WEBVTT - The Format Wars 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.760 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.680 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:22.759 and I love all things tech and standards. Who needs them? Well? 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:28.000 So it it turns out if you want stuff to 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:32.920 work with other stuff, you you need them because without standards, 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:37.800 compatibility would be the exception, not the rule, especially between 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:42.920 products from different manufacturers. Because of standards, you can use 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.400 a USB cable from one company to connect to a 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:50.320 computer built by a totally different company, and then connect 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.000 that to a device built by a third company and 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:57.400 it can all work. But standards don't just magically pop 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.360 into being. It's not like people just start building new 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:07.559 technologies and then they all magically morph into a universal standard. Nope. 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.840 We humans have to figure out what final form stuff 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.679 should take, and then we have to cooperate to make 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.640 sure everyone conforms to that decision. Sometimes a group of 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:23.920 people from multiple disciplines will form a hopefully impartial committee 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:28.840 whose job is to determine these things. Other times things 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:31.280 are a little more messy, with a lot of give 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.039 and take. I'm going to talk about a few of 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:38.920 those other times. We can think of these as format wars. 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:43.160 I've covered some format wars in the past. On May one, 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:47.200 two thousand nineteen, I published the episode Blu Ray Versus 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:51.880 h D DVD about how two different groups of manufacturers 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.160 faced off in a fight to determine which format would 0:01:55.160 --> 0:02:00.160 succeed the DVD home media format, and spoiler alert for 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:02.840 those who have been oblivious for more than a decade, 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:05.920 it was Blu Ray that won. That story is pretty 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.720 darn good and it involves stuff like companies quickly switching 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:14.240 alliances and a rapid descent into obsolescence for the poor 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:18.880 h D DVD. Way back on June six, two thousand 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.880 and eleven, we published an episode called The Current Wars, 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:27.639 describing the battle between George Westinghouse and the alternating current 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.320 that he favored versus Thomas Edison and his direct current. 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:37.400 This is another format war that achieved legendary status, complete 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:41.400 with public demonstrations of the dangers of alternating current and 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:44.640 a fierce competition to be the provider of electricity for 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:49.200 the Chicago World's Fair, and in that case, alternating current 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:53.000 would win out as the standard being used for long 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.880 distance transmission of electricity, so I'm not really going to 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.720 go into those two stories in this episode, because I 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:03.720 do have other episodes dedicated to those. We'll look at 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.600 a few other instances of format wars, some of which 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.640 I have touched on in the past. In fact, it 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:11.680 would be good to start off with one of those, 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.240 and it's a format war that was going on just 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.880 as I was growing up as a kid in the seventies, 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:23.480 the home video format war, which had several contenders. Now, 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.880 the two big ones that most people have heard about 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:32.240 are the two primary video cassette recorder formats, VHS and 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.720 Beta Max, and we will get to those, but first 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:38.680 I thought I would chat about a few other formats 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.080 that made a go of it but ultimately fell short 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:45.560 of becoming the standard format for home video. So it's 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:49.360 good to remember that before the nineteen seventies, there really 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:52.600 wasn't such a thing as home theater in the sense 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.160 of being able to watch recorded media at home on 0:03:56.200 --> 0:04:00.640 any real scale. You could watch television broadcasts, but once 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.520 the show was over, that was it. You would only 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.600 see that show or that movie or whatever again if 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.240 someone were to rerun it. Otherwise it was just gone. 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:12.920 The film experience was still largely one where you would 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:15.840 go to a cinema and you would sit there and 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.919 you would watch a film. The emergence of technology that 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:23.000 would allow people to view recorded media on demand at 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.919 home was a truly revolutionary one and also one that 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.400 caused more than a little hubbub in Hollywood as various 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:35.839 studios grappled with the implications anyway. One of the technologies 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:41.880 to emerge in this era gradually, anyway, was the laser disc. Now, 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.520 this started out more than a decade earlier with a 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.599 fellow named David Paul greg who came up with a 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:53.440 means to record video and audio information onto a essentially 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:57.760 a plastic disc. This case, the disc was transparent and 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:00.520 in the original pattern which you can read if you 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.200 want to, and the idea was really cool. You take 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:07.120 a transparent disk and you encode video information onto it 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:12.800 using a quote unquote metallic deposit, essentially creating opaque areas 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:17.479 on the disc that light cannot pass through. So in 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.920 a player, you would have a transducer like a light 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.599 sensor on one side of the disk, and on the 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:25.240 other side of the disc you would have a light 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.960 shining up through the disc. So as the disc spins, 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:32.480 the light and the transducer keep pace with a spiral 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.120 of data that has been encoded on the disc itself. 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:40.640 With these metallic deposits, the transducer ends up generating electricity 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.080 depending on how much light is hitting it, so it 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:48.599 varies as the metallic deposits pass in between the transducer 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.840 and the light, and that gets converted into the electrical 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.880 signals that go to be interpreted as a video signal. 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:01.240 It's decoded that way. So Greg invented this technology in 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.159 the early nineteen sixties. He filed for a patent for 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.360 it in nineteen sixty seven, received it in nineteen sixty nine. 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.000 Other inventors made related advancements in technology that would go 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.800 toward the foundations for what would become laser disc. M 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.920 c A would purchase the rights to the patent from 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:23.320 Greg in the late nineteen sixties. Meanwhile, the Dutch company 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:27.320 Phillips was hard at work on a similar technology, except 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:31.800 this one used reflective discs rather than transparent ones. So 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:36.000 a laser would shine a light onto a reflective surface 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:40.440 of the disk, detecting sequences of little pits and lands. 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.120 So a land is essentially a bit of the disc 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:47.280 that hasn't been carved into a pit. The pits and 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.560 lands would represent the information of the video recording. Now 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:53.520 these days, we would call it just binary information zeros 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.320 and ones. Now, normally this is where I would go 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:59.400 into more detail about how all this works, but I've 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.680 actually heard this type of technology fairly extensively in other episodes. 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.280 It's the same basis for compact discs, which would come 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.400 out a little bit later. Anyway, Phillips and m c 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:14.640 A joined forces to bring the technology to market. They 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.280 first gave a public display of the technology in nineteen 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.480 seventy two, but it wouldn't be available for purchase until 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:26.280 nineteen seventy eight, when it debuted under the name m 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:30.440 c A Disco Vision. It was a very different time, 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.640 my friends. Interestingly, according to the sources I found, it 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:39.520 originally launched in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, and the 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:43.040 very first film available on the format happens to be 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:46.040 my favorite film of all time. It's also the movie 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.640 that was number one at the box office the day 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:52.920 I was born, Jaws, And yet my family never owned 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.760 a laser disc. So that's where my personal connection to 0:07:55.840 --> 0:08:00.840 this particular technology ends. The disks could hold old sixty 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.400 minutes of content per side when it was in extended 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:08.080 play mode. With extended play, the motor would rotate the 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:12.440 disc at a slower speed. Standard play speed was faster 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.920 and allowed for more features that you could use with 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.360 the laser disc player, but you could only fit thirty 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:22.520 minutes of content per side on the disc in standard 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.200 play playback speed. And yes, this does mean that for 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:29.320 a two hour film with extended play, you would have 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.720 to flip the disc over halfway through the movie. Though 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.920 later on towards the tail end of the laser disc era, 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:41.160 some players could actually automatically switch sides, you wouldn't have 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:45.640 to manually do it. Sometimes films would include a special 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:50.360 standard play disc with the extended play feature film, and 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:54.040 the extra disc would include stuff like bonus footage and 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.480 interviews and the sort of features that we would later 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:01.120 come to expect on DVD releases. A laser disc format 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:05.800 could provide superior video and sound compared to the VHS 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:09.000 and Beta Max formats, but it had a couple of 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:13.359 major disadvantages. One is that it was far more expensive 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:16.439 than cassette based technologies, and when I get to those 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.280 and tell you how much they cost. That's going to 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:22.760 raise some eyebrows. But another drawback is that you couldn't 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.920 record to a laser disc, so you were restricted to 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.880 watching prerecorded stuff from major studios. You would have to 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:34.400 buy a movie or TV series or whatever on laser disc. 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:39.120 You couldn't just you know, recorded off the television. That 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:43.280 was a difference between that cassettes. Cassettes you could do that. 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.720 And these drawbacks meant that fewer people would purchase laser 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:50.400 disc players, which meant the technology couldn't really scale to 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.960 a level where prices could drop significantly. The very last 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.400 laser disc movie was in two thousand. This was the 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.720 last film printed to laser disc. That's interesting to me 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:05.800 because DVDs were already on the market by two thousand 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:10.080 and The last film on laser disc was Bringing Out 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:12.960 the Dead, which is a Nicolas Cage film that I 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.720 have never actually watched. But LaserDisc never made a huge 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.360 impact on home video. It was kind of a cult 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:24.320 favorite among a small group of enthusiasts, but it never 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:28.280 had an enormous impact. It also became a little bit 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:31.520 of a novelty in arcades, however, because it was the 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:35.600 basis for games like dragons Layer and Space Ace, but 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:40.079 that's another story. Another technology that took a stab at 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.760 becoming a standard home video tech and failed was the 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:49.359 capacitance Electronic disc player or ce D, which was developed 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.440 by our c A. Now, as I record this, I 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.960 am actually looking right now at my old c e 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.960 D player, which may or may not be functional. I honest, 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:02.360 we don't know. I haven't plugged it in in years. 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.199 Plus I don't have a television with the proper connectors, 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:08.480 so even if it works, I wouldn't be able to 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.920 verify it anyway. But this is the technology that my 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.880 family had obviously while I was growing up, though we 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:20.240 only ever had a relatively small number of films for it, 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:24.560 like Singing in the Rain, uh Raiders, Lost Arc, a 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.080 couple of Woody Allen movies, that sort of thing. And 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.240 the c e D is a disc based system, but 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.440 unlike the laser disc, it's not an optical system. That 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.800 means there's no laser shining on this disc. No. Instead, 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:42.840 these discs which were housed inside these plastic envelopes that 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.600 kind of made them look like a cross between a 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:50.920 giant computer disc and a record album sleeve. Anyway, the 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:54.800 actual discs inside the envelopes had very small grooves in them, 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.439 just like a vinyl record album, but much smaller and 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.680 like an old record player. The ce ED player used 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.920 a special needle to move through these grooves. However, instead 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.400 of the needle vibrating and then transmitting those vibrations to 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:13.040 a transducer that converts the vibrations into an electric signal, 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:17.400 the ceed player's needle and the disk in the player 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:22.000 would complete an electronic circuit. The needle would not actually 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:25.920 make contact with the bottom of the groove on the disc, 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:29.599 but the groove would curve up toward the bottom of 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.680 the needle, or it would curve away from the needle, 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:36.480 and that would affect the capacitance between the stylus and 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:40.680 the disc itself. The changing capacitance would then affect a 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:45.720 resonant circuit, which in turn would send the generated fluctuating 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.400 signal to a decoder to transmit as video and audio. 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.360 And I know it sounds super technical, but in reality, 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.040 it was using a quality of electricity as a sort 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:59.199 of evolution of the old vinyl record technology. One advantage 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:01.880 of the c e ED is that it wasn't as 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:07.400 expensive to produce as VCRs and definitely less expensive than 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:12.040 laser disc players. The video and audio quality were around 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.280 the same level as that for cassettes, maybe a little 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.720 bit better, but they definitely did not measure up to 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:22.360 the superior quality of the laser disc format. But like 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:27.040 laser discs, you could not record programming to c D. 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.680 You could only buy existing media and play it at home. Also, 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.800 like laser discs, you had to flip a movie halfway 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.200 through because each side could only hold about an hour's 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:42.240 worth of video. I seem to recall, although I have 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:46.600 not verified this, that for Raiders of the Lost Arc, 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.319 the point where we would have to flip the disc 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.200 was right around the time where Salah would say to Indiana, 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:57.640 they're digging in the wrong place. Our c A had 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.280 this technology in development as far back the nineteen sixties, 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:05.880 but various problems within the company and the project in particular, 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:10.720 delayed it to market until the early nineteen eighties. By 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.880 that time, the laser disc was already on the market 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.920 and VHS and Beta Max were well established too, so 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.200 C e D really never stood a chance. Our c 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:23.560 A only would produce them for a couple of years 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.040 before throwing in the towel, so in a way, I 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.320 own a piece of tech history, or, as I like 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:33.880 to call it, a very large paper weight. There were 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:38.320 other media contenders besides C E D and laser disc, 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:42.120 but the real battle raged between Beta Max, which was 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:46.400 backed by Sony, and VHS, which was backed by j 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.600 v C. Sony had hoped to create the standard format 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.000 for home video. They tried to get buy in from 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.480 all the other manufacturers in the early nineteen seventies, but 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:00.000 j v C, which had been developing its own technology, 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:03.480 held out and made the risky decision to back their 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:07.760 competing format. The Beta Max hit the market first in 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:12.080 nineteen VHS would debut about a year or so later, 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:16.720 probably like early nine, I believe, And while both formats 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:21.360 recorded media to tape that was inside of a cassette, 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:25.360 they were also incompatible with one another. The Beta Max 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:28.840 video cassettes were not as wide as the VHS, but 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:32.080 they were longer or taller, depending on how you're looking 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.760 at them, and at first, the Beta Max is faster 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:38.800 playback speed resulted in a slightly superior resolution over the 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:43.080 VHS format, so you might think Beta Max thus had 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:46.240 the edge. It was better picture, right, but VHS had 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.400 a couple of advantages of its own. One was that 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.880 JVC chose to go with a less expensive set of 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:57.400 components than Sony did, which kept the costs of production down, 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.160 and that meant the company could sell VHS e c 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:04.480 rs at a lower price point than Sony's Beta Max VCRs. Now, 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.480 when I say lower price, we have to remember that 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:13.360 the VCR technology was crazy expensive when it first came out. Now, 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:17.600 this is typical for new technologies, particularly in the area 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:21.280 of media technologies, where the early examples are priced at 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.360 a point where most of us can't afford it, and 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.080 over time, due to stuff like early adopters and the 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:31.320 scaling up of production, the price comes down to a 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:35.600 point where we lowly peons can also enjoy the technology. 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:40.080 When the Beta Max first launched, the models ranged from 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:44.040 just under two thousand dollars for the base model up 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:47.720 to two thousand, two hundred nine five dollars for the 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:53.000 top end model. And this was so if we adjust 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:57.200 that for inflation, let's see that means that a top 0:16:57.360 --> 0:16:59.920 end model of a Beta Max machine would set you 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:05.879 back more than eleven thousand dollars in today's money. Hatchi 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:10.879 Machi that's a princely summoned no mistake. But but hey, 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.120 I said that the vhs came in at a lower price, right, 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:18.399 So what did those go for when they first came out? Well, 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:23.600 the VHS style VCRs retailed for between one thousand dollars 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:28.199 and fourteen hundred dollars, So that's between hundred bucks and 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:33.000 six thousand dollars today. That is a hefty price to 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:37.200 pay to watch my old night Court tapes. But beyond that, 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.959 a huge differentiator came down to recording time. With the 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:45.080 original Beta Max machines, users could only record one hour 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:50.120 of content per tape. The original JVC VHS machines could 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.240 record up to two hours of material onto a tape, 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:56.240 and to be clear, this was more of a limitation 0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:00.440 on the machines than on the cassette tapes themselves. See, 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.240 by running the tape more slowly through the machine, both 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:08.120 for the recording and playback of media, you could cram 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:12.240 more video content onto the cassettes. But you did this 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.880 knowing that you were also compromising the video and audio 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:19.960 quality at slower speeds, like super slow speeds, where you 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:23.400 can cram like ten hours of material onto one video cassette, 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:26.040 you could end up having a lot of cross interference 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:28.320 and other issues that would affect the quality of the 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:32.639 audio and the video. Sony and JVC initially were loath 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:36.000 to budge on this. They didn't really want to give 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.720 on quality. But as j VCS approach was gaining more 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.879 favor because it could record twice as much content per tape, 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.840 Sony would push out new players and video cassettes that 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:52.160 could hold more content. So JVC then response the same way, 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:55.080 or would allow other manufacturers like our c A to 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.719 build VCRs capable of recording at slower tape speeds and 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:03.680 thus more hours of content per tape. The VHS format 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:06.520 got the edge and held it long enough that eventually 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:11.040 Sony capitulated. This was a format war that was decided 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.680 in the marketplace rather than by a standards committee, and 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.520 it was a long and costly war, both for the 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:22.040 manufacturers and for consumers. For people who backed Beta Max, 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.160 they ended up supporting a format that eventually went obsolete, 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.399 and switching over to a different format tends to be 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.040 pretty irritating, both because it means that you've got to 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:35.359 spend more money on stuff like a new player, but 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:36.760 you also have to figure out what to do with 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:39.879 your library of content. Do you keep a working Beta 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:43.160 max machine around or do you go ahead and replace 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:46.000 all the films and shows that you've either recorded or 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:50.600 bought on Beta Max with new VHS copies. It is 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.480 a mess, and it's one of the reasons standard committees 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:57.159 form in the first place to avoid that kind of situation. 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:00.200 When we come back, we'll turn the clock back a 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:02.919 good way to talk about a totally different type of 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:13.840 format war all aboard. Now, I'm sure a lot of 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.840 you have already figured out what format I'll be talking 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:20.479 about based on my lane transition into the ad break earlier. 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.840 We're going to talk about train railway gauges. That is 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:30.199 the distance between the inner edge of the two rails 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:34.200 on a train railway. The standard gauge for most of 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.879 the world is known as one thousand, four hundred thirty 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:42.480 five millimeters or four feet and eight and a half inches, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:44.440 because here in the good old USA, we just don't 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:47.280 cotton to that their metric system, gosh darn't it. And 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:51.719 to be clear, that's not every single railway around the world, 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.960 but more than half of them do conform to this. Now, 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:58.199 there is a charming story that the whole reason that 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:02.600 train rails are this distance from each other ultimately depends 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:06.280 upon the rear ends of a pair of horses. And 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:09.920 as I said, the story is charming, but not necessarily 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.840 totally accurate, at least in the grand scheme of things. 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:15.800 But let's go through the story anyway, so we know 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.240 where we're coming from, all right. So, back in the 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.840 days of the Roman Empire, you had Roman soldiers who 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:25.600 would use chariots a lot in war or just to 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.919 get around, and chariots would be pulled by a pair 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:32.720 of horses, so by necessity, the chariot would need to 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:37.520 accommodate two horses side by side in the front, which 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.880 in turn meant that a chariot could only be so 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:45.040 wide before it would become difficult to maneuver. The wheels 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:48.720 need to be wide apart enough to provide stability, but 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.919 not so wide apart that you couldn't do stuff like 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:56.159 take a turn easily. And generally the distance between the 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:59.719 two wheels of the chariot that would provide decent stability 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:05.040 and maneuverability was about four feet eight inches or so. Now, 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:08.840 the Roman Empire needed to produce a good number of chariots. 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:12.919 They were important for military conquests and for maintaining a 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:17.400 presence in the large Roman Empire. The chariots all followed 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:21.120 a fairly close set of standards, and all that chariot 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:24.680 traffic on roads started to create ruts in the road. 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:29.200 The wheels were wearing down paths in the roadways, and 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:31.879 these were like little ditches where the wheels of the 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:34.280 old chariots were just hitting the road over and over. 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:37.879 Over time, the ruts get fairly deep, and then the 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:41.800 Roman Empire falls. This has nothing to do with ruts, 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:44.080 although I guess you could argue that the empire was 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:47.520 in a rut. But I suppose you could also argue 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:49.919 that a few horses rear ends were involved in the 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:54.640 process as well. Anyway, flash forward to areas that had 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:58.840 formerly been part of the Roman Empire. As people began 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.919 to build more vehicles like wagons and carts and stuff, 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:06.760 they tended to gravitate back to that four foot eight 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:10.880 inch distance between the wheels. Now, you could argue that 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:13.760 this is because of those ruts, and that a cart 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:17.440 with wheels that are closer together or further apart than 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:21.159 that would have trouble navigating roads because the ruts are 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:23.439 of a certain width, and if you're if you have 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:25.280 one wheel in a rut and one wheel that's out 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:28.600 of a rut, or you're constantly moving in and out 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.959 of the ruts, it's not very easy going. Your animal 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:34.639 has to work harder, it's not efficient. That's how the 0:23:34.680 --> 0:23:37.879 story goes, and that probably does play a part. But 0:23:37.960 --> 0:23:41.040 another part is just the practical considerations that the Romans 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:44.640 had made were still in play centuries later, and that 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:47.800 really that had more to do with the limitations of 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:51.679 relying on vehicles that are powered by using critters to 0:23:51.800 --> 0:23:54.520 haul them. Anyway, the story goes on to say that 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:58.640 when inventors in England first started building steam engine locomotives, 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:01.680 the tools they were it upon to build out rails 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:06.479 were based on the early horse horse drawn tram system 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:08.919 where you would have rails and a cart, but a 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:12.080 horse would pull the cart along the rails, and that 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:17.160 those in turn were based on, you know, the the 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:20.000 old ruts in the roads, you know, based off the 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:22.960 carts that had to go through those roads, and that 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:25.600 in turn was based off the original roaming chariots and 0:24:25.640 --> 0:24:28.320 hardy Hart horror. That means that train rails are the 0:24:28.359 --> 0:24:30.480 way they are because of the patutis of a pair 0:24:30.480 --> 0:24:35.439 of horses, which isn't true. Now, it is true that 0:24:35.560 --> 0:24:40.560 some early railway companies would use existing carriage bodies that 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:44.600 had been intended for use on roads, and then they 0:24:44.600 --> 0:24:47.720 swapped out the wheels on these carriages and put them 0:24:47.760 --> 0:24:51.080 with wheels that could ride on top of rails like 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:54.679 train cars. That was just playing practical. I mean, why 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:57.359 would you spend all the money to reinvent the wheel 0:24:57.520 --> 0:25:00.639 or at least the wheeled carriage in you can just 0:25:00.760 --> 0:25:05.680 repurpose existing vehicles. But that's not the full story. George Stevenson, 0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:09.679 a nineteenth century engineer in England who came from truly 0:25:09.800 --> 0:25:14.199 humble origins, would be an early innovator with locomotives, not 0:25:14.320 --> 0:25:18.879 the inventor, but he made a lot of improvements with them, 0:25:18.960 --> 0:25:22.800