When Mini-DVD tried to go big

okay today we're talking about mini dvds now just to make sure that everyone's starting off on the same page because i've seen quite a bit of confusion on these things over the years a mini dvd is not a umd it's not a mini disc it's not a mini cd those are all different formats you're most likely to have seen a mini dvd in perhaps a camcorder or maybe the gamecube although officially the gamecube uses a mini dvd based format but let's not split hers okay so now we know what we're talking about the 8 centimeter mini dvd let me switch on the time machine to bring you another use of mini dvds that of course everyone fondly remembers yes of course we're talking about movies on mini dvd what do you mean you don't of course you remember them you know we all used to go and buy our favorite blockbusters on eight centimeter discs you know the mini sized disc that can also be played in most full-sized dvd players hold on also what they mean by also what else would you be playing them in oh yeah one of these a dvd junior the mini dvd player from samsung surely this is all ringing a bell now it's funny how quickly we forget these things i mean this was only back in 2005 that's when warner's launched a range of 100 titles on mini dvd now you may be wondering what amazingly innovative compression system has developed to get a full-size dvd movie onto a mini dvd well they split it onto two discs pretty ingenious stuff oh and not only do you get more discs for your money you also get less to watch those pesky dvd extras get on your nerves well don't worry about it because you won't find any of those on a mini dvd and to house these mini discs they came in a box that takes up roughly the same amount of space as the full-size dvd although in fairness the case is thinner than many standard dvd boxes however it could house two full-size 12 centimeter dvds in the same space it holds these two eight centimeter ones oh there's one more thing i should mention about the disc since the screens in the mini dvd portable players are all two and a half inches the releases to fill them out are in the full three aspect ratio none of that silly widescreen malarkey here oh and it's reassuring to see that amazon reviews back in 2005 were just as trustworthy as they are today you've got a choice of two reviews for this cyber home mini dvd player one of which says the screen is crisp and clear color is unreal sound quality is perfect apparently they watch it in the bed car train and bathroom and they say they don't know how they ever survive without it and give it five stars or for a slightly different perspective you've got the other review that one states that this machine has nothing to recommend it for nothing nada and gives it one star luckily for me my time machine which now also seems to be bringing things back from an alternate dimension had delivered a different machine samsung's dvd junior was by far the better of the two mini dvd machines that were produced it again could only play eight centimeter disc just like the other machine and it's also got a two and a half inch screen this one comes with four double a rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries together with the charger for those and to enhance the fun it comes in its own plastic panic room packaging which won't give up its contents without a knife fight can you believe they actually have patents on this packaging it's like taking out a patent on a kick in the groin but anyway six hours and three pints of blood later i'm finally in interesting to see that the instructions mentioned it has an up to two hour battery life while the box claimed two and a half hours neither of which though would get you all the way through some of the longer titles released on the former i suppose you'd have to bring along some spare batteries or find a power source to plug it into power adapter not included or just wait for up to eight hours for your batteries to charge incidentally longer films like the ron weasley movies would come on three discs creditwear is due though the little slipcase design of this looney tunes disc that came free with a player is quite appealing and it's properly pocket-sized you can see on the back it's dual language english and french dolby digital region 1 dual layer and holds 56 minutes of video taking a look around the player itself well there's a speaker there on the front of the left and then on this side we've got a headphone output power jack volume wheel and an on off switch on this side we've got play and pause stop and menu buttons on the front there's a 4-way d-pad which also works as a chapter skip button and when you push it in that will select things and then on the bottom there's a loop for a wrist strap perhaps as well as a button to open the lid to test it i'm going to use four normal double-a alkaline batteries and we'll see if this thing powers up but given the fact there's a good eight or so minutes left in this video i think we know it's going to oh shocker now that screen is of course tidy and when i bring it up to the camera to show it at a decent size you do start to notice the individual pixels it's a lower resolution of course that we're accustomed to nowadays however in its favor it's sharp and it's clear and it has bright colours and when held at a normal distance for viewing perhaps about the distance you'd hold a book in your hand to read it it's perfectly watchable now the speaker on there i was surprised it actually sounds alright yeah okay so it's one speaker it's not in stereo and it doesn't go very loud but it's a lot better than i expected it to be there's some basic menus on the machine as well the kind that you get with any normal dvd player but nothing really to write home about i'll play a different disc on this i'm going to play catwoman now i've never seen the film catwoman i bought two copies just for this video because i wanted to compare the normal dvd with this mini dvd version looks like i'm going to have to watch it at some point now though the mini dvd the title sequence is the only part of it that's letterboxed once you get into the film it goes into the full screen 4-3 aspect ratio but i discovered that you can't skip past the titles to get to the next chapter and i was trying to figure out what was going wrong and then when i got back to the main menu screen i discovered what it was it's because there are no chapters on this disc the only options that you get in the menus are to change the language between english and french or play the film however it turns out that you can skip through the film if you hold that stick on the right hand side either to the right or to the left to fast forward or rewind it will scan through a disk at up to 128 times normal speed oh and for the curious might be someone out there wants to know here's what happens at the end of disc once probably not going to be that much of a surprise and i've got to say that was a really sloppy eddy because we were just nine seconds into that scene when it cut off why not just put the cut the break between the two discs nine seconds earlier now i mentioned i wanted to compare the two versions in a normal dvd player so starting with the 12 centimeter full size disc and note that this one has 30 chapters but the thing i really wanted to get a look at though was the bitrates to see if there were any significant compression differences i could only really compare the title sequences between the two because they were the only parts that were letterboxed on both versions however the full size disc i've got is pal and anamorphic while the other one is ntsc and full screen and of course they're different resolutions to one another so they're never going to match but looking at this section of the titles played from the full size disc it peaks at 7.7 megabits a second so now moving across to the mini dvd and first off note that there's only the one chapter for the full disc and there's absolutely no technical reason for that it's just laziness but now looking at the same section of the titles on here it peaks at a slightly lower 6.3 megabits a second which tells us there's been no deliberate additional recompression done to squeeze these movies down after all is no need as this film would easily fit on two mini dvds but they could have probably got some of those three disc titles down to two discs if they'd taken the time to reduce the bit rate a bit i mean you definitely wouldn't have noticed if you were watching it on a two and a half inch screen this whole endeavor really just feels like it's been done very quickly and with a minimum of effort now as well as playing dvds this samsung machine has a few other features it will play cd singles although while it's doing this there's no on-screen menu of any sort it's just a blank screen now it's also able to play mp3 and wma files off a disk so i'll burn some on a mini dvd i think lgr would like that dvd burner and while they worked the menu system turned out to be really quite limited interestingly though while the manual states it'll play mp3s up to 160 kilobits a second it actually had no issue at all playing my 320 kilobits a second files i wanted to test out its ability to display photos as well but the only way i could find to get back to the root folder on the disk was to reboot the player and it turns out that it will show jpegs fine on that tidy screen for what it's worth you can zoom in you can rotate them you can play them as a slideshow but it's advisable to stick to low resolution images unless you want to run out of memory so while it does do exactly what it's supposed to do there's a lot about this whole proposition that doesn't really make too much sense of course it won't play full-size dvds so therefore you're limited to the small range of mini dvd titles are available but of course warder brothers would definitely see that as a plus but to the user it's not very appealing so what is in it for the user well if you think it's going to be portability then the size of the disk really doesn't make as much difference to the size of a dvd player as you might think this player holds a standard 12 centimeter disc and yes it's a just a vcd player but there were plenty of similar sized dvd players on the market it's just only had a vcd player to hand to demonstrate this of course with pretty much any normal dvd player you'd also get a bigger screen than the two and a half inch screen that's on that dvd junior now of course i wasn't the target demographic for this the whole thing was being aimed at kids or to be more specific the middle and junior high school aged children it appears really to be launched as a competitor to the video now colour from hasbro and when compared against that well it does come off looking like the better option after all unlike the video nowadays that were proprietary the mini dvds could be played in most home dvd players and if you're wondering what that most qualifier was about it's because some slot loaders won't accept eight centimeter discs it also appears to be aimed at a slightly older age group than that video now product but while the majority of the catalogue of titles i can find on this format were targeting a certain age group there are quite a few odd choices in there for example starsky and hutch that's categorized as a pg-13 and parents are strongly cautioned because of drug content sexual situations partial nudity language and some violence yeah i know it's not reservoir dogs but still it seems like this was all really just a way for warners to double dip on their existing catalogue and as a value proposition well the case for investing in this system really wasn't strong the samsung junior itself was a hundred and fifty dollars and the titles the dvds they could cost as much as 25 a piece looking at a b h catalog from 2005 at that point you could have bought this standard dvd portable as a seven inch widescreen display for just twenty dollars more than the samsung junior and of course that wasn't the best deal to be had at that time either toys r us in their black friday deals for 2005 included a seven inch portable that came with a car kit and one free dvd of your choice for a hundred dollars and don't forget that standard dvd portables usually have video and audio output so could be plugged into the television at home if you were on a budget you could therefore just buy the one player to use both out and about as well as back at home that's not the case with the mini dvd player and talking of budget your chances of finding a heavily discounted normal copy of a dvd movie in a sale would have been approximately a thousand times more likely than finding a discounted mini dvd in fact mini dvd seems to have sold so poorly that a full 15 years after it was launched you can still find unsold stock on amazon although they do seem to be getting down to the last couple of copies of most of the titles now so if you do like paying above the odds for a bare bones version of a film in full screen on an inconvenient format then you can find an affiliated link in the video description that will point you in the right direction and really that's the appeal that this whole thing has now it's a weird curiosity from the fairly recent pasta products repackaging at almost no redeeming features other than providing a perverse enjoyment from marveling at how it ever made its way to the market in the first place anyway that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 987,555

Rating: 4.9508858 out of 5

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, Mini DVD, Mini-DVD, 8cm, DVD, Retro Tech, Samsung, DVD Jr, 2005, Failed Ideas, Tech Mistakes, Retrotech, Bad Idea, Kids DVDs, Portable DVD Player, DVD Player, Mini DVD Player, Pocket DVD, Movies

Id: EraaP20gs7Y

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 22 2020