I found this very interesting especially starting around 1985:
1985 - Pocket Songs and Sound Choice, two of the worlds biggest producers of Karaoke discs today, are formed in the United States, both producing “audio sing-a-long” CDs and cassettes.
1985 - CD-I was introduced by Philips and Sony in another collaboration in 1985, but went unreleased to consumers until 1992 due to production and consumer introduction problems. These types of drives attach to television sets, displaying interactive CDs with graphic images, animation and video. They also display audio and photo images, including photo CDs released by Kodak. CD-I players are compatible with regular audio discs, but not CD-ROMs. Only a limited number of companies have produced these types of discs, and for that reason, combined with what many consumers see as merely a pricey novelty, CD-I discs have not gained popularity. Traditionally, consumer prices for new compact disc technology begin quite high but then gradually decline. When originally released, CD-R drives - for computers or stand alones - costed at least £2,000.00, and blank discs from name brand companies could be purchased for no less than £20.00. Now such drives can cost way less than £100.00 and the price of discs can be measured in pence!
1985 to 1988 - Pioneer latch on to the Japanese Karaoke phenomena and produce the first real Karaoke discs for the western markets. These 12” Laser Discs were very expensive, selling in those days at £100 or more, with around 24 to 28 tracks on each disc.
1989 - UK companies such as Essential (now known as Easy Karaoke) and Sunfly start to compile Laser Discs for the UK market. Although a little cheaper at £75 to £80, these discs were still way too expensive to be widely used by the public, but were successful commercially due to a new breed of enthusiastic Karaoke Roadshow operators, in turn encouraged by an audience eager to become a star just for one night!
1991 - The first ever CD + G (CD + Graphic) discs start to appear.Pocket Songs was one of the first company's in the field to adopt the new CD+G format, which provides a sub-strata lyric text on each compact disc. This is decoded and comes up on the home stereo system when using a special CD+G machine. Now, home users who could not afford Laser Disc machines could throw away those hand held lyrics cassette systems and replace them with a cheaper method – the CD+G would give lyrics on a screen that could be viewed by all the people in a room. The tavern entertainment had finally entered the home! The new CD+G solution brings the disc prices tumbling down overnight. £100 Laser Discs became £25 or £30 CDG discs at this time. It is the western markets of the United States and the UK who seem to embrace this as the best option. The new format means production times can be speeded up, getting the latest chart sounds into the Karaoke venues much quicker than was ever possible with the Laser Disc. With Karaoke at last evolving into the, now long established, Compact Disc form, track location is now instant, greatly improving the user-friendly nature and the working life of the Karaoke MC (or KJ, for Karaoke Jock, as they were to become known).
Although the CD+G discs mean that Videos are not displayed on screen (as they were with the Video Tape and Laser Disc), this does not seem to affect the popularity of the concept in the pubs and clubs up and down the country. There are some mutterings about losing the video as entertainment, but this grumble is soon disproved as sales of CDG discs naturally start to outgrow the Laser Disc already!
1992 - The CD-I was introduced by Philips and Sony in another collaboration in 1985, but went unreleased to consumers due to production and consumer introduction problems. These problems were finally overcome and the worlds first commercially viable CD-I releases started to appear. There are quite a few CD-I Karaoke Discs that were produced in Asia from this time, but these never gained any popular support, and are now “collectors items” only!
1993 - Back over in Japan, there is a new breakthrough – the Video CD is created, set up by Philips and JVC and intended solely for Karaoke purposes (although Video CD movies soon started to appear shortly after.) The Video CD (or VCD) soon became an enormous success for the Asian markets due to the fact that people could play these discs at home on the cheaper and widely available Video CD players. Mass production always means lower costs and soon the VCD would take over from Laser Disc as the Karaoke format of choice for the Asians. Video-CD became very popular mainly in Asia, as some 40 million Video-CD compatible players were sold by the beginning of 2000. Outside of Asia, Video-CD was mainly used as a prototype tool or as a cheap way to produce DVD-Video compatible discs. Although Video-CD compatibility is not required for DVD-Video players, it is very likely that Video-CD playback functionality is included since every DVD-Video player must be able to decode MPEG-1 as well.
1994 - Sunfly are the only company who get behind the new VCD format, now offering customers a choice of CD + G or VCD Karaoke discs. The general lack of manufacturing support for VCDs in the west, sees CD + G disc sales grow from strength to strength, as they do this very day.
1995 - The newest Compact Disc breakthrough is the Digital Versatile Disc, or the DVD. Data is encoded on DVD using an entirely new system; an MPEG-2 data reduction format, which is the same method used by Digital Satellite Systems (DSS) television transmissions. This method allows for the use of more data, even than DSS, making display quality state of the art. Because DVD can hold so much information, it is not foreseen to replace audio discs in the near future, but will likely replace the VHS video cassette standard once a way for all buyers to record on DVD is developed. The biggest early issue that holds back the mass release of DVD is the inability to record. Analysts predict DVD will be a reality for everyone by the late 1990s.
1997 - The first DVD players start to appear both in the United States and the UK. In December of this year, Pioneer lead the Karaoke way again in the West, recompiling all of their Laser Discs, spread across a new range of Karaoke DVDs.
1999 - Everyone seems to agree that DVD is a worthwhile format and slowly but surely many companies both in Asia, the States and Europe all start to tentatively produce Karaoke discs on this format. Although initially more expensive than CD + G, this format offers the best audio and video reproduction and has been gaining in popularity ever since, most especially in Europe.
2002 - Annual world production of DVD-Video discs surpassed VHS cassettes, according to IRMA industry statistics: DVD increased from 1.08 billion in 2001 to 1.74 billion in 2002; VHS declined from 1.533 billion in 2001 to 1.33 billion in 2002. Naturally, this is reflected in the ever increasing popularity of the Karaoke DVD.
2003 to 2005 - The new possibilities with the advances in the world of the internet mean that more and more people are connecting with a new form of song compilation – storing, manipulating and recording files on home PCs. This has led to the creation of many formats, often especially produced by manufacturers specifically for “their models only”, which is, we feel, rather consumer unfriendly. Formats such as Midi Karaoke, MP3G, Super CDG and Neo CDG are examples of the new breed. The new format to come out of this era which looks like it could be universally accepted is the div X format. divX files are created on computers, much alike MP3 files, and then transferred to CDs. Divx is an MPEG4 format. The file size is around 1/4 of DVD MPEG2 files, so it can essentially store more songs or movies than a standard DVD or CDR. Any DVD player capable of playing MPEG4 will play div X discs. Before this transfer process, the audio files are compressed with no perceivable loss in quality. This allows Karaoke discs to be produced which can have 5 to 50 times as many tracks as normal discs. The divX format is capable of reproducing video on screen as well as graphics, so whether there are video scenes or movies in the background completely depends on the compiler and the chosen source.
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