British Garden Birds is a very early BBC Video title, released at a time when the BBC didn't have permission to raid its decades of archives of entertainment programme material for home release.

The laserdisc version of British Garden Birds differs from the video cassette issues as it has a number of enhancements not present on the tapes: one is that there is dual soundtrack, with one channel containing only the birdsong on the disc and the other channel containing birdsong and commentary.

Another significant feature is that the disc contains a Teletext magazine of information pages related to the subject matter of the disc, ie. British garden birds. Laserdiscs and players have the ability to carry Teletext information as part of the video signal in a way that can't be done on domestic videotapes. It is the first laserdisc to contain Teletext, although the technique was not widely adopted and very, very few were ever issued.

The ability to combine moving video and sound with data - in the form of Teletext - was the impetus behind the Domesday LV-ROM format of laserdiscs, although ultimately, LV-ROM did not use Teletext to store the data.

I hope I've said enough to whet your appetite for this important item and that you will click on the picture links above to learn more.

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