving pictures and I'm
being deliberately vague here they had
two options for long-form content you
would go to the theater to watch the
newest releases movies were obviously
not a new thing in 1975 and the way you
watched them had been the same for many
years a film was a thing you went to go
see once maybe twice and wasn't
something you would expect to see at
home over and over again only the
wealthy and eccentric would shell out
the cash necessary to purchase a 16
millimeter film and prints to go with it
with a true 35 millimeter projector and
films being the unobtanium of home
entertainment television was another
story though by 1975 more than 70% of
households in the US had a color
television but unlike music which could
be heard for free through the radio or
as desired when purchased on disk or
tape television was only a broadcast
technology the viewer of a television
had no control over what was
shown all you could control was what
channel to tune into movies were often
broadcast on tv2 with a generous amount
of commercial breaks peppered in but you
still had no direct control over what to
watch you were limited to what was
offered but that was about to change
by 1975 the public had been teased many
times about a video disc system which
would revolutionize the television
experience RCA had been developing their
video discs since 1964 and Philips had
demonstrated in early laserdisc
prototype in 1969 these companies along
with others were trying to adapt the
familiar concept of a record player into
a video player and they weren't shy
about it you'll be able to buy video
records with movies cooking classes and
all sorts of new programming imagine
television when you want it key word
imagine while this certainly was a neat
idea it likely didn't resonate with many
people to compel a consumer to purchase
a video disc player required you to
convince them to buy into a new kind of
media it's not as simple as a new format
we're talking about something foreign
it's an entirely different kind of
content altogether it's an entirely
different no one had yet experienced
what would come to be called home video
it simply wasn't a thing the video disc
was a classic case of a solution in
search of a problem
which brings us to the second issue it
was too late though the concept had been
around for more than a decade it took
until 1978 for it to be introduced and
it wasn't available nationwide for a
couple years but three years before
disco vision came onto the scene we got
our hands on a different technology
which actually had a problem to solve
unlike radio programming television
shows took up a large chunk of your time
and were far more immersive
they were also scheduled occurring on a
known channel at a known time generally
these shows were broadcast once a week
with over a dozen episodes produced in a
year the continuity character
development and other serial aspects of
the shows compelled the viewer to watch
every week and missing your favorite
television program was a severe
disappointment if only there were a
device that could keep that from
happening enter the video cassette
recorder and
1975 Sony released the Betamax system
and JVC followed with VHS a year later
I'm not going to cover the format war
between those two formats because I have
already in previous videos but at this
stage in the timeline the format war was
irrelevant and yes there were earlier on
successful systems and I know about
video 2000 but the existence of a VCR of
any kind is what matters these machines
promise to change how we watch TV if you
were gone you could tape your favorite
shows using a built-in timer and if
there were two shows you liked that
we're on at the same time you could tape
one and watch the other the video
cassette recorder had a problem to solve
and it was perfect for the way
television programming worked you knew
when your show would be on thanks to the
TV Guide and there was an incentive to
not miss any episode of your favorite
shows it sounds silly because TV is
after all unimportant in the grand
scheme of things but the VCR was seen by
many people as a potential way to free
up their schedule the act of recording a
show to be watched later was called time
shifting and that was what sold VCRs if
you had a VCR it took the limitations of
a format you were used to
that's television and removed them it
solved a problem now here's where many
discussions on the failure of laserdisc
get hung up I'm looking at you simon
whistler when you look back to the
beginning of these two formats you'll
see that they were meant to be used
completely differently take a look at
early advertisements for these machines
and you'll see that laserdisc wasn't
really ever competing with VHS or
Betamax this ad for this machine
describes it as a turntable a video
turntable and an excellent one at that
making pictures better than TV itself
but you have to buy your video records
and the ad from 1981 shows that there
are a whopping 120 to choose from that's
so many look at an ad for any VCR in the
late 70s or early 80s and you'll see it
takes a different approach this ad for
the RCA machines for our brother talks
about television shows you want to put
on tape and talks how easy it is to
program it so you won't miss a thing you
don't find anything about pre-recorded
tapes you can buy that's because the
VCRs of this time period essentially
predated modern home video
the video cassette recorder wasn't being
marketed as a device to play a
pre-recorded tape content distribution
of that kind wasn't really a thing yet
in large part due to the high cost of
producing video cassettes
that's right here's another thing in the
saga on laserdisc that gets overlooked
the idea behind video discs in general
was that they could be mass-produced
quickly and cheaply since they are
stamped like vinyl records with rca's
ill-fated ced system literally being a
vinyl record the discs could be made
pretty easily from an ad linked in the
description the original cost of disco
vision titles was intended to be 595 or
995 for half hour and hour long titles
respectively with new feature films
priced at 1595 adjusted for inflation
that may seem pricey but considering the
price chart from Popular Mechanics here
shows the cheapest one-hour blank VHS
tape that's blank with nothing on it
going for 1695 you get a sense of why
the disc was considered better for
content distribution the tape used in
video cassettes was a brand new very
specialized fine particle tape it was
expensive to produce well over 200
meters of the stuff for each cassette
and to mass-produce pre-recorded video
tapes in a meaningful quantity would
require hundreds of separate video
cassette recorders each spending the
entire runtime of the program being
recorded to actually produce a duplicate
tape one machine could make dozens of
laser discs per hour whereas one
videotape duplicator would take more
than an hour per tape and the laserdisc
players were cheaper to that same chart
shows the cheapest VCR costing 995 this
magnificent player started at $6.99 and
it doesn't seem as though that cost was
subsidized by potential profit from
selling discs as Phillips Magnavox and
disco vision were separate entities so
then say you're a consumer in 1980
deciding between these two machines the
Magna vision is touted as having stereo
sound in an incredible picture and there
are exciting interactive possibilities
to go along with it but there's not a
lot of content you can watch you'd save
a few hundred dollars buying it but once
you've purchased 20 or so movies you'll
have spent all that anyway the long-term
cost of ownership doesn't really add up
the VCR though is this somewhat mature
technology you know people who use them
and
them and well this machine is more
expensive and so are the tapes you can't
see yourself needing more than one tape
you still aren't sure you need to save a
TV program after you've seen it after
all that's not been possible before
so after you've watched the shows you
missed that week you can reuse the same
tape who cares if it's more expensive so
long as it's reusable if you buy the
Magna vision machine how often will you
really use it you'd have to be buying a
disc every day and to get serious use
out of it and that'll get expensive fast
sure the frame-by-frame and slow motion
features are in neat gimmick and the
possibility of an art encyclopedia is
kind of cool but that'll only occupy a
few hours of time you're pretty sure
you'd get bored with it and need to buy
another disc
you know you'd use the VCR at least once
a week
mash and Mork and Mindy are on at the
same time and you've always wanted to
watch both plus you can never stay up
late enough to watch Johnny Carson
maybe you'll use it daily sure is kind
of ugly and clunky but who cares if it
does its job do you really need the
better picture on this machine you only
have a 19 inch television at home who
knows if you could even see the
difference and who really needs stereo
sound for TV nothing on TVs in stereo
anyway and I doubt you'll rearrange the
living room just to have this machine
play through your hi-fi see the problem
a laserdisc player was a technological
marvel with some neat tricks up its
sleeves but it's lengthy development
time caused it to be released after
video cassette recorders
if laserdisc had been available say in
1970 I don't think it would have
struggled like it did without the
existence of a video cassette recorder
the idea of buying content to watch on
your schedule might be more appealing
after all you've been doing the same
thing with music for decades and there
would be nothing else to allow you that
sort of flexibility on your TV but with
the VCR already on the market
suddenly the laserdisc has to convinced
buyers to forgo time shifting
capabilities for cheap to own movies
which again was an odd proposition to
many consumers of the time having never
been able to own a movie before the idea
of owning movies was also a foreign idea
to movie studios they had never before
needed to think about how to sell their
content formats home consumption
laserdisc was trying to start an
entirely new market category that of
home video with MCA back in the disco
vision format
their catalog of content could easily be
licensed but disco vision would face
challenges when trying to license other
content movie studios were
understandably reluctant to sell their
catalogues of movies to a company like
disco vision before home video it wasn't
uncommon for older movies to be released
in theaters again the movie studios were
used to charging essentially per view
and a home video solution goes entirely
against that the issue of licensing was
further complicated in the discs ground
by competing standards and confusing
branding with the development of their
CED system RCA was hard at work
convincing movie studios that they
should license their content to RCA this
might have limited the content available
to disco vision if any exclusivity
clauses were added to the contract
signed it was all so frustrating to
consumers as they didn't know which disc
system would be better supported with
content down the road and even among
laserdisc players Magnavox continued to
refer to this as Magna vision even
though the discs you could buy were
called disco vision and the format had
been christened laser vision by this
time this fear and confusion probably
kept a good number of video disc players
on store shelves
thus began a chicken-and-egg problem
buying a laserdisc player in the early
years but buying into a system with
limited content this kept sales low
which meant there weren't a lot of
people with players which meant the
movie studios couldn't make much money
selling discs which meant there wasn't
much content which kept the sales of
players low and the cycle continued but
video cassette recorders didn't have
that problem in the slightest going back
to our ad you'll remember that pre
recorded content isn't mentioned at all
that's because this wasn't the primary
purpose time-shifting was what you did
with a VCR it didn't have anything to do
with buying and movie to watch over and
over again who would want that but
plenty of people would want to record
their TV shows while they weren't at
home that was an idea you could get
behind as more and more people purchased
a VCR suddenly there was a large
installed base of devices that could
play a pre-recorded tape and now there
was a place for home video tapes needed
to get cheaper to manufacture and
duplication facilities needed to mature
but once those things happened it became
easier for movie studios to get behind
the idea
selling their movies for watching at
home especially their older and classic
films which wouldn't make too much money
with a new screening but might turn a
decent profit on home video now that
home video was an established business
buying a laserdisc player made even less
sense to the average consumer what was
the point of buying another machine when
I already have a VCR now that the big
movie studios are all releasing their
movies on VHS and beta and to be honest
laserdisc was an inconvenient form at
pretty much every single movie is longer
than an hour
so you're guaranteed to have to flip the
disc over and if you push in to two
hours you'll need another disc VHS and
beta were largely immune to this though
very long titles would push on to a
second cassette and then there was the
rental market video cassettes may have
cost more to make than laser discs but
many people weren't buying them they
were renting them a rental store owner
would make the cost of the tape back
many times over so the high cost of the
purchase wasn't that impactful and
cassettes made more sense for rental as
their design is inherently less fragile
the tape does wear out over time which
laserdisc was at least they thought
immune to it wasn't but any surface
scratches on the surface of a laserdisc
would immediately harm the image quality
and the smaller chunky nature of a video
cassette was easier to transport than
the flat large size of the laserdisc as
years passed the video cassette received
the benefits of economies of scale much
more than laserdisc did though it should
be noted that the price disparity
between laserdisc and tapes continued
for some time there's a clip on YouTube
of Siskel and Ebert and the movies and
in it they discuss how the film running
on empty released in theaters in 1988
that came out of 89 95 on tape but 24 98
on disc but they also noted that at this
time movie studios were beginning to
sell cheap tapes paramount had been
releasing some films on tape for 1495
with some bargain tapes going for 995
the trend of tapes continuing to get
cheaper would go on and laser just
wouldn't get to join in on that at this
point it might seem that laserdisc would
be doomed being beaten to market by a
device which could record really hurt
his chances and once the movie studios
had started offering their content on
VHS and beta buying a second device just
for watching movies didn't make tons of
sense
but laserdisc didn't die it cling to
life until 2000 coexisting with DVD for
four years
it was the collector's market and to a
lesser extent the education market that
saved them from a complete death those
who bought laserdisc from the mid 1980s
onward largely did so for reasons of
quality and exclusive content in the
next video we'll look at how laserdisc
evolved over the years and to the
pinnacle of home entertainment and we'll
also look more closely at the features
and follies of the format itself thanks
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to record I began the previous video
with component with an unknown purpose
there was not a serious - Martha more
history