By the time my primary school bought a video recorder – some time in the late 1970s, if I recall correctly – I was already quite familiar with video recorders (I think we had a Betamax at the time, but I don’t remember correctly). I do remember, however, being fascinated by the fact that the tapes were square, rather than rectangular, meaning that the two spools were stacked one above the other, rather than being next to each other as VHS, Beta and Video 2000 tapes were. (more…)

In the 1920s, the BBC was transmitting a single television channel (actually the only television channel transmitting in Britain) using the first system to be given an ITU letter designation. System A was positive modulation – meaning that dropouts were light patches rather than dark ones, as seen in later systems such as the 625-line PAL system currently in us (until 2012, at any rate) in the UK. (more…)

VideoLAN‘s VLC 0.9.2 (codenamed Grishenko) has been released today. (more…)

5. Daddy’s Song
Davy Jones and the Monkees at their finest.  Watch the syncing of the video as well, and remember this is Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson before they had a clue what they were doing…  “years ago I knew a ma-ah-an…”  Beautiful…  Watch at the end for Frank Zappa doing an impression of Marilyn Whirlwind.

4. Winnie Loves Satan
Not Churchill.  Obviously.  But strangely, weirdly – hideously, in a ghastly way – funny.  Remember to clean your mind after watching this, folks.

3. OK Go – Here It Goes Again
If you’re feeling guilty about watching Winnie The Pooh The Satanist, what better but a bit of OK Go?  This video is so good a pharmaceuticals company recently made an advert that is an homage to it…  In fact, it’s so good my brain hurts.

2. Krazy And Ignatz At The Circus
It may have first seen light of day in 1917, but it’s the only one of the Krazy Kat cartoons from that year that still works.  And if you’re a true Krazionista, like me and that Michael Stipe fella out of REM, then you’ll like this sort of thing.  And if you’re not, you won’t.  But it made me cry.

1. Lord Of The Rings, 1940 Vintage
You just have to pause this every so often just to look at it, especially when the credits are on (read VERY carefully at that point).  But this is so wonderful it needs no more hyperbolae – just enjoy!

PS: for those that have made Herbert Payne my top search result, just enjoy the man himself, on the new-fangled YouTube box of visual delights …

Recently I had to take some old videos from VHS and transfer them to DVD.  While in the end I decided to use the DVD recorder (and why didn’t I think of that first?) I came across the interesting challenge of converting Windows Media Video files to DVD spec.

Eventually I came across Any Video Converter.  It will convert up to 8000Kbps/sec (which is the highest setting allowable for DVD).

The free version did everything I needed, but there are paid for versions to convert to iPod or Zune players, or you can buy a “professional” version with the features of all four editions for slightly more than any of the other three paid versions.