VideoNow
 | |
 left: PVD for Original VideoNow right: PVD for VideoNow Color | |
| Media type | Optical disc |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 450 MB (VideoNow Color), up to 30 minutes. |
| Developed by | Hasbro |
| Dimensions | VideoNow: 3.3 in (84 mm) diameter VideoNow Color: 4.25 in (108 mm) diameter |
| Usage | VideoNow players |
| Extended from | CD |
| Released | July 17, 2003 |
| Discontinued | 2007 |
| Optical discs |
|---|
 |
The VideoNow is a discontinued line of portable video players produced by Hasbro and released by their subsidiary Tiger Electronics in 2003 as part of Tiger's line of Now consumer products. The systems use discs called Personal Video Discs (PVDs), which can store about 30 minutes of video,, enough to store one TV episode with some space left over for additional content (mostly trailers or other advertisements). As such, the majority of releases on VideoNow were TV series, with a small number of movies split onto at least three discs each. As the devices were targeted towards children, their libraries exclusively consisted of content considered kid-friendly, mainly coming from kids' channels such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. The video is compressed, and runs at 15 fps. Audio is in mono, as video data is stored on the left audio channel, relegating sound to the right channel. The original model plays content in black and white, while later models could play content in color.
Hasbro also produced editing software for creating custom VideoNow Color PVDs called the VideoNow Media Wizard in 2005, which came with blank PVD media. A number of unofficial solutions are available for creating the oddly-formatted VideoNow files, including a plug-in for the popular video processing program Virtual Dub. The files can then be burned to a CD-R using standard CD burning software, and the disc cut down to the required size.