VHD: The vinyl video format that looks like a giant floppy disk
Have you ever heard of VHD? A quick Google search states it stands for Virtual Hard Disk.
What if I told you the V stands for Video?
Video HD. High Definition? Like Blu Ray or the less popular HD-DVD?
Well like HD-DVD, this is a failed video format, but the HD has nothing to do with High Definition. In fact it was available in the mid 80’s, before High Definition was even a thing.
VHD actually stands for Video High Density.
So what is VHD? You’ve probably never heard of it and that’s not a surprise. Maybe unless you’re Japanese.
It was mainly released in Japan and is very similar to the CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc) system which was released in the USA and briefly for a short time in the UK.
Its main competition in Japan was Laserdisc and was relatively competitive for a few years, primarily due to the cost of the VHD players being a lot cheaper than Laserdisc players.
By all accounts, VHD is technically a superior format compared to RCA’s failed CED system.
For a start, the discs are smaller than CED discs and full sized Laserdiscs at 25 centimetres in diameter, although they still dwarf VHS:
The Terminator: Released in 1986 by Vestron Video in Japan on Laserdisc (L), VHS (C) and VHD (R)
Like CED, the vinyl discs are stored in a plastic caddy, protecting the discs from fingerprints and scratches. In fact, the user is never supposed to see the disc.
The discs are loaded through a letterbox on the player. It’s very much like inserting a 3.5 inch floppy disk into a disk drive, just on a much larger scale. You hear a clunk and then pull the caddy back out with the disc left in the player. I have to admit it’s a pretty satisfying procedure!
Like CED and Laserdisc, each VHD disc holds up to 1 hour of video playback. For movies, video would be recorded on both sides of the disc, so you need to insert the caddy into the player, pull it out with the disc inside, turn the caddy over and insert it again into the player so that you can watch the rest of the movie. Whilst this may seem annoying, I personally don’t mind. The movie is always cut at the end of a scene and it allows you to have a break. Go get a tea or coffee. Go to the toilet. Make a sandwich.
The main problem with CED’s failure was that the disc is read by a stylus, almost exactly like a record. The difference over a record being that the grooves are smooth. The stylus reads differences in electronic capacitance to obtain the sound and picture. Because of this, the stylus would need to be replaced once worn and after so many plays, the actual CED would eventually become unplayable because of the continued friction.
Although VHD shares similarities with CED, the main difference is there are no grooves on the disc. This allows for many improvements. This allows more video to be stored on a smaller disc. There is less friction from the diamond stylus on the disc as it runs over the top of the disc and not inside a groove. Therefore the stylus doesn’t need to be replaced as often and the discs will need to be watched a lot more times than CED discs before they get to the stage where they become unplayable.
Comparing VHD with Laserdisc, there are a lot of similarities. The ability to skip chapters for a start, however they are set at 5 minute intervals on VHD. In fact, there are features which are actually better than a comparable Laserdisc in CLV format. You can fast forward and rewind which you can’t do with a CLV Laserdisc. In fact, you can fast forward and rewind up to x32 speed, with the picture still on the screen. This wasn’t available again until DVD was released.
You can also have a near perfect freeze frame. Pausing will show a repeat of 2 frames of video as each frame takes up half of a rotation of the disc. An upgrade on a CLV Laserdisc, which just gives you a blank screen when you pause. However, not quite as good as a CAV Laserdisc which can give a perfect freeze frame due to 1 frame per rotation of the disc.
VHD also had some other tricks up its sleeve. Some players could be hooked up to certain MSX compatible computers to play games with video capability.
It also allowed for video to be watched in 3D with compatible glasses.
So how did I find out about VHD? I highly recommend you watch this video by Mat, more commonly known as Techmoan on YouTube. He does a fantastic video explaining how he got a brand new in box VHD player from Japan, explaining how it works and giving great demonstrations of the couple of VHD discs he got.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCWLaAwr3sM
Whilst pursuing my quest to get the original Terminator movie on all available home video formats, I often searched for VHD on Buyee.jp, a proxy site allowing people outside of Japan to buy from Yahoo Auctions and other Japanese shopping sites like Mercari and Rakuten. A few came and went on Yahoo Auctions, but always for a pretty hefty price. There’s also one for sale on eBay here in Australia for $199 (good luck selling that one, mate).
Then eventually I found it on Mercari. Not only was it the Terminator VHD, it also included Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rambo 2 and The Neverending Story. All for ¥2,980 (AU$36 or £20). Take my money!
I wasn’t originally planning to get a VHD player, but now I had 4 VHD’s to watch, I felt I should probably get one.
One problem about buying electronics from Japan is most things are sold as “junk”. This doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t work, but the sellers don’t have a way to confirm operation. They’ll tell you if it “energises”, but in my case most sellers probably don’t have a VHD to confirm if it plays. The ones that could be confirmed went for high prices.
I had a few options but I came across one on Yahoo Auctions which looked awesome for ¥3,500 (AU$43 or £23). I could have got a cheaper one, but I loved the retro look of this one. I bid and I won it for the asking price.
So, what did I end up with? It’s a Toshiba VDP-140 VHD Video Disc Player. It’s hard to find a lot of information on this player, but another one sold on Yahoo Auctions states it was released in 1985 and the list price at that time was ¥109,800 (AU$1,340 or £720).
Before I could use it, I had to buy a step down voltage converter, converting the 230V here in Australia to the 100V supplied in Japan. Thankfully Japan has 50 and 60 Hertz so no need to worry about the player running 20% slow.
Pressing the satisfyingly sized 電源 (Dengen - Power Supply) button, a red light above it illuminates and after a second the letterbox door opens, gratefully awaiting for you to load a VHD caddy into it.
The awesome looking panel on the front also illuminates with a green triangular light, indicating 電源 (Sōnyū - Insert).
Once you insert the caddy and the player takes the disc, the number 1 illuminates in green on the ディスク (Disuku - Disc) line.
A black screen with a blocky digitised “1” is shown, reminding me of the large numbers you’d see your score on whilst playing on an Atari 2600 game.
Pressing the 再生 (Saisei - Playback) button would start the movie but it commonly would rapidly skip through a few chapters. To get the disc right to the start, Chapter 0, you’d have to press the left side of the チャプターサーチ (Chaputāsāchi - Chapter Search) button a couple of times. Or press the 0 on the Chapters section.
Chapter 0 would nearly always be the colourful VHD logo on a white background with some charming jingle. It screams 80’s, but classy 80’s.
So, how did the discs play? When they run smoothly, you get a relatively decent picture quality. I would say it’s better than VHS quality, but not as good as Laserdisc. Although Laserdisc has a sharper picture, VHD does appear to have richer colour. I can’t say if this is the case for all Laserdisc and VHD players, but it’s definitely the case for the players I have.
I found all discs had playback issues to some degree. This is where it’s tricky as it may just be that the stylus needs replacement, however I was happy that I was able to get a picture at all.
You could watch the movie but in its current state it’s definitely an “interactive” experience. Occasionally the movie would skip forward and you’d have to rewind back or skip back a chapter to attempt to watch it again.
At some points the movie would loop, just like a record can do. You’d end up watching the same couple of seconds again and again. And again. This could be fixed by fast forwarding the movie, or if you felt lazy (or had a cat on your lap in my case), you could just let it keep playing and eventually it seems to fix itself.
Other interference included a section of the screen being warped and what I would call “satellites” - slow moving white dots moving across the screen from right to left, much like how you’d see a satellite orbit the Earth in the night sky.
Whilst this would annoy a lot of people, I like to see this as the beauty of analogue. No two analogue recordings are identical and this makes every recording unique in its own special way. It gives the recording character. If I wanted a perfect picture every time, I’d stick with streaming or downloading, but where’s the fun in that? I do love watching these 80’s and 90’s movies in digitally remastered HD and Ultra HD (note that I’m still waiting for somebody to do this with The Terminator in 4K Blu Ray), but watching them in the blurry, imperfect, analogue glory brings back the true nostalgia.
At the end of Side 1, a grey screen appears indicating this and when playback stops, a red triangular light indicating 取出し (Toridashi - Take Out) illuminates. The letterbox door opens and you do the flip of the disc process.
The ディスク 2 light now indicates side 2 of the disc is in the player.
So what other features does the Toshiba VDP-140 have? As mentioned earlier, it has 2 lines of numbers on the front to skip to a specific chapter. Line 1 has 1-5 and line 2 has 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0. VHD players were popular karaoke machines, so this would allow you direct access to a song to sing.
There’s 2 ピクチャーサーチ (Pikuchāsāchi - Picture Search) buttons. Backwards and Forwards. This is how you can skip backwards or forwards up to x32.
There’s a 静止/コマ送り (Seishi/Koma Okuri - Still/Frame Advance) button. Each press will advance the disc by 1 frame.
There’s a 画面表示 (Gamen Hyōji - Screen Display) button. Not sure what this does to be honest. Nothing of note happens when it’s pressed.
There’s an 音声 (Onsei - Audio) option. This allowed you to skip between 2 channels, A and B, indicated on the front panel. If both A and B are illuminated in green, this meant you had ステレオ (Sutereo - Stereo) sound. I’m assuming A would be the Left channel and B would be the Right channel. If you had a bilingual VHD, you’d use this to change from a Japanese mono soundtrack into the original mono soundtrack of the material. For karaoke VHD discs, this would toggle between having a back up singer or just the music.
If you wanted to retrieve the disc during playback, you’d press the 停止/取出し (Teishi/Toridashi - Stop/Take Out) button.
There’s a switch for 一曲再生 (Hitokuse Saisei - Play 1 Song). You can switch between 切 < > 入 (Setsu < > Iri - Off < > On). This is a karaoke function so that the next song won’t automatically play.
Finally on the front there’s a microphone jack and a slide for マイクミキシング (Maikumikishingu - Microphone Mixing) from 小 (Ko - Small) to 大 (Ō - Large). I don’t have any karaoke discs but nice to know I can run a commentary on the movies I have or even add my own dialogue!
On the top there’s a screwed down port allowing you to replace the needle without having to take apart the machine.
A sticker advises:
ご注意 (Go chūi - Please note)
この扉はセンサー交換用カバーですので、サービスマン以外は、開けないで下さい。
Kono tobira wa sensā kōkan-yō kabādesunode, sābisuman igai wa, hirakenaide kudasai.
This door is a sensor replacement cover, so only a service person should open it.
Around the back there’s composite jacks allowing 音声出力 (Onsei Shutsuryoku - Audio Output). The white jack labelled 1/左 (Hidari - Left) and the red one labelled 2/右 (Migi - Right). There’s a yellow jack for 映像出力 (Eizō Shutsuryoku - Video Output).
There’s 2 screw mounts for hooking up VHF aerial jacks. The one labelled 1CH is for 出カ (Shutsuka - Departure) and the one labelled 2CH is for 入カ (Nyūka - Enter). There’s a switch to toggle between the 2 channels.
There’s a grounding screw if required.
There’s also a 電源出力 (Dengen Shutsuryoku - Power Output) for AC at 100V with a 最大 (Saidai - Maximum) of 150 Watts. This is a really handy way to power both the VHD player and your television from just the 1 walled power outlet (known as a pass through).
The sticker on the back reads:
東芝ビデオディスクプレーヤー
Tōshiba Bideodisukupurēyā
Toshiba Video Disc Player
形名 (Keimei - Model Name) VDP 140
定格電圧 (Teikaku Den'atsu - Rated Voltage) AC100V
定格消費電力 (Teikaku Shōhidenryoku - Rated Power Consumption) 30W
定格周波数 (Teikaku Shūhasū - Rated Frequency) 50/60Hz
株式会社東芝 (Kabushikigaisha Tōshiba - Toshiba Corporation)
SN 72425091
50 / 60Hz 共用 (Kyōyō - Shared)
The final thing to note is the silver sticker indicating this was the 1013th mode produced from the production line.
Whilst this isn’t going to be my main device for retro analogue movies, it’s a wonderful looking example of 80’s Japanese technology. Hopefully one day I can get a new stylus and allow the few VHD’s I do have a proper chance of being played in their full glory.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog!
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