This is a very strange 1984 Pioneer Laserdisc demo featuring Devo and some bad blind jokes via Ray Charles.

What do you think – did this video kill the Laserdisc format?

Details:

This is from an in-store demo disc featuring Devo explaining the benefits of laserdisc over tape. A little bit has been cut to keep it under 10 minutes, you can see the complete disc (including the turtle side) on Stage6 or Google Video.

Parts of this were included on the “Complete Truth About De-Evolution” laserdisc and its subsequent DVD release.

Ray Charles did a number of TV and radio commercials for laserdisc- the deal on them was that he was blind, but the sound on laserdisc was so good he loved it just for that. This was before digital sound on laserdisc had come out. In 1981, Optical Programming Associates put out a concert of his shot in Canada, which you can see part of here and has been reissued on DVD.

via eyeh8cbs, sync.sound.cinema