Around 2011 we got hit with a massive ice storm that knocked power out for weeks. Once all our phones and game boys finally died, me and my buddies wet digging through some old stuff and found the original and the color video now, with a few episodes of SpongeBob, Jimmy neutron and Fairley odd parents. We spent that night getting drunk by candle light, huddled around that tiny screen. Pretty great night.
@@blakksheep736 stereo has 2 channels, left and right. you get mono audio from the right channel and video from the left channel. I think that it has some sort of specialty encoder that turns video to audio when burning the disk, and the player has a decoder that is able to turn the audio to video. It's an anti-piracy measure.
Fun fact: Mini-CDs were actually wildly popular in Japan for a time, and are still produced and sold within the country even to this day, albeit VERY rarely now. They were used for their original purpose here, as CD singles; when a band released a new song that was popular, before a full-sized CD album came out, you'd be able to snag the song as a mini-CD single, usually with a B-side track the band wanted to promote and maybe karaoke versions of both songs -- or if you were lucky, remix versions! They generally came packaged in long cardboard "jewel cases" with a plastic tray inside, about half the size of a standard CD case. These cardboard mini-CD cases would clamshell open vertically, and had lyrics printed on the inside. Since not every CD player is compatible with mini-CDs, however, it became somewhat popular over time to release CD singles on regular-sized CDs that just... had a lot of wasted space on them. These became marketed as "maxi singles," and were considered a premium product despite being a lot more wasteful and a lot less cool than the mini-CDs. And sadly, maxi singles are now the norm for pre-album single releases from bands and artists here in Japan (and yeah, CDs are still very much a thing here!), with mini-CDs being more of an occasionally released novelty designed to appeal to customer nostalgia.
This whole story is truly very interesting, but you're telling me CDs are still a medium that's regularly used to sell mainstream music? Am I understanding that correctly?
I have a Japanese Pokemon mini CD, there's a Euro 96 mini CD I plan to get that features Alright and Wake Up Boo! and Busted's She Wants To Be Me single is a mini CD!
@@MysterySteve Yep! Tower Records, HMV, and Disk Union are the big retailers, and they're pretty much everywhere in Japan... but the truly shocking thing? Japan still has video rental stores in great quantities (the biggest chains are Tsutaya and Geo), and while it's not legal to rent out games in video rental stores here, it IS legal to rent out music CDs! So you can actually go to your local Blockbuster Video equivalent and rent yourself a bunch of CD albums for one week. ...Of course, if the music is old enough, you can instead go to one of the gajillion used CD retailers like Book-Off and just BUY them for about the same price. Physical media is very much alive and well here in Japan!
This video really makes me appreciate the thought that goes into character design, as the cast is still somewhat recognizable on this godforsaken video format
I still usually find videonows at the thrift shops from time to time. And I usually buy em since I used to have a Video now when I was younger. So I kinda feel nostalgic towards them.
Man I remember seeing this thing in a Toys R Us. I remember it so clearly because at the time I was trying to decided between saving for a DS or getting one of these. I chose the DS and so glad I did lol
I literally had this lmao. When my parents would confiscate my iPod touch because they didn't want me having fun while I was sick, I was watching the entirety of that spy movie with the kid from Malcom in the middle starring in it. You had to switch out the discs halfway I think. I would also watch episodes of America's funniest home videos lmao
@@Stephaniewashere sadly no 😔 it was just agent Cody banks, Americas funniest home videos, a couple episodes of SpongeBob and the episode of the fairly odd parents where Timmy becomes an adult and hates responsibility lmaoo
I mean you can literally count the pixels on that screen. GBA video was just as bad if maybe a little better but at least you didn't have to buy a whole cheesy plastic video player to watch those.
A big appeal for VideoNow and Game Boy Advance video was that back then, home video releases were pretty scarce for all but the most popular kids' cartoons. Buying one of those might've been the only chance you had to watch something like My Life as a Teenage Robot or Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go outside of it airing on TV.
I remember Game Boy Advance Video. I bought a SpongeBob one and it was played so damn much everywhere I went. I’m pretty sure it came with a YuGiOh episode, Kaiba vs Yugi Battle City part one. I’m kinda surprised they weren’t bigger than they were at the time.
@@ivanalvarado3646 The GBA video ones weren't great but I will say considering you were getting pretty much the exact same if not better quality than these video now discs on a device you already owned that was a selling point right there.
I still have my Game Boy Advance Videos, the big advantage was (and still is) that you didn't need to buy a whole other unit to watch them on! The SMRTHG cart I feel I really need to have, not only because I bought it in preparation for my family and I's trip to South Africa in 2016, but because that show is still not (at the time of typing) on my country's Disney+!
@@brentfisher902 I'm sure it's possible with the right tools, it took me awhile but but by using compression skills and Metro AVI.... I got the entire Morbius movie on the damn thing with only 20mb file with audio somehow, it's surely possible to do that type of stuff.
I spent many hours as a kid watching the same three discs over and over again on one of these. This video literally unlocked a memory I completely forgot until today so thank you!
I did actually have a portable DVD player when I was just a wee lad still living in Hawaii. The thing was made out of all metal shaped like a laptop. Had a bright big screen all the controls were on the bottom half the entire top half that folded out on the laptop hinge was just screen. You would press a button and the disk drive was in the center of the bottom half of this little nugget. And man that I love that thing until one day eventually something with the hinge system just conked out or maybe was the optical drive but it just stopped working. I would pay any amount of money to have that thing again may he rest in peace.
Portable DVD and for that matter Blu-ray we're amazing especially toward the end. With anti-shock and just amazing features I still find those to be the only "portable" media player worth talking about. Of course you could do the same thing with a PSP with roughly the same result. 2005 was a true banger.
The distortion on the built in speaker when it was dying was the most crisp, screamy and glorifyingly auful sounding thing you would ever hear! I miss these guys!
Yeah those INTEX swimming pools smell like a Chinese mountain village after one of Xi Xing's rocket-stages "gently"......errr......I mean, explodes violently, when it returns to Earth, still burning and billowing that toxic orange smoke that gives the mountain villagers and their pets (aka tomorrow's lunch), "Bubba-Teeth" and/or death.
I actually know why that case for Band Geeks is in there! The disc that had band geeks on it was a pack-in for the original series of Video Now players, along with an episode of Fairly Odd Parents I think. it was just in a paper sleeve or something, so I guess in the spongebob pack they just included a spare case for the Band Geeks disc. Kinda neat.
I didn't noticed the titles, I thought that it was a pocket sized case so you could bring a second disc with you instead of having to carry the full size cases
This has unlocked a childhood memory I forgot I had. We didn’t have much growing up but remembering the little good things is nice. Genuinely glad I’m subscribed to dankpods
I think my biggest problem with these things are they were superseded almost immediately. They had a very small time on the market before better products completely stole their thunder. Also I was way too old at the time to be using something like this so it was more of a cute novelty that became obsolete with the quickness.
I remember having one of these, I came home from school one day and my grandma gave it to me. I had the spongebob episode where Mr krabs gets the beep boop song stuck in his head and the Halloween episode of fairy odd parents where Marc the alien first appears. Truly a crazy nostalgia trip watching this
If you want to know the powerhouse that the VideoNow tried to be, they got the licensing to put Nick shows onto the GAME BOY ADVANCED (using special tech I believe) and that looked about as high quality as the SpongeBob black and white discs but in color. Holy gosh they tried.
I have roms of all their videos and to be honest, at the time, they aren't all that bad and you get 3 sometimes even 4 episodes depending on the cartoon.
I had the original Yu-Gi-OH! release back in the day, along with the Dragonball GT one. You can bet that I tried to look happy after realizing I convinced someone to spend $100 on two pieces of plastic that I only ever used once. I never even watched the Dragonball GT cart after seeing how bad the Yu-Gi-OH! one was.
I remember having one of the Kids Next Door cartridges and another that I forget. Sure the screen was small and the sound quality was shit, but watching cartoons on the go in the palm of your hand? It was like living in the future. If you showed our 12 year old butts an iPhone 12 playing dozens of TV shows and movies in crystal clear HD, it would’ve literally and figuratively blown our minds.
@@sedme0 I mean at least a gba video you already had the GBA you just had to get the little cartridges. I'm so amazed there's a cartridge with I believe two movies shark tale and Shrek and holy crap is the bitrate and audio crushed to all hell hey two full length movies on a single tiny cart, that's something. Technically impressive even if now it would be literal torture to try to watch that.
I had the Archos PMP400, AV500 and the 605. Back when they first launched it truly felt like the future, even though the battery life was shit and they weighed about 400 grams. But being able to drag and drop a .avi you got off Pirate Bay directly on to one of them and watch movies and TV in the back seat of your parents' car for the whole road trip was all worth it. Thanks for a trip down memory lane.
Old tech really is interesting. Videos like these teach you how things were before the age of smartphones, when companies were experimenting with stuff.
It's so crazy how time flies . I was like 12 or 13 when this came out and I had both . I remember getting the black and white one and thinking, they could have made a color one , but they knew it would sell black and white and then later they could introduce a color version . Sure enough I was right. I had both and I also had the videos for Gameboy advance. We would always take road trips from Texas to Alabama to see family an it was a 12 hour drive so I would have plenty of entertainment I remember. I only used the video now for road trips . Or at school
@@pryingopenmythirdeye1830 I've never seen such things but i have experienced the portable DVD Players, disassembled a broken one and salvaged some electronics like capacitors and USB ports, kind of. Also VHS players and DVD Players too, family still owns the same ones from many years ago too. Time sure does fly and this is why I wish to experience the tech that existed when I was a very small boy.
@@DimT670 Still a market experiment. Selling a portable video player for kids was something no one would have thought back in the 80s and 90s or so, even tho you could do it with Video 8, and Sony indeed did it (not for kids). Same the portable DVD players, they existed yes, but no one dared make a cheapo kid version. They don't really try anything nowadays, barely cheaper smartphones.
@@Kalvinjj Here's something interesting to look up in case you thought there wasn't a decent alternative for a reasonable price at the time, the Zvue. A very well made decent quality device that took SD cards and had a screen of far better than any of these cheap devices. Sold predominantly in places like Walmart it was an impressive little media player that retailed for about $100 and was really impressive for the time. It could go toe to toe with the far more expensive iPod but for a fraction of the price.
I had the 605 WiFi with the dock! I only used it 2 or 3 times to watch a movie on a TV as DVDs were still much better quality than the very compressed video I managed to convert for the Archos. As a portable audio and video player it was amazing.
Still sad he trash talked it! That particular CD-ROM is the one with the Toa designer mini activity and some pretty good techno music. Thinking of it I believe I have seen a Bonkle nugget out there so maybe we'll see one get one-gritted one day.
i love this channel and the videos so much, i just moved to another country by myself so after i discovered this channel a few days ago i have been putting on all the videos on shuffle to keep me company during the evenings so keep it up!
This was luxury to me as a child, my mom gave it to me for I want to say my birthday, and I've been trying to figure out what it was. Thank you for covering this blast from the past.
Did you know that Tiger Electronics made an MP3 player around the same time call the "PlayItNow?" Even calling it an MP3 player is a bit generous since you had to connect it to the headphone jack of another device and record the audio that way. It was barbaric and sounded awful but it was my first MP3 player that I got as a hand me down. You've got to check it out.
Holy shit I completely forgot about that. I remember I told a friend of mine I’d get him and iPod for his birthday not knowing how much one was. Not trying to disappoint I hit up toys R us and got him one of those. Let’s say disappointment was had. I think hasbro made it actually…
I had the Tiger VuGo which played video at 60p, or four RGB phosphor triads per recorded Pixel, the sound was in mono, and it only had 8.3 filenames, and if you wanted the 60th song from the top of the list you had to press the down arrow a full 60 times. Today the only thing that works is the photo viewer. It's a passive matrix screen that looks like something from the mechanical television era...
My first laptop that was actually new when I bought it was a G4 PowerBook. It included a DVD/CD+-R drive (could read DVDs and CDs, but could burn CDs). I burned my first pirated films in VCD format (after ripping the DVD with Handbreak). It wasn't bad resolution given that none of my TVs were HD yet. I'd have to split movies onto two CDs, and manually look for a breakpoint near the middle of the film where there was a natural break between scenes to split the film.
Anyone remember those rad portable DVD players? Memories of going on holiday, sitting in the back having to watch a Barbie movie because my sister wanted to watch it but I also kinda enjoyed it anyway
My brother the original model of that for Christmas one year, and we had an absolute blast with it! We thought we were too cool for school using that on long car journeys instead of a regular portable DVD player, even though the portable DVD player was definitely way better, especially for in the car.
Oh man. I had this exact model and color. It was mind blowing back then as a child. It reminds me of a specific memory of me huddling under covers after losing power back in 2004. Our town got hit by Hurricane charley and this thing came in clutch.
Ah plenty of memories of using this thing, I had both the original and the color ones and I used them when I went to Denmark to see family and going all over the country my eyes were glued to the video now
Honestly dankpods is probably the only reason I still watch RUclips you remind me of the old RUclipsrs when people had passion for what they did and injected Thier own personality into the videos keep up the great work
His production style hasn't really changed either. Everyone's going full studio, he's still a guy with a phone making us happy when the new video drops.
If I remember right (I might not) this thing was packaged with a Nickelodeon sampler disc, and that's what the case included with your SpongeBob set is for, maybe?
I actually had this as a kid and still have it around the house, honestly as a kid back when phones could be used to whack nails into wood, it was actually good for trips out and watching an episode in bed when you cba to go grab the remote for the tv or if you just didnt have that episode of your favourite show to watch on a tv.
Please do a video about the archos dock thing. It looks really interesting and it'd be nice to see a video about a nugget thats actually good for once.
You could buy something like this for the GameBoy Advance where they had episodes of shows or even some movies on GBA cartridges. By the way, they have Shrek, the whole movie, on GBA. I thought you'd want that information.
What's impressive is there's a double pack one on a single cartridge it has shark tale and Shrek. It's bit crushed all to hell and it looks and sounds terrible but it's kind of a marvel considering I think it's like 64 MB or something. Physically painful to try to watch nowadays of course even for the nostalgia/novelty. Still I would have preferred something like that over this where you need a whole separate player. I mean most people had GBA's back then.
They made tv episode cartridges for the gameboy advance, I had a cartridge or two with SpongeBob on em. It was the crunchiest, pixeliest thing ever made. It kicked ass.
1:59 "Why is this illustration in black and white?" Because you uploaded this video just as my phone's bedtime mode got activated, so your whole video is in black and white now. So the illustration didn't even look any different to me.
I had one of these as a kid and i remember it being the greatest thing ever. Being able to watch movies on the go was the coolest thing ever, my 4 year old brain couldnt even comprehend the difference in quality
I had a blue video now player and one single disk that happened to be the one you're missing, Band geeks. I watched that episode so many times on that bad boy I could quite the entire thing. Edit: I had the exact one you showed at 6:38
Funny story related to DankPods: So in my town, there’s this small Fiat(?) driving around sometimes, It’s black and has a sticker over the top of the windshield that says “Nugget.” So, every time I drive past it, I immediately say out loud, “I’m arming the nugget!” Doesn’t matter if I’m alone, I just do it. Anyways, good video Dank, keep it up!
really happy to see you covering this item. The VideoNow Color I remember was my absolute favorite thing back when I was a kid, my parents wound up buying me 3 of them because I kept losing or breaking them lol until the last one and I never saw one again until recently when they've come back to life online. It made my childhood great but it wasn't until I saw it these days that I realize just how bad it actually was 🤣
I mean I grew up with things like the original non backlit game boy and I would defend that to the end I would gladly die on that hill. The problem with these video players is besides nostalgia it's really unpleasant to go back and use them. The tech was superseded so quickly by things like iPod,PSP and similar better but cheaper alternatives that it's just not fun revisiting them except to laugh at them.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu ahh yeah the good old days. I forgot about the GameBoy. I had a Color that I absolutely loved. Played that thing every day for years until it just wasn’t fun/cool anymore there was better things. Like DS/PSP PS3 etc.
I just noticed the Nick sitcom Romeo advertised on the back of the VideoNow Color package... never even heard of that one before now for some reason, feels weird
I asked for one of these for my birthday as a kid and was SO disappointed with it. Not only was the quality so bad, I couldn't get any new discs. No local stores near me sold any at all, and when I could find some they were either overpriced or for really bad shows, so I was stuck with 2 old episodes of Rugrats. The best part about the thing was the headphones I got with it, I used them for a long time with my DS
For once I relate and actually had this nugget! You were right any kid like me with the color was totally fine with the quality as long as we got our favorite shows. Would it be possible you would cover the Gameboy Video? They were like gameboy cartridges that came with episodes of various shows like the the Video Now did with disks.
Man, I remember sitting on the bleachers in gym class in high school waiting for the bell to ring so we could all leave. I'd be there with my friend watching old episodes of the boondocks on my iriver. Framerate seemed good, in memory, and I could store close to a season on there with room for music. Glad to see we evolved from cave tools since then.
holy shit i had one of these! it failed on me because this corn kernel looking thing (i think it was a transistor?) literally fell off of the internal motherboard and was rattling around like a maraca
i grew up on the videonow color 😍 it was so nice to be able to take my shows on the go. i had super long car rides and this was my way of getting through them granted this was over 10 years ago so definitely rose tinted glasses but my videonow got me through some lONG car trips. i was hoping that’s where this episode was going and the little squee i did when you pulled out the CD case for it… no apologies given. ever
Same here I had both versions color and non color plus you remember video now on game boy advance ? I had a bunch of those also . Made road trips so much better
@@pryingopenmythirdeye1830 oh my god i forgot about the video for gameboy. i unfortunately didn’t own those until i was a bit older but those were really cool tech to my child brain
Oh man the beginning takes me back, we had a thing that flipped open and close that you Velcro'd around a car seat to watch dvds on the back of it, i loved that stupid thing but i don't remember where it went. First time i ever saw those flat circular batteries
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Great to see you cover this - it's terrible but that's what makes it great.
Not surprised to see you here lol I love your channel!!!
I remember watching your video on the other VideoNow player so I got really excited when this popped into my notifications.
Love your stuff mate!
Hiiiii
Flippin’ ‘eck didn’t expect you to comment!
Around 2011 we got hit with a massive ice storm that knocked power out for weeks. Once all our phones and game boys finally died, me and my buddies wet digging through some old stuff and found the original and the color video now, with a few episodes of SpongeBob, Jimmy neutron and Fairley odd parents. We spent that night getting drunk by candle light, huddled around that tiny screen. Pretty great night.
that sounds like a dream i would love that tbh
to this day, whenever our internet goes out, it's time to bust out the spongebob dvd
that's a whole vibe
Isn’t it crazy how the shittest tech makes for the greatest memories?
The most amusing thing about the VideoNow is that it's not even Video CD, it's a stereo audio CD with the video signal stored in the left channel
-Put it in your CD player and get ready for earr**e-
How does that even work?
@@blakksheep736 stereo has 2 channels, left and right. you get mono audio from the right channel and video from the left channel. I think that it has some sort of specialty encoder that turns video to audio when burning the disk, and the player has a decoder that is able to turn the audio to video. It's an anti-piracy measure.
so its kinda like a coaxial cable
You guys are lucky I was the 399th like. Open for 400.
Fun fact: Mini-CDs were actually wildly popular in Japan for a time, and are still produced and sold within the country even to this day, albeit VERY rarely now. They were used for their original purpose here, as CD singles; when a band released a new song that was popular, before a full-sized CD album came out, you'd be able to snag the song as a mini-CD single, usually with a B-side track the band wanted to promote and maybe karaoke versions of both songs -- or if you were lucky, remix versions!
They generally came packaged in long cardboard "jewel cases" with a plastic tray inside, about half the size of a standard CD case. These cardboard mini-CD cases would clamshell open vertically, and had lyrics printed on the inside.
Since not every CD player is compatible with mini-CDs, however, it became somewhat popular over time to release CD singles on regular-sized CDs that just... had a lot of wasted space on them. These became marketed as "maxi singles," and were considered a premium product despite being a lot more wasteful and a lot less cool than the mini-CDs. And sadly, maxi singles are now the norm for pre-album single releases from bands and artists here in Japan (and yeah, CDs are still very much a thing here!), with mini-CDs being more of an occasionally released novelty designed to appeal to customer nostalgia.
This whole story is truly very interesting, but you're telling me CDs are still a medium that's regularly used to sell mainstream music? Am I understanding that correctly?
@@MysterySteve yup, and in Indonesian KFC is the biggest CD music store that still exists
I have a Japanese Pokemon mini CD, there's a Euro 96 mini CD I plan to get that features Alright and Wake Up Boo! and Busted's She Wants To Be Me single is a mini CD!
@@MysterySteve Yep! Tower Records, HMV, and Disk Union are the big retailers, and they're pretty much everywhere in Japan... but the truly shocking thing? Japan still has video rental stores in great quantities (the biggest chains are Tsutaya and Geo), and while it's not legal to rent out games in video rental stores here, it IS legal to rent out music CDs! So you can actually go to your local Blockbuster Video equivalent and rent yourself a bunch of CD albums for one week.
...Of course, if the music is old enough, you can instead go to one of the gajillion used CD retailers like Book-Off and just BUY them for about the same price.
Physical media is very much alive and well here in Japan!
@@LastBastion LOL 😂 please don't let the world know how sad is CD audio market in Indonesia 🤣
This video really makes me appreciate the thought that goes into character design, as the cast is still somewhat recognizable on this godforsaken video format
I still usually find videonows at the thrift shops from time to time. And I usually buy em since I used to have a Video now when I was younger. So I kinda feel nostalgic towards them.
Man, leave some for us
videonow scalper
@@exposednerve6382 how am I a scalper? I don’t even resell them
@@john_toss thats the joke, other dude is saying leave some for the rest of us, imagine scalping a 20 year old piece of crap
@@exposednerve6382 I can’t sneed
Man I remember seeing this thing in a Toys R Us. I remember it so clearly because at the time I was trying to decided between saving for a DS or getting one of these. I chose the DS and so glad I did lol
@@masopupspuchblob
Nothing beats running into a DankPods video after your standard weekly binge. Bless the 1 Grit.
All hail the great 1 Grit and "PooK" battery.
God bless the 1 grit
Is it just me or has it been a while since the 1 grit saw some action?
@@tei1337 feels like it
I literally had this lmao. When my parents would confiscate my iPod touch because they didn't want me having fun while I was sick, I was watching the entirety of that spy movie with the kid from Malcom in the middle starring in it. You had to switch out the discs halfway I think. I would also watch episodes of America's funniest home videos lmao
Agent Cody Banks
@@TheCambo31 there it is 👆
"didn't want me having fun while I was sick"
Bruh wtf leave the poor lil guy alone he's sick
@@windowstips1430 Yeah my mom would do the same thing. Some parents are shitty lol
@@Stephaniewashere sadly no 😔 it was just agent Cody banks, Americas funniest home videos, a couple episodes of SpongeBob and the episode of the fairly odd parents where Timmy becomes an adult and hates responsibility lmaoo
To my dumb child brain, slapping this thing while a video was playing and watching it glitch out was the height of entertainment.
The resolution makes it look like every scene was done with an Etch-a-Sketch
I mean you can literally count the pixels on that screen. GBA video was just as bad if maybe a little better but at least you didn't have to buy a whole cheesy plastic video player to watch those.
How could you say something like that!? That’s an insult to etch a sketches everywhere!
NBSC through a piece of wire looks better than that, and that is 31potato resolution.
A big appeal for VideoNow and Game Boy Advance video was that back then, home video releases were pretty scarce for all but the most popular kids' cartoons. Buying one of those might've been the only chance you had to watch something like My Life as a Teenage Robot or Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go outside of it airing on TV.
Also most these video player could be watched in a car with headphones. That was big when your 8.
I remember Game Boy Advance Video. I bought a SpongeBob one and it was played so damn much everywhere I went. I’m pretty sure it came with a YuGiOh episode, Kaiba vs Yugi Battle City part one. I’m kinda surprised they weren’t bigger than they were at the time.
@@ivanalvarado3646
The GBA video ones weren't great but I will say considering you were getting pretty much the exact same if not better quality than these video now discs on a device you already owned that was a selling point right there.
Ah yes, Super Robot Ninja War Token Blonde Hyper Beaver Little Man
I still have my Game Boy Advance Videos, the big advantage was (and still is) that you didn't need to buy a whole other unit to watch them on! The SMRTHG cart I feel I really need to have, not only because I bought it in preparation for my family and I's trip to South Africa in 2016, but because that show is still not (at the time of typing) on my country's Disney+!
Fun Fact: One of the big reasons Nintendo created GBA Video was to compete with the VideoNow
god i love my shrek 1 and shrek 2 for my GBA. the only proper way to watch shrek
and it was better, it wasn't good though, but it was better than videonow
I tried running the bitstream for Microsoft Video 1 on a GBA with DevKitPro, but the GBA doesn't have enough gas....
@@brentfisher902 I'm sure it's possible with the right tools, it took me awhile but but by using compression skills and Metro AVI....
I got the entire Morbius movie on the damn thing with only 20mb file with audio somehow, it's surely possible to do that type of stuff.
I spent many hours as a kid watching the same three discs over and over again on one of these. This video literally unlocked a memory I completely forgot until today so thank you!
4:22 why did he show a picture of my pool when he said this?!
Same!
I did actually have a portable DVD player when I was just a wee lad still living in Hawaii.
The thing was made out of all metal shaped like a laptop. Had a bright big screen all the controls were on the bottom half the entire top half that folded out on the laptop hinge was just screen.
You would press a button and the disk drive was in the center of the bottom half of this little nugget. And man that I love that thing until one day eventually something with the hinge system just conked out or maybe was the optical drive but it just stopped working.
I would pay any amount of money to have that thing again may he rest in peace.
Chill dude, you're not even 2 mins into the video yet
rip nano
You could probably get one cheap on eBay,
I watched Bad Boys 1 & 2 on the way to Florida with a portable DVD player.
Portable DVD and for that matter Blu-ray we're amazing especially toward the end. With anti-shock and just amazing features I still find those to be the only "portable" media player worth talking about.
Of course you could do the same thing with a PSP with roughly the same result. 2005 was a true banger.
The distortion on the built in speaker when it was dying was the most crisp, screamy and glorifyingly auful sounding thing you would ever hear!
I miss these guys!
20 subscribers, 2 songs, 489 views, who is giving random people like you these music notes? Are you aware of this?
@@endgamerplays A lot of channels have the music note thing. It kind of just happens
Yeah those INTEX swimming pools smell like a Chinese mountain village after one of Xi Xing's rocket-stages "gently"......errr......I mean, explodes violently, when it returns to Earth, still burning and billowing that toxic orange smoke that gives the mountain villagers and their pets (aka tomorrow's lunch), "Bubba-Teeth" and/or death.
@@MAGGOT_VOMIT
Indeed a truly distinctive and unique aroma. Not a pleasant or enjoyable one mind you but definitely unique.
I actually know why that case for Band Geeks is in there! The disc that had band geeks on it was a pack-in for the original series of Video Now players, along with an episode of Fairly Odd Parents I think. it was just in a paper sleeve or something, so I guess in the spongebob pack they just included a spare case for the Band Geeks disc. Kinda neat.
Came here to say this. I'm also on board with this theory.
I didn't noticed the titles, I thought that it was a pocket sized case so you could bring a second disc with you instead of having to carry the full size cases
This has unlocked a childhood memory I forgot I had. We didn’t have much growing up but remembering the little good things is nice. Genuinely glad I’m subscribed to dankpods
I think my biggest problem with these things are they were superseded almost immediately.
They had a very small time on the market before better products completely stole their thunder.
Also I was way too old at the time to be using something like this so it was more of a cute novelty that became obsolete with the quickness.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu reading your comment after his was kind of funny
I remember having one of these, I came home from school one day and my grandma gave it to me. I had the spongebob episode where Mr krabs gets the beep boop song stuck in his head and the Halloween episode of fairy odd parents where Marc the alien first appears. Truly a crazy nostalgia trip watching this
Happy to see Bionicle being featured on that Cheerios box. I remember when they had the Rahkshi in 03 some of the sets had mini cds as well.
I still have my Masks Of Light era mini discs lol
"worst video format" true because unlike GBA video this didn't have Shrek on it
Good point
If you want to know the powerhouse that the VideoNow tried to be, they got the licensing to put Nick shows onto the GAME BOY ADVANCED (using special tech I believe) and that looked about as high quality as the SpongeBob black and white discs but in color. Holy gosh they tried.
I have roms of all their videos and to be honest, at the time, they aren't all that bad and you get 3 sometimes even 4 episodes depending on the cartoon.
I had the original Yu-Gi-OH! release back in the day, along with the Dragonball GT one. You can bet that I tried to look happy after realizing I convinced someone to spend $100 on two pieces of plastic that I only ever used once. I never even watched the Dragonball GT cart after seeing how bad the Yu-Gi-OH! one was.
I remember having one of the Kids Next Door cartridges and another that I forget. Sure the screen was small and the sound quality was shit, but watching cartoons on the go in the palm of your hand? It was like living in the future. If you showed our 12 year old butts an iPhone 12 playing dozens of TV shows and movies in crystal clear HD, it would’ve literally and figuratively blown our minds.
@@sedme0
I mean at least a gba video you already had the GBA you just had to get the little cartridges. I'm so amazed there's a cartridge with I believe two movies shark tale and Shrek and holy crap is the bitrate and audio crushed to all hell hey two full length movies on a single tiny cart, that's something. Technically impressive even if now it would be literal torture to try to watch that.
@@VulpesHilarianus $100 😹
I had the Archos PMP400, AV500 and the 605. Back when they first launched it truly felt like the future, even though the battery life was shit and they weighed about 400 grams. But being able to drag and drop a .avi you got off Pirate Bay directly on to one of them and watch movies and TV in the back seat of your parents' car for the whole road trip was all worth it. Thanks for a trip down memory lane.
Had one of these with the Fairly Oddparents, Spongebob, and Jimmy Neutron discs. Went through so many batteries
I had those plus the Yu-Gi-Oh one.
I remember wanting this soooo bad. Tech absolutely took off in a relatively short time
Old tech really is interesting.
Videos like these teach you how things were before the age of smartphones, when companies were experimenting with stuff.
It's so crazy how time flies . I was like 12 or 13 when this came out and I had both . I remember getting the black and white one and thinking, they could have made a color one , but they knew it would sell black and white and then later they could introduce a color version . Sure enough I was right. I had both and I also had the videos for Gameboy advance. We would always take road trips from Texas to Alabama to see family an it was a 12 hour drive so I would have plenty of entertainment I remember. I only used the video now for road trips . Or at school
@@pryingopenmythirdeye1830 I've never seen such things but i have experienced the portable DVD Players, disassembled a broken one and salvaged some electronics like capacitors and USB ports, kind of. Also VHS players and DVD Players too, family still owns the same ones from many years ago too. Time sure does fly and this is why I wish to experience the tech that existed when I was a very small boy.
This is the opposite of an experiment. This is taking the oldest tech available and making it as cheap as possible
@@DimT670 Still a market experiment. Selling a portable video player for kids was something no one would have thought back in the 80s and 90s or so, even tho you could do it with Video 8, and Sony indeed did it (not for kids). Same the portable DVD players, they existed yes, but no one dared make a cheapo kid version.
They don't really try anything nowadays, barely cheaper smartphones.
@@Kalvinjj
Here's something interesting to look up in case you thought there wasn't a decent alternative for a reasonable price at the time, the Zvue. A very well made decent quality device that took SD cards and had a screen of far better than any of these cheap devices. Sold predominantly in places like Walmart it was an impressive little media player that retailed for about $100 and was really impressive for the time.
It could go toe to toe with the far more expensive iPod but for a fraction of the price.
when he put the two batteries positive to positive I was wondering if it was going to work at all lmao
I thought that too, but then I realized where the springs were that was how it's supposed to go, weird.
ooo I like the lighting on 7:08, it gives some stage vibes
5:42 …and a modern Samsung, a modern huawei, in fact any modern phone.
Sony? They still put em
@@BloominFleury29 lol is Sony even relevant these days?
@@dengyaohou somewhat
@@dengyaohou I still love it.
@@BloominFleury29 that wasn’t a question.
Chilling in critical care after my first cancer surgery and a new dank video drops, perfect timing !
Get well soon!
Fingers crossed the next ones go well
Been there before, but with a different youtuber. It sucks right now, but your body will recover! get well soon random internet citizen!
Get well soon
I hope you get well soon, I'll be praying for you!
I had the 605 WiFi with the dock! I only used it 2 or 3 times to watch a movie on a TV as DVDs were still much better quality than the very compressed video I managed to convert for the Archos. As a portable audio and video player it was amazing.
DankPods acknowledging Bionicle was all I needed in life.
Can i have your stuff then?
The books were much better than they had to be.
Still sad he trash talked it! That particular CD-ROM is the one with the Toa designer mini activity and some pretty good techno music. Thinking of it I believe I have seen a Bonkle nugget out there so maybe we'll see one get one-gritted one day.
i love this channel and the videos so much, i just moved to another country by myself so after i discovered this channel a few days ago i have been putting on all the videos on shuffle to keep me company during the evenings so keep it up!
This was luxury to me as a child, my mom gave it to me for I want to say my birthday, and I've been trying to figure out what it was. Thank you for covering this blast from the past.
I love watching dankpods make fun of music, but video is a whole new level
Hearing an Aussie say the word "munted" got a full on, spit out my brew tier belly laugh.
4:34 Gotta love when Dank screams
For example: 4:43.
me when i see something in the suggestions: 4:34
3:13 as a canadian i can agree its not color its colour
Color is just the American way of spelling Colour
@boomy098 it’s literally not, as an American it was originally colour and we just changed it for some reason
In the UK we also dont recognise the word 'color' can u Americans leave our words alone!
I love how he said out door pool like people have indoor pools
Those Bionicle mini-CDs were phenomenal, I'll have you know.
One of the few cereal box specials that were good
Did you know that Tiger Electronics made an MP3 player around the same time call the "PlayItNow?" Even calling it an MP3 player is a bit generous since you had to connect it to the headphone jack of another device and record the audio that way. It was barbaric and sounded awful but it was my first MP3 player that I got as a hand me down. You've got to check it out.
Holy shit I completely forgot about that. I remember I told a friend of mine I’d get him and iPod for his birthday not knowing how much one was. Not trying to disappoint I hit up toys R us and got him one of those. Let’s say disappointment was had. I think hasbro made it actually…
I had the Tiger VuGo which played video at 60p, or four RGB phosphor triads per recorded Pixel, the sound was in mono, and it only had 8.3 filenames, and if you wanted the 60th song from the top of the list you had to press the down arrow a full 60 times. Today the only thing that works is the photo viewer. It's a passive matrix screen that looks like something from the mechanical television era...
My first laptop that was actually new when I bought it was a G4 PowerBook. It included a DVD/CD+-R drive (could read DVDs and CDs, but could burn CDs). I burned my first pirated films in VCD format (after ripping the DVD with Handbreak). It wasn't bad resolution given that none of my TVs were HD yet. I'd have to split movies onto two CDs, and manually look for a breakpoint near the middle of the film where there was a natural break between scenes to split the film.
Anyone remember those rad portable DVD players? Memories of going on holiday, sitting in the back having to watch a Barbie movie because my sister wanted to watch it but I also kinda enjoyed it anyway
that's actually so sweet.
1:52 never knew my favorite channel would talk about my favorite show
My brother the original model of that for Christmas one year, and we had an absolute blast with it! We thought we were too cool for school using that on long car journeys instead of a regular portable DVD player, even though the portable DVD player was definitely way better, especially for in the car.
The fact that he knows so much every episode of Spongebob that he knows what’s happening in the episode only with the title
1:39 THE STOPROCK HAS RETURNED
All hail the Stoprock!
Oh man. I had this exact model and color. It was mind blowing back then as a child. It reminds me of a specific memory of me huddling under covers after losing power back in 2004. Our town got hit by Hurricane charley and this thing came in clutch.
Ah plenty of memories of using this thing, I had both the original and the color ones and I used them when I went to Denmark to see family and going all over the country my eyes were glued to the video now
I’ve been binge watching DankPods videos lately. They just keep me happy.
Honestly dankpods is probably the only reason I still watch RUclips you remind me of the old RUclipsrs when people had passion for what they did and injected Thier own personality into the videos keep up the great work
His production style hasn't really changed either. Everyone's going full studio, he's still a guy with a phone making us happy when the new video drops.
most youtube are just $ hungry
There are many RUclipsrs like him around, like "z reviews" and this old tony,
If I remember right (I might not) this thing was packaged with a Nickelodeon sampler disc, and that's what the case included with your SpongeBob set is for, maybe?
I lost it at 1:03. The whizz wazz from Ed, Edd n’ Eddy is real!
I actually had this as a kid and still have it around the house, honestly as a kid back when phones could be used to whack nails into wood, it was actually good for trips out and watching an episode in bed when you cba to go grab the remote for the tv or if you just didnt have that episode of your favourite show to watch on a tv.
6:48
When Spongebob makes you experience high-tide
Please do a video about the archos dock thing. It looks really interesting and it'd be nice to see a video about a nugget thats actually good for once.
Right? He just dropped the whole, "It's still used today" part and walked away. I want more info, lol!
You could buy something like this for the GameBoy Advance where they had episodes of shows or even some movies on GBA cartridges. By the way, they have Shrek, the whole movie, on GBA. I thought you'd want that information.
What's impressive is there's a double pack one on a single cartridge it has shark tale and Shrek. It's bit crushed all to hell and it looks and sounds terrible but it's kind of a marvel considering I think it's like 64 MB or something. Physically painful to try to watch nowadays of course even for the nostalgia/novelty. Still I would have preferred something like that over this where you need a whole separate player. I mean most people had GBA's back then.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu The single cartridge uses this weird type of ROM that iirc has physical sectors cut out of it to program the cartridge for the video.
4:34 I love how he equalize the volume even though he was screaming, so we wouldn't hurt our ears.
10:00 and he was never heard from again.
0:40 YO FORESHADOWING OF THE NINTENDO SWITCH THIS SOON?????
Not so related to this Fun fact:
The creators of the GBA video also helped create the cutscenes for Kirby Super Star Ultra.
5:52 he made me experience high tide
yeah i had one of those. It drained batteries in minutes, but i LOVED it. It was pretty hard to find discs for it though
They made tv episode cartridges for the gameboy advance, I had a cartridge or two with SpongeBob on em. It was the crunchiest, pixeliest thing ever made. It kicked ass.
5:26 ...did he just put the + ends of the batteries together? he fixed it after but that's a rookie mistake!
Glad I'm not the only one who saw that
6:26 "I love Messing things up"
1:59 "Why is this illustration in black and white?"
Because you uploaded this video just as my phone's bedtime mode got activated, so your whole video is in black and white now.
So the illustration didn't even look any different to me.
You can do that on a phone?
@@Tovosx2 yes, it should be an option in your phone's clock app.
I had one of these as a kid and i remember it being the greatest thing ever. Being able to watch movies on the go was the coolest thing ever, my 4 year old brain couldnt even comprehend the difference in quality
Hes right those laptop thingies slapped. I remember watching cars on mine as a wee lad.
Watching Shrek on this thing would be a beautiful experience
Lololololol
The most Pure Shrek experience
08:14 thundercat sighting!!
8:52 the nugget has poisoned him
I had a blue video now player and one single disk that happened to be the one you're missing, Band geeks. I watched that episode so many times on that bad boy I could quite the entire thing.
Edit: I had the exact one you showed at 6:38
i remember when i saw this in toys r us my dad dashed it out of my hands because of the quality and then he bought me an archos
0:47 I also enjoy plummeting into my TV. (Watch with subtitles
3:44 rip to the blue and white robot we will miss you
wait what
what happened
I know a kids video player that is worse and better than the VideoNow at the same time, it's the Mattel Juicebox
Watching videos on low quality dsvices is really satisfying.
Funny story related to DankPods:
So in my town, there’s this small Fiat(?) driving around sometimes, It’s black and has a sticker over the top of the windshield that says “Nugget.” So, every time I drive past it, I immediately say out loud, “I’m arming the nugget!” Doesn’t matter if I’m alone, I just do it. Anyways, good video Dank, keep it up!
2:47 what the fuck did you just say about mayonnaise?
5:57: I just died at this.
really happy to see you covering this item. The VideoNow Color I remember was my absolute favorite thing back when I was a kid, my parents wound up buying me 3 of them because I kept losing or breaking them lol until the last one and I never saw one again until recently when they've come back to life online. It made my childhood great but it wasn't until I saw it these days that I realize just how bad it actually was 🤣
I mean I grew up with things like the original non backlit game boy and I would defend that to the end I would gladly die on that hill. The problem with these video players is besides nostalgia it's really unpleasant to go back and use them. The tech was superseded so quickly by things like iPod,PSP and similar better but cheaper alternatives that it's just not fun revisiting them except to laugh at them.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu ahh yeah the good old days. I forgot about the GameBoy. I had a Color that I absolutely loved. Played that thing every day for years until it just wasn’t fun/cool anymore there was better things. Like DS/PSP PS3 etc.
Kind of like that 1 lumen P.M.P.O. film projector kids toy from the 1970s with the endless loop film cartridge...
In the UK you can still get a type of TV licence that is cheaper than the normal one but it is in black and white
I just noticed the Nick sitcom Romeo advertised on the back of the VideoNow Color package... never even heard of that one before now for some reason, feels weird
7:49 it also functions as YTP generator
My theory is, that the original color of that thing is the one of the hinges. 😂
9:30 very good tim Allan impression
Is that where that’s from?🤣
I asked for one of these for my birthday as a kid and was SO disappointed with it. Not only was the quality so bad, I couldn't get any new discs. No local stores near me sold any at all, and when I could find some they were either overpriced or for really bad shows, so I was stuck with 2 old episodes of Rugrats. The best part about the thing was the headphones I got with it, I used them for a long time with my DS
It’s like watching a video on an overclocked Tamagotchi.
7:21 lights 💀
For once I relate and actually had this nugget! You were right any kid like me with the color was totally fine with the quality as long as we got our favorite shows. Would it be possible you would cover the Gameboy Video? They were like gameboy cartridges that came with episodes of various shows like the the Video Now did with disks.
DankPods, the Australian Techmoan
Oh man. I had one of these as a kid, and I had the Band Geeks SpongeBob episode too. It was great at the time
Man, I remember sitting on the bleachers in gym class in high school waiting for the bell to ring so we could all leave.
I'd be there with my friend watching old episodes of the boondocks on my iriver. Framerate seemed good, in memory, and I could store close to a season on there with room for music.
Glad to see we evolved from cave tools since then.
2:59 BONKLE
holy shit i had one of these! it failed on me because this corn kernel looking thing (i think it was a transistor?) literally fell off of the internal motherboard and was rattling around like a maraca
If it's an orange circle, then it is a capacitor.
i grew up on the videonow color 😍 it was so nice to be able to take my shows on the go. i had super long car rides and this was my way of getting through them
granted this was over 10 years ago so definitely rose tinted glasses but my videonow got me through some lONG car trips. i was hoping that’s where this episode was going and the little squee i did when you pulled out the CD case for it… no apologies given. ever
Color*
I'm not just being American here, it's a proper noun
Same here I had both versions color and non color plus you remember video now on game boy advance ? I had a bunch of those also . Made road trips so much better
@@pryingopenmythirdeye1830 oh my god i forgot about the video for gameboy. i unfortunately didn’t own those until i was a bit older but those were really cool tech to my child brain
@@ExpandDong420 oops, non-american keyboard results in it always being spelled as colour
@@SprintToggle fair enough
For some reason this reminded me of the GBA Carts containing episodes and videos. Thanks for the memories
Oh man the beginning takes me back, we had a thing that flipped open and close that you Velcro'd around a car seat to watch dvds on the back of it, i loved that stupid thing but i don't remember where it went. First time i ever saw those flat circular batteries