VideoNow

The VideoNow is a portable video player produced by Hasbro and released by their subsidiary Tiger Electronics in 2003. The systems use discs called PVDs (which stands for Personal Video Disc), which can store about 30 minutes (half an hour) of video, the length of an average TV show with commercials (a typical TV episode is about 20–23 minutes without them), so each PVD contains only one episode, with trailers at the end to use the leftover time on most PVDs, including Nickelodeon PVDs. Video data is stored on the left audio channel with audio on the right channel, thus making it impossible to achieve stereo sound on the system, which only plays mono. The video plays at about 15 frames per second. Most of the shows were from Nickelodeon, such as SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents. A small handful of movies were also released on the system, but they had to be split into three PVDs, due to the limited space on each PVD.

Hasbro also produced editing software for creating custom VideoNow Color PVDs called the VideoNow Media Wizard in 2005, which came with blank PVD media. A number of unofficial solutions are available for creating the oddly-formatted VideoNow files, including a plug-in for the popular video processing program Virtual Dub. The files can then be burned to a CD-R using standard CD burning software, and the disc cut down to the required size.

As the VideoNow Color does not accept standard 8 cm mini-CDs, some creative users have resorted to cutting down standard 12 cm CD-R discs, though not without problems. Hasbro made recordable PVDs available without the Media Wizard from their online store. However, at least one video has been posted on YouTube showing how VideoNow Color players can be easily modified to accept standard-sized CDs with a bit of cutting and gluing.[1] Full-sized CDs can hold roughly 42 minutes of total video, and play with no difference in the modified player.

It should also be noted that as VideoNow uses personal video discs, it has issue with skipping. To make matters worse, it has very little skip protection, making skipping more common.

Types

Accessories

Complete list of shows and movies available on VideoNow

In the UK, a different range of discs were produced, presumably for licensing reasons. The PVDs are interchangeable and have no region protection. The UK range included most of the Nickelodeon shows from the USA plus:

The lower age group discs from Disney and Nick Jr. were in general not available through UK outlets.

PVDs were issued in waves to retailers - 6 to a box, generally comprising 3 titles. There were 6 waves of PVDs released in the UK, although some popular titles appeared in more than one box.

See also

References

  1. ↑ YouTube - VideoNow Color Mod Uncut Cdr

2. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nP1ud6YLaI

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/2/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.