#Obsolete media

[foone]

So, regarding Cartrivision and how the Red Tapes were effectively play-once, this idea of "you buy/rent a tape but you can only play it for a short while" so was enticing an idea that it keeps coming back. There's obviously ways this can be implemented on streaming services, but it was tried at least twice in the optical disc era, but amusingly in two entirely different ways.

And it was backwards from how you might think. The older one seems like it should have come later!

So first was DIVX (the disc format: it's unrelated to the Codec of the same name)

This came out in 1998, just as DVD was starting to catch on. They got a bunch of movie studios to sign on to only release their films on DIVX, not DVD, and tried to backdoor the format into acceptance: it was heavily pushed by Circuit City, then a major retailer. All DIVX players were also DVD players, so they would try to convince you to buy a DIVX player so you could play both.

How it worked is pretty simple: it is basically a DVD that's been encrypted. To decrypt it, you need a license. The DIVX player can talk to the DIVX server and let you purchase a license to watch the film, and the license would be valid for 48 hours before deleting itself. So the idea was that you'd pick up a disc for very cheap, like a rental, but when you could hang onto it for later, and re-axtivate the license by just paying the license free (a couple dollars) again. And if you didn't like the movie? No need to take the film back to blockbuster, you can just toss it in the garbage! (you could also pay a higher fee to get an unlimited license to the film, effectively converting it into a DVD)

But this was 1998, remember: very few people have always-on internet. How's it talk to the DIVX server?

Simple. It's got a modem. You plug your DIVX player into the phone line, and it dials up DVD HQ and talks to them over that connection. It's a very 1990s solution.

Anyway it died. People interested in DVD universally hated the idea, especially the part where some studios were only going to release films as DIVX. People had had VHS tapes for a while now, and they were used to buying and owning their films. Going to a time-limited rental system seems like a big step back.

And of course, movie rental companies hated the idea too, as it basically would destroy them as a business (years before streaming destroyed them anyway). So they refused to entertain the idea. So it failed, and it took down Circuit City with it. The funniest part? Remember how it talks to a server? Well, guess what happened to that server when the format was discontinued!

Yep, all DIVX discs are unplayable now. They announced the discontinuation in 1999, and by 2001 the servers were turned off. All DIVX discs (even the ones upgraded to forever-playable) are just paperweights. (and btw: I've looked into the feasibility of hacking the encryption. They used 3DES, which is far from the best but is still pretty secure. Give me a million dollars and a year of computation time and I'll be able to watch one film.)

So, with DIVX dying such a quick and painful death that it took out the major retailer that invented it, surely no one else would even consider this idea again, right?

Welcome to FlexPlay. A 2003 format where you buy a DVD for cheap, and you can watch it for 24-48 hours. Even better than DIVX, because you don't need a special player and you don't even depend on talking to a server!

Wow. What weird technical tricks did they do to make this work? Is there a special program on the disc? Some kind of computer code? Special encryption? Can you only play it on a PC with some DRM software installed?

Nope! While DVDs have anti-copying DRM and DIVX added limited-playback DRM, FlexPlay goes completely the other route and has Analog Rights Management: the limited playback is enforced by CHEMISTRY.

Yep. See, the way optical discs work is by shining a layer through the clear plastic and bouncing it off a mirrored layer of aluminium in the center of the disc. (Well, for pre-pressed discs. MO and CD-R/RW discs work differently)

But FlexPlay discs add a layer of dye between the aluminum and the plastic. This dye is initially transparent to the red laser used by DVD players (did you know that's why blu-rays are called that? They use blue lasers instead of the red lasers used by DVD , and the infrared lasers used by CDs), so it can be read just fine.

But they made the dye react with oxygen. As soon as the airless bag the disc is stored in is opened, the dye starts darkening, eventually becoming unreadable. So once you have opened the disc, you better watch it soon, or it will be unreadable.

This format technically lived on until 2011 before being discontinued, but it doesn't seem like it was terribly popular at any point. Part of this was probably that it couldn't live up to the dream of selling a film on a disc you made for pennies, and making tons of profit. Making the discs was tricky, as you had to make them in special inert-atmosphere conditions to keep them from prematurely darkening.

Anyway the final joke of FlexPlay is that they haven't been made since 2011, and while they were sold in air-tight packages, nothing is PERFECTLY airtight. So all the ones for sale have had the bags leak over the last 12+ years, and are prematurely unreadable. Whoops.

Anyway now that physical media is dead, movie companies finally have their time-limited rental they've always wanted. Streaming makes this trivial.

And two final notes:

1. There's not really any lost-media risk with these two formats. All DIVX-only films were later released on DVD when the format ranked. And all FlexPlay films had already gotten DVD releases, so there was never any risk.

2. My buddy Technology Connections did a video in FlexPlay a while ago, if you want to learn more about it.

[mudwerks]

(via Internet Archive Responds to Recording Industry Lawsuit Targeting Obsolete Media | Internet Archive Blogs)

Statement from Brewster Kahle, digital librarian of the Internet Archive:

“When people want to listen to music they go to Spotify. When people want to study 78rpm sound recordings as they were originally created, they go to libraries like the Internet Archive. Both are needed. There shouldn’t be conflict here.”

These preservation recordings are used in teaching and research, including by university professors like Jason Luther of Rowan University, whose students use the Great 78 collection as the basis for researching and writing podcasts for use in class assignments (University Professor Leverages 78rpm Record Collection From the Internet Archive for Student Podcasts, June 9, 2021). While this mode of access is important, usage is tiny—on average, each recording in the collection is only accessed by one researcher per month.

The recording industry truly are a bunch of greedy morons that don’t give a fuck about music or the artists who create it...

just MONEY for themselves

[ocelotrevs]

I've played a couple of my old DVDs over the last few weeks, and I had forgotten how much stuff was on them.

one of the many victims of streaming is the dvd homepage where they included lil games, bloopers, director commentary, and behind the scenes. I miss u gurl

[reubeningall]

Happy Fourth of July! I'm playing a live score with Marlene Radice at Smiths Alternative for Soundscapes #47 on Thursday. I haven't grown this collection in the last 5 years so lemme know if you need a good home for one 🛸

[miscpav]

Laserdisc 'Dead Side' from Technidisc

This is the beginning of an unused side of a laserdisc manufactured by Technidisc.  The more familiar "dead sides" are the ones with the upside-down turtle on Pioneer discs, but other manufacturers used different messages.

This is just 15 seconds, but the entire side runs 25 minutes (in CAV with analog sound only), with the message cutting to black at 24 minutes.  Technidisc was regarded as the absolute worst laserdisc manufacturer and often called names like Technideath or Technicrap; many of their discs have an unacceptable amount of video noise.  This particular one is remarkably good, especially considering the standards for the dead sides were never as high as the sides with actual material on them.  Technidisc made audio CDs too which experts say were just as bad but most CD players had good enough error correction so the average person wouldn't notice.  The company went out of business around 1996 (the oldest laserdisc I've seen from them is dated 1983), and nobody was sad about it.  One thing I liked about their discs though was that they often had the exact date they were mastered stamped on them.

[foone]

VHD! It's the Japanese answer to the CED.

Mine is City Hunter, Disc II.

This is a cartridge containing a vinyl disc (like a record!) but it encodes analog NTSC video.

Just like CED it never really caught on, but there were a few neat uses of it: some VHD players could be controlled by an MSX computer, so there were games where it did Dragon's Lair type tricks, where it switches between different video tracks under computer control.

[the-punforgiven]

Hey do the kids of today know about the vast overlap between flails and greatswords

[100percentdirtball]

i tweeted about making a bootleg vhs copy of I Saw The TV Glow and Jane Schoenbrun r/t'd it and now ig a lot of people want them so i'm starting a business lmao

[conservethis]

was very disappointed this wasn’t about a Laserdisc resurgence

we're so back

[pb-s-corner]

I saw there are still people who think Mogeko Castle Gaiden never had any progress or is cancelled, so I searched for any behind the scenes content and...

She was ACTUALLY WORKING ON IT, before the project went on a hiatus.

ALL OF THIS PICTURES ARE PUBLIC, THEY ARE NOT BEHIND ANY PAYWALL, you just need to search correctly on her ci-en.

I'm specially intrigued with this one

I don't know japanese, but I'm sure the general is in somekind of mogeko heaven, also, hi Hasu!

(Reblog are apreciated, not much people know this info I don't want more fans to belive this game never made any progress, because from what I gathered, it looked like it already had the structure)

[bad0mens]

So.

(mental health rant below)

I tried and failed to take a social media break for the better part of the day because my day started with a prolonged anxiety episode where it felt like I was on fire all morning and constantly on the verge of tears and did not want to be perceived at all.

A lot of things happened today which I won't go into detail on. I was supposed to have a nice afternoon out with my sister for my birthday, but I had a breakdown and couldn't. I spent most of the afternoon sleeping with a migraine from crying. There are things about myself that I'm uncomfortable with, truths that I know are hard ingrained but I can't break. But I'm trying.

I failed my social media break because I couldn't stop checking in to socials to make sure my friends were okay, even if I wasn't interacting with them. I had to know the people I care about are okay, even if doing so was continuing to ramp up my anxiety to the breaking point. I want to help. I want to be there for people. But sometimes I feel like I can't even help myself. So what good is that? What good is my help? What good am I?

I'm feeling a little better now. Still tired, washed out and sore. That won't be changing soon. But I'll muddle through like always.

But if you're reading this, please know I'm trying my hardest for you. I have trouble with caring for myself so I do it for others.

I'm okay. I'll be okay.

[thoughtcontainment]

Eno is one of my personal deities.

that Brian Eno quote about how whatever you find most repulsive about a medium (film grain, record scratches/fuzz, CDs skipping) will be the first thing you try and emulate once that medium is obsolete because it's "the sign of a moment too powerful for the medium assigned to contain it".... man.......

[1863-project]

The funniest thing to me about analogue horror as a genre is that if those VHS tapes are being stumbled upon now, roughly 30 years after they were made, if they weren't stored in ideal conditions there's a good chance they're already demagnetized and won't play back correctly at all

[mbrainspaz]

people: THE NEWS MEDIA AREN'T COVERING THIS

me who hasn't ever really watched TV news in my adult life except when it happened to be on at my grandma's house: 🤷🏻

I'm not saying I 'don't watch the news.' I talk to my friends around the world, read some articles, and follow first hand social media accounts in places where I want to know what's going on.

[thefirstvessel]

I find it absolutely fascinating that liminal haunted house horror got a huge spike in popularity not too long after the start of a traumatic global event that forced us all involuntarily into our homes for uncomfortably long amounts of time.

It's fun finding cultural anxieties in horror, man.