There are many dead media formats out there, but did you know that it exist VHS tapes that supported 1080i/720p? DVHS (Digital VHS) was a nextgen VHS format that stored data digitally. You needed a more expensive DVHS player and more expensive DVHS tapes, but they had the same size as normal VHS tapes. DVHS VCRs can record at multiple speeds. "HS" is "High Speed", "STD" is "Standard" and "LS" is "Low Speed"; where LS3 and LS5 represent 3 and 5 times the standard length of tape, respectively. High-definition content such as 1920x1080 or 1280x720 is typically stored at 28.2 Mbit/s (HS speed). Standard-definition content such as 720x576 (720x480) can be stored at bit rates from 14.1 Mbit/s down to 2.8 Mbit/s (STD, LS3, LS5 speeds). The quality of STD speed is actually superior to the average DVD, since this speed has a much higher bitrate (approximately 14 versus 5 Mbit/s average) and suffers few compression artifacts. The LS3 speed is roughly equal to an amateur DVD with some visible artifacts in high-action scenes (4.7 Mbit/s), and LS5 appears similar to a medium-quality video download (2.8 Mbit/s). They also released pre-recorded movies called D-Theater. You had to own a D-Theater-compatible DVHS-player in order to watch them. The movies had 3 regions (1 USA, 2 Japan, 3 South Korea). No movies were released in region 2 or 3, but at least region 2 had D-Theater-compatible players. 91 movies were released, with I Robot being the last one. Each movie also had chapters, just like DVDs. Support was dropped like two years before Bluray was released.
ugh....regional restrictions...ugh...VHS still had more versatility, as you could store 6-8 hours on one tape. CDs they were like....lets make them biased on region.
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"Er...well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um...destroying a forest.....or something" -Black Mage