Sony PlayStation VCD Player Add-On Card!
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2019
- Taking a look back at the PlayStation VCD movie add on card. This little device was used heavily by me during my college years. It was an easy way to get your perfectly 100% legal VCD movies output to a standard television using the disc player most college kids had at the time, the Sony PlayStation.
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#ScarletSprites, #VCD, #PlayStation, #SonyPlayStation, - Ігри
Another game system that would play vcd was the Philips Cd-i of course with attached digital video cart. I still use mine once in awhile to be honest as it put a load of movies out. Plus made the system more compatible with better games have that cart installed
Yeah, the CD-i always interested me but I never owned one. Yeah, imagine that these consoles required extra hardware to assist with MPEG-1 decoding. A few people have mentioned that the 3DO and Saturn also had add-ons that enabled VCD playback. What a time to be alive right? Thanks for sharing man!
@@ScarletSprites and saturn too with card
The Commodore Amiga CD32 was a console version of the Amiga 1200 computer, which could also play back VideoCD, with the addition of its Mpeg1 decoder card (the same internal expansion bay also made it possible to upgrade your CD32 to a full Amiga computer, via add-ons like the SX1 and SX32). And in Hong Kong (possibly other places in SE Asia), it was possible to purchase PlayStation model SCPH-5903, which had built in VideoCD support, making it the nerve centre of your home entertainment, in much the same way the PlayStation 2 was with DVD support, years later.
VideoCD was relatively popular Europe too. There were were several DVD players that also supported VideoCD, and often, you could find a single episode of a TV show on a VideoCD, given away as a promotional freebie on the cover of a magazine. I got a couple of episodes of The Twilight Zone that way, and they looked pretty good. I suspect it helped that they were in black and white rather than colour.
@@boblowes great info i love vcd
@@boblowes Well here in Germany I didn't really see the Video CD being successful. Funny enough, a friend back then gave me his CD-i / Philips branded VCD copy of Star Trek V because he had no way of playing it and I also had no way because I never bothered buying the MPEG card for my Sega Saturn. This was around '95.
A few weeks ago I was actually bidding on a MPEG card for my Saturn but it selling for more than 100€ was a bit too much for a gimmick device in my eyes. Don't even know what happened to my one and only VCD.
I've got a lot of affection for VCD. We used / brought them for years before DVD took off. It was a monster format.
That’s awesome, do you still have any official releases?
@@ScarletSprites Loads. Ghibli boxsets, random horror movies, all kinds of stuff. I never once burned a VCD though - they were all official. Today I sometimes think about pulling the trigger on a Saturn VCD card for the enhanced FMV capability it unlocks with some games.
That’s really cool. I wish I hadn’t unloaded that Star Wars box set. You should definitely grab that Saturn add-on, it sounds cool.
In China, VCD was a popular format before DVD took off (from late 90s to early 2000s), meanwhile VHS were mostly used for home video recording using those giant camcorders, and TV show recordings. Our family still have those VHS home video tapes from the 90s, starting around when I was born. On the other hand, my childhood memories were fulfilled by movies from those VCD and DVD discs. Now we’re pretty much just watching everything from the Internet.
i think we had a VCD card, and it allowed you to browse the files of a CD which allowed me to search for images and videos on a disc, and i remember finding demos of other games on commercially released games. i'm not sure you were allowed to try them, but i remember having a lot of fun roaming ALL of my CD's to find stuff on them
Those were the days man! I’m kind of bummed this doesn’t work anymore but it is what it is. Good times with sketchy hardware.
There’s something I’ve never seen before. Looks like a very useful device from the late 90’s early 2000’s. I missed out on this type of tech. Great vid, thanks for showing!
Thanks for watching man. It definitely came in handy, when VCDs and SVCDs were far cheaper to burn than buying DVDs.
Very cool never heard or saw anything like this i love these weird and just super obscure gaming accessories
I thought it was cool enough to share with the few people who would appreciate this type of thing. Definitely not going for mainstream appeal here.
Interesting, I've heard of VCDs and that the PS1 was capable of supporting them with an external device, it's crazy to think that was around 20+ years ago, this kind of reminds me of using Napster back in the day and burning Big Pun albums. Great video 😃
Man, there was a whole scene for releasing these and moving them across FTP sites. Different release groups, couriers, rippers, etc. It was really a hobby that albeit fun, was unfortunately largely based around piracy. I met a lot of fun people for years who I only knew by screen name.
When I was 12 YO, I had one in Abu Dhabi and it was a big deal. The first movie I watched was The Matrix on PSX with the VCD Movie Card. We were impressed.
Since a lot of music artists today are releasing small runs of music on niche formats (cassette, of course vinyl. Even SD cards and USB drives), as a artist who has seen the 80's, 90's and now 2000's and 10's, and all the techs of those decades, I was actually just thinking about releasing a limited run of about 100 copies of VCD music videos for my upcoming vault release of my music spanning 3 decades! VCD still works on many newer players. It would blow young people's minds to see this stuff. Like they somehow discovered a new format. Lol.
Hah, for sure. Very few people outside of those who’s were into bootlegging/tech are aware of the format in the States, then alone the younger crowd. I’m not even sure if or any blu-ray players support the format.
@@ScarletSprites I am a tech junkie. I am completely addicted to electronics. And I have hung on to nearly all of my players over the years. Even though many don't advertise it anymore, many players do still support it. The lasers that were made generally were cheaper in bulk to just buy them with these techs already built in. Even though not many used them anymore. The hang-up is the firmware on certain players. They don't write VCD into it anymore. So this is why the combo vhs/DVD units mostly play them. The firmware was designed at the time to include video cd. But surprisingly, even some of the portable DVD players (for road trips) with screens will play them. Depending on age. Ect..
I was not familiar at all with this video format. this was very informative. Keep up the great work man!
Thanks PK, that means a lot from a guy who was disenchanted with UA-cam today!
Scarlet Sprites It’s been a struggle today. I have to say this was a video that was different from anyone else’s video on UA-cam so it definitely has that going for it. It was nicely done sir .
Had one of those cards for my PlayStation!
Happy memories
This was great! Never seen that card but used vcds a ton back in the day when making my own videos before uploading them was possible.
That’s amazing to hear. Hah, the things you don’t know about the people you meet. Did you later then dabble in SVCDs as well? Those were definitely better quality (480x480) and held me over until DVDs could become more affordable.
@@ScarletSprites Never got my hands on SVCDs. I was happy the cds got cheaper though!
Now i keep a eye out for that verison of ps1
I still make a few VCDs every now and then. A lot of players are not super strict about the bitrates and can go higher than 1150k
When I was at Uni (‘College’) around the late ‘90s there was a guy whose dad worked in Malaysia and used to send him loads of VCD format films so this brought back some good memories of those times. This was also around the time of DivX pirate films being watched on a PC screen or through a laptop connected to a TV....never knew this device existed though?
Oh yeah, the whole divX thing. That was a legit product/service that then had the codec used for it modified and everyone started encoding movies with it. It became known more for that than it did the original purpose. That of course eventually gave rise to Xvid, which, is just divX backwards. Not very clever. A few people have mentioned there were VCD cards for Saturn, 3DO, and CD-i as well. Good times.
Scarlet Sprites I didn’t even know at the time that DivX was a legit platform and had assumed it was just a bootleg format so was surprised/confused to then start to see DVD players showing DivX compatibility
i recently bought a VCR for the very first time ever (never seen VHS movies before), and id say the experience with VCD is somewhat better. the quality of VCD is more consistent, so with a decent CRT TV and DVD player, they look surprisingly okay. the support for VCD is also surprisingly great, i can still play them after the latest firmware update on my Bluray player, and Windows computers without installing anything.
i remember back then, VCD players with 3 to 4 disc changers were quite popular, i have had 2 of them between 2000 and probably 2015 before they gave up. so having 2 discs would usually not be an issue. Rewinding the tape takes a whole lot more time.
but i just love the idea of collecting VHS and VCD, i love them 😊
I have a few VCDs and I would have liked to have this. Thanks for sharing this.
Definitely a handy accessory to make your PlayStation double as the poor person’s DVD player!
commodore CDTV and cd32 could both play vdc format. im surprised three format is considered obscure in the usa. not so in Europe.
It was available, but very niche and not common. I really only ever learned about it in the late 90s while at college. There were a few attempts to push it to the mainstream through companies like Philips, but it never really caught on.
I think the one official VCD I have is an M2M music video collection from (I think) Singapore. The end part of “Don’t Say You Love Me” with the popcorn raining down is predictably full of compression artifacts.
Oh I don't doubt it. MPEG-1 at 240 forgives nothing.
I still have one of these in 2024 that I bought back in 2000, I think it was. I got it to watch bootleg VCD movies back in the day before DVD came around. I did a video on it, too for my channel.
Ever try AVCHD? I don’t think anything was ever released commercially on that format, but it was a way of putting HD video on DVD discs and they play in most Blu-Ray players. I have a few I created with component video capture from my DVR, and some I made from my own videos. It depends on the source footage, but the picture can be at least as good as broadcast HDTV, and possibly somewhat better, as the disc-based version of the format tops out around 18 mbps h264.
I have one disc that I self-created that’s pretty decent. I never messed with it much after that. My Panasonic camera gives me the option to record in MP4 or AVCHD but I never use it as the file sizes are generally larger and more difficult to deal with when editing.
Even though I don't have any VCDs these days, I do remember burning them with videos of myself via Nero and sending them to friends to watch on their dvd player. It was neat.
I think I used Roxio for a while but then Nero became the default program almost. It’s probably been at least ten years since I’ve had that installed.
Wow!!I have this add-on since 1998, and a Video-CD Original movie, Top Gun, made by Philips.Greetings from Barcelona Spain!!!
Nice! Top Gun sounds like a movie that is prime for VCD. Cool to hear from people in Spain sharing the same kinds of memories.
@@ScarletSprites I love you channel, subscribed one year ago.Here in Sapin there's a huge industry of different enterprises that sale custom cabinets with tons of roms like Factoryarcade, Rex Arcade and Brico Game.
We all were pirates back in the day. 😁
Believe it or not, my Pioneer DVD Player can still play VCD. I also still have all my old VCDs including one for Karaoke.
I think I have an Apex dual DVD/VCR that will still play VCD/SVCD. Back in the day I had an Apex 800 that was pretty sweet for them and SVCDs.
It’s a shame that VCDs didn’t catch on in North America. They could hold more storage than VHS tapes, and could have been further optimized to put out a better image quality.
i swear this the official version of this is the only ever add on that Sony officially made for the PS1 to use the parallel I/O port
Wow, I never even heard of this. Good stuff there. I got a feeling you know about the Super WildCard as well....ah yes bootleg floppy disks galore & dumping the roms from the rented games.....ah that brings me back.
I know OF the Super WildCard but not much about it overall. It definitely looks like an oddity that would interest me though. I love all these third party accessories that are obscure.
You know both the PS1/Saturn with their respective VCD peripherals can easily read up to 2.4mbps due to the DOUBLE SPEED 2x CD drives they BOTH seem to have which is great for those like me who could use Xtended VCD to lengthen or shorten a movie by increasing or decreasing bitrate to fit the size of the limited 702MB. I used VideoSolo Free Video Converter because it's the best QUALITY PER BIT Mpeg-1 encoder I have ever tested with on my PC, and used that for encoding my 80 minute 2008 Horton movie from DVD, and yes, I used VirtualDub for Bicubic downscaling and AviDemux for Pro Logic 2 hence the Saturn/PS1 can process that all by themselves (Croc game has Dolby Surround).
It’s been ages since I’ve heard anyone mention VirtualDub. That was my go to software back in the day. I fooled a lot with that, CCE, AviSynth, and TMPGEnc.
@@ScarletSprites I only use TMPGEnc for the highest quality MP2 audio on the planet, other programs suck at MP2, AviDemux's MP2 is super close though but TMPGEnc wins the battle for sounding just fine even on 160kbps (up to stereo only), Avidemux does 192kbps just fine too, with Pro Logic 1/2 included.
@@ScarletSprites Yeah VirtualDub2 is my go to place for the filters I need like Nearest Neighbor to multiply resolutions. Because UA-cam only trancodes uploaded videos with nice quality if the resolution of the video is high enough. 1080p60 for example is 5.7mbps of AVC, decent enough but of course fps games don't benefit too well from it. I plan on making the perfect retro longplays of my personally selected games, and multiplying them to the nearest resolution to 1440p and using Bicubic interpolation for resolutions like 1344p due to the nature of the Genesis/32x game aspect ratios apparently 320x224-a little wider than 4:3. I'm kind of a tech wiz so I hope you don't get too confused.
Don't forget about KVCD! It was a way to fit a full length movie on one CD. I think VCD quality is better than VHS.
A few others too like XVCD. Doom9 and VCDHelp pages were the goto sources back then for guides and tools.
as a kid, there was a guy at the local weekly swap meet that sold bootlegs on VCD for dirt cheap. Using software on my Dreamcast, I watched them. Amassed quite a few, most were Anime usually bootleged from Japanese laserdiscs with very bad english subs. I would assume the guy was downloading the ISOs and writing them to disc. hey, I saw Sailor moon uncensored, as well as Serial Experiments Lain.
I eventually tossed most of my bootleg VCDs away because they stopped playing due to disc rot. I still have my pressed discs, most of them are US releases surprisingly. I have one Chinese pressed disc, and it's Friday the 13th.
That’s really cool. I only ever saw them for sale from street vendors in NYC way back in the day. I had them run on DC once just for kicks to see how it would handle but mostly played them on PlayStation and later an Apex DVD player.
@@ScarletSprites we got our first DVD player a few years later, an rca that played vcds as well. My current Laserdisc player plays vcds and DVDs and that's my main system.
One thing about vcds that suck with us releases, the discs made for cd-i. They are vcds, but can't play on a vcd player.
I have a very similar add-on for my PS1. I have to flick the switch to VCD and insert a genuine PS1 game. Switch it on with the PS1 game still inside (still on VCD mode) and let it spin up. It then gives a message that I can now swap discs to a VCD and press any button to start. It then loads the movie. Hope this helps.
Yeah, I’ve had a few others weigh in with that feedback. Unfortunately that doesn’t work either. I installed a modchip in this unit way back in the late 90s and it never required any type of boot disc for VCDs. It’s fine though, it’s not too often I feel I’m missing out, lol. Thanks though!
A few years late, but, I think you need to insert a game first and use some spring thing to prop the door open: "The basic unit boasts both multi-out and AV out, has a flashing red power button and a cunning spring that slots under the lid, again enabling you to open and close the machine at will. Once all the bits are attached, flick the Video card to on, insert game and turn the PlayStation on with the lid open. The red light should now be blinking. After the two loading screens have appeared the disc will stop spinning and an instruction screen will appear. Take out the game and insert the Video CD of your choice. Now simply press any button on your joypad and follow the same instructions as opposite. Simplicity itself."
Yeah, a few people have talked about that or disc swapping. I know bitd I never had to do any of that. I’m assuming because the system was modded it was fine to boot VCDs straight with the card. I’ve since tried a few of these swaps and tricks and haven’t been able to get it to work any which way.
@@ScarletSprites I got mine working using a video cd with a game cd to swap and holding down the two triggers (I have to confirm that second part is even needed), but it worked with a "Star Wars Phantom Edit" VCD which was a very professional rework of the poorly reviewed "Phantom Menace", but would not work with a couple boot-leg VCDs of Minority Report and Mr. Deeds. Those are the only 3 VCDs I own. My conclusion is that it is picky about the formatting and how professional it is. It says it works with VCD versions 1.0, 1.2 and 2.0. I'm assuming the bootlegs are some non-complaint format. I just ordered three cheap Hong Kong movies sold as VCD (Police Story 1 & 2 with Jackie Chan and Thunder Cops), so I'll see how they do. Obviously, there are better ways to watch these, but it would be nice to have a small collection that works with the movie card.
BTW, there is also one out there, apparently, that also allows playing back-ups and Game Boy games like some of the GameShark type add-ons.
UPDATE: A) You need a game disc as a starter swap disc, but don't need to hold the two triggers down while the lid is open. Just play game until instruction screen appears, open lid and swap with VCD , close lid and hit a button on the controller, then the movie card LED starts flashing.
B) You probably do need a professionally made VCD that conforms to VCD 1.0, 1.2 or 2.0.
C) My Gamars movie card plays the game shark mode with Playstation's composite, S-video or HD RetroVision's component cable, but the VCD will only dislay using composite. It will not display with the S-Video or component cables.
I used to have one of these add back in the day Joe. I can’t for the life remember where I bought mine from, maybe Lik Sang, remember them lol.
I didn’t use it heavily from what I can remember but was a interesting bit of kit. I no longer have it and threw it out years ago. Did you not have to have some sort of spring on inside the door button for it to work. I think I remember mine having some sort of spring on a piece of string that was went indie the CD unit so the PS thought that the door was closed even when it was opened.
Thanks for that 7 min hit of 90’s nostalgia :).
That’s really what this video was all about, just remembering the old days (or ways?). And you saying Lik Sang, WOW. Does that ever take me back. Makes me feel like browsing some isonews.
I love vcds man this takes me back to my collage days when we used to swap dodgy pirate movies back and forth it wasn't exactly hard to clone an original 2 disc vcd movie all you needed was a pc with a cd writer and some software and you were quids in, in the mid 90s i had the video cd card for my sega saturn and was well impressed with it as it had no problems reading cdrs, most of the main retailers here in the uk sold official vcds and there were several mail order places that sold them too so getting hold of vcd movies etc wasn't a problem, i always thought the quality was pretty good certainly better than vhs, the movies done by paramount were the best the picture quality was very good especially the StarTrek films and the Saturn vcd could run in rgb so Chrystal clear picture, i still have my vcd collection and still collect vcds just for old time sake also still have the saturn and vcd card, saturn vcd and Philips cdi were the best 2 vcd players on the market during vcds lifespan.
Had one of these. Had things like lethal weapon4, armageddon, bride of chucky, bugs life, dvd was still expensive at the time. Wasnt it only the 1st ps1 version that had the outputs socket?
Nice! Yes, DVDs were only just surfacing at the time and were not cheap. Players were $300+ easy still. This was a nice introduction to video on discs and taught me a lot about audio and video compression. SVCDs were pretty nice too, particularly since they doubled the vertical resolution of VCDs.
I’d say it’s not broken probably the laser when I want to run silver discs I actually have to do some slight adjustments to my laser and then if I want to go back to the black ones I have to put it back because they don’t read the same for some reason all 4 of my ps1s are like that
I remember this. I had plenty of VCD movies
The Sega Saturn can also play VCDs, if you have the movie card. Pretty cool for the era!
Agreed! It was nice to be able to watch all the bootlegs on an actual TV.
I believe the Sega Saturn had an expansion card that went into one of the expansion slots in the back which would allow it to play VCD as well. Heard the best VCD players were the multi-disc player. Appearently these were popular in East Asian countries because of the extreme humidity and cassette tapes not doing well in those conditions. I wonder if people in Florida and other swampy high humidity areas can confirm this.
That’s actually a really interesting point about the humidity. I wonder how much validity there was to that too, or if it was a claim being pushed by those marketing discs. You’re spot on with the Saturn, it did have something I recall but I’m mostly unfamiliar. Never owned a Saturn unfortunately.
@@ScarletSprites:I'm a bit shocked that a big arcade guy like you never owned a Saturn. Had some of the best home arcade ports that were nearly arcade perfect especially with the Saturn's own 4MB ram expansion. The Saturn's controller is my favorite controller for fighting games to which all modern fight pads are based off of including Hori's offerings.
It was during that time when I was still young and in high school, and it was one console or the other. I went PlayStation.
Hah, I just don’t think I have time for another console right now. Some day maybe the time will be right. I’m afraid I’d just never play it right now unfortunately.
Omg I love the bmw that Robert de Niro sits in
I have roughly over 70 orginal VCDs that I still keep around for collectible purposes. The best part of VCD was there were releases on VCD that you couldn't get on DVD for a while. Some of the ones I was able to get back in the 90s(legally) were The Star Wars Trilogy(Phantom Menace as well) Back to the Future Trilogy and Predator 2, just to name a few that were yet to be released on DVD. These were best viewed on a 20" CRT(picture tube) due to their 4:3 aspect ratio and low resolution. I will say, my Oppo Blu Ray does a great job on upconverting them making some more than watchable on my 106" projector screen. A forgotten format for sure.
I totally forgot about BttF being available on VCD as well. Good call and nice sounding collection. I kind of regret selling my Oppo. I had the 103D with the Darbee video processor integrated into the unit. It was great but I wanted to move to 4K. I of course sold the 103 and then never got around to purchasing the 4K model until Oppo announced they were ceasing manufacturing.
@@ScarletSprites Yeah, Oppo players are top notch. I still have my 95(which I region hacked off course). I confess, I won't buy a player(Blu Ray or DVD) that doesn't play vcds. Like yourself, I'm not overly impressed with VCD quality. There are some exceptions of course. I have a 2007 release of Rob Zombie's Halloween(Widescreen no less) and the Sci-fi classic The Incredible Shrinking Man which both look surprisingly good. Still have an infinity for the format for whatever reason though. Then again, I still spin laserdiscs so you know I still have one foot in the 90s.😀
I wish I knew about this as a kid. I learned about Video CD as a kid in the 90's, and ended up buying a bunch from Bolivia in the 2000's, so I would have been using my old playstation for years 😂
i love best the early digital its nice to test
Yeah, it's a cool format!
if you have a early 1000 model series ps1 it can boot imports and backups :)
A CD-R only holds 80 minutes of audio. The 80 minutes was not referred to the amount of VCD data it could hold. You can compress the video to fit within the 700Mb.
Not sure what you’re referencing as it’s been a while since the video came out. But yes, 80min of uncompressed wav audio for “normal” audio CDs, but VCD compliant discs are using a compressed mp2 format (I think, it’s been forever since I made a disc). Also pretty ugly MPEG-1 video compression.
Whoa!!
This is new news for me Scarlet. If you didn't mention this, I would'n't know at all. Nice bro, I learned something new today. 8^)
Anthony..
Haha, I like the odd stuff.
VCD worked fine without an adapter on my UK PlayStation 1 , it was chipped though , I had a massive collection of one film , the phantom menace , they came on two discs
Mine is chipped but that didn’t enable VCDs to play unfortunately. The only original VCDs I had were Star Wars as well.
@@ScarletSprites I have realised after a bit of research and my failing memory that my PlayStation was an imported version , it was almost white , it was sold by a toy shop , “ the red balloon “ in Manchester , the shop was the only one that had playstations in the area so I bought it for 300.00 uk pounds , after a mod which only involved one wire to bypass a chip , I bought a VCD from a local hooky store and to my surprise it worked perfectly , only about 10,000 of these were made for the Taiwanese and Malaysian market from what ive heard , shame it was thrown in the bin when I got a ps2
Huh, so the Saturn (With mpeg card, unless you have a Hi-Saturn) wasnt the only console to play vcd's
I got a similar model, and given my experience with that, here are my instructions to have the ps1 play vcd with the addon.
1. Have the switch set to vcd
2. Insert an og ps1 disc
3. Wait until it stops reading it
4. Remove the ps1 disc without having the disc lid go all the way up. Otherwise, you'll have to start from step 1 again.
5. Insert any vcd you'd like to play and press any button on the controller
6. Profit
i have the gamars psx-003 movie card, it just came without any instructions... and the box is blue with a 1950 writing... and i don't know what the 1950 means
edit: my switch says vcd or password instead of game. and can it run on ps1 with chip... i tried it yesterday with a burned tekken 3 but it did not work.
What type of modchip are you using? from what I know abort early modchips like the old crow is that it might be conflicting with the vcd player and trying to send ps1 disk data to it?
but yeah I would try it on a unmodded ps1 or a older model like the SCPH-1000 or SCPH-5000...
Unfortunately it’s been so long that I have no idea what modchip is in there. It’s the only system I’ve ever had though and it used to work fine. I’m just glad it’s playing games. I suppose I’m never going to sit and watch a VCD unless I wanted to torture myself.
@@ScarletSprites arrh yeah might be just a issue with the VCD player :'( iv never seen one of these befoul so idk if the vcd player has things like caps or anything that would fail over time..
i know there was a vcd player PlayStation (SCPH-5903) but didn't know there was a addon you could get to play vcds in a non vcd PlayStation though so that's cool.
I tried opening the VCD player card and there is a screen that is stripped, so unfortunately it’s going to be even more of a pain to look at this. It’s honestly probably not even worth it. I did see the VCD Playstation model you’re referring to. Pretty cool!
Makes me wonder if the sega cd or if the dreamcast has an add on like this?
I vaguely recall there was a way to hack the DC to get them to play, but it was software based and the frame rate on playback was horrendous. The Saturn and 3DO had VCD playback devices according to what some other people have said.
You put the spring in can you put a PlayStation one game in let it read it then press the reject button then put in the VCD and it should play
No, I saw you had mentioned that the other day. I tried this as well when I made the video and this doesn’t work either. I never needed to boot the discs either as the modchip always took care of that for me.
some people are even scared of old digital things that it stuck or give some weird sounds then they feel very scared
I had the movie gothika with halle barry and terminal with Tom hanks on vcd i got from a chinese mall when they came out...pretty random but only vcds i ever seen in person/owned
Do the philips cd-i movie discs play on the PS1 Movie card.
My guess is no unless they are VCD compliant. I’m just not familiar with what Philips used for the cd-i movie discs.
Don't you still have to load a PSX games wobble into the ram before the VCD player will boot?
No, you could pop a disc in and it would load. No swapping was ever needed for this.
@@ScarletSprites thanks I figured I must have remembered it wrong. Any luck getting yours to load VCDs?
@@RetroGamerBB No, this went back in the box about a day after I was done the video. It was just a fun moment to revisit my college days and I decided to share it.
I think part of the reason VCDs didn’t look that great was that the technology/processes for digitizing film/video weren’t nearly as good as they are today. You can’t make them look great by any means, but you can make them look better than some of the ones you have there.
That's a good point too. There was a part of me that wanted to take a more recent 4K source and see what that looked like in VCD format. The older (and smaller) CRTs definitely helped to hide some of the now glaring limitations back in the day.
you might have to load the vcd with an official PS1 disc first after the EMS VCD menu a new menu should pop up to switch the PS1 disc to the VCD.
So many people have mentioned that, but that was never the case with this setup and modchip. For arguments sake I’ve tried that anyways and the disc still doesn’t load.
I burned numerous VCD back in the day. I had a few official releases. It briefly made a run here within the states. Some music artists released CD/VCD combos. I did not however, know about this PlayStation add on. I assume it is only for the fat PS1?
Yes, only for the fat models. I doubt anything was ever released to fit or work on the PSOnes like this, although I’m uncertain if any gameshark like peripherals supported VCD down the road.
I’ve been calling them Rawr files for... probably way too long.
Or, it could be me. I’ve honestly heard it pronounced both ways. I thought for sure there’d be someone arguing it in the comments, but thankfully my viewers typically pass on being petty.
I never even knew this existed, I didn’t even know about VCD until DVD was already out lol
VCD was great for bootlegging really, and little else. SVCD was actually where it was at. That was like the poor man’s DVD split to two discs. On the small CRTs at the time, the quality of those (480 x 480) was pretty close to DVD, and substantially better than VCD.
What you need to do is get a little spring put it in the back of the PlayStation inside the lid sorry and put a game in once it’s in VCD mode take that video game out and put in your movie and it should work
Yeah, I tried that method as well. I used a pen to hold the switch down to boot the game and then switch discs. In the past I never had to do that though. Since the system was modded, you could always start with a VCD inside and just start it up. Thanks for thinking of that though.
Is it possible it required a boot disc to play vcds?
No, the console is modded and never required a boot disc to play movies.
I have it... its only available in asia
I knew that in Hong Kong a white Playstation got released that played VCDs but this add on card is new to me.
kool find
It’s a throwback, that’s for sure
3DO could play vcds but it had to be purchased separate.I agree back in the day this was exciting news just to watch movies in another format.I still have movies for the CDI I purchased from Best Buy years ago when they were in the clearance.☺
Hah, that’s really cool. The CD-i is a system I sadly have no experience with. I love the more fringe stuff like that. I do have a 3DO but I don’t really recall anything about it playing VCDs. Did it need an add-on card similar to this?
@@ScarletSprites Yes it needed a video module for the vcds but I never purchased because of the price.If I remember correctly you can play vcds made for the 3do on the CDI.
@@CAPCOM784 the Video CD adapter for the FZ-1 also handily gives you a memory storage manger when no game is in the drive.
@@michaelmanning8099 Such a shame the 3DO was so expensive back then it could've did alot better? Yep I thought that was so neat back then not having to use memory cards on the 3DO.🙂
@@CAPCOM784 yep, but it could basically play 3D games and PC CD-ROM games, and PCs were expensive back then. They were £700 to £1200 here.
For a year, it was a great time to own one haha
I have one of those attached to my ps one, no box or instructions though
Is it still in working order?
Scarlet Sprites , I am not sure as have not switched my ps one on in years, but will check over the weekend
Maybe the modchip interfered with the vcd unit?
i love vcd
I was aware of the Saturn's VCD capabilities, but I never knew this thing existed. Pretty cool! Too bad that it's not working anymore.
I have a VCD of Total Recall and the quality is pretty terrible. Kind of fun to watch - just for kicks!
I copy my 4k uhd blu ray to vcd recorder for back ups, it looks like dvd to blu ray. VCD can look better than vhs, again 4k copy to vcd can look like blu ray way better dvd.
But a KVCD ( a vcd encoder configuration) improved quality A LOT. I mean, you could burn an entire movie into a VCD and still looking good on old big TVs (and better than the VHS).
I had one of those, my dad was into dodgy bootleg activities and would give me all kinds of crap that no one in their right mind would use. They were really bad and I don't think I ever watched anything all the way through on it, it was about on par with the quality you would find on pirate VHS tapes back in the day, which my dad also was able to source if you were into that kind of thing.
It’s amazing the amount of crap quality we put up with back in the day really. Watching terrible quality movies on a Playstation on a 27” CRT.
@@ScarletSprites I think the few people that did buy products like this did it for the novelty value or just did not know how poor the quality was.
Im pretty sure you cant play vcd with a modchipped system. Doesn't matter if its an official disc or burnt, it simply wont work
You can, that’s how I rolled back in the day.
@@ScarletSprites ok, i thought it was the same with the 5903 ps1 that was video cd
If you have an Action Replay/Gameshark you dont mind sacrificing to flash the firmware, the NO$PSX Emulator has a replacement rom for it ( www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=1319 ) and while it will let you load swapless backups/imports [Chipless Modchip], it also has a built in VCD Player as well! ( www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=1317 )
Might be worth looking into if you're curious about it.
Nice man, thanks for providing that info. I’ll check it out later this evening.
What's the point of mentionning an unofficial Playstation video CD extension whereas Sega released a video CD card for the Saturn?
What’s the point in commenting if you weren’t interested in the subject?
I managed to cram transformers with a menu back in the day lol
Haha, nice man!
I still have one of these the original version the one you show is a later revision and the last versions had cheat card/disc swapper built in as well.
Original vcd came out even before the movies hit the cinema in my country i i was getting big name films way before cinema release.
SOme films the quality is better
That’s really interesting to hear. Where are you from Nic?
@@ScarletSprites When these came out I had moved to UK the cinemas back then ended up getting movies compared to the likes of the US almost a year later.
I just tried my one that was in the loft it still works playback was bit jumpy which could be the disc or the PlayStation laser
I never heard of this. I never knew anyone who had this.
I have it
My friend was always bringing back movies.. some of them were legitimate but many were “dollar discs” 🤣 some guy in a movie theater filming the video in a handicam. Oh the blocky Chinese subtitles!
Oh for sure. I always liked seeing someone’s head move around on the bottom of the screen. It added to the real theater like atmosphere at home.
It's not broke! I had this issue. Some movies just did not work on it even if it was a legit disc.
I wish that were the case. I tried a lot of discs man, legit and some....less than legit. It just won’t boot anything sadly.
@@ScarletSprites maybe because your PlayStation is modded is why. Mine wasn't modded.
Yeah, it’s always been modded though. I’m going to open up the card and see if I can spot any bad caps.
Necesitas un chip que se le agrega
The console is modded. This setup previously worked as is throughout the late 90s and early oughts.
Hey dono if you realised this worked by booting a game first then the VCD would run
No, that’s not how this ever worked. That swap wasn’t needed with the modchip installed. I tried that method while making the video and it still failed to boot. I believe that VCD card is unfortunately just not working any longer.
Ugh. I remember getting Power Ranger season sets on super VCDs. Super expensive
SVCDs were pretty sweet, a lot better than VCDs. I had no idea Power Rangers were released on SVCD, though that does make sense given the region. Look how far we’ve come!
I use to have one of those so I could watch those crazy Hong Kong martial arts movies.
Nice! I can’t lie, I may have watched Black Mask on VCD.
Oh bootlegging I’m college. We used to split a spindle of 100 blank CDs then hit the ghetto mom and pop rental stores and do their $1/1 day PS1 rentals... then burn disks all night. The good ole days!
You must have been rich, lol. The only CD-Rs that were even close to being cheap were these 10 pack Verbatims that my Dad used to get at Sam’s Club. I think those were around $20 at the time. What an era.
@@ScarletSprites I want to say when we ordered them by the 100 pack from TigerDirect we were paying around $100-125 a spindle. We would all split the cost and still... about 1 out of 3 would (what we called) "Gash". We'd get a buffer underun errors and have to toss the disk. When we FIRST were trying this out, we were buying disks for what I want to say around $4-5 each... when they "Gashed" we got really pissed off and would chuck them against a wall like Chinese stars... which was pretty stupid because the bits of plastic would get everywhere. Later we decided we would pull our money together and buy the CDR's in bulk and when they failed it was less of a loss. Some of the first games I remember we "burned" were Bust a Move 1 & 2 (The dance games) and Rival Schools. These were the Japanese versions. Another underhanded thing we used to do was we would go to Circuit City and buy a new Playstation. Attempt to install the "chip" in it. If we screwed it up, we would box it back up and return it. They started to catch on to this and they stopped letting you return opened boxes. So we started opening them from the bottom... and if we needed to return one, we just glued the bottom of the box back together so you couldn't tell. Yeah, we were awful people... and terrible at soldering. I still have my original chipped PS1. The chip is so old, it won't play some of the newer games they coded to detect the chip.
Hah, a lot of that sounds very familiar to things that people I know used to do. My PS1 is still my original with the chip too, did it myself. I actually lost count of the number of PS1s I modded back in the day at college. There was tons of disc swapping taking place too, people renting and burning multiple copies and then trading them with other people.
And yes, I recall the horrors of bad burns and how costly those were when media first came out. It was aggravating. Once I switched over to CDRWin things got a little better. The Adaptec software was hit or miss for me.
Vcd was released in North America
Sure, but I think the word obscure accurately defines that release.
@@ScarletSprites yes it was not a wide release and I think only like a hundred titles we're released America one of them being the movie clueless
My friend has the same vcd movie card you have and every time he used it he swap the disc from game to vcd to get it to work
Someone else mentioned that too. This Playstation has a modchip in it and I never had to do that previously. I think the card is just shot. No point in buying a new one though, lol.
@@ScarletSprites out of curiosity would you be interested in selling that movie card?
I still have that same video card for my ps one. It’s the reason I have a small vcd collection. I also have the Hong Kong vcd release of the trilogy as well as Phantom Menace. I have a copy of Die Hard 3 but it has horrible artifacting. Virtually unwatchable.
I didn’t think the Star Wars discs were terrible but I certainly didn’t think they were great either. My widescreen VHS bitd looked better. The audio however sounded better from the discs.
That’s crazy about Die Hard. I kind of want to see that now. MPEG1 compression of action sequences is never good.
Filipinos had VCDs back in the late 1990s.
Yeah, that’s probably about the same time period when I was burning them as well. It’s was a pretty big scene for bootlegging movies but I know outside the US it was used as a retail format and was pretty popular. It’s fascinating to hear about those types of differences of the era really.
Are you using S-Video through the AV Multi Out on it? I have the exact same one and it will only show an image if I'm using composite cables.
Right, S-Video never worked on the VCD adapter. I could only ever use composite.
@@ScarletSprites Did you try the one you have again with composite cables? Did it work?
@@1980sGamer No, that's what I was trying to say. I've only ever used composite on this. S-Video has never worked. The device itself is just done for unfortunately.
@@ScarletSprites Oh. Ahh man. Such a shame. Maybe try it on another console that doesn't have a mod chip?
@@1980sGamer It's the only PSX I have. It's really fine though. The urge to watch a VCD doesn't come up too often in 2020.
I could never get that damn thing to work.
Mine was pretty good in college, although you had to burn the discs at lowest speed possible to avoid skipping. Probably a decent practice any ways back in the day.
@@ScarletSprites I still have the thing as well. Prima TOPVIEW movie card. At least I could use it as a pro action replay.
E.M.S. made a lot of accessories for every system.
That’s interesting, I wasn’t really aware of them too much outside of this little add-on. It’s also entirely possible I just didn’t pay attention.
I hate when people say vcd is worse picture than vhs its not true. I can send you a vcd that will rival a dvd.
It’s true in the majority of cases. It’s archaic compression (MPEG-1) and half the resolution of a DVD. I’m sure there are exceptions to be found but if you took the same source material and compared apples to apples, creating a VCD vs DVD it’s not going to be close unless you’re viewing on a really small screen.
@@ScarletSprites I make 4kuhd copies to terapin vcd recorder (look it up its rare, best vcd encoder ever made) svideo to svideo and it looks better than 📀 dvd or as good on bigger screen. I generally use 21" tv and these copy vcds look superior to early dvd (again from blu ray source).
I have loads of official vcds
That’s cool. Aside from the one I showed in the video the only other official ones I had were the Star Wars trilogy. I did have a copy of Jet Li’s Blask Mask too.
*it's not broke dude! You are missing the Spring of the unit! You load your US game then swap the Video CD to watch* 😂
So many people have said this, but that’s not how this ever worked. There was never a need to swap discs to get the VCDs to load (silvers or burns). Subsequently I have tried that method just to see and it’s still a no go.
@@ScarletSprites *then it trully is broken then*
The only thing holding on to VCD is for the asian Movies and Music Videos that was only released on this format. Otherwise you can ditch it, because the quality is sucky. DVD is way better to watch on it.
These were every where is asia. This made the PS1 the ultimate console to have
I can only imagine based on what I’ve read. Loved having the ability to play VCDs in the 90s, but that meant pirating for most of us in the US since most retailers didn’t sell the discs.
@@ScarletSprites hey man thanks for the reply! stumbled upon your channel, very interesting content.
How big is playing DVD or Blueray content on PS2/PS3 is in the US ? Any content Taito Type X anytime soon ?
It was a big selling point for Sony back in the day, for sure. I actually had a 360 so I owned the HD-DVD addon, lol. When that failed I switched over to a standalone blu-ray player. For sure though, many people saw the PS3 as a fantastic Blu-Ray option and it was used as such by many of my friends.
I unfortunately don’t have a Taito Type X. Would love to talk about it some day if I am able to get one though.