I just realized that while the Gameboy outsold the Game Gear probably 100 to 1, the GG actually outlasted the GB chronologically, that is, the b/w model that was for sale when the GG came out. Hows that for a "failure"?

I'd much rather have a GB of course. The game selection is a million times better and while the GG had color that screen was a terrible blurry mess. However, the GG was in no way a failure.

My comment doesn't relate to the article but about your statement above - and I'm not writing this as any sort of attack on you, but just as a reminder to everyone that many LaserDisc collectors talk about how LaserDisc video isn't compressed when the truth is, it IS highly compressed. The NTSC color system that LaserDisc uses IS an analog compression system, reducing an 18MHz RGB-based full color signal down to a 6MHz compressed color signal via dot interlace and 2 color reproduction for one of its color decoding axis - and that the color signal was also compatible with all existing B/W sets that were first standardized in the early 40's. And the B/W system also used compression; 2:1 interlace to cut the broadcast bandwidth in half.

NTSC's method of compatible color encoding was brilliant, but it does have severe limitations in color resolution, horizontal luminance resolution, diagonal luma resolution (when comb filtered) and various picture artifacts that are quite severe but that we have learned to live with. DVD's main artifact is macroblocking and it isn't really a major problem if care is taken with the encoding. DVD has 250 lines of full RGB color over its full color bandwidth, unlike NTSC which has 40 lines of full RGB color for large objects with edges and smaller objects up to 120-150 lines being reproduced in various combinations of only 2 colors, Orange and Cyan. And since the color is in component format, it doesn't have to be untangled from the luminance information, creating rainbow artifacts, crawling dots and losses of luminance resolution depending on the detail in the scene. Since DVD has higher chroma resolution in component format, images have greater detail in highly detailed and saturated color scenes since less high frequency luminance is lost when Gamma is applied - in other words, DVD violates the Constant Luminance principle much less than NTSC. And sadly, the vast majority of color televisions only used 40 line narrowband color, throwing away the wideband orange/cyan color detail information. Even many professional broadcast monitors used only the 40 line color bandwidth. And if a set doesn't use a comb filter - which consumer sets didn't until around 1980 - the luminance bandwidth is limited to 240-250 lines of resolution.

I bring these things up not because I adore DVD and hate NTSC, but because the statement that LaserDisc doesn't carry a compressed signal is just flat out wrong. As I said, NTSC is a brilliant compression system - both PAL and SECAM use various aspects of it, as do HD systems - and it's even more impressive when you consider that it was standardized in 1953 and the first color sets went on sale in 1954 - although sales were slow till the mid-1960’s, NBC regularly had color broadcasts of specials and holiday programming from the very start.

Turning to Professional VTR's, LaserDisc's bandwidth and FM signal allocation is essentially the same as the pro 1-inch C-format open reel system that was used for years, until the development of the D1 and D2 digital video tape systems. C-format was used for network programming, video mastering, program origination and archiving, etc... Is amazing to think that MCA insisted on such a high quality format for consumer use - Philips wanted a crossband color system, like Consumer VCR's use, with 40 lines of color and 250 lines of luma. But MCA insisted, much like Sony insisted on a 16-bit for,at for CD when Philips wanted 14-bit.

Oh, one thing regarding the stupid article - although LaserDisc was a huge success in Japan, that was due in large part to Japanese law that made video rental illegal - and prerecorded tapes were expensive to make since they had to be recorded in real time - LaserDisc was a high quality, low cost video format Japanese consumers could afford. Later the law was changed, but for most of LaserDisc's life in Japan, videotape rental was illegal - and prerecorded tapes were very expensive.

There were no such laws in America, so consumers became renters, not buyers - still, LaserDisc's were cheap enough that the format fully supported itself here - LaserDisc in the US never had to be subsidized by its sales in Japan. For some strange reason people now always say LaserDisc was too expensive for the mass market, yet players could be bought for less than $400 - often for only $199 pr so - and the vast majority of disc releases cost from $24 to $35 dollars. Expensive box sets and special editions were NOT the mainstream of LaserDisc releases.

Yeah, I keep telling people that.

Also, the sound. Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital, DTS, all compressed. Only stereo and mono soundtracks are uncompressed.

EDIT: I'm not so sure about the tape rental thing in Japan. I'm pretty sure rental priced VHS existed as far back as at least 1987, maybe 1984, which would certainly not be the majority of LD's life.

Thanks for your in depth treatment of LD and the type of "analog compression" utilized by NTSC disclord, as it is very interesting reading. I did qualify LD as being free from "digital compression" because, as you point out, NTSC is a type of video compression, but for analog junkies such as myself NTSC video still has it's charms. Macroblocking, when it occurs, is still really annoying on some DVDs, and LD video still has a nice analog look which (for reasons hard to quantify, perhaps akin to preference for vinyl LP) is appealing and remarkable for the age of the tech.

Still, LD has it's issues with various issues like chroma noise rather annoying. That LD retains the quality of the RTR tape from which it is mastered is also interesting to know.

Analog video is an interesting subject, akin to the lost field of Cybernetics (which studied feedback loops through continuous math like differential equations, with the founder of the field N. Weiner taking inspiration from a paper by Clerk Maxwell on the centrifugal governor found in steam engines), in that such analog paradigms (dealing with continuous rather than discrete values) are an interesting alternative to the digital explosion (we do still inhabit an analog world, I think...although there are physical theories which reduce reality to the digital).