Laser Karaoke

Karen and I hung out with some of her work friends last night at a bar in Honolulu last night. They have beer, video poker machines, darts, and karaoke. Karaoke gets its own room and I was surprised at how big karaoke is here. This would never go over well on the east coast.

Being a technology nerd, I was amazed at the karaoke contraption. It was larger than a standard sized Coca Cola vending machine. It had PIONEER LASER KARAOKE all over it and Laser Karaoke was written in the same style they used on LaserDisc players. My guess is the Laser Karaoke system is a huge jukebox with LaserDiscs containing the tracks. When you queue one up select a song, you get a video on the screen (some of which were hilarious) and the words appear on the screen and light up as the song progresses.

There's a vocoder, a mixer, and an entry panel where you select tracks. Disc changes are handled by a robotic arm in the machine that changes disks (behind a severely tinted window, so you couldn't see it that well).

In addition to that, it had a money taker attached to it. Songs were $1 each and it would take notes or coins (I think). Karaoke is free on Wednesday nights, so the bar just kept feeding in $5 notes for us.

I sang Livin' On A Prayer, which was fun. The group sang Sweet Child O' Mine twice.

I also learned I need more practice with darts. No injuries though.