RECORDABLE ‘Laserdisc’ - Sony CRVdisc

Recordable ‘Laserdisc’ wasn’t sold to the public but really did exist and I've got one to show you.
This video features Sony CRVdisc - a 12" Recordable Laser Videodisc system designed for professional use. Destined to be thrown away in a skip* but rescued for one last job.

Thanks to Dave & Ken on Patreon for their help with this one.
Special thanks to Paul for donating (and delivering) the machine and discs.

Links to things mentioned:
BBC News over the years

Predicted ‘correction’
You might have noticed that the specs for the LVR-5000 show it could record 43,500 stills - whereas in the video I mentioned my LVR-6000 recorded 36,250 stills. Yep both facts are true and accurate. I don’t know why the LVR-6000 recorded fewer stills than its predecessor- but it did. I checked the disc and it only goes up to 36,501 (the first recordable frame is number 1).

Real corrections and Addendums.
The CRVplayer I mentioned that didn’t sell on eBay wasn’t £15 - it was £25

Clarification:
As we all know - CD-Rs can be written in multi sessions as long as they aren’t finalised.

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*A skip is similar to a 'dumpster'.

[wimwiddershins]

"Look Mum, there's a tiny man holding a floppy disk!"

[tvkling]

Thank you for the link to my documentary about the EditDroid. I’m glad it finally found a bigger audience and the EditDroid got the credit it deserves.

[Fanuc_Operator]

"Uncle techmoan, tell us the story of the laserdisc again please!"

"Well it all started back in 1969 with DISCOVISION...."

[tolerpro]

Great episode! Brought back fond memories. In 1993, I worked for Metrolight Studios in Hollywood where we did the ink and paint for the Beavis and Butthead and Ren And Stimpy animated TV series for MTV. We used the Panasonic version of this machine to proof animation. We did the ink and paint on DOS PCs running our proprietary animation software and would print a frame at a time to the WORM drive which was then played back at normal speed to check for paint flashes and other errors. Final approved animation was output, again one frame at a time to an Abekas digital recorder (a fine English product!) which was then run off to one inch analog video tape synced to sound for final delivery. No film was used in the process which saved lots of money in production. The major drawback with this process is that there will never be film-quality copies available of these shows for posterity.

[Techmoan]

As always there’s a bit more information in the *Video Description Text Box*

[BillyPilgrim]

I always imagine Mrs moan seeing the postman coming up the path with a heavy parcel and letting a deep sigh out as she wonders where you are going to store the next bit of tech

[calwong]

I storyboarded that Regular Show episode, so cool to see a couple seconds of it on your channel!!! I wish it wouldve worked, but maybe we would not be ready for the consequences of that

[DaveDuca]

In the nineties, we used both the CRV and the Pioneer VDR-1000 on corporate AV shows. Though the VDR was more expensive initially, being able to rewrite more than made up for that. Quickly, we started phasing out the CRVs. One client would bring two or three hours of video clips for each week's show, and I would spend a bit of load-in time ingesting and being librarian. We had a custom Mac based program that another client had written, and allowed me to use, that would allow for easy and simple playlists. The end client never really used a script for the three day shows, and these often went way over schedule. Being able to follow a speaker who could literally bounce anywhere content wise on stage made for a very random access show. For years, we never had a rehearsal, and also almost never missed a queue. They were amazing machines. Thank you for finding one to show.

[gtoger]

Thanks very much for this video on a really interesting "transitional" technology. Another use case from the broadcast industry is when Fox Sports in the US obtained the NFL broadcast rights. At the time, they had zero infrastructure which allowed them to build from the ground up. They used a system with "LaserDisc" technology for instant replay systems, which offered a lot of advantages over the tape-based systems from the "legacy networks". I remember reading about this in Broadcast World magazine at the time, back when people mocked and laughed at Fox. This technology helped them leapfrog other broadcasters to become the new standard by which sports broadcasts would be judged. (and here you thought I just made tow truck videos.)

[StoneyK]

Those sequences of images flipping through rapidly always remind me of Data on the bridge of the Enterprise searching through the library computer. I wouldn't even be surprised if they used one of these machines to make that exact effect.

[adammedbery]

I'd love to get an LD with that episode of Regular Show on it. I'm really glad you knew about it.

If I had the ability, I would record the format wars onto the various formats represented in the show, LD would be the hardest to do.

[keithowen]

Back in 2000 I worked at the California Department of Justice and those disks were part of my tasks. On a console one of the messages I had to watch for would be that machine wanting a disk. On all the disk were all of California fingerprint records, the machine could hold a lot but not all the disk. So, when I saw a message saying it wanted disk 435 I had to find it in cabinets and pull out what looked like a pizza box. Of course the machine was full so I had to eject a disk (at random usually the highest number) and then load 435 into the matching. I always wondered how that machine work and now I see, an attached computer had a fingerprint to lookup and would then go frame by frame comparing trying to make a match, when it made a match it would report back to the officer with the frame info. Very enlightening, I really enjoy watching and learning with your videos. Cheers.

[cromulence]

I believe BBC used these to play out idents in the early nineties as they are truly broadcast quality devices - would love to see what they look like direct from disc.

Thanks for yet another amazingly rare treat that would otherwise never see the light of day! Happy Christmas Matt :)

[mspysu]

These machines were also used in the production of animations and special effects for the Babalon 5 series. When the series premiered the graphics and animations where produced on Commodore Amiga 2500's with Video Toaster hardware, with some frames taking 4-6 hours to render on the Amiga. At first special "annimation" versions 0f the standard Sony BVH-3000 series VTRS where tried for the recording of the rendered frames but they were too expensive and needed some manual tending during the recording process. The VTR's where replaced by Sony CRV machines which were controlled by custom software in the Amiga through the Amiga's GPIO port and the process became automated, it was also extended to later animation systems under Mac and DEC Alpha computers.

[Alan_Mac]

Techmoan's house is 10% living space and 90% attic. Great stuff, though.

[skittlesryan]

The recording of the outro really gives a very strong 90's feel to it. I really like it.

[ms_enj]

I used to work with these in the motion simulator industry. The individual frame counts were sent over a serial port to a computer that controlled the movement of a motion base. The earlier machines were based on U-Matic and SMPTE time coding. These were far more reliable...

[smiththers]

I absolutely love seeing such obscure tech. I fall in the middle group of your audience who knew of laser disc, but not the recordable varients.

[helge]

Merry Christmas to you too, Techmoan! Funny enough I for once belong to the group using these devices back in the day:
The TV station I worked for used laser disks right to the middle of the 2000's as emergency programme playback devices (ie. in case of some equipment malfunction) because it could play back an endless loop (opposed to tape drives).
I've actually seen it in action a few times: The building was new and fire alarms went off for no reason. Everyone was required to evacuate the building however - switching over to laser disk in the process :)

[djdjukic]

I actually went to the edge of my seat when the pictures started playing: it WAS just like in the movies! All that was missing was 90s trance playing in the background...