Comment by BonesJustice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BonesJustice | Hacker News Reader

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> As a means of playing back video, its reliance on a low-resolution SDTV display made it inferior even to a computer with a VGA monitor.

No kidding. Its reliance on low-resolution MPEG-1 for video meant VCDs compared poorly even to VHS. I believe the NTSC discs had roughly similar horizontal resolution to VHS, but only about half the vertical resolution. I suppose the quality would be similar in theory, as the VCDs were not interlaced like VHS, but that wasn't my experience.

I had Star Trek II and a couple other movies on CD-I video discs, and my first impression was, "wow, I can barely make out these opening credits."

I do, however, credit my CD-I for giving me early exposure to the VCD format. I had a CD-R back before most people even knew they existed (they were still called WORM drives), and I put together a few school projects on VCD.

In a similar boat; I got a CD-I with the add-on MPEG-1 module (picked up for $20 for a floor-model clearance table in the late-90s), but in my eyes the big failure of VCD as a format was needing two discs per movie.

VCD's aren't that terrible though (a 4head Hifi VCR though would look better), here's a recording of the opening of the Matrix with some trailers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRElGEgHzEE

VCD's never really made it into piracy. If I recall at the time the Warez scene was using Vivo Active [1] (H.263 video and G.723 ADPCM audio) splitting videos at 650Mb, which gave greater fidelity than MPEG-1 in a smaller package. I think that only lasted a year or so until DiVX/Xvid came along.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivo_Software

I can recall a period when pirated MPEG-2 SVCDs could be found easily enough. It was mostly during that period where DVD players were commonplace, but DVD burners were rare. I think some players (Apex?) could even play MPEG-4 video off of CDs, though I don't think that was a standardized format.

Regardless, pirated SVCDs were nowhere near as common as the h.263 discs you mentioned, and you're right about MPEG-1 VCDs. I don't recall seeing (m)any pirated movies in that format.

> a 4head Hifi VCR though would look better

I'm suddenly missing my old Sony SLV-N81 :).

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