My mom was on the show the very week after the one you had aired. Cornelia retired undefeated. Your episode originally aired Friday, 3/2/90. I would only keep that up at the Annex for a short time, Sony is very block/strike happy. The WoF theme, by the way, is titled "Changing Keys," and was composed by Merv himself!
@@OddityArchive I have figured out a digitization workflow that is good enough to preserve the signal. If you use the tape RF capture (vhs-decode) and play it back on a CRT, the tape will load. Just tried it with the 1990-03-09 episode.
@@michaelcarpenter2498 Trying to remember, I know I had to pay CA state tax (which I got all back), if I recall right I had to pay like $4k in tax total? I did get a check for $31k in the end
OK, this is completely nuts, and I would kill for a tech breakdown of this and teardown of the home game. Is it broadcasting the data on a loop? They’re including both the puzzle data AND timing data which is nuts. Wonder what the postproduction process was for integrating the metadata. I want more!!!
Despite this being a bit clunky, I am genuinely impressed how well this works with the TV broadcast episodes and even the volume tapes. Really makes me wonder how this must've worked as the device only has a primitive light sensor and not a mic and whatnot. My guess maybe it detects some sort of very very slight wave or light fluctuation that mimics some sort of infrared signal (since there's some quick brightness changes in the quick snippet you showed? maybe it's the antenna reception or affiliate messing up though, no idea), which is why it may not've worked with the DVD copy as that one is compressed? Just a guess of course, no technical talk. Other technical ways don't really make sense to me if I think about it. If that is the case though that they did hid it via patterns / brightness fluctuations, that makes it even more impressive, as that meant that there was some serious R&D involved and the production company was willing to put up with the additional post production work for a gimmicky toy only a few owned / fewer regularly used, even if it seems to be an experiment that was limited to two years.
That it worked AT ALL from a half-assed OTA signal recorded on a (what was THEN) nearly 15 year old Betamax re-re-reused tape (likely recorded on a then 15 year old VCR!) and STILL playable 31 years later is frankly ASTONISHING!!! I have 3 year old BD-R discs that won't even LOAD! Hell, this was a TOY made by MATTEL and it's more functional than some tech from 5 years ago!
As you can probably tell by looking at my avatar, I'm a huge fan of Wheel of Fortune, and I do have the game as well as both tapes made for it, but there was a similar game that was supposed to be released by Tiger Electronics in 2004 called Wheel of Fortune Live Play. In the end, Parker Brothers released a small number of units and only a handful of copies are known to exist today, including one that I managed to get in late December 2019. I have a couple gameplay videos of the game's regular mode, and my avatar is a recreation I made of the Wheel layout used in the game.
The fact that someone is really into Wheel of Fortune makes me happy :) I have some very niche and specific interests as well :) many things seem to be mundane based on first appearance but in actuality hide a wealth of interesting stories and history. In my case I love Genesis and Phil Collins. People especially mid-late 20s like myself, know them as an inoffensive 80s pop group with a penchant for experimentation, but theyre so so much more than that, they have a 20+ year history spanning 15 incredible albums; their members even helped revolutionize how drums are recorded more than any group since The Beatles. They also completely changed the stage lighting game by funding the R&D put into the first moving lights that are used in every event today from mundane gatherings like corporate events and church services to concerts and theatrical performances of all sizes.
You could probably make one or more dedicated episodes to devices like this that are more sophisticated than your average light-gun. I know for a fact that there was also a talking Barney plush and a toy Batmobile from the 2004 The Batman cartoon that reacted to stuff on the TV.
Ah, right! "Microsoft ActiMates"! I think the Barney version was mainly designed to interact with certain PC games, but could also interact with certain seasons of the show, at least according to an old news clip I found on UA-cam a while back.
Heh. Yeah... Soldering is a fickle thing at the best of times. Though, it's great to see your technique with the braid is getting better! (A little bit of liquid flux applied to the braid makes it perform even better. Also, less heat is definitely more, else pads get nice and crispy.) It would definitely be interesting to see if you can overscan the tape (connected through your camcorder, I guess) to capture the VBI, (or whatever else it's using to send the information), and see whether you can reverse-engineer the whole dealio. In theory, if you can capture the information, and learn how/what's sent, you could create your own custom puzzles. Or, even retrofit modern Wheel episodes to send the puzzle information, if programmed ahead of time. Plenty of future avenues/episodes to consider! :D
I want to know how the hell this works with the aired episodes? I didn't see any flashing imagery when you were scanning it during the episode. I get how it worked with the Tape though. This is really cool. If I ever get a CRT, I'll get this for the little Wheel Of Fortune collection I got going
I don't know wtf a Kiara is, but I have the same question: How did they encode the data? Does it actually have timing data? Benny does not point it at the TV at the time the letters show up. Invisible game data messages encoded in live broadcasts. Reminds me of that one X-Files episode. Cool stuff.
@@RanFuRe Oh you poor, naive child. Not about the video encoding stuff (I honestly have no idea how that works, either), I mean about not being dragged down into the Hololive rabbit hole. ua-cam.com/channels/Hsx4Hqa-1ORjQTh9TYDhww.html You're welcome.
This is AWESOME that you did an episode on this! I had one of these Wheel of Fortune games growing up. Sold it and both VHS tapes on eBay 6 or 7 years ago.I
Good episode, as always...actually got my TVPA unit for Xmas 88, and had fun using it while watching the show, as well as creating puzzles for friends/family to try and solve, and vice-versa. Didn't get the VHS tapes at the time, but did acquire them both on eBay during the late 00s.
Can you try to reupload this without filtering out the ~15KHZ scan frequency from the television? I suspect that the game data is hidden in the scanline phasing and could be picked up with a microphone without worrying about pointing the device at the television, but wouldn't work on silent LCD's
The instruction video on the Wheel of Fortune tape gave me a flashback to docfuture1's video where he did a mashup of the Wheel of Fortune theme with The Prodigy "Smack My Bitch Up"
I'm almost certain it's a modulation in the vertical blanking interval. It reads all answers and puzzles as well as the timing between events as the episode starts. After that is basically one of those tiger handhelds
I uploaded a c. March 1989 episode of Nighttime Wheel on my alternate channel (Mitchell's Video Vault). I'm wondering if I can get the TV Play-Along device (as well as a CRT TV) and see if it works with the episode.
I instantly clicked on this episode when I saw it because I recognized that blue game unit! I never actually played it myself because I hadn't even been born by the time they stopped working on Wheel of Fortune broadcasts, but I remember finding it while exploring the basement as a kid. Apparently my parents had one and forgot about it down there. It was just the game unit itself, none of the packaging or tapes or anything else. I remember something that may help with the mystery of how this thing works. I recall pointing the unit at the office-style fluorescent lamp tubes in the ceiling, and being surprised when the unit started playing music and the red indicator light lit up, as if the unit was trying to read data from the lamps. But I noticed in this video that, if the unit is actually reading data, the red indicator light pulses. I recall the indicator light staying solidly lit when pointed at the fluorescent lamp. Nothing interesting would happen after that, obviously, since there wasn't actually any data for the unit to read. It would just sit there playing the tune with the light on until you stopped pointing it at the lamp. Also, it didn't activate with any of the incandescent bulbs in the house.
(9:29) As a child, my family had a Toshiba projection TV whose remote used the exact same shell, which would imply that both it and the DVD player the seller had were from some time in the early 2000s! (18:37) Context for those who aren't familiar with VHS: if I recall correctly, pausing on VHS keeps the drum (containing the playback/recording heads) spinning, rubbing up against the tape.
My grandparents had one of those Mattel WOF games. We used to set it to "manual" mode and you could play it between friends with words and phrases you came up with in your head.
From the way I understood it, it worked off of programmed luminance fluctuations in the ultraviolet range. Which a CRT emits, but the human eye does not see.
Now all I can think of is stacks and stacks of those Wheel of Fortune VHS games increasingly marked down at a Kay*Bee Toy Store. Imagine how many unsellable Interactive VHS stock they kept having to clear out because they didn't sell the systems anymore. And isn't having a number of fixed puzzles self defeating? Like you can only play it once because you already know the answers?
How long before Califon Productions flags this? After all that long out of print 1941 retrospective tape had one segment flagged. Of course it was a part with a caption joke which was ruined without the audio it's making fun of. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if you coughed in a video and Content ID mistook it for the intro to Sweet Leaf and flagged you.
I expect Sony to DMCA it. Califon renamed to Merv Griffin Enterprises before Columbia Pictures Television (later absorbed into Tristar, then renamed Sony Pictures Television) bought them out in 1991.
I guess. Figured it'd be more practical to just keep a running fleabay search for another copy of Vol. 1. I blame the sticky tape on how the game was stored--Vol. 2's saving grace was (probably) that it was still in-sleeve and sealed.
@@OddityArchive If the tapes are rare then it may be easier to do this to save worry. Still look for a non-sticky version but not have it be a top priority because you have a clean dub.
Maybe the next thing you could tackle would be a malfunctionibg luxury vaporizer; that way we can have Ben vs. The Volcano. JK, love your work Benny boy, especially the Ben Vs. episodes. I like the narrative.
I remember stumbling onto just the main unit itself at a Goodwill a couple years ago. I thought it was neat but didn't pick it up since I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find any episodes it worked with
Cute. I got see TLM for my 11th birthday that year. Someone bought me a vinyl bag with the character on it. I hated the villain sequence like with any D-s-e- film, and like always I overloaded the bag and broke it the first day I had it,, but I have fond memories that you've brought up to round off a nostalgic evening.
Have you ever done a video about portable TVs? I have one from the 80s ( or possibly the 70s? ) that used to belong to my Great Uncle before he passed; and I was curious about them.
I guess the device is picking low level and high frequency brightness variations as encoded serial data. The data must have timestamps to sync with the prerecorded show. Maybe you could solder an audio jack to the light sensor on the broke device and 'listen' to the serial data. Digital formats will lose that information because they tend to average things that are not visually perceptible. Unless you can capture it as lossless format. Thanks for sharing!
That it worked AT ALL from a half-assed OTA signal recorded on a (what was THEN) nearly 15 year old Betamax re-re-reused tape (likely recorded on a then 15 year old VCR!) and STILL the game was somewhat playable 31 years later is frankly ASTONISHING!!!😲 I have 3 year old BD-R discs that won't even LOAD! Hell, this was a TOY made by MATTEL 1/3 of a century ago, and it's more functional than some tech from 5 years ago!👍😊👍
You say that off air recording is rough but seriously it looks excellent to me. Good job that's not easy to do. Just getting into VHS archiving myself.
It once was a joke about their litigious nature, but when I tried to drop the joke, everyone got upset that I stopped censoring it--I just brought it back as a(n apparently permanently) running gag after that.
The only part of the vertical blanking interval preserved by DVDs is closed caption data, nothing else. It sounds like the data is entirely in the audio channel, I didn't see anything unusual on the screen.
It's such a bummer when Pat and Vanna don't appear in some the video games. Like the PS4 version has two imposters. And a PS2 version has Vanna doing double duty...
This is fascinating tech for the time. I suppose if it still plays, you could try preserving vol. 1 by copying to another analog format (vhs or even possibly umatic) to rule out any possible mpeg compression issues with dvd transfer, and see if the light sensor still works. From there you could also try copying via DV camcorder analog input to either MiniDV tape or PC over FireWire. The free WinDV Windows program can capture over FireWire while retaining the vblank info like CC.
Okay so this is going to sound really crazy but they filmed a commercial for this in Pennsylvania and my grandmother was in it, does anyone have a link to that or anything? my family always tells me about it but doesn't have it and I'd love to be able to see it. Thanks in advance!
A commenter on an upload of one of the two prerecorded tapes for use with this device has an interesting theory: he believes there to be an infrared signal embedded in the video that, when emitted from a CRT, functions much like an IR remote control.
This is pretty cool. I remember seeing the board game but not this. I have two versions of the game on CD-Rom for my computer, and handheld game. Neither of them required a TV, the handheld had a cartridge and you could buy other ones and the CD-Rom you played on your computer.
Silly question, Ben, but did you try doing a fully digital recording instead of a DVD-R? I mean, capturing it to your computer using a lossless codec. Or possibly Firewire / DV, if that is an option, since that's supposed to be good enough to capture -all- the info on a VHS tape with very minor colorspace loss. Then that recording could be transferred to another VHS tape. And maybe that would work. In theory.
I haven't, though I do have a lossless copy on my laptop. Can't think of a way to get it back to VHS without any intermediate stuff (like Digital8, which would have some compression).
I have the exact same 13" crt sitting on my second office desk right now lol , its branded Durabrand, I think i bought it for my daughter 20 years ago or so from Walmart, I think it was like $75 at the time. now i use it to monitor my music studio cameras and playing my retro games console occasionally
This was interesting, thanks for the video. Couldn't you have just cut off the old bad battery clip and spliced the wires for the new battery clip to the old wires to avoid the risk of soldering on the circuit board and destroying it?
Is that done through V-blank? Otherwise i duuno how they had patience and money to program for the chips of the time. Or it's Taiwanese? They had SoC's and programmers with both left hands but it's to deep for the job.
Are you really sure it is a photo diode inside? And there are hidden scan lines in the video? Are you sure? I dare you to test this: try wheel of furtune with your VCR with known good part. And mute the volume. If it still works, you’re right and I am dumb. If not: photodiodes in that time period were not precise for data transfer. Data transfer in high pitched sound could also be possible.
this is so cool!i i'm a bit too young for this kind of technology, but do you know how this game works with a recording of the show? has every show a different crt cue that the game picks up so it knows what puzzle to load? even from an old vhs?
You always have a habit of overstating how bad the quality of old recordings are, Benny-boy, and that Beta recording of Wheel was no exception. It looked and sounded perfectly fine, albeit a little faded.
I had one of these as a kid. When the Game Show Network aired these episodes back around 2001, I tested mine to see if it would work. It actually did.
I take it they worked on both versions?
Sometimes I'm truly amazed by the extreme measures Ben goes to in order to make things work! Most people would never go to that much money and effort!
My mom was on the show the very week after the one you had aired. Cornelia retired undefeated. Your episode originally aired Friday, 3/2/90.
I would only keep that up at the Annex for a short time, Sony is very block/strike happy.
The WoF theme, by the way, is titled "Changing Keys," and was composed by Merv himself!
If that's the case, then it's a rerun. The airdate of my copy was Friday, July 27, 1990.
@@OddityArchive The "encore presentation" line was dubbed in over the intro of many Wheel reruns at the time.
@@OddityArchive I have figured out a digitization workflow that is good enough to preserve the signal. If you use the tape RF capture (vhs-decode) and play it back on a CRT, the tape will load. Just tried it with the 1990-03-09 episode.
Is this where I can brag I was on Wheel over 20 years ago? And won?
Yooooo that's amazing 😂
@@AveryTalksAboutStuff Won $43k including a trip and $25k in the bonus round!
How much was the taxes and other fees
But do you have an off-air recording that can be used with this device? 😉
@@michaelcarpenter2498 Trying to remember, I know I had to pay CA state tax (which I got all back), if I recall right I had to pay like $4k in tax total? I did get a check for $31k in the end
OK, this is completely nuts, and I would kill for a tech breakdown of this and teardown of the home game. Is it broadcasting the data on a loop? They’re including both the puzzle data AND timing data which is nuts. Wonder what the postproduction process was for integrating the metadata. I want more!!!
Despite this being a bit clunky, I am genuinely impressed how well this works with the TV broadcast episodes and even the volume tapes. Really makes me wonder how this must've worked as the device only has a primitive light sensor and not a mic and whatnot.
My guess maybe it detects some sort of very very slight wave or light fluctuation that mimics some sort of infrared signal (since there's some quick brightness changes in the quick snippet you showed? maybe it's the antenna reception or affiliate messing up though, no idea), which is why it may not've worked with the DVD copy as that one is compressed? Just a guess of course, no technical talk. Other technical ways don't really make sense to me if I think about it.
If that is the case though that they did hid it via patterns / brightness fluctuations, that makes it even more impressive, as that meant that there was some serious R&D involved and the production company was willing to put up with the additional post production work for a gimmicky toy only a few owned / fewer regularly used, even if it seems to be an experiment that was limited to two years.
That it worked AT ALL from a half-assed OTA signal recorded on a (what was THEN) nearly 15 year old Betamax re-re-reused tape (likely recorded on a then 15 year old VCR!) and STILL playable 31 years later is frankly ASTONISHING!!! I have 3 year old BD-R discs that won't even LOAD! Hell, this was a TOY made by MATTEL and it's more functional than some tech from 5 years ago!
I thought the device was pretty lame until it started filling in the letters in time with the broadcast, much more sophisticated than I thought.
Pretty ahead of its time indeed.
As you can probably tell by looking at my avatar, I'm a huge fan of Wheel of Fortune, and I do have the game as well as both tapes made for it, but there was a similar game that was supposed to be released by Tiger Electronics in 2004 called Wheel of Fortune Live Play. In the end, Parker Brothers released a small number of units and only a handful of copies are known to exist today, including one that I managed to get in late December 2019. I have a couple gameplay videos of the game's regular mode, and my avatar is a recreation I made of the Wheel layout used in the game.
The fact that someone is really into Wheel of Fortune makes me happy :) I have some very niche and specific interests as well :) many things seem to be mundane based on first appearance but in actuality hide a wealth of interesting stories and history. In my case I love Genesis and Phil Collins. People especially mid-late 20s like myself, know them as an inoffensive 80s pop group with a penchant for experimentation, but theyre so so much more than that, they have a 20+ year history spanning 15 incredible albums; their members even helped revolutionize how drums are recorded more than any group since The Beatles. They also completely changed the stage lighting game by funding the R&D put into the first moving lights that are used in every event today from mundane gatherings like corporate events and church services to concerts and theatrical performances of all sizes.
Wow... seeing some of my past and present interests in this comment thread is quite surreal
You could probably make one or more dedicated episodes to devices like this that are more sophisticated than your average light-gun. I know for a fact that there was also a talking Barney plush and a toy Batmobile from the 2004 The Batman cartoon that reacted to stuff on the TV.
Ah, right! "Microsoft ActiMates"! I think the Barney version was mainly designed to interact with certain PC games, but could also interact with certain seasons of the show, at least according to an old news clip I found on UA-cam a while back.
I do think that's possible for most interactive devices like this. I imported a Terebikko from japan purely for this reason
@@HarmonyOmega I would've just bought one for the sake of Mario in anime form (one where Luigi is actually colored correctly)
Heh. Yeah... Soldering is a fickle thing at the best of times. Though, it's great to see your technique with the braid is getting better! (A little bit of liquid flux applied to the braid makes it perform even better. Also, less heat is definitely more, else pads get nice and crispy.)
It would definitely be interesting to see if you can overscan the tape (connected through your camcorder, I guess) to capture the VBI, (or whatever else it's using to send the information), and see whether you can reverse-engineer the whole dealio. In theory, if you can capture the information, and learn how/what's sent, you could create your own custom puzzles. Or, even retrofit modern Wheel episodes to send the puzzle information, if programmed ahead of time. Plenty of future avenues/episodes to consider! :D
I want to know how the hell this works with the aired episodes? I didn't see any flashing imagery when you were scanning it during the episode. I get how it worked with the Tape though. This is really cool.
If I ever get a CRT, I'll get this for the little Wheel Of Fortune collection I got going
This is the last place I'd expect to see someone with a Kiara pfp, but I acknowledge that you're a man of culture.
Someone that watches Hololive and Oddity archive, didn't expect to see a Kiara avatar here.
I don't know wtf a Kiara is, but I have the same question: How did they encode the data? Does it actually have timing data? Benny does not point it at the TV at the time the letters show up. Invisible game data messages encoded in live broadcasts. Reminds me of that one X-Files episode. Cool stuff.
@@RanFuRe Oh you poor, naive child.
Not about the video encoding stuff (I honestly have no idea how that works, either), I mean about not being dragged down into the Hololive rabbit hole.
ua-cam.com/channels/Hsx4Hqa-1ORjQTh9TYDhww.html
You're welcome.
@@otaking3582 I don't get it. But you, do you ^^
You’re quite of a puzzle solver, Benny-boy! I wonder if that Wheel Interactive game can still work while today’s episodes air?
This is AWESOME that you did an episode on this! I had one of these
Wheel of Fortune games growing up. Sold it and both VHS tapes on eBay 6 or 7 years ago.I
That Alex Trebek bit was pure gold!!!
uck 'em
i remember these being advertised, but can't say if i ever actually saw one in person, much less in use, congrats on fighting the good fight, mate!!!)
Good episode, as always...actually got my TVPA unit for Xmas 88, and had fun using it while watching the show, as well as creating puzzles for friends/family to try and solve, and vice-versa. Didn't get the VHS tapes at the time, but did acquire them both on eBay during the late 00s.
Charlie Brown's mom played the person watching the video.
Can you try to reupload this without filtering out the ~15KHZ scan frequency from the television? I suspect that the game data is hidden in the scanline phasing and could be picked up with a microphone without worrying about pointing the device at the television, but wouldn't work on silent LCD's
The instruction video on the Wheel of Fortune tape gave me a flashback to docfuture1's video where he did a mashup of the Wheel of Fortune theme with The Prodigy "Smack My Bitch Up"
I'm almost certain it's a modulation in the vertical blanking interval. It reads all answers and puzzles as well as the timing between events as the episode starts. After that is basically one of those tiger handhelds
Remind me this summer to binge all of these episodes
All the episodes of Wheel Of Fortune? That's going to take a bit longer than just one summer.
@@TheKnobCalledTone. no oddity archive
As requested, your reminder to binge Oddity Archive.
I uploaded a c. March 1989 episode of Nighttime Wheel on my alternate channel (Mitchell's Video Vault). I'm wondering if I can get the TV Play-Along device (as well as a CRT TV) and see if it works with the episode.
It won't. I downloaded and tested some WOF episodes from YT--the relevant info doesn't carry over.
@@OddityArchive I forgot to mention I have the original tape the episode was recorded on. So maybe it’s worth a shot in my case?
I instantly clicked on this episode when I saw it because I recognized that blue game unit! I never actually played it myself because I hadn't even been born by the time they stopped working on Wheel of Fortune broadcasts, but I remember finding it while exploring the basement as a kid. Apparently my parents had one and forgot about it down there. It was just the game unit itself, none of the packaging or tapes or anything else.
I remember something that may help with the mystery of how this thing works. I recall pointing the unit at the office-style fluorescent lamp tubes in the ceiling, and being surprised when the unit started playing music and the red indicator light lit up, as if the unit was trying to read data from the lamps. But I noticed in this video that, if the unit is actually reading data, the red indicator light pulses. I recall the indicator light staying solidly lit when pointed at the fluorescent lamp. Nothing interesting would happen after that, obviously, since there wasn't actually any data for the unit to read. It would just sit there playing the tune with the light on until you stopped pointing it at the lamp. Also, it didn't activate with any of the incandescent bulbs in the house.
Glad you didn't lose your Beta Player. I really enjoyed this episode. That tech was pretty cool for back then.
I’m surprised how good the recording quality is for a tape reused over and over for 12 years!
Ben I thought you and Alec from Technology Connections were the same person. I know your not but wow you guys have the same way of making jokes.
(9:29) As a child, my family had a Toshiba projection TV whose remote used the exact same shell, which would imply that both it and the DVD player the seller had were from some time in the early 2000s!
(18:37) Context for those who aren't familiar with VHS: if I recall correctly, pausing on VHS keeps the drum (containing the playback/recording heads) spinning, rubbing up against the tape.
My grandparents had one of those Mattel WOF games. We used to set it to "manual" mode and you could play it between friends with words and phrases you came up with in your head.
From the way I understood it, it worked off of programmed luminance fluctuations in the ultraviolet range. Which a CRT emits, but the human eye does not see.
I wonder if this works with much more recent episodes.
Now all I can think of is stacks and stacks of those Wheel of Fortune VHS games increasingly marked down at a Kay*Bee Toy Store. Imagine how many unsellable Interactive VHS stock they kept having to clear out because they didn't sell the systems anymore. And isn't having a number of fixed puzzles self defeating? Like you can only play it once because you already know the answers?
How in the bloody hell did they manage to make that work!?
How it updated "real time" with the tv episode was really cool.
3:40 I had (maybe STILL have somewhere?!?) the MS-DOS version! 👍😊👍
Damn! I wish I had this when I was a kid. We watched the nighttime Wheel religiously, along with Jeopardy, of course.
Is there a patent number on the game? That might answer a few questions.
Ok, but on this topic, has anyone seen that weird movie with Vanna White playing Venus? Goddess of Love? 😂
...Maaaayyyybbbeeeeeee? :3
@@mysfiring 😂😂😂
The person on the other end of the steadicam sounds like they went to the Peanuts adult way of speaking.
This is a better way to pass messages to spies than the clumsy number station broadcasts.
Well I hope I do much better next weekend on the Price is Right, Ight Ight Ight!
How long before Califon Productions flags this? After all that long out of print 1941 retrospective tape had one segment flagged. Of course it was a part with a caption joke which was ruined without the audio it's making fun of. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if you coughed in a video and Content ID mistook it for the intro to Sweet Leaf and flagged you.
I expect Sony to DMCA it. Califon renamed to Merv Griffin Enterprises before Columbia Pictures Television (later absorbed into Tristar, then renamed Sony Pictures Television) bought them out in 1991.
21:04 I spat my water out hearing you say that!
Can you dub to a different tape so the sticky tape can die without worry?
I guess. Figured it'd be more practical to just keep a running fleabay search for another copy of Vol. 1. I blame the sticky tape on how the game was stored--Vol. 2's saving grace was (probably) that it was still in-sleeve and sealed.
@@OddityArchive If the tapes are rare then it may be easier to do this to save worry. Still look for a non-sticky version but not have it be a top priority because you have a clean dub.
I don't quite understand how the device is communicating with the TV. Can someone help me?
There is a chadtronic video about a barney doll that communicates with the TV. I don't have the link, but I'm pretty sure it works the same.
Didn't expect to see Tweeterman here.
@@tamacat2001 Oh hi!
Maybe the next thing you could tackle would be a malfunctionibg luxury vaporizer; that way we can have Ben vs. The Volcano.
JK, love your work Benny boy, especially the Ben Vs. episodes. I like the narrative.
I remember stumbling onto just the main unit itself at a Goodwill a couple years ago. I thought it was neat but didn't pick it up since I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find any episodes it worked with
Cute. I got see TLM for my 11th birthday that year. Someone bought me a vinyl bag with the character on it. I hated the villain sequence like with any D-s-e- film, and like always I overloaded the bag and broke it the first day I had it,, but I have fond memories that you've brought up to round off a nostalgic evening.
I love this channel
They still film episodes of Wheel of Fortune at Epcot occasionally
Have you ever done a video about portable TVs? I have one from the 80s ( or possibly the 70s? ) that used to belong to my Great Uncle before he passed; and I was curious about them.
I haven't. The only portables I have are a couple of late '90's LCD handheld TV's.
I guess the device is picking low level and high frequency brightness variations as encoded serial data.
The data must have timestamps to sync with the prerecorded show.
Maybe you could solder an audio jack to the light sensor on the broke device and 'listen' to the serial data.
Digital formats will lose that information because they tend to average things that are not visually perceptible.
Unless you can capture it as lossless format.
Thanks for sharing!
That it worked AT ALL from a half-assed OTA signal recorded on a (what was THEN) nearly 15 year old Betamax re-re-reused tape (likely recorded on a then 15 year old VCR!) and STILL the game was somewhat playable 31 years later is frankly ASTONISHING!!!😲 I have 3 year old BD-R discs that won't even LOAD! Hell, this was a TOY made by MATTEL 1/3 of a century ago, and it's more functional than some tech from 5 years ago!👍😊👍
You say that off air recording is rough but seriously it looks excellent to me. Good job that's not easy to do. Just getting into VHS archiving myself.
Can anyone tell me why Ben dislikes the company that must not be named? I'm just curious.
It once was a joke about their litigious nature, but when I tried to drop the joke, everyone got upset that I stopped censoring it--I just brought it back as a(n apparently permanently) running gag after that.
Now, Ben, you gotta do a follow up where you get a digital set top box and try with a modern episode.
The only part of the vertical blanking interval preserved by DVDs is closed caption data, nothing else. It sounds like the data is entirely in the audio channel, I didn't see anything unusual on the screen.
This is amazing!
This is pretty clever!
It's such a bummer when Pat and Vanna don't appear in some the video games. Like the PS4 version has two imposters. And a PS2 version has Vanna doing double duty...
That ending theme is "Changing Keys" from 1989 (the third variant) composed by Merv Griffin and Mort Lindsey (if the Fandom page is true).
This is fascinating tech for the time. I suppose if it still plays, you could try preserving vol. 1 by copying to another analog format (vhs or even possibly umatic) to rule out any possible mpeg compression issues with dvd transfer, and see if the light sensor still works. From there you could also try copying via DV camcorder analog input to either MiniDV tape or PC over FireWire. The free WinDV Windows program can capture over FireWire while retaining the vblank info like CC.
So now you got me wondering if there is going to be an episode about VCR Board Games like the Wayne's World VCR board Game.
I’m pretty sure that I had a Game Boy version of Wheel of Fortune. Am I imagining that?
nope. game boy version existed, but it wasn't mentioned here.
There was, but, given the TV Play-Along debuted in 1988, that's where I put the cutoff date. The Game Boy itself didn't even drop 'til '89.
Okay so this is going to sound really crazy but they filmed a commercial for this in Pennsylvania and my grandmother was in it, does anyone have a link to that or anything? my family always tells me about it but doesn't have it and I'd love to be able to see it.
Thanks in advance!
I remember watching Wheel of Fortune as a todler and didn't know why they were buying a vawl.
If only they came out with a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game just like it.
Thanks for the laughs, Benny. 😄
THAT A GREAT EPISODE BENJAMIN.
Haha... I have the PC version that I found in a thrift store from HASBRO Interactive.
Additionally, RIP Malstrom. One of my favorites from EPCOT.
Play along fun!❤❤❤
A commenter on an upload of one of the two prerecorded tapes for use with this device has an interesting theory: he believes there to be an infrared signal embedded in the video that, when emitted from a CRT, functions much like an IR remote control.
I think that your dvd method did not work because it works only with captioning and not other data that is stored on the vhs.
Would it work with the Australian version of it?
It time for wheel of fortune!!!
Now we need a Wheel of Fortune DVD game
This is pretty cool. I remember seeing the board game but not this. I have two versions of the game on CD-Rom for my computer, and handheld game. Neither of them required a TV, the handheld had a cartridge and you could buy other ones and the CD-Rom you played on your computer.
Silly question, Ben, but did you try doing a fully digital recording instead of a DVD-R? I mean, capturing it to your computer using a lossless codec. Or possibly Firewire / DV, if that is an option, since that's supposed to be good enough to capture -all- the info on a VHS tape with very minor colorspace loss. Then that recording could be transferred to another VHS tape. And maybe that would work. In theory.
I haven't, though I do have a lossless copy on my laptop. Can't think of a way to get it back to VHS without any intermediate stuff (like Digital8, which would have some compression).
I have the exact same 13" crt sitting on my second office desk right now lol , its branded Durabrand, I think i bought it for my daughter 20 years ago or so from Walmart, I think it was like $75 at the time. now i use it to monitor my music studio cameras and playing my retro games console occasionally
4:16 That's about $155 in 2021 money!
5:08 When the Maxell guy’s family plays Wheel Of Fortune.
I have the tape for this game but someone covered up the security holes and taped over it. It’s got some crime drama on it now I think.
This was interesting, thanks for the video. Couldn't you have just cut off the old bad battery clip and spliced the wires for the new battery clip to the old wires to avoid the risk of soldering on the circuit board and destroying it?
Not enough slack for that.
Is that done through V-blank? Otherwise i duuno how they had patience and money to program for the chips of the time. Or it's Taiwanese? They had SoC's and programmers with both left hands but it's to deep for the job.
The host was a cross of Joe Piscapoe with Pat Sajak.
17:04 Hweel of Fortune.
Are you really sure it is a photo diode inside? And there are hidden scan lines in the video? Are you sure? I dare you to test this: try wheel of furtune with your VCR with known good part. And mute the volume. If it still works, you’re right and I am dumb. If not: photodiodes in that time period were not precise for data transfer. Data transfer in high pitched sound could also be possible.
I'd imagine if it were tied to the audio, it'd work on a modern flatscreen TV. I'll leave that to the experts though.
i want to see what else is on that betamax tape
A partial dub of a VHS copy of "A Bridge Too Far"
this is so cool!i i'm a bit too young for this kind of technology, but do you know how this game works with a recording of the show? has every show a different crt cue that the game picks up so it knows what puzzle to load? even from an old vhs?
Hold up didn’t we already have a home version of wheel of fortune
And it’s for free
It’s called hangman
Pretty sure I wasn’t high when I watched this episode, though it does beg two questions: Huh? and What?
Ok I'm new to the channel. What's the deal with the cardboard box and hiding the face?
Partially uncomfortable on camera, partially for privacy. The box itself was just a handy item at the time I started doing this.
Looks like a franklin device
26:47 filmed in walt disney world
Why the box?
You always have a habit of overstating how bad the quality of old recordings are, Benny-boy, and that Beta recording of Wheel was no exception. It looked and sounded perfectly fine, albeit a little faded.
I CAN'T FIND THE "ST0P" BUTTON
Why does this guy hide behind a box?
I think it's the Disneyland episode.
Nope, It’s Disney World.
@@eascec8374 Oh, It's Florida. Got ya, It's from July 1990.
It's pronounced Hee Tah Chee. Not "High tah Chee."
And Apple ][
I miss the old Wheel of Fortune theme; the new one sucks.