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Cool VCD now has available all three of Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemekis' Back To The Future movies in Video Compact Disk (VCD) format, which can be played on any middling to fast Mac with a CD-ROM or DVD drive. I received my review copy of the Back To The Future Trilogy VCD release from coolvcd.com last week. I had previously only seen Back To The Future III, which I had enjoyed, so I was looking forward to watching it again, with the two earlier segments of the story to fill in some blanks. The Back To The Future flicks star my fellow Canadian Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, a typical American teenager in the Eighties small town of Hill Valley, who is accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean DMZ sports car "time machine" invented by slightly-mad scientist Doc Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd. The winsome Lea Thompson co-stars in all three as Marty's girlfriend, and in BTTF I as his mother as well. Lloyd's over-acting is annoying at times (I usually like him, but these performances are more than a bit over the top at times), these movies are mostly charming and funny, and Fox does this sort of comedy as well as anyone I can think of. 
In BTTF I Marty must take a trip back in time to make certain his teenage parents-to-be, played by Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson, meet and fall in love - so he can get back to the future. These movies don't even try to be believable -- they are pure fantasy and fun. 
In BTTF II, Marty and the Doc time-travel forward to the year 2015 to resolve some problems with the future McFly family, but when they return home, they discover someone has tampered with time to produce a nightmarish Hill Valley, 1985. Their only hope is to get back to 1955 again and save the future. 
BTTF III picks up where II left off, with out heroes stranded in 1955 after a freak burst of lightning, Marty must travel to 1885 to rescue Doc Brown from a premature end. Surviving an Indian attack and unfriendly townsfolk, Marty finds Doc Brown the blacksmith. But with the Doc under the spell of the charming Clara Clayton played by Mary Steenburgen It's up to Marty to get them out of the wild west and back to the future. I played the Back To The Future movies in full- screen QuickTime Pro mode on my WallStreet 233 MHz PowerBook. While they would be even better on a faster Mac with a bigger display, even on the old WallStreet, with its little 12.1-inch screen and puny two megabytes of video RAM, these VCDs are very watchable. With a G3 or G4 PowerBook, you can also output the video to a TV set using the S-Video port. I would say that any G3 machine (with the possible exception of the no cache "MainStreet" early G3 Series 233 MHz PowerBooks), will provide very acceptable viewing of these movies. Incidentally, if you are new to VCDs, you may initially find the procedure for getting them up and running confusing. First, you will need at least QuickTime 4.1 installed on your Mac -- a free download from http://www.apple.com if you don't already have it. For full screen viewing, you will need QuickTime Pro. Then when you insert the CD disc your CD-ROM drive, and double click to open the "Untitled" CD icon that appears, you will be greeted by a bunch of folders with arcane, DOS - sounding names. What you need to look for is the folder entitled "MPEGAV," in which you will find files named MUSICxx.DAT, which are the actual movie files. If you double click them, a dialog will appear showing several options for player applications. Normally you would select "QuickTime With QuickTime Translation," which will start QuickTime's movie player. You can also use an Open dialog to select them from within a player application. Once the QuickTime Player window appears, you can select the desired window size from the "Movie" menu (Command M"). Then just use the QuickTime controls to operate the movie. One of the cool things about VCDs is that you can move the progress slider back and fourth instantly for infinite access to everything on that particular movie file. One drawback with VCDs as opposed to DVDs is that it takes two VCD discs to contain a single feature length movie, which necessitates changing discs at midpoint. I don't find this a hardship, since I'm highly unlikely to want to sit through an entire movie at home about getting up at least once and usually more often for a snack or other sorts of breaks. While DVD movies are now the standard for newer Macs, Mac-users who own machines without DVD drives are unaware that they can watch movies on their computers too. Using MPEG compression, it is possible to fit a whole movie (about 2 hours) onto two CD-ROM disks. Although not as sophisticated or high quality in output as DVD, which uses MPEG-2 compression to fit whole movies onto one disk, sound and video quality on VCDs can be quite decent (good ones are roughly on par with VHS tapes). Although the VCD movie format is very popular in Asia it has never really been promoted in North America. Your best source of VCD movies is the Internet. A visit to Cool VCD will reveal that plenty of interesting VCD titles are available including titles like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Shanghai Noon, The Perfect Storm, and X-Men. CoolVCD is located in Penang, Malaysia. VCDs purchased online are shipped from Penang to the US or Canada via FedEx Next Day Air. The VCD Back To The Future series I. II. and III releases sell for US$7.88 each plus shipping. For more information, visit:
Information about playing VCDs on the Mac can be found at:
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