The self-erasing 2View Video Tape (UPDATED)
Added 2024-09-29 12:30:43 +0000 UTCToday I’m able to share with you an almost mythical failed format, the 2View, the pre-recorded videotape that erased itself after, you guessed it, two views.
I was aware of these but due to its limited release I’d never seen one in person and thought it unlikely that I ever would. That was until a kind Patron named Sebastiaan spotted one being sold on Marktplaats and offered to send it over. So thanks to him, we all now get to have a good look at this one…it’s a doozy.
I like this video - I think it came together well. There were a lot of different elements that I needed to combine and I’m never able to tell until the edit stage whether a video feels like it’s all going to gel so I was happy to discover that this one did.
It might be difficult to believe but this one was recorded over three days and then edited for another two.
I hope you enjoy it. Thanks again to Sebastiaan and to everyone take care and enjoy your week.
UPDATED - The number one request from early viewers was to see the mechanism defeated by the paperclip. As a result I have inserted the appropriate clip (literally) at around the 19 minute 41 second point in the video. The updated video is the one now embedded and linked to above.
Comments
It was called DIVX and it was created by Circuit City and DIVX.
Julian
2024-10-16 21:41:13 +0000 UTCI don't understand how that would work, other than somehow recording a weak signal onto the disc? I must research.
Grace Robbins
2024-10-16 21:36:05 +0000 UTCThey had a similar item for DVDs that was sold in the early 2000s. The DVD would erase after two viewings.
Julian
2024-10-15 02:12:25 +0000 UTCYes it’s really helped out. It’s all about the subject. When Sebastiaan suggested this, he mentioned that there were no other videos on the subject, which is always a good thing.
Techmoan
2024-10-13 09:03:48 +0000 UTCIt's nice to see the Self-Erasing VHS video is over 300K views. I think Hackaday did an article on it.
Grace Robbins
2024-10-12 23:37:02 +0000 UTCOK, will do
Techmoan
2024-10-11 08:35:16 +0000 UTCYou should include a link to your video about V-Lite, because according to Fran Blanche's latest video, it seems that some people are confusing this self-erasing VHS tape with a disposable VHS tape, like V-Lite.
VWestlife
2024-10-10 23:53:07 +0000 UTCIn America? No change that I am aware of. Red Box made a whole industry out of buying up all the lots of discs on release date at Walmart/bestbuy since the studios would not sell to them! Little does it matter now that the convenience of online streaming has destroyed the physical media rental sector. A few cities still have their (amazing) niche BD/DVD/VHS rental shops that have held on, and they rent niche cinephile media sourced from boutiques all around the world (Eureka, BFI, Second Run, 88 Films!) including region B / free players. Scarecrow Video in Seattle, Vidiots in LA, ect. The reason anyone in the US "collecting" movies prior to 1990 had a closet full of dubbed VHS tapes is precisely because studios wouldn't price for the general public because retail product was game. Video games too, of course, which in stark comparison have been *illegal* to rent in Japan since (PC software) piracy became rampant in the early 80s. The average American of my generation has more experience playing Nintendo games than their own population! Conversely CDs have been a popular rental property in Japan since back in the day, but in the US I only ever remember renting music from the local library. Books in US libraries are actually cheaper than retail because they can afford to buy in bulk as a collective, but e-book pricing has been a challenge (legality wise) apparently.
Chris Browne
2024-10-08 06:03:10 +0000 UTCThe money thing is a problem.
Techmoan
2024-10-07 21:27:44 +0000 UTCI made a mistake removing Patreon because this is a non-toxic space. I would be perfectly happy to work solely as a volunteer with housing & food only if it was something I enjoyed. The world runs on cash, sadly.
Grace Robbins
2024-10-07 20:44:33 +0000 UTCI’m all for anyone disconnecting from the online nonsense. It’s all so negative it’s not good for the soul. The most positive person on the planet would feel like nuking it after five minutes in the YT comments. Please do whatever makes you feel peaceful. Oh and as far as the job market goes - I wish you all the luck in the world. I think I’d have to try and do something more positive if I wasn’t doing this, charity work or looking after animals or something, just anything that wasn’t competitive.
Techmoan
2024-10-07 20:34:17 +0000 UTCOh... I'm really sorry about causing you concern. I uninstalled the Patreon app and some others in an attempt to suppress my OCD tendencies. Suffice it to say it was the worst week ever and I was at an all-time low. I don't know if that's good or bad. 🫤 Also, unemployment and lacking tangible experience in the jobs I want to pursue has made me a grouchy goat.
Grace Robbins
2024-10-07 20:22:28 +0000 UTCI was a tad concerned when I didn’t see your comment on this one as you’re usually very early. Glad to see you’re fine. The widescreen thumb is a bit of a cheat, I grabbed a still from the video but then needed to shrink it to leave room for the text, so I ended up adding letterbox bars to hide the fact the image no longer filled the vertical frame.
Techmoan
2024-10-07 19:56:02 +0000 UTCI'm obviously very late on this; enjoyable video. I remember viewing 'Coyote Ugly' at the time of release and all I remember was eyeroll Olympics and women acting the fool in a bar. I don't recall a plot of any kind. I noticed your anamorphic widescreen thumbnail. Take care 🤍
Grace Robbins
2024-10-07 18:37:37 +0000 UTCIt could do with the help, the video didn’t do as well as I hoped it would. I’d hoped the subject would make it appeal to a wider audience than usual.
Techmoan
2024-10-06 09:21:20 +0000 UTCThis video got posted to Metafilter today (as “This Tape Will Self-Destruct in 12,120 Seconds”) so there’s a chance it’s going to escape the regular viewers. (The defeated by a paper clip thumbnail I think is helping.) Ewen
Ewen McNeill
2024-10-06 09:06:41 +0000 UTCRental tapes and sell though tapes are priced accordingly. It’s the same system as books sold to a library and in a shop. The price includes a consideration for the number of times it’ll be rented out. So you can’t legally rent anyone your £10.99 copy of Lethal Weapon. However a shop can rent out their £80 copy of the same film.
Techmoan
2024-10-02 22:06:10 +0000 UTCI would guess this was aimed more at retail outlets like Woolworths. A major factor in their bankruptcy was that they had become increasing reliant on media sales, even as a distributor to other stores. Very profitable until Spotify and Netflix went online.
Duncan
2024-10-02 21:48:02 +0000 UTCIn the 1980s I bought a three pack of Sony E180 VHS tapes which, as a promotion had the film "Absolute Beginners" recorded onto one of them despite being priced the same as normal tapes. Sony was keen to point out that after watching the film you could record over it. I guess that reflected the reviews of that film.
Duncan
2024-10-02 21:36:30 +0000 UTCAt least with this format you were left with something more useful than a coaster.
Duncan
2024-10-02 21:16:04 +0000 UTCAs always, I love the way you tell a story, Mat. Of course never heard of this format and very fascinated to see how it worked.
Justin T Lee
2024-10-02 16:39:47 +0000 UTCSpeaking of the first sale doctrine point - are you aware of any change in law or court case which removed the inherent right to rent out a video you own? It seems like it’s explicitly prohibited now, that the copyright owner has the right to prohibit renting if you haven’t licensed the content for that express purpose. Was that a change?
Daniel Pritchard
2024-10-02 15:30:45 +0000 UTCCan't have been easy for video rental stores, baised on the average store here in the UK, they kept about 4-6 tapes of most films, which got re-circulated, they'd have had to keep alot more copys of each film at the store if they didnt get the tapes returned. I wonder if the ones that did'nt get used got returned and re-used with another film?
Tim Barker
2024-10-02 09:15:11 +0000 UTCI was also reminded of the gimmicky audio head demagnetizer cassettes which spin around a magnet with alternating poles to (hopefully) demagnetize the head and then retract it.
VWestlife
2024-10-01 22:02:45 +0000 UTCOh, I’m sure it wasn’t. I was just letting you know that it felt a bit odd!
Kirk Northrop
2024-10-01 11:46:47 +0000 UTCIt wasn’t intentional, on-camera monitor screens and varifocal spectacles don’t mix. I’m pretty much shooting blind when I’m talking to camera.
Techmoan
2024-10-01 11:31:00 +0000 UTCOh good, I made a guess as to how it worked and I was depressingly right. It’s a bit late now, but at the beginning when you’re describing the tape, it’s a bit disconcerting when your mouth is behind the tape. Maybe something to note for the future.
Kirk Northrop
2024-10-01 07:35:37 +0000 UTCI suspect a supercut of all the screams in the movie would be half and hour long. There’s something about watching fake fun that makes me even grumpier. Fortunately the tech made up for it.
Techmoan
2024-10-01 07:16:44 +0000 UTCI appreciated the supercut of the screams LOL Super interesting tech!
Erik Granlund
2024-09-30 23:27:06 +0000 UTCThat makes sense! I think it was the double breath that drew my attention. Thanks for the reply.
David Murphy
2024-09-30 17:05:33 +0000 UTCGreat video. Cool to see the workings of it. Thanks for sharing.
Benjamin Giguere
2024-09-30 15:54:31 +0000 UTCYeah, there was that strange 10 year+ gap when VHS was priced for rental houses and nothing less, while LD was actually cheaper since (I assume?) a installed player base (ie rental market potential) failed to emerge. "First Sale Doctrine" in America meant there could be no market bifurcation - any legal copy could get turned around and rented out for profit - but I don't know how common that legal framework is around the world. Japan allows limits on what can/cannot be rented, so there are generally two different releases on each title (probably to create price tiers) and the rental version sometimes lacks commentaries and other supplements. At some point this changed, and I don't know what convinced the studios to change practice to market VHS at "sell-through" prices, but I remember Home Alone and Pulp Fiction a few years later as massive home video campaigns (even though I was able to buy an import Japanese LD of Pulp Fiction at Suncoast video a full year before the sell-through VHS dropped, the theatrical window was something else back then). Had 2View (3View, 4View?) emerged in about 1985, it would have changed the course of home media for certain.
Chris Browne
2024-09-30 14:39:14 +0000 UTCJust a thought: maybe "2View: The self-erasing VHS tape hacked with a paperclip" would be a better title, so that if people ever search for 2View they'll find the video? Anyway, I'm no Youtube search engine expert :)
Sebastiaan
2024-09-30 12:36:26 +0000 UTCI think you did hit the right point about failing. If this had come out in -91 then sure I think it might have taken off. Even more so if earlier. But yeah -01 VHS was going out fast. If I remember correctly, at my local movie rental, all new movies were only on DVD.
J Ruonti
2024-09-30 11:48:39 +0000 UTCThat is fascinating - really well presented, Mat. I remember when movies first became available on video tape, it was theoretically possible to buy one, but the price (in the early 1980s) was about £75 for a recent top movie, so if this 'twice view' product had come out then, it might have found a place at a more premium price, competing in the 'buy to own' market instead of the rental market. It might not have been too hard for the designers to defeat the 'paperclip hack' with some local case strengthening if the product had been a goer. But, timing is everything - as Elisha Gray found out when Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone shortly before him... Great work, as always, Mat!
Roland Bogush
2024-09-30 10:36:31 +0000 UTCIt's all in the lap of the gods now, I tried my best, but that rarely guarantees success...we'll see.
Techmoan
2024-09-30 09:17:15 +0000 UTCI'm so glad you sent it over. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to open it without destroying the mechanism, either that or not be able to figure out exactly how it worked. As it was, it all turned out as good as I could have hoped. So thanks again - it's very much appreciated.
Techmoan
2024-09-30 09:13:17 +0000 UTCGreat video you made of it Mat. I enjoyed it very much. I myself had not yet seen in real life how this exactly worked, but you showed it very clearly. I'm glad I could contribute to your channel in this way!
Sebastiaan
2024-09-30 09:09:51 +0000 UTCOne article at the time did mention that ‘they’ were working on a self erasing DVD, so it’s possibly something to do with the same company.
Techmoan
2024-09-30 08:24:21 +0000 UTCYes I accidentally said ‘machine’ as it’s a word I use a lot when describing mechanisms, but it didn’t really fit here.
Techmoan
2024-09-30 07:46:09 +0000 UTCI have a Japanese friend in his sixties who recommends that film (insists it is his favorite), but by those clips I am starting to wonder if he was the target demographic. Speaking of convenience-as-achilles-heel, when Japan started their digital satellite service about twenty years ago instead of accepting the minor hassle of relaying ones tuner card serial number to the provider they initiated a two week sampling period by inserting the included card (required to decode even free to air local channels) and tuning your new HDTV to any of the BS/CS subscription channels. Of course in order for that to be possible every card had decryption keys on hand which *had to be static* so that future purchasers could also participate. Cut to somebody figuring out you could use an off-the-shelf IC card writer to set your "two week" expiration date up to the year 2038 and... BS got real!
Chris Browne
2024-09-30 05:59:53 +0000 UTCHonestly, this reminds me more of Flexplay, a failed alternative to renting DVDs where the disc would self-destruct after two days iirc.
ChrisFratz
2024-09-30 05:26:42 +0000 UTCYour failed format videos are among my favourites! Did you remove a word of dialogue at 5:15? I can't make up my mind if there's an edit there or if I'm losing my mind 😅
David Murphy
2024-09-30 04:30:27 +0000 UTCI wonder if this inspired the creation of FlexPlay, the DVD format introduced in 2003 that self-destructed after 48 hours (unless you kept it in your freezer).
VWestlife
2024-09-29 23:15:14 +0000 UTCIt looks almost as bad as the film Honey, from around the same time, which I declare the worst film I've ever seen. Now you come to mention it, I can't recall if I bought any new videotapes after DVD came in. Though from having a single tape left in 2016, I've now got a wall full again, thanks to this retro format lark!
Brad Jones
2024-09-29 23:08:21 +0000 UTCThe best thing about this format is it made for a perfect Techmoan video! This had better get some serious views! Thanks Sebastian!
Buckaroo Bunny Slippers
2024-09-29 23:07:35 +0000 UTCThinking about my own use of video tape back in the 1990s, I have to agree with Mat that this would been a pretty attractive product if the price-point was low enough to be worth the purchase. I very rarely ever bought sell-through VHS. I would say at least 95% were rentals. Me and my friends spent a lot of time at Blockbuster from the late 80s onward. But we also bought a lot of blank tape. We seemed to record EVERYTHING, like hours off MTV, or entire seasons of Star Trek, Seinfeld, etc. So to have some rubbish movie that magically became a blank tape would have been most welcome! The only annoyance being that you might not want even watch it TWICE! Thinking back, I don't remember ever renting DVDs. I think was must have been an interval between the end of my VHS use and having a DVR in my life. That maybe we why I missed so much TV in the early aughts. Nothing was recorded!
David Fulton
2024-09-29 23:03:08 +0000 UTCoh right I keep forgetting that Divx came out in the late 90s, shame there's no real way to do a video on that format with a visual demonstration(unless someone found a way to crack the discs on a PC or something).
LifeIsStrange
2024-09-29 20:56:12 +0000 UTCOddly enough DIVX had already been and gone a couple of years before this was launched.
Techmoan
2024-09-29 20:46:07 +0000 UTCReally cool! Never saw one my own country.. I kind of like Coyote Ugly though 😅 I had also already switched to DVD in 1997.. It was a bit dumb to release this in the Netherlands. Piracy was rampant and this would have been like something red on a bull 😂 It was probably cracked within a week.. Cool mechanism though! Quite clever..
Bas van Schooten
2024-09-29 20:27:15 +0000 UTCWhen TV cards for the PC became a thing in the late 90s, a whole plethora of tools appeared to bypass the encryption. Even the then-advanced Nagravision with its randomly permuted lines was easily defeated just by rearranging the lines depending on their similarity. This worked surprisingly well...or so I've heard ;)
Tunix
2024-09-29 20:20:58 +0000 UTCThe idea as such was terrible, but I can only applaud the ingenuity that went into this product. Then again, compared to today, you at least had some control over when to watch a video. With streaming services, content tends to pop in and out of existence at a random pace. You did a good job with the editing. The video looks really well rounded.
Tunix
2024-09-29 19:56:11 +0000 UTCThanks, this was very interesting. Never heard about it in France. This would never have worked, since the security device is in the user's hands. Even if it existed before the Internet was a thing, people would have known. Example, our French Canal+ decoders, our first encrypted channel in 1984. DIYing a decoder was possible. Nowadays, the un-encryption is done on the server side for all subscription channels.
CheeseParis
2024-09-29 19:09:40 +0000 UTCWhat an idea! Clever as h*ll, but easily defeated, thanks for the video!
Pin Swede
2024-09-29 19:05:49 +0000 UTCWhat a great video. I love all your videos that show an analogue version of what today would be a digital code or algorithm.
Marcin Wichary
2024-09-29 18:56:04 +0000 UTCThank you Sebastian. I do admire the engineering solution to the fixed watches then wipe.
Gareth R
2024-09-29 18:03:10 +0000 UTCI'd never heard of this! What a weird niche tech, and a great video
Longplay Games
2024-09-29 17:14:22 +0000 UTCYep that's the video I was thinking of too. I actually bought a FlexPlay DVD when they were new purely to experiment with making it last longer. I think they lasted a couple of weeks in the fridge.
Chris Horry
2024-09-29 16:57:51 +0000 UTCYeah, the rental stores had to pay a lot more than the consumer for a pre-recorded movie. That's also why if you rented a movie from Blockbuster and failed to return it, they hit you with a $70 fee. The better option, if you lost the tape, was to run down to Suncoast or some place like that, buy the same tape for $16 and then return that to Blockbuster and they'd never be any the wiser.
The 8-Bit Guy
2024-09-29 16:18:09 +0000 UTCI remember these.
Timothy Roller
2024-09-29 15:50:54 +0000 UTCYep the price for the pre-recorded tapes sold to the rental stores were £70-£80.
Techmoan
2024-09-29 15:49:42 +0000 UTCyeah I heard the DBZ VHS releases actually looked better then the DVDs due to the latter having low bitrates.
LifeIsStrange
2024-09-29 15:46:27 +0000 UTCAh so this was basically an analog precursor to the very short-lived DIVX format.
LifeIsStrange
2024-09-29 15:45:18 +0000 UTCI have an Oasis cd at home that had the same principle. Once you listened to it twice it then wiped itself clean and couldn't be used again..I actually don't think I ever listened it out of fear of losing it..it's ok though I just bought the full album when it released 😂
Sparky Kelly
2024-09-29 15:25:19 +0000 UTCI am also originally from the Netherlands, I never heard of this system though. At the time it was launched, DVD was really coming, but also illegal downloading was already a "serious business"
MrHammond
2024-09-29 15:20:50 +0000 UTCI like the ingeniousity of the mechanism, but from the beginning on, it was already clear to me that there must have been some way to circumvent it, easier than the discolouring of the "rental" DVD movies that Alec (Technology Connections) once showed... At least, the tape is still usable afterwards, and not just "waste"...
MrHammond
2024-09-29 15:17:05 +0000 UTCI'm curious where the paperclip interacted with the mechanism. Did it stop the magnet reaching the tape or did it force the magnet to switch to the final "safe" position while the spool was clear? Would be good to see that in the video, though I appreciate that it would be more work on an already excellent video just to slake a nerd's curiosity!
Ian Gawler-Collins
2024-09-29 15:16:21 +0000 UTCI worked in a rental store in the late 80s and films cost around £70 to buy, though that may have been the cost to the rental shop. Saw most of my movies via the time-coded promos supplied to the store manager back then!
Ian Gawler-Collins
2024-09-29 15:07:46 +0000 UTChttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs FlexPlay. I thought Mat had done a video on it, but it was Technology Connections
Randall Jennings
2024-09-29 15:02:29 +0000 UTCIt looks like you're trying to watch a VHS tape. Would you like help with that? - Clippy
Randall Jennings
2024-09-29 14:59:05 +0000 UTCYes and at a useful tape length too.
Techmoan
2024-09-29 14:47:49 +0000 UTCYes it’s just a normal tape, with a brief watermark, in a weird case.
Techmoan
2024-09-29 14:46:42 +0000 UTCThose are all composite captures from this tape.
Techmoan
2024-09-29 14:45:54 +0000 UTCI'll be uploading a version with the defeat demonstrated shortly.
Techmoan
2024-09-29 14:45:10 +0000 UTCTrust me, twice is the absolute limit of how many times I would ever want to watch Coyote Ugly. I think that is indeed the total number of times I've seen it. Still, it's a clever idea and if it had launched in the 80s or 90s it would have seen success, and I like that you get to reuse the tape afterwards! There was a DVD version of this idea in the US in the late 2000s, only it used a chemical reaction to "erase" the DVD after a few days, and then you would have to discard it, so a very wasteful format. People figured out of course you could stick the DVD in the freezer and it would last a bit longer, or just rip the thing.
Chris Horry
2024-09-29 14:45:10 +0000 UTCI’m not sure there would ever have been sufficient space in the price bands for it to have found a niche. Even if it had come out a decade earlier in the early 90’s - from my (faulty) memory a rental was £2, a blank tape was £4 and a pre-recorded sell though title was £11. If I’m recalling that correctly then 2View would have to be marketed at around £6 to make any sense. I suspect it would cost a bit more to manufacturer than a regular blank cassette but I don’t know what cut the movie studios would have needed. It’s possible there wouldn’t be a price point left where this worked.
Techmoan
2024-09-29 14:44:51 +0000 UTCSounds like something a fancy VHS killer like Jigsaw would setup.
Terence Tan
2024-09-29 14:15:43 +0000 UTCDefinitely a strange idea, but at the very least it became useful after the viewing was over, and wasn't destined for a landfill like Flexplay
AtomicPurple64
2024-09-29 14:02:27 +0000 UTCYou'd be surprised how relatively OK VHS can look with good capture equipment! Not to mention PAL tapes are probably better looking than NTSC ones
AtomicPurple64
2024-09-29 14:01:14 +0000 UTCThank you for continuing to do what you do!
pj
2024-09-29 13:57:45 +0000 UTCVery interesting format! I wonder about something. Had this format come about 10 years earlier, might it have been a success?
The 8-Bit Guy
2024-09-29 13:54:10 +0000 UTCI assume the paperclip held the magnet arm to stop it swinging round and hitting the tape after it had done the 2 plays.
Simon Moseley
2024-09-29 13:31:33 +0000 UTCI like the mechanism nice innovation but always going to get bypassed plus of course timing
AzoriusMage
2024-09-29 13:29:22 +0000 UTCExcellent and interesting video, thanks. Great to end it with that clear section showing the mechanism.
MM
2024-09-29 13:13:40 +0000 UTCAs soon as you know it's a mechanism the challenge is to defeat it. If you just opened the tape the magnet wouldn't automatically release? that seems like a slightly weak approach. It doesn't matter if you wreck the casing if you can just transplant the reels into another casing for a worn out tape.
Giles Jones
2024-09-29 13:09:51 +0000 UTCStrong agree on your conclusion. Probably terrible timimg, and kiina similar to that dvd that ages to unreadable on exposure to oxygen. The mechanism in the tape is absolutely clever though.
Marlo Delfin Gonzales
2024-09-29 13:07:54 +0000 UTCIntriguing technology. And speaking of Technology and its Connections, it’s reminiscent of Alec’s video on the Flexplay DVD, except with the 2View system it will still work as designed over 20 years later being based on ingenious mechanical system to limit the views rather than Flexplay’s reliance on some sort of oxidation reaction to “kill” the disk and render it into another bit of plastic trash. By the way, those clips you included that featured the screaming nature of the film looked too good to be from a 20-year-old VHS, so I assume you actually had to go a buy a DVD copy of a film that you didn’t like in the first place in order to include them.
Mark Hesse
2024-09-29 13:07:51 +0000 UTCQuite a clever mechanism, very interesting indeed. Presumably these tapes also had Macrovision since an initial thought might have been to copy the movie across before watching - if it was one worth viewing multiple times, of course!
Paul Watkins
2024-09-29 13:07:11 +0000 UTCOf course, coming from the US, I never heard of it. I remember the DVD equivalent. I'm surprised this got as far as testing it. A typical excellent video, Matt. Cheers.
CrimsonPig808
2024-09-29 13:06:01 +0000 UTCIn Dutch the word for ‘tape’ and ‘tire’ (and ‘band’) is indeed the same: ‘band’.
Kurt Hansen
2024-09-29 13:00:47 +0000 UTCI am from Holland, and while watching, it got back to me. Indeed, quite absurd they launched it when they did. Also illegal movie downloads, divx format and such, ‘came in to view’ at that time. Always highly appreciate the audio or video format video’s 😃😃
Jasper Colijn
2024-09-29 13:00:43 +0000 UTC
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