There was this arcade/play place I went to in middle school where one of the claw machine like games in it, no joke, had a DivX copy of A Bug's Life in it. This was 2013. (The rest were regular DVDs.)
not a popular opinion, but "a bug's life" is one of my very favorites of pixar's... it is, after all, a more 'family-friendly' version of orwell's "animal farm"... without the terrifying "horse getting trucked off to the glue factory" scene... ;0 a divx "bug's life" would've maybe alluded to - and implanted in the child's mind - the travesty of the whole concept of disposable dvds/anything plastic... "mmmooommmmaaa!!! my fav'rit mooooveeee wooonn't plllaayyyyy!!!" (insert mommy trying to explain why...) whole concept is so metaphor; picturing some exec/head-accountant at some movie-studio back in the day, first reading about the concept at their desk... a) 48-hour disposable dvds, vs ... b) future landfills too dense with non-recyclable plastics ... c) open spreadsheet with the bottom-line of negligible advantages (short-term profits; long-term loss) ... accountant sighs, clicks 'approve' like we do on software-agreements these days
Selling DVDs that deliberately degrade over a short period of time is so absurd, so unscrupulous and so aggressively idiotic that, well, I'm actually not surprised they did it.
+generalcoon47 I know, right? I would have been scared to death to stick any of those discs in ANY player ... I mean, how do we know the corrosive stuff inside the disks couldn't contaminate the laser?
Back in the late 90s and Early 2000s, during the twilight period of the Dot Com era, there was this push for trying to latch onto anything "Cutting Edge" for a quick Cash Grab, so Investors Savy Businessman from Corporations would instantly cook up any Gimmick that sounded good on paper as long as it guaranteed a quick profit. Problem was, most were so incredibly half baked that its execution results often turned out both short-sided and asinine. I mean did the idiots who thought up DVD D/Flex Play ever consider the thought of DVD overtaking VHS by 2002 and its masters costs significantly dropping by the mid 2000s?
Disposable movies sound good for a movie you want to check out to see if you'd like it for your home video/DVD collection but you can be rid of it if you don't (like I would be if Into the Woods had come out in that format, GOD that depressing piece of bat guano). Then again, we're much better off with movies we can watch once on sites like Netflix and get off the watch list after and never see again.
27:17 My hypothesis is this: The laser in the bluray player can read through the chemical damage, but only on the first layer. After the layer transition, there is too much material that is now opaque, that the laser cannot penetrate. With the fact it dies at that exact spot, at what would be a layer transition, is an almost perfect explanation of this zombie disc phenomenon.
Yeah, that's likely exactly it. Blu-ray players have stronger lasers than DVD players, since the die is packed tighter on Blu-ray. Odd that his PC drive wouldn't read it though.
@@drfsupercenterwell it may be using stil la seperate laser vs nowdaus likely fwiw prolly more easu to biild with one laser fwiw to switch between colors for cd dvd an blu ray.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what happened just a year after its initial release, plus Circuit City ended up going out of business just a decade later (part of the reason why they went out of business was from the failed DIVX format).
I purchased a few of these expiring DVD's just out of curiosity. One lasted over a week and the others lasted nearly 4 days. Also there is nothing stopping you from making a copy of the disc on the first day you open it.
I bought one of these from Staples in 2008 when they were carrying them for 99 cents. This is when Sony's ARccOS protection was in full force, and guess what - the FlexPlay disc had it too. So I couldn't rip it normally, DVD Decrypter and similar programs would fail with read errors right away. I was able to use AnyDVD to rip an image of it, but yeah... based on my one purchase of FlexPlay the discs would use the same encryption/copy protection as the retail discs, take that how you will.
After the AVGN thing this is almost the standard expectation. I myself would hope some weird thing like - number for some random construction site. I dunno.
METTING AT DVD HEADQUARTERS (that's what it's, called right?) "George, we've got to think of something we can make a profit on... DivX didn't do so great, but I feel the idea of an alternate rental system could earn us quite a lot of money." "I know, boss! Let's make a type of DVD that physically fucking DESTROYS ITSELF over a period of time!" "Brilliant! Here's a $50,000 raise!"
So a supposedly "self-destructed" DVD that actually still plays halfway through…was a real attempt at rights management of commercial films. Even more evidence that truth is more ironic than fiction, I suppose.
Keep in mind, it plays halfway through on a Blu-ray player, but those didn't exist when FlexPlay was created. Notice how it didn't work on any of his other equipment. So if you bought this in 2004, it would have worked as intended and been unplayable on your devices after a day or two.
3:38 Hey, that's my family's first DVD player (circa 9 October 1999)! We still have that hooked up in the living room as it has outlasted every DVD player (and even my first Blu-Ray player) we have owned. I just wish that models still had navigation buttons on them as it makes it so much easier if you have misplaced the remote (like we have done dozens of times).
Yes, that's a feature I do miss that seemed to be dropped from later-model DVD players around 2000-01 or so. I still have a ca. 1998 Curtis Mathes DVD player that has the navigation controls on the front of the player itself. So convenient having those controls there for those missing remote moments :)
You've got the disposal DVD formats done, now you should do the DVD-Video off-shoots introduced in the late 1990s to late 2000s. These formats are as follows: Interactive DVD - 1998 DVD singles - 1999 Superbit - 2001 DVDplus - 2002 AniMini DVD - 2004 Pre-recorded Mini-DVD from Warner Home Video - 2004 DualDisc - 2005 MVI (Music Video Interactive) - 2007 I wish to see these DVD-Video off-shoots being featured in a future Oddity Archive episode.
I hate to be that "but ackshually" guy, but... everyone keeps mentioning Superbit as some sort of DVD spinoff, when it isn't at all. Superbit *is* DVD, it's a silly name given to their (at the time revolutionary idea?) process of using a higher-than-normal bitrate to get better quality than other companies' discs. They would have just the movie and no extra features, on a dual-layer disc, that's really all it is/was. Nothing special about it, and by the time Superbit came around every other studio was doing the exact same thing... I have plenty of those "2 disc collector's edition" releases where disc 1 is the movie on a dual layer disc and disc 2 has all the extras. I can't speak for any of those others, but they are likely similar things. The mini DVDs comply to the DVD specifications, they're just...smaller. Also while that pre-recorded mini DVD thing was a failure, there were camcorders that used recordable mini DVDs, I got one for my dad in the 2000s. I just googled AniMiniDVD and it's the same exact thing. Just 3" discs, but otherwise DVD-Video standards compliant. DualDisc is perhaps the only one that's actually "different", because the thicker disc required to put audio on one side and video on the other means it doesn't actually comply with the Philips red-book CD spec, and thus isn't allowed to carry the compact disc logo. I am not sure about the video side, but it might be the same way. They claimed it "should work" with any CD players, but it's "technically" not redbook compliant.
EZ-D sounds like such a tacky name that was created by a boardroom full of old corporate dinks. This entire system screams "dumb" Nothing says "wasted profits and extra trash" quite like this.
Just had a look through the Wayback Machine, and apparently they closed down the site except a rebate form sometime before October of 1999, and then the site went quiet, supposedly indicating the lack of a registrar for the website. Then, in 2001, someone registered the site and had it link to a "Mayo Project" codec called DivX that originally had no relation to the Digital Video Express, LP company name, but sometime between then and now a few management changes seem to have caused the codec to take on the old Divx name. But no, the codec there isn't the encrypted Divx format, sadly. EDIT: Although, I do admit that it is pretty cool to see the "time lapse" as the name changed hands.
Suggestion for next Oddity Archive: Modern Day Format Wars-HD DVD vs Blu-Ray Featuring discussion on what led to the death of HD DVD. This is one Future Oddity that has now already come about! :D
Callie Ray. My hometown somehow still has a Family Video. I have no idea how, my town is just as "with the times" as any other town its size(about 25,000 people, so decent sized). I do see people going in and coming out with movies though(not just old people), so I guess people still go actually rent physical movies for some reason...?
Chloie Kwirant I live in a small town that seems similar to how Ben described Aurora, and we have a couple Family Videos. I think what it comes down to is that enough people in this area can't afford decent internet and a subscription to Netflix or Hulu (or at least they think they can't because FV is cheaper for a single rental?)
3:38 -- My dad got that same DVD player for Christmas in 1999. I love the fact that you can still use it if you lose the (really large) remote (somehow). Months earlier, he got a Sony VAIO that had a built-in DVD ROM drive along with a 21" Sony Trinitron monitor. I was blown away at how HUGE that monitor was at the time.
The OddityArchive now sells explosive discs: Forgotten to bring back the episode of OddityArchive? No worries! As soon as you play it, mini nuke detonators will blow up causing the end of the world! Y O U R W E L C O M E
Perhaps they should have considered adopting this self-destructing technology for use in porn DVDs: 48 hours of use, after which it rots. Who knows -- it might have made Flexplay a HUGE hit (if the porn was cheap enough). As has often been stated, porn drives technology.
At 15:02, the video paused for buffering on me. I thought it was some witty joke about discs failing without even being played. Then I saw that it really was just buffering. I was so disappointed.
I remember when the EZ-Ds started popping up at the local circle K for $3. I remember being offended by the conspicuous waste of it. I quickly realized there was nothing practical stopping them from making a really cheap DVD without an inherent self destruct mechanism. until I saw this video, I thought they were designed to only start degrading after exposure to a player laser, that would be more slick than what it actually was. I guess the new version is a little closer to that, but, I still see it as a terrible idea.
Hollywood video was always way better than blockbuster. The only reason I went to blockbuster was either late fees at hollywood or I needed to go somewhere within biking range.
I remember when DIVX came out, and I passed on it mainly for the same reason most did-people generally don't like proprietary, retailer-specific technologies, epecially when it was essentially competing against a virtually identical product, but which was also typically available in widescreen format. Why would someone pay for DIVX silver when you could simply buy a regular DVD that had no restrictions? While the concept of a cheap, play on demand format at the time was not inherently bad, DIVX was mainly created to compete with the emerging rental market, but even in that limited capacity, it simply couldn't sustain itself. Flexplay was just a terrible idea, period.
Yeah, I remember hearing about the Flexplay. Disney was wanting to be one of the major players in this format. However at the end cooler heads prevailed, when they realized...these disks would be in the landfill for a good long time. Also many of us wanted to re-watch our movies forever and ever.
+Specter227 Oddly this is the first episode I've seen in a while that DOESN'T have Code Lyoko on the sidebar or related vids at the end. Instead I'm getting mostly Ben's other videos... and some dude who's uploading French movies.
+Foxhack I think that in the last few months the way the sidebar works has changed quite a bit, since I have noticed that what shows up for me is no longer videos with similar words but stuff actually based on things I have already watched, though that in it's self is a problem since it only ever shows me things that I have already watched or know exists but have no interest in watching... so yeah... it's pretty much become a forced version of that useless recommended video feature that no one uses, go youtube.
In other words, he watched Caddy Shack in Groundhog Day mode. Only a fool would pay that much for a rental. New release movies were not that expensive at Blockbuster.
I can safely say that disposable discs (DIVX & Flexplay) are the worst forms of Physical Media! Why would you want to own a full-frame/widescreen barebones release of a catalog title that lasts for only 48 hours like a Pay-Per-View ordering window and as a video rental? Certainly not me! This has got to be the dumbest idea in the planet and I'm glad it failed! I want to own a movie that I can watch many times without any problems and I'm happy I chose better formats like DVD, Blu-rays and 4K UHDs. Even older physical media formats like VHS, S-VHS, D Theater, Betamax, Laserdisc and U-matic are better than DIVX and Flexplay. At least DivX exist as a video encode software!
There is no way to trick the player, but there might be ways to stop the rot from happening. I would imagining putting glue or something around the edges might stop air form getting inside the disc.
Ben, i just wanted to say i enjoy your channel and as a history buff i like the history lessons on each episode. Keep up the good work. A suggestion for a future episode, the quadraphonic records and 8-tracks of the 1970's.
The DSS video is oddly appropriate, actually. It also required a phone line for pay-per-view. My family had one, so the menus in the video bring back a lot of memories!
+Michael Mangi (theblackdog) I believe the outer edges is also the area a dvd player actually reads first, so that would make the disc it's self unreadable. My theory is that he was only able to play it because he had left it in the dvd player with it running all that time.
StefanSreto Yeah, but the movie may not start from there, that could be where the menus start since they're usually one of the first things you see. So I get what Kandi Gloss means
As you can see in the video, it doesn't work in DVD players or PC drives that use red layers (it's rejected or doesn't read). But wiki states that blue lasers (i.e. the one's used in blu-ray players - that's where the name comes from) can get through the darkened disc layer due to the different wavelength of light that they use. EDIT: According to some websites 1:20:20 is the time that the layer change (for Dual Layer DVD-9 discs) occurs. Interestingly, the home video logo and FBI copyright warnings are held in this area - that would be understandable why the DVD player read it then rejected it - it couldn't ignore the user operation prohibition flag on those bits - but bluray players can ignore it IF it finds the film itself - i've noticed this on some DVD's i've played on my Bluray player it will ignore the warning and go right into the film, my region-free DVD player won't ignore the warnings.
InsaneGamers Bluray players typically have 2-3 lasers in them. You have the blue laser for Blu-rays, the red laser for DVDs, and a near infared laser for CDs. Very early players (and even some newer players) can't play cds but can play DVDs. The blue laser can't read the DVD due to its shorter wavelength (405 nm vs 660 nm) in addition to some other factors.
If Ben was British, Ihave a feeling he would have already done ITV startups by now. Although if American TV stations went on strike the way the BBC and ITV did back in the day, then that would be interesting.
Your story of a PC DVD and your collection gives me memories. My PC DVD: Like you, I bought it because I wanted to have any DVD player. I had just spent a fortune buying a Pentium II with the money from my first real job and couldn't afford much, but I saw an ad for a DVD drive on sale at the Egghead software superstore (a short lived concept) deep on the other side of the city. I drove out to find it, almost giving up getting lost trying to find the place. Eventually I got the drive and made for home. I made a couple of stops on the way (a Suncoast and somewhere else) to pick up my original collection which I remember like yours, all different as the standard DVD Keep Case was not yet a thing. Blade Runner: The Director's Cut. A standard WB solid cardboard box with plastic tray Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The first edition used the poster image of Arnold sitting on the bike. The Usual Suspects. The first edition of this DVD is one of the oddest cases in DVD history. It's a solid square plastic like a CD, but you don't fold the case open. You pull the disk out of the top. It's the only of of the old cases I kept just for this. The collection grew from there (12 Monkeys came next) eventually becoming an obsession until at some point it just stopped mattering.
I remember "flexplay" as redbox, like the modern rental kiosks, when it was in it's testing phase since I knew some one that was involved with it somehow. Can anyone confirm that I'm just not miss-remembering? also, I'm slightly disappointed, that there was no visual video corruption on the zombie disc.
I suspect the reason that the blu-ray player, but not the computer players nor the dvd player would play the disk is because the stand alone blu-ray uses its single, blue laser diode to read all media. Your computer players are, I'm willing to bet, writers as well, which contain multiple laser diodes. They use the appropriate color diode to read CD's and DVD's instead of using the blue one. I suspect the oxidation/corrosion layer can be read 'through' with a fine enough laser most of the time, and in addition the corrosion may not be as opaque to the blu-ray's 'blue' as it is to the dvd's laser (which is IR I think). Where it crapped out is just where the damage was the worst and it couldn't skip over it to continue. The corrosion on the end being the worst makes sense, because the central hub has to be strong due to the torque it absorbs, so the 'leaking' would come in from the outer edge. And CD/DVD/Blu-Ray are done backwards to the way a vinyl record is, the beginning is in the middle of the disk. (Laserdisks are I believe the same). Supposedly the reason the consortium that created CD decided to use that style was because they thought it was more likely the edge would get damaged, and the disc would still be playable with said damage.
Per another video on Flexplay from Technology Connections, the black is actually transparent to blue lasers. That's why a fresh Flexplay disk has a red sheen: so it can never be played with a blue laser, even when fresh. That said, most Blu-Ray players actually use a separate red laser for playing DVDs and CDs.
Re: VCR tape rentals. I never rented a VHS tape, being the miser I am I borrowed them free from the local library for 24 hours. Almost invariably the evening I planned to watch a film company stopped by, phone calls, etc. Any other night, nothing. No company, no phone calls. Never failed. Finally I just gave up and didn't borrow any more.
Lol! I still have A DIVX copy of Tomorrow Never Dies. It's one of few releases on DIVX. I worked for Circuit City in High School and would just get the unlock code for them and keep them as regular discs. Wonder if it would still play...
Is there some irony that I remember seeing these things being sold at Staples and...of course, Circuit City. A soon to be defunct store selling soon to be defunct products. Wonderful.
Loved this episode! I've always found the format slightly fascinating. Didn't know anything about Flexplay, so that was a nice bonus. Great ending, too! :D
The "dd" tool on LInux (or Mac) would've been a better alternative to make a RAW copy of the disc. At least partly. Still a nice episode! :) I've never seen any of these discs, although you mentioned we have disposable DVDs here in Germany.
Very informative episode...having not jumped on the DVD bandwagon until getting my first player for Xmas 99, didn't even know DIVX was a thing (as it was discontinued only a few months before) and was only marginally aware of its spiritual successor, Flexplay/eZ-D, much less the technology which caused said discs to self-destruct after a short time.
The beginning made me jump for some reason. Maybe because I had it kinda loud and it went from silence to music. Scarier than most jump scares though, and I'm not kidding
I work with one of the companies that helped develop divx, I don’t remember this tech so it took a long time before I realized they weren’t talking about the codec haha. I was curious about what it really looked like, so thanks for the video.
Hey, it could have been worse on that original batch of DVDs circa 1998. I remember my first DVD was Digimon the Movie. And I had to watch it the exact same way you did, in a computer with a DVD-ROM drive.
Thank god I didn't have to experience my first DVD like that. My parents never let me use the computer when I was a little kid, I always had to use it when they were at work.
+Bobby JK Me too! At the time I got my DivX player, the cheapest DVD player I could find was around $300. The DivX player was around $350, so I decided to spend a little extra to get that functionality. But it turned out that I hardly ever watched DivX disks, and when they discontinued it and I got my refund I wound up with a fairly nice, fully functional DVD player for about $50 less than anything I could have gotten at the time. Sweet!
+Gator Girl Yeah, I remember making out better on that deal as well. I think my DivX collection included a couple of those featured on this episode. I know Breakfast Club was one of them.
I had that dvd player (similar, it hadn't the little knob in middle of right panel) on 3:40, it was an beautiful machine. That's a pity one lighting hit near my house and destroyed it :(
Maybe Bluray players can read "expired" flexplay discs, because they use blue laser (blue ray, get it?) that can see through the blue dye. The unplayble portions just naturally rotted due to shitty quality of the disc itself.
+Worstplayer I've actually noticed bluray players can handle some scratched and damaged discs very well. I bought a used Sony one (old model, but it was seven bucks) and it read some movies I couldn't play on my other player just fine.
Per the Technology Connections video (a) Bluray players use a separate laser for DVDs, but (b) they could theoretically use the blue laser for DVDs, and that _would_ indeed see through the dye, and therefore (c) Flexplay discs also have a red dye, and a fresh Flexplay disc is bright red, blocking blue lasers.
My first DVD player was also via a desktop computer. My mom had to replace an old computer and the new one had a DVD drive. I recall the first DVD I ever bought being a cheap basic copy of The Fox And The Hound which I got from a Disney Store back when malls still had those.
Just uploaded the intro from a regular Flexplay DVD: ua-cam.com/video/2dYJwEJaONM/v-deo.html (Noel, their very first title had its own intro which I've had up for a while.)
oh, and the re the Ez-d black dye is blue, the blue laser has no trouble with it, The red dye is supposed to stop blue lasers completely (even fresh from factory fresh opened) but clearly the finer focus of modern lasers was a match for it. id say u had physical damage at that 80m mark.
This wasnt a great idea from the beginning. Why would you pay 7 dollars for something you could get at the movie rental store for 3? Yeah, late fees, etc but you still have to go to a store to get them, and I dont think a 5 minute trip to the outside of the rental store to drop your movies in the box is worth 4 dollar savings. Ive seen a few videos about rental stores and enjoyed them (for whatever reason) is there any way you can make an episode on those somehow?
Very interesting about the failure of the disc to corrode. Guess the corrosive lost it's mojo over the years, perhaps has already reacted without destroying the disc. Back in 1998 I had the same Umatic machine (Sony VO-2610), dubbed a laser disc or 2 but I wish I had done some divix. Not that my family would have bought a divix player... I had to buy the umatic myself, make the tape at a friend's place and could hardly afford tape! Never had a macrovision issue with laser disc but I wonder if divix had macrovision that a vo-2610 couldn't handle...
I know this video is 6 years old now, but I just watched it and I want to leave some thoughts/observations. First - the stock footage used in this (from the Circuit City DIVX training video) has a hilarious mistake: at 7:12 the disc is loaded upside down! Of course it won't play if you do that! Oddly at 4:41 they insert it correctly, so I'm not sure what happened there. (This is obviously not OddityArchive's fault, just something funny I noticed and also pointed out in that video's upload) 9:14 - no widescreen divx? Actually there were. I was looking around on eBay for these just for fun and I saw some that had a red banner at the top, that said widescreen. The photos of the back of the box confirm they are anamorphic widescreen as well. Armageddon (your favorite movie!) is one of them that had a widescreen release. It seems like they released two, as there's a 4:3 version and an anamorphic widescreen version with the red border. I don't know if the widescreen one came out later, but they obviously did release them as I see copies floating around for sale. 11:34 you mention "shortly after DIVX, FlexPlay came along" - I don't know when the company was founded, but the first FlexPlay DVDs weren't even sold until 2003, that's two full years after DIVX shut down and 4 years after the 1999 discontinuation date... so I wouldn't call that "shortly". There were a few years there where you could only get normal DVDs (oh, the horror!) And lastly, the 2008 Staples thing - that was my foray into FlexPlay. I was actually shopping at Staples for school supplies and saw a rack of these things on sale, not sure if they were lowered to 99 cents by this point, I think I paid like $3 or $4? But I thought what the heck, it's the same price as a Blockbuster DVD rental, I want to see how this works. So I bought one, opened it, immediately popped it in my computer and tried to rip it - since it's "my" disc that I bought, it's legal to do that, right? Anyway, what I found is it was identical to the retail release, including Sony's ARccOS copy protection that made it impossible to rip with most programs of the time. I had to use AnyDVD to get an ISO made. Movie played like normal and then a few days later I checked and it had turned black, so I threw it out. I didn't own a Blu-ray player until my PS3 in 2009 or I would have tried the "zombie" experiment lol. I see people selling sealed FlexPlay discs on eBay now as "rare" collectibles, for $20 and up... I assume they are all completely rotted even inside the sealed package by this point, and there's no reason to buy them even for lulz? Edit: one last thing - you mentioned that DVD "has been available since 1996", but that's not quite true. Assuming you live anywhere that isn't Japan, DVD wasn't released until 1997, and there were no prerecorded discs sold in the English speaking world anywhere before 97 either. I had never even heard of DVD until 1999 or 2000, but I was also a child - I'd imagine someone who was older and into technology would have... but I digress. March 1997 was the release date of DVD in the US, and probably when the first movies were available on the format too. It wouldn't come out in most of Europe until 1998.
Ben, can you refresh my memory as to your second channel? I was updating my UA-cam subscriptions and I seem to recall you have a channel for things that didn't quite "fit" on OA.
disposable media... doesn't seem too right now given how everyone is so touchy about the environment. my question is this... how did it have a chance vs blockbuster and later netflix with its rental methods???
There was this arcade/play place I went to in middle school where one of the claw machine like games in it, no joke, had a DivX copy of A Bug's Life in it. This was 2013. (The rest were regular DVDs.)
I wished you had won that
I'd hate to be the unlucky kid who managed to win it! ("Mommy, why does this DVD just show boring text? Where's the movie?")
@@chouts1 I agree, it should've have been saved from purgatory.
not a popular opinion, but "a bug's life" is one of my very favorites of pixar's... it is, after all, a more 'family-friendly' version of orwell's "animal farm"... without the terrifying "horse getting trucked off to the glue factory" scene... ;0
a divx "bug's life" would've maybe alluded to - and implanted in the child's mind - the travesty of the whole concept of disposable dvds/anything plastic... "mmmooommmmaaa!!! my fav'rit mooooveeee wooonn't plllaayyyyy!!!" (insert mommy trying to explain why...)
whole concept is so metaphor; picturing some exec/head-accountant at some movie-studio back in the day, first reading about the concept at their desk...
a) 48-hour disposable dvds,
vs ...
b) future landfills too dense with non-recyclable plastics
...
c) open spreadsheet with the bottom-line of negligible advantages (short-term profits; long-term loss)
... accountant sighs, clicks 'approve' like we do on software-agreements these days
Why'd you write Divx like the video codec?
It would be funny if a disposable DVD copy of Groundhog Day was used for the daily disc check test, same results everyday. :D
lol
Disappointingly, the movie's not available on either format due to Sony not being total idiots.
A self-destructing DVD that utterly half-asses it's own destruction?
Classic corporate boondogle.
Selling DVDs that deliberately degrade over a short period of time is so absurd, so unscrupulous and so aggressively idiotic that, well, I'm actually not surprised they did it.
+Fernie Canto That's why it died out. I'm surprised the chemicals didn't ruin the players.
+generalcoon47 I know, right? I would have been scared to death to stick any of those discs in ANY player ... I mean, how do we know the corrosive stuff inside the disks couldn't contaminate the laser?
at the time: they didn't tell anyone HOW the DVDs stopped working at a time. you wouldn't be aware of a potential hazard to your machine.
Back in the late 90s and Early 2000s, during the twilight period of the Dot Com era, there was this push for trying to latch onto anything "Cutting Edge" for a quick Cash Grab, so Investors Savy Businessman from Corporations would instantly cook up any Gimmick that sounded good on paper as long as it guaranteed a quick profit. Problem was, most were so incredibly half baked that its execution results often turned out both short-sided and asinine.
I mean did the idiots who thought up DVD D/Flex Play ever consider the thought of DVD overtaking VHS by 2002 and its masters costs significantly dropping by the mid 2000s?
Disposable movies sound good for a movie you want to check out to see if you'd like it for your home video/DVD collection but you can be rid of it if you don't (like I would be if Into the Woods had come out in that format, GOD that depressing piece of bat guano). Then again, we're much better off with movies we can watch once on sites like Netflix and get off the watch list after and never see again.
27:17 My hypothesis is this: The laser in the bluray player can read through the chemical damage, but only on the first layer. After the layer transition, there is too much material that is now opaque, that the laser cannot penetrate. With the fact it dies at that exact spot, at what would be a layer transition, is an almost perfect explanation of this zombie disc phenomenon.
Yeah, that's likely exactly it. Blu-ray players have stronger lasers than DVD players, since the die is packed tighter on Blu-ray. Odd that his PC drive wouldn't read it though.
@@drfsupercenterwell it may be using stil la seperate laser vs nowdaus likely fwiw prolly more easu to biild with one laser fwiw to switch between colors for cd dvd an blu ray.
"What if DIVX goes out of business?" -- "That's a great question! Ask me a different one."
"It's almost IMPOSSIBLE to believe that DIVX could go under!"
DivX: my belly hurts circus City:
nobody cares about you
That's a fair question. Except it's impossible for it to come true, so your question is dumb.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what happened just a year after its initial release, plus Circuit City ended up going out of business just a decade later (part of the reason why they went out of business was from the failed DIVX format).
@@lovelydolltime8006 Exactly.
I purchased a few of these expiring DVD's just out of curiosity. One lasted over a week and the others lasted nearly 4 days. Also there is nothing stopping you from making a copy of the disc on the first day you open it.
I bought one of these from Staples in 2008 when they were carrying them for 99 cents. This is when Sony's ARccOS protection was in full force, and guess what - the FlexPlay disc had it too. So I couldn't rip it normally, DVD Decrypter and similar programs would fail with read errors right away.
I was able to use AnyDVD to rip an image of it, but yeah... based on my one purchase of FlexPlay the discs would use the same encryption/copy protection as the retail discs, take that how you will.
@@drfsupercenter Interesting. I don't remember what software I used at the time.
@@brpadington DVD Decrypter would have worked for most of them, but the ones from Sony were using more advanced rip protection
@@drfsupercenter I'm pretty sure I was using AnyDVD or CloneDVD at the time.
Am I the only one that hoped the Divx phone number was going to be a phone sex line?
+Dan Mount Didn't hope but still expected it.
+Dan Mount According to legend the Phone Number in the NES Game "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is now a phone sex line.
Yes! I do know about that from the AVGN episode!
No, not at all.
After the AVGN thing this is almost the standard expectation.
I myself would hope some weird thing like - number for some random construction site. I dunno.
METTING AT DVD HEADQUARTERS (that's what it's, called right?)
"George, we've got to think of something we can make a profit on... DivX didn't do so great, but I feel the idea of an alternate rental system could earn us quite a lot of money."
"I know, boss! Let's make a type of DVD that physically fucking DESTROYS ITSELF over a period of time!"
"Brilliant! Here's a $50,000 raise!"
Correction, Flexplay headquarters.
Smedis2 Meeting*
You know the DVD Forum (formerly the DVD Consortium) exists? Also, that should have been Flexplay Technologies HQ, not the Forum.
Also why'd you write Divx like the video codec?
So a supposedly "self-destructed" DVD that actually still plays halfway through…was a real attempt at rights management of commercial films. Even more evidence that truth is more ironic than fiction, I suppose.
Keep in mind, it plays halfway through on a Blu-ray player, but those didn't exist when FlexPlay was created. Notice how it didn't work on any of his other equipment. So if you bought this in 2004, it would have worked as intended and been unplayable on your devices after a day or two.
I think the disc was crapping out around the 1:20 mark because the layer switch likely happens around this point, I'd assume it's a dual-layer disc.
3:38 Hey, that's my family's first DVD player (circa 9 October 1999)! We still have that hooked up in the living room as it has outlasted every DVD player (and even my first Blu-Ray player) we have owned. I just wish that models still had navigation buttons on them as it makes it so much easier if you have misplaced the remote (like we have done dozens of times).
Yes, that's a feature I do miss that seemed to be dropped from later-model DVD players around 2000-01 or so. I still have a ca. 1998 Curtis Mathes DVD player that has the navigation controls on the front of the player itself. So convenient having those controls there for those missing remote moments :)
You've got the disposal DVD formats done, now you should do the DVD-Video off-shoots introduced in the late 1990s to late 2000s.
These formats are as follows:
Interactive DVD - 1998
DVD singles - 1999
Superbit - 2001
DVDplus - 2002
AniMini DVD - 2004
Pre-recorded Mini-DVD from Warner Home Video - 2004
DualDisc - 2005
MVI (Music Video Interactive) - 2007
I wish to see these DVD-Video off-shoots being featured in a future Oddity Archive episode.
I hate to be that "but ackshually" guy, but... everyone keeps mentioning Superbit as some sort of DVD spinoff, when it isn't at all. Superbit *is* DVD, it's a silly name given to their (at the time revolutionary idea?) process of using a higher-than-normal bitrate to get better quality than other companies' discs. They would have just the movie and no extra features, on a dual-layer disc, that's really all it is/was. Nothing special about it, and by the time Superbit came around every other studio was doing the exact same thing... I have plenty of those "2 disc collector's edition" releases where disc 1 is the movie on a dual layer disc and disc 2 has all the extras.
I can't speak for any of those others, but they are likely similar things. The mini DVDs comply to the DVD specifications, they're just...smaller. Also while that pre-recorded mini DVD thing was a failure, there were camcorders that used recordable mini DVDs, I got one for my dad in the 2000s. I just googled AniMiniDVD and it's the same exact thing. Just 3" discs, but otherwise DVD-Video standards compliant.
DualDisc is perhaps the only one that's actually "different", because the thicker disc required to put audio on one side and video on the other means it doesn't actually comply with the Philips red-book CD spec, and thus isn't allowed to carry the compact disc logo. I am not sure about the video side, but it might be the same way. They claimed it "should work" with any CD players, but it's "technically" not redbook compliant.
Did any company other than Columbia TriStar/Sony even release Superbit DVDs? The only Superbit DVDs I’ve ever seen were of Columbia Pictures films.
EZ-D sounds like such a tacky name that was created by a boardroom full of old corporate dinks.
This entire system screams "dumb"
Nothing says "wasted profits and extra trash" quite like this.
“So what if DIVX hilariously fails?”
“Great question! It’s not gonna!”
I noticed a URL for divx.com at 5:47. If you go to divx.com now, it's owned by the makers of the video codec.
Just had a look through the Wayback Machine, and apparently they closed down the site except a rebate form sometime before October of 1999, and then the site went quiet, supposedly indicating the lack of a registrar for the website. Then, in 2001, someone registered the site and had it link to a "Mayo Project" codec called DivX that originally had no relation to the Digital Video Express, LP company name, but sometime between then and now a few management changes seem to have caused the codec to take on the old Divx name. But no, the codec there isn't the encrypted Divx format, sadly.
EDIT: Although, I do admit that it is pretty cool to see the "time lapse" as the name changed hands.
New segment: Ben's Tolerance
How many times can one man view Armageddon without puking.
Suggestion for next Oddity Archive: Modern Day Format Wars-HD DVD vs Blu-Ray
Featuring discussion on what led to the death of HD DVD. This is one Future Oddity that has now already come about! :D
Short answer: the short-sighted buffoons running the DVD consortium.
Circut City+Blockbuster+Hollywood Video = ALL R.I.P.
Callie Ray. My hometown somehow still has a Family Video. I have no idea how, my town is just as "with the times" as any other town its size(about 25,000 people, so decent sized). I do see people going in and coming out with movies though(not just old people), so I guess people still go actually rent physical movies for some reason...?
Callie Ray. We also have a couple Redbox machines but even that is a tired, outdated concept I think.
Chloie Kwirant The Family Video near me recently had a thing looking for new hires.
Sears will be next.
Chloie Kwirant I live in a small town that seems similar to how Ben described Aurora, and we have a couple Family Videos. I think what it comes down to is that enough people in this area can't afford decent internet and a subscription to Netflix or Hulu (or at least they think they can't because FV is cheaper for a single rental?)
3:38 -- My dad got that same DVD player for Christmas in 1999. I love the fact that you can still use it if you lose the (really large) remote (somehow).
Months earlier, he got a Sony VAIO that had a built-in DVD ROM drive along with a 21" Sony Trinitron monitor. I was blown away at how HUGE that monitor was at the time.
Well you're in luck because anything looks awesome on a Trinitron.
The OddityArchive now sells explosive discs:
Forgotten to bring back the episode of OddityArchive? No worries!
As soon as you play it, mini nuke detonators will blow up causing the end of the world!
Y O U R
W E L C O M E
Perhaps they should have considered adopting this self-destructing technology for use in porn DVDs: 48 hours of use, after which it rots. Who knows -- it might have made Flexplay a HUGE hit (if the porn was cheap enough). As has often been stated, porn drives technology.
At 15:02, the video paused for buffering on me. I thought it was some witty joke about discs failing without even being played. Then I saw that it really was just buffering. I was so disappointed.
I remember when the EZ-Ds started popping up at the local circle K for $3. I remember being offended by the conspicuous waste of it. I quickly realized there was nothing practical stopping them from making a really cheap DVD without an inherent self destruct mechanism. until I saw this video, I thought they were designed to only start degrading after exposure to a player laser, that would be more slick than what it actually was. I guess the new version is a little closer to that, but, I still see it as a terrible idea.
Hollywood video was always way better than blockbuster. The only reason I went to blockbuster was either late fees at hollywood or I needed to go somewhere within biking range.
🎵 Armageddon's finally here!
Armageddon out of here! 🎵
- Religetables skit from Saturday Night Live
That commercial/promotion at the end is gold. Amazing.
Just guessing - the 1:20:26 mark could be a layer change, meaning that the corrosion happened only on one layer of a multilayered disc.
+zoikkeli Yeah all it does is tint the layer over the data layer to block the light from the laser from reading the data layer.
I remember when DIVX came out, and I passed on it mainly for the same reason most did-people generally don't like proprietary, retailer-specific technologies, epecially when it was essentially competing against a virtually identical product, but which was also typically available in widescreen format. Why would someone pay for DIVX silver when you could simply buy a regular DVD that had no restrictions? While the concept of a cheap, play on demand format at the time was not inherently bad, DIVX was mainly created to compete with the emerging rental market, but even in that limited capacity, it simply couldn't sustain itself. Flexplay was just a terrible idea, period.
z
Thing is, Divx will be a huge sucess.
- fails -
Uh...
There was a VHS variant of this where they have a magnet that slowly gets closer to the tape and eventually erases it.
Yeah, I remember hearing about the Flexplay. Disney was wanting to be one of the major players in this format. However at the end cooler heads prevailed, when they realized...these disks would be in the landfill for a good long time. Also many of us wanted to re-watch our movies forever and ever.
For those wondering, 1-888-SAY-DIVX connects to a Fax machine.
Fax Sum (. ).)::::::::::D - - -
I was expecting a sex hotline to have taken over just like what happened to the number featured in the Rodger rabbit nes game
what does it send out then?
I hope that the 100th episode will be about Code Lyoko.
Why?
+DarkwingIcarus The joke comes from Oddity Archives having the word "Oddity" and Code Lyoco's episode "A Space Oddity".
+Specter227 Oddly this is the first episode I've seen in a while that DOESN'T have Code Lyoko on the sidebar or related vids at the end. Instead I'm getting mostly Ben's other videos... and some dude who's uploading French movies.
+Specter227 I rather hear about HD-DVD instead!!!
+Foxhack I think that in the last few months the way the sidebar works has changed quite a bit, since I have noticed that what shows up for me is no longer videos with similar words but stuff actually based on things I have already watched, though that in it's self is a problem since it only ever shows me things that I have already watched or know exists but have no interest in watching... so yeah... it's pretty much become a forced version of that useless recommended video feature that no one uses, go youtube.
Ben... That buzz at the end scared the crap out of me... You wanted to share the zombie plague with us all, didn't you! >:D
In other words, he watched Caddy Shack in Groundhog Day mode.
Only a fool would pay that much for a rental. New release movies were not that expensive at Blockbuster.
I can safely say that disposable discs (DIVX & Flexplay) are the worst forms of Physical Media! Why would you want to own a full-frame/widescreen barebones release of a catalog title that lasts for only 48 hours like a Pay-Per-View ordering window and as a video rental? Certainly not me! This has got to be the dumbest idea in the planet and I'm glad it failed! I want to own a movie that I can watch many times without any problems and I'm happy I chose better formats like DVD, Blu-rays and 4K UHDs. Even older physical media formats like VHS, S-VHS, D Theater, Betamax, Laserdisc and U-matic are better than DIVX and Flexplay. At least DivX exist as a video encode software!
Kinda makes me wonder if people managed to find a way to trick the player into playing the movie after the 48 hours expired
There is no way to trick the player, but there might be ways to stop the rot from happening. I would imagining putting glue or something around the edges might stop air form getting inside the disc.
Knowing me, I'd probably figure out how FlexPlay worked, rent such a disc, and stick glue along the edges of the disc as quickly as possible.
It would still corrode. I would just make a backup of the disc
Ben, i just wanted to say i enjoy your channel and as a history buff i like the history lessons on each episode. Keep up the good work. A suggestion for a future episode, the quadraphonic records and 8-tracks of the 1970's.
Never go out of business... Famous last words...
The DSS video is oddly appropriate, actually. It also required a phone line for pay-per-view. My family had one, so the menus in the video bring back a lot of memories!
I was so relaxed during the bit before the intro that bloody Max Headroom jump scared me 😂
I'm wondering if they only designed these discs to corrupt along the outer edges and only ruin the ending.
+Michael Mangi (theblackdog) I believe the outer edges is also the area a dvd player actually reads first, so that would make the disc it's self unreadable. My theory is that he was only able to play it because he had left it in the dvd player with it running all that time.
+Kandi Gloss actually most media start from sector 0 on the very inside
StefanSreto Yeah, but the movie may not start from there, that could be where the menus start since they're usually one of the first things you see. So I get what Kandi Gloss means
As you can see in the video, it doesn't work in DVD players or PC drives that use red layers (it's rejected or doesn't read). But wiki states that blue lasers (i.e. the one's used in blu-ray players - that's where the name comes from) can get through the darkened disc layer due to the different wavelength of light that they use.
EDIT: According to some websites 1:20:20 is the time that the layer change (for Dual Layer DVD-9 discs) occurs. Interestingly, the home video logo and FBI copyright warnings are held in this area - that would be understandable why the DVD player read it then rejected it - it couldn't ignore the user operation prohibition flag on those bits - but bluray players can ignore it IF it finds the film itself - i've noticed this on some DVD's i've played on my Bluray player it will ignore the warning and go right into the film, my region-free DVD player won't ignore the warnings.
InsaneGamers Bluray players typically have 2-3 lasers in them. You have the blue laser for Blu-rays, the red laser for DVDs, and a near infared laser for CDs. Very early players (and even some newer players) can't play cds but can play DVDs. The blue laser can't read the DVD due to its shorter wavelength (405 nm vs 660 nm) in addition to some other factors.
I still have a sealed Flexplay copy of Rolling Stones: Shine A Light. Wish I could've sent you it.
If Ben was British, Ihave a feeling he would have already done ITV startups by now.
Although if American TV stations went on strike the way the BBC and ITV did back in the day, then that would be interesting.
Your story of a PC DVD and your collection gives me memories.
My PC DVD: Like you, I bought it because I wanted to have any DVD player. I had just spent a fortune buying a Pentium II with the money from my first real job and couldn't afford much, but I saw an ad for a DVD drive on sale at the Egghead software superstore (a short lived concept) deep on the other side of the city.
I drove out to find it, almost giving up getting lost trying to find the place. Eventually I got the drive and made for home. I made a couple of stops on the way (a Suncoast and somewhere else) to pick up my original collection which I remember like yours, all different as the standard DVD Keep Case was not yet a thing.
Blade Runner: The Director's Cut. A standard WB solid cardboard box with plastic tray
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The first edition used the poster image of Arnold sitting on the bike.
The Usual Suspects. The first edition of this DVD is one of the oddest cases in DVD history. It's a solid square plastic like a CD, but you don't fold the case open. You pull the disk out of the top. It's the only of of the old cases I kept just for this.
The collection grew from there (12 Monkeys came next) eventually becoming an obsession until at some point it just stopped mattering.
I remember "flexplay" as redbox, like the modern rental kiosks, when it was in it's testing phase since I knew some one that was involved with it somehow. Can anyone confirm that I'm just not miss-remembering?
also, I'm slightly disappointed, that there was no visual video corruption on the zombie disc.
It's Schrödinger's Disc!! :D
in this episode, Ben gradually loses his mind after watching Armageddon on repeat on a slowly rotting DVD disc produced from bad marketing decisions
I suspect the reason that the blu-ray player, but not the computer players nor the dvd player would play the disk is because the stand alone blu-ray uses its single, blue laser diode to read all media. Your computer players are, I'm willing to bet, writers as well, which contain multiple laser diodes. They use the appropriate color diode to read CD's and DVD's instead of using the blue one. I suspect the oxidation/corrosion layer can be read 'through' with a fine enough laser most of the time, and in addition the corrosion may not be as opaque to the blu-ray's 'blue' as it is to the dvd's laser (which is IR I think).
Where it crapped out is just where the damage was the worst and it couldn't skip over it to continue.
The corrosion on the end being the worst makes sense, because the central hub has to be strong due to the torque it absorbs, so the 'leaking' would come in from the outer edge. And CD/DVD/Blu-Ray are done backwards to the way a vinyl record is, the beginning is in the middle of the disk. (Laserdisks are I believe the same). Supposedly the reason the consortium that created CD decided to use that style was because they thought it was more likely the edge would get damaged, and the disc would still be playable with said damage.
Per another video on Flexplay from Technology Connections, the black is actually transparent to blue lasers. That's why a fresh Flexplay disk has a red sheen: so it can never be played with a blue laser, even when fresh.
That said, most Blu-Ray players actually use a separate red laser for playing DVDs and CDs.
Re: VCR tape rentals. I never rented a VHS tape, being the miser I am I borrowed them free from the local library for 24 hours. Almost invariably the evening I planned to watch a film company stopped by, phone calls, etc. Any other night, nothing. No company, no phone calls. Never failed. Finally I just gave up and didn't borrow any more.
Lol! I still have A DIVX copy of Tomorrow Never Dies. It's one of few releases on DIVX. I worked for Circuit City in High School and would just get the unlock code for them and keep them as regular discs. Wonder if it would still play...
Is there some irony that I remember seeing these things being sold at Staples and...of course, Circuit City.
A soon to be defunct store selling soon to be defunct products. Wonderful.
those Flexplay DVDs were also sold in the Netherlands about 12 years ago for a short period in the Albert Heijn supermarkets(!)
THE QUESTION IS ... what happens if you play the disc now?
Loved this episode! I've always found the format slightly fascinating. Didn't know anything about Flexplay, so that was a nice bonus. Great ending, too! :D
The very last frame of that Flexplay disc should've been used as a cardboard box picture.
The "dd" tool on LInux (or Mac) would've been a better alternative to make a RAW copy of the disc. At least partly.
Still a nice episode! :) I've never seen any of these discs, although you mentioned we have disposable DVDs here in Germany.
Wish the warning would have said "If there is a problem, yo I'll solve it."
100th episode. Standard Emergency Warning System! Please do that!
Wow, Ben really needs to clean out his hard drive.
thats amazing that you got a sample of a black disk, i have a few un opened in my garage, im gonna run some tests and try to capture some footage
10:34 Phone has speakerphone....holds earpiece to the microphone... wtf
Very informative episode...having not jumped on the DVD bandwagon until getting my first player for Xmas 99, didn't even know DIVX was a thing (as it was discontinued only a few months before) and was only marginally aware of its spiritual successor, Flexplay/eZ-D, much less the technology which caused said discs to self-destruct after a short time.
27:00. No, not mindless. Going to the remaining chapters to check.
5:00 - there's honestly something so fitting about "BASEketball" being on DIVX.
The beginning made me jump for some reason. Maybe because I had it kinda loud and it went from silence to music. Scarier than most jump scares though, and I'm not kidding
100th episode- A history of the oddity archive
That Armageddon disc:
I CANNOT LIVE
I CANNOT DIE
TRAPPED IN MYSELF
BODY MY HOLDING CEEEEELLLL
EZ-D for the T****Stone Releases.
I work with one of the companies that helped develop divx, I don’t remember this tech so it took a long time before I realized they weren’t talking about the codec haha. I was curious about what it really looked like, so thanks for the video.
Hey, it could have been worse on that original batch of DVDs circa 1998. I remember my first DVD was Digimon the Movie. And I had to watch it the exact same way you did, in a computer with a DVD-ROM drive.
Thank god I didn't have to experience my first DVD like that. My parents never let me use the computer when I was a little kid, I always had to use it when they were at work.
who thought that a self destructing disc was a good idea?
Holy crap. I had a DivX player. After a year or so they discontinued the service. I got a $100 check from the company to cover my losses.
+Bobby JK Me too! At the time I got my DivX player, the cheapest DVD player I could find was around $300. The DivX player was around $350, so I decided to spend a little extra to get that functionality. But it turned out that I hardly ever watched DivX disks, and when they discontinued it and I got my refund I wound up with a fairly nice, fully functional DVD player for about $50 less than anything I could have gotten at the time. Sweet!
+Gator Girl Yeah, I remember making out better on that deal as well. I think my DivX collection included a couple of those featured on this episode. I know Breakfast Club was one of them.
Well it is Michael Bay, obviously it will make you a zombie.
I had that dvd player (similar, it hadn't the little knob in middle of right panel) on 3:40, it was an beautiful machine.
That's a pity one lighting hit near my house and destroyed it :(
Maybe Bluray players can read "expired" flexplay discs, because they use blue laser (blue ray, get it?) that can see through the blue dye.
The unplayble portions just naturally rotted due to shitty quality of the disc itself.
+Worstplayer Blu-ray players don't use the Violet laser to read DVDs. There are three lasers in a Blu-ray player; CD, DVD and Blu-ray.
+TGOTR
Cool, didn't know that. That makes it even better, it means this mighty "dye rights management"...didn't even work right in the first place.
+Worstplayer I've actually noticed bluray players can handle some scratched and damaged discs very well. I bought a used Sony one (old model, but it was seven bucks) and it read some movies I couldn't play on my other player just fine.
Per the Technology Connections video (a) Bluray players use a separate laser for DVDs, but (b) they could theoretically use the blue laser for DVDs, and that _would_ indeed see through the dye, and therefore (c) Flexplay discs also have a red dye, and a fresh Flexplay disc is bright red, blocking blue lasers.
My first DVD player was also via a desktop computer. My mom had to replace an old computer and the new one had a DVD drive. I recall the first DVD I ever bought being a cheap basic copy of The Fox And The Hound which I got from a Disney Store back when malls still had those.
I herd both formates where killed my the EPA, Blockbuster, and consumers voting with their wallets.
I remember seeing Flexplay discs at gas stations when on road trips. I always thought it was a neat idea.
Just uploaded the intro from a regular Flexplay DVD: ua-cam.com/video/2dYJwEJaONM/v-deo.html (Noel, their very first title had its own intro which I've had up for a while.)
Schrodinger's DVD.
Actually, Armageddon wasn't really the best movie for that demonstration. Groundhog Day would have been more appropriate.
fwiw dude- they would be trivial to play, tripleDES is now crackable in under an hour.
oh, and the re the Ez-d black dye is blue, the blue laser has no trouble with it, The red dye is supposed to stop blue lasers completely (even fresh from factory fresh opened) but clearly the finer focus of modern lasers was a match for it. id say u had physical damage at that 80m mark.
Try to play your Flexplay DVD with a Sony PS2, it could read dark/black disc since it was the "copy protection" used by the PS1.
+Stephane Tanguay I was thinking this same thing while watching. Don't think it would really work but it's worth a shot
That is a myth, check out Technology Connections video on the matter
This wasnt a great idea from the beginning. Why would you pay 7 dollars for something you could get at the movie rental store for 3? Yeah, late fees, etc but you still have to go to a store to get them, and I dont think a 5 minute trip to the outside of the rental store to drop your movies in the box is worth 4 dollar savings. Ive seen a few videos about rental stores and enjoyed them (for whatever reason) is there any way you can make an episode on those somehow?
Atta boy, Ben.
I still wonder why DivX the MP4-ish codec for DVD and DIVX the Inernet-based DRM have the exact same name
They bought the name or something
How do you fit a cartridge into your SNES? 26:24
Very interesting about the failure of the disc to corrode. Guess the corrosive lost it's mojo over the years, perhaps has already reacted without destroying the disc. Back in 1998 I had the same Umatic machine (Sony VO-2610), dubbed a laser disc or 2 but I wish I had done some divix. Not that my family would have bought a divix player... I had to buy the umatic myself, make the tape at a friend's place and could hardly afford tape! Never had a macrovision issue with laser disc but I wonder if divix had macrovision that a vo-2610 couldn't handle...
If you were using Quicktime to record the video from your Mac, just so you know, the feed from iDVD won't show (Apple's anti-piracy measure I guess).
I know this video is 6 years old now, but I just watched it and I want to leave some thoughts/observations.
First - the stock footage used in this (from the Circuit City DIVX training video) has a hilarious mistake: at 7:12 the disc is loaded upside down! Of course it won't play if you do that! Oddly at 4:41 they insert it correctly, so I'm not sure what happened there. (This is obviously not OddityArchive's fault, just something funny I noticed and also pointed out in that video's upload)
9:14 - no widescreen divx? Actually there were. I was looking around on eBay for these just for fun and I saw some that had a red banner at the top, that said widescreen. The photos of the back of the box confirm they are anamorphic widescreen as well. Armageddon (your favorite movie!) is one of them that had a widescreen release. It seems like they released two, as there's a 4:3 version and an anamorphic widescreen version with the red border. I don't know if the widescreen one came out later, but they obviously did release them as I see copies floating around for sale.
11:34 you mention "shortly after DIVX, FlexPlay came along" - I don't know when the company was founded, but the first FlexPlay DVDs weren't even sold until 2003, that's two full years after DIVX shut down and 4 years after the 1999 discontinuation date... so I wouldn't call that "shortly". There were a few years there where you could only get normal DVDs (oh, the horror!)
And lastly, the 2008 Staples thing - that was my foray into FlexPlay. I was actually shopping at Staples for school supplies and saw a rack of these things on sale, not sure if they were lowered to 99 cents by this point, I think I paid like $3 or $4? But I thought what the heck, it's the same price as a Blockbuster DVD rental, I want to see how this works. So I bought one, opened it, immediately popped it in my computer and tried to rip it - since it's "my" disc that I bought, it's legal to do that, right? Anyway, what I found is it was identical to the retail release, including Sony's ARccOS copy protection that made it impossible to rip with most programs of the time. I had to use AnyDVD to get an ISO made. Movie played like normal and then a few days later I checked and it had turned black, so I threw it out. I didn't own a Blu-ray player until my PS3 in 2009 or I would have tried the "zombie" experiment lol.
I see people selling sealed FlexPlay discs on eBay now as "rare" collectibles, for $20 and up... I assume they are all completely rotted even inside the sealed package by this point, and there's no reason to buy them even for lulz?
Edit: one last thing - you mentioned that DVD "has been available since 1996", but that's not quite true. Assuming you live anywhere that isn't Japan, DVD wasn't released until 1997, and there were no prerecorded discs sold in the English speaking world anywhere before 97 either. I had never even heard of DVD until 1999 or 2000, but I was also a child - I'd imagine someone who was older and into technology would have... but I digress. March 1997 was the release date of DVD in the US, and probably when the first movies were available on the format too. It wouldn't come out in most of Europe until 1998.
Ben, can you refresh my memory as to your second channel? I was updating my UA-cam subscriptions and I seem to recall you have a channel for things that didn't quite "fit" on OA.
Just curious, I saw the LaserDisc player under your Blu-Ray player. What model LD player was that?
This message will self destruct in five seconds. Good luck Jim...
I miss Circuit City. It was where I bought Kingdom Hearts II, my all-time favorite video game.
+Otaking Mikohani Yeah me too, I also miss Service Merchandise ( I'll be surprised if anyone remembers that store)
+dorourke105 I remember it. There was one a few blocks away from my home. It was in Oak Lawn, IL.
Where was yours?
+ira moser in denver just down the street from us. sadly it's a rite aid now,but we'll always have the memories
dorourke105 Yeah we will. The hardest thing to explain to people is how the catalog/conveyor belt system worked.
Thanks for the answer!
ira moser I think my dad used to work at that one before he got hired for Foot Action back in the 90s
That Garfield clock though
How about an episode on portable tvs (ie, the watchman)?
disposable media... doesn't seem too right now given how everyone is so touchy about the environment. my question is this... how did it have a chance vs blockbuster and later netflix with its rental methods???
It has NEVER seemed right.