Comments by "Neil Forbes" (@neilforbes416) on "Laserdisc's Failure: What Went Wrong" video.

  1. 3:50 Not "channel", rather, what station to tune into. Was it a CBS, NBC or ABC station, or was it PBS, or was it that filthy scourge of TV, Fox Network?
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  2. You tuned in to a STATION, not a channel! On a typical Australian colour TV set of the mid-1970s, you had a rotary tuner with thirteen channels(some sets had a UHF tuner that was activated by either a 14th position on the VHF tuner, or one of the unused channels swapped out with the "biscuit" that activated the UHF tuner, or, you pressed a button that selected between the tuners. Some sets only had VHF). Depending on whether you were in a capital city or a regional centre, you'd have a choice of two or four statons. In NSW for instance, if you were in Sydney you'd get the following: Ch.0 - hash; Ch.1 - hash; Ch.2 - Station ABN(ABC TV Sydney key station); Ch.3 - weak signal from Station NBN-Newcastle*; Ch.4 -slightly stronger signal from Station WIN-Wollongong*; Ch.5 - Weak signal from Station ABHN-Newcastle(ABC regional staton)*; Ch.5a - hash; Ch.6 - weak signal from translator for Station WIN-Wollongong*; Ch.7 - Station ATN-Sydney; Ch.8 - hash; Ch.9 - Station TCN-Sydney; Ch.10 - Station TEN(which should've been UTN)-Sydney; Ch.11 - hash(or weak signal from another of WIN's translators*). *Depended on where you were in the Sydney "basin", how good your antenna was and prevailing weather conditions. The point I'm making is, that a channel without a station to broadcast a signal thereon, is worthless.
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  3. There was one problem: The Irish VCR - Recorded the shows you didn't want to watch, and played them back when you weren't at home(modern equivalent, Irish digital PVR). LOL
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  4. Actually, the advent of home video was less-than-innocent. Early machines were used to view tapes of pornographic movies...."naughty-flicks"!
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  5. Prototype Beta machines and tapes were around in 1972. I saw one on display at a hi-fi shop in Newcastle, Australia back then. I just stood and stared at it for what seemed like ages. Only trouble was, colour TV was still almost three years away so trying to record anything would be futile and the tuner would not be compatible with the 13-channel VHF-only CCIR system employed by Australian stations. Add to that, the shop's staff were too busy with other customers to be bothered demonstrating this new-fangled gadget to a 17-year-old, as I was back then.
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  6. Laserdisc had one massive STIGMA to overcome, which it NEVER did. That was that it was a Philips invention. And like so much of Philips' inventions, it was always OTHER companies outside of, and totally unaffiliated with Philips that made product FAR SUPERIOR to the crap Philips spewed out!
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  7. One correction: Known STATION at known time! A channel is nothing more than a chunk of spectrum space(7Mhz for PAL-system colour broadcasting, 6Mhz for NTSC in the analogue days - we'll ignore SECAM as it was a rubbish system). Without the STATION to broadcast its programme content across that range of bandwidth, you would get only static hash, same as when the station closed down for the night, as they did in the 1970s. A channel produces nothing, employs no-one, earns no revenue, pays no salaries, it can't, because a channel is ethereal. A channel's only physical representation is in the circuitry of the tuner used to select it. As you turn that knob(in those old days) your set goes clunk-clunk-clunk through 13, 15 or maybe 20 VHF channels but there may only be signals on three, they'd be the NBC, CBS or ABC affiliate for your area, or if your in a small town, you'd have two stations, each independent and carrying their pick of content from the three major networks plus some local shows produced in their own studios. The remaining channels will be blank unless a stray signal comes a-wafting its way past your antenna and it might be a distant independent or a network affiliate that you might sniff it up on Ch.6. Put it this way, if you're in an art gallery and see a painting that grabs your attention, do you give credit to a] the artist who worked and sweated blood to create it, or b] the canvas on which it was painted, ignoring the artist's efforts? Crediting the channel for TV shows is like crediting the canvas for the painting.
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  8. Again I'll clarify. A programme is broadcast by a station, not a channel. Without a station to transmit its signal, a channel would give forth nothing but static hash, "snow". That was the case in the analogue days but in digital, if you hit the wrong key on your remote, you'll be greeted with "Invalid Channel" as there is no signal available on that channel.
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