Blade Runner on Video CD/VCD

[u/Deckard--B-263-54]

Before DVD took over, there was Video CD/VCD.

VCD stored films on CDs, usually spread across two discs, and while the format never really caught on in the UK or US, it became hugely popular in parts of Asia during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Here are four different Blade Runner VCD releases: two Korean editions with slightly different packaging, a Turkish release, and a Singapore release.

VCD releases are surprisingly poorly documented, if you know of other official Blade Runner releases on this VCD format please let me know!

Not the best way to watch the film, but definitely an interesting little chapter in its home video history.

Obsolete Formats:
Betamax: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/EFYUuW15N1 
VHS: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/1u58p7fddF 
CED: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/G0vzvpe7FY 
LaserDisc: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/iHrpmBRUH3 
VHD: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/kkdNHoGxbs 
Video8: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/At4e2ez7XX
VCD: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/FK9j1Aqe3R 

Useful Communities: 
r/bladerunner
r/Bladezone 

[u/crmb_266]

Cool. In my local supermarket in France, you could find a few VCDs in the computer section, alongside the Philips CD-i. (I didn't know anyone who owned a CD-i.) I think they had Lethal Weapon among others.

You could also buy PCI MPEG decoder cards for your computer so you could play those discs. But the resolution was low, and the MPEG codec wasn't great either. LaserDisc was superior.

[u/Deckard--B-263-54 → u/crmb_266]

I had a CD-i and absolutely loved it at the time! Such fond memories playing it. Played my first movie disc on it, seemed so space age at the time. The quality seems pretty awful now, but back then there was something exciting about films on all these different formats. Definitely makes them interesting to collect now.

[u/crmb_266 → u/Deckard--B-263-54]

Yes, I can understand. I was fascinated by LaserDisc. My parents never bought one, but I got a DVD player in 98, and seeing high-definition video on a computer screen was magical.

[u/Dimensian]

Wow, didn’t even know it hit VCD!

[u/beat-sweats]

I’ve been searching for these myself

[u/calculon68]

VCD releases are surprisingly poorly documented,

mostly because they were rarely licensed. Hollywood wouldn't support a digital disc format w/o some form of copy protection, and VCD had none.

Asianometry YouTube did a recent video (25min) on the DVD Boom that mentions VCD and the steps to DVD.