I bought a vcd from 1988. It has 5 audio tracks and one video track. Anywhere I play it, I can only listen to the audio tracks. My computer (and others) doesn't recognize the video track, only the audio. The same with dvd players. I've downloaded a vcd player associated with windows media a while ago and I've been able to listen to vcds before.

-- manuel maio graça fernandes (nomoriginal@hotmail.com), November 26, 2004

Answers

The VCD (Video CD) specification wasn't released until 1993, so I would guess that what you have is actually a CD-V (Compact Disc - Video) which was a regular CD with 20 minutes of audio and 5-6 minutes of analog video. You'll need a 'laser disc' player to watch the video, and the laser disc player will need to be capable of playing the proper video format (PAL or NTSC.) There is no other player capable of reproducing the video.

Philips released these discs in 1988, but they never really caught on, even though they predicted a demand of 300+ million a year. Laser disc players just weren't common enough to satisfy that prediction.

-- Bryan (gryps-innocens@gryphon.zzn.com), November 29, 2004.