VHS, VCDs, and Laserdiscs in Southeast Asia
28 comments
·July 11, 2025magnio
Funnily enough, the article spent a paragraph explaining the initialism and acronym, only to refer to VCD as an acronym later.
TrackerFF
Were bootlegs popular?
The first time I traveled outside the western part of the world, I was (naively or not) surprised by the sheer amount of bootleg tapes sold in regular stores. Same with DVD when that time came around.
fidotron
Bootlegging of everything is a huge business.
Back in the 90s Singapore was such a big market for this that it acted as the major driver for motivating globally synchronized releases. i.e. for Reader's Digest magazine* in the US in 1995 if you did not release it on the same day in Singapore it would be easily available in pirated form within days, removing any ability to make money in that market for the legitimate product.
In UK pubs circa 2000 it was notorious that certain people would approach your table to sell you bootleg DVDs, and that if you indulged them you'd then get access to their "special" selection.
* And yes, that example is totally serious.
cgh
In Thailand in the ‘90s, there were street vendors selling every dvd and cd you could think of, all bootlegs, complete with copied artwork and packaging. It was completely out in the open.
joeblubaugh
Bootlegging was massive in Malaysia. Whole floors of some of the high-rise malls in Johor Bahru were VCD shops.
selimthegrim
Rainbow Centre in Karachi was a highlight of my childhood.
Scoundreller
My friend that lived in Iran said you basically would have a guy that goes around and basically opens his trunk and offers bootlegs.
Sometimes they’d disappear for a while and you’d have to work with your existing collection or find a new guy.
But that was pre ubiquitous-ish high speed internet.
goosedragons
I'm pretty sure they're still popular outside of the western world. At least for some things. eBay is filled with bootleg DVDs of Anime, TV shows, etc. There is no official Simpsons Season 21+ DVDs for example and yet they are not very hard to find...
jgalt212
Very popular. Even Seinfeld got caught up in it.
2muchcoffeeman
You can buy a vhs cleaner that accepts some alcohol and then fast forwards and rewinds through the tape. The alcohol would soak into a sponge bit and wipe the tape.
At least this is my recollection.
mlinhares
Memory unlocked, incredible. I just clearly remembered doing this to re-record some stuff.
esafak
It's interesting that LaserDiscs were popular. They were quite niche in the West so I imagine they must have been expensive to produce. Who even made the machines?
jnaina
Brings back memories of VHS copies of bootleg and other questionable content (Pr0n) being sold in certain shops in Singapore (if you know where to find them) in 80s.
OneFriend2575
Loved this, such a good reminder that for a lot of us in SE Asia, VCDs weren’t just a format, they were basically the bridge between VHS bootlegs and early DVDs. Karaoke, bootlegs, family movies… it was all mixed in.
What’s interesting is how much the timing of official releases shaped all this. If you had to wait months for a cinema run or home video, the “street version” was too tempting to pass up.
justsomehnguy
> the bridge between VHS bootlegs and early DVDs
What about DivX/XviD?
reaperducer
What about DivX/XviD?
VCDs had broad hardware support, and were more mainstream.
I used to travel around Southeast Asia a bit, and whenever I was in Hong Kong, I'd load up on VCD movies at mainstream stores like HMV.
I still have VCD copies of The Incredibles and On Her Majesty's Secret Service I bought at HMV.
Projectiboga
VCD were a format that put compressed video and sound onto a standard CD. That is where Mp3s sort of come from. The VCD actually used MPEG1layer2 for sound, but layer 3 came along and computer enthusiasts used that for audio in the mid 1990s. SVCDs came out in the later 90s They used the MPEG2 like Dvds and were often spread over multiple discs. DIVX came from a Microsoft program that had MPEG4 inside of the software, this and the wrapper AVI came together for the first internet distribution focused format. There was a Chinese DVD player and some mainstream ones that supported VCD and SVCD and later avis. There was an active scene modding certain Phillips DVD players in the early 2000s.
null
aaron695
[dead]
Svip
What's the usage of the word 'factoid' when its use is clearly to just say 'fact'; considering the word 'factoid' actually means something that looks like a fact, but is – in fact – false? The fact that it should mean 'false fact' but may be used as 'true fact', makes the opening of this piece rather confusing.
thunderbong
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid
I was only familiar with the second definition -
- a briefly stated and usually trivial fact
happymellon
I was only familiar with the first for a long time, until I realised that other people were using it in the same manner as literally.
reaperducer
What's the usage of the word 'factoid' when its use is clearly to just say 'fact'
What's the use of the word "usage" when its use is clearly to just say "use?"
AStonesThrow
[dead]
> It’s wild to me to think people can simply move overseas and interstate now and watch the same intertube programming, but that’s a different post.
This is still not easy without piracy, at least for liveTV.