Interactive Video – an unholy mess of non-standards and then CDi salvation (not)…
In the 1970s and 80s there were many attempts at hooking up video players – first tape and then disc – with computers to make an interactive system for work or play.
Emmy Award-winning Bernie Luskin – of education and media solutions company Luskin International – was an enthusiastic evangelist for disc-0based interactive video.
The Ill-fated VHD system was used for interactive video. Before that cassettes had been tried, but access was painfully slow.
The industry then tried to do it with CD-ROMs. But although a very tight standard ensured that any music CD plays on any player, the much looser standard for CD-ROM gave the computer companies freedom to find their own best ways of packaging, control and access.
CDi was then conceived as the answer, while others backed systems powered by larger LaserVision discs.
While corporations could work with their own adopted system, consumers were never going to buy into a monster mess of almost-but-not-quite compatibility.
Lack of standards crippled them all, exacerbated by the steady growth in worldwide data connectivity.
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Interactive video disc map from BT.
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Lloyds Bank disc-powered interactive kiosk.
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The Videologic interactive video
disc system used a database
from start-up company Microsoft. -
Interactive video using CD-ROM.
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Users typed a number...
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...as touch-screens were still some years off.
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Video cassette interactive learning - access was slow.
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Philips claimed a CD-ROM stores the entire contents of an encyclopedia.
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A mix of optical and floppy disc formats vied for the burgeoning interactive video market (1988).
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Natwest Bank's interactive video pilot.
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Net Channel Interactive TV.
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Big firms like Ford took to training staff...
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...with new interactive video systems.
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Austin Rover was another auto industry customer...
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...and piloted LaserDisc-driven point-of-sale systems.
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Video discs powered Lloyd Bank's interactive office.
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'This one's probably my favourite.'
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A responsive telly was a kind of magic at the time.
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The re-inventors of TV soon had their own annual British Interactive Awards ceremony.
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Interactive video evangelist Bernie Luskin.
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Interactive video set the course for today's web-based distance learning.
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The travel industry was seen as a key market for interactive video.
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The Rank Organisation formed a new Division to exploit interaction.