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Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Amaritudo posted:

Really in the end, Blu-Ray won solely because Toshiba just didn't have the Hollywood clout that Sony did. There was a glimmer of hope when Paramount defected to HD-DVD but the loss of Warner put the final nail in the coffin.

Sony got revenge over the whole Betamax thing.

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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Amaritudo posted:

Really in the end, Blu-Ray won solely because Toshiba just didn't have the Hollywood clout that Sony did. There was a glimmer of hope when Paramount defected to HD-DVD but the loss of Warner put the final nail in the coffin.

I thought it was as much that the PS3 pushed out a huge install base for Blu-Ray players that people could essentially get "for free" with the purchase of a game system. When BD and HD-DVD first came out, the players were something like $1000, so even a $600 console used only as a player was a surprisingly good deal. So, y'know, using a loss-leader to win the format war.

Kaboom Dragoon
May 7, 2010

The greatest of feasts

Factory Factory posted:

I thought it was as much that the PS3 pushed out a huge install base for Blu-Ray players that people could essentially get "for free" with the purchase of a game system. When BD and HD-DVD first came out, the players were something like $1000, so even a $600 console used only as a player was a surprisingly good deal. So, y'know, using a loss-leader to win the format war.

I've heard it argued that it would've taken a hell of a lot longer for DVD to take off if it weren't for the PS2 for the same reasons. Granted, by that point, DVD players had been around for a few years and were a more reasonable price, but that essentially swayed a lot of people towards adopting DVD as a format.

Ramadu
Aug 25, 2004

2015 NFL MVP


Kaboom Dragoon posted:

I've heard it argued that it would've taken a hell of a lot longer for DVD to take off if it weren't for the PS2 for the same reasons. Granted, by that point, DVD players had been around for a few years and were a more reasonable price, but that essentially swayed a lot of people towards adopting DVD as a format.

What were the alternatives to DVD at the time? I lived through it and I don't even remember. Oh god I'm so old.

Kaboom Dragoon
May 7, 2010

The greatest of feasts

Ramadu posted:

What were the alternatives to DVD at the time? I lived through it and I don't even remember. Oh god I'm so old.

It was still really VHS, with people occasionally suggesting CDs as a possible successor. I remember lots of people I knew refusing to part with their movie collections or their videos - you couldn't record live TV with a DVD (at the time), after all. However, after the PS2 came out, people really started to become more comfortable with the idea of replacing their movies for something shinier. The fact that fancier TVs were becoming more affordable to show off your shiny new discs probably didn't hurt either. It may be coincidental, but the two did seem to go hand in hand.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light
When DVD recorders first came out, they sucked. I decided to roll the dice and buy this:



Panasonic's DVD-RAM recorder (mine only recorded RAM discs, but could play DVDs & DVD-Rs). You could timeshift and edit on the disc. I used it to record shows from my pre-DVR satellite receiver, edit the show and copy it to a VHS tape.

They were about $500. I had two. They both died within two years. :(

I found one in a pawn shop last year for $60. I needed something since my cheapo DVD recorders all died and I still had about 20 DVD-RAM discs. It's been flawless.

lllllllllllllllllll
Feb 28, 2010

Now the scene's lighting is perfect!

Ramadu posted:

What were the alternatives to DVD at the time? I lived through it and I don't even remember. Oh god I'm so old.

Between VHS and DVD there was Video-CD. The funny thing was that compression artefacts and low resolution made for a worse picture than a good VHS tape. Few players exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_CD

lllllllllllllllllll has a new favorite as of 11:54 on Jul 17, 2012

JediTalentAgent
Jun 5, 2005
Hey, look. Look, if- if you screw me on this, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, you rat bastard!

lllllllllllllllllll posted:

Between VHS and DVD there was Video-CD. The funny thing was that compression artefacts and low resolution made for a worse picture than a good VHS tape. Few players exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_CD

I remember around the DVD era, though, VCD had a bit of a following for folks because several DVD players supported VCDs, allowing folks to burn stuff on their PCs with regular CDs.

Along these lines, there was also MovieCD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MovieCD

It was a proprietary movie playback format for computers. It had quite a few titles released, but it never caught on. As time has moved forward, apparently the required installed codecs needed to play back movies no longer work with modern OSs.

Oddly enough, I had some of these I bought on clearance several years ago and they weren't great, but they weren't all that bad, either. It was just way too niche an audience to make it succeed, especially when you had to have a computer to play back any of the movies.

TShields
Mar 30, 2007

We can rule them like gods! ...Angry gods.

Mister Kingdom posted:

When DVD recorders first came out, they sucked. I decided to roll the dice and buy this:



Panasonic's DVD-RAM recorder (mine only recorded RAM discs, but could play DVDs & DVD-Rs). You could timeshift and edit on the disc. I used it to record shows from my pre-DVR satellite receiver, edit the show and copy it to a VHS tape.

They were about $500. I had two. They both died within two years. :(

I found one in a pawn shop last year for $60. I needed something since my cheapo DVD recorders all died and I still had about 20 DVD-RAM discs. It's been flawless.

My stepfather has two almost exactly like the one pictured, he uses them all the time! He's huge on recording movies or TV shows that he likes and passing them around the family. He's kindof an audiophile though, and he seems to be loving made of money, so maybe they aren't exactly the same..

axolotl farmer
May 17, 2007

Now I'm going to sing the Perry Mason theme

JediTalentAgent posted:

I remember around the DVD era, though, VCD had a bit of a following for folks because several DVD players supported VCDs, allowing folks to burn stuff on their PCs with regular CDs.


VCDs were huge in Asia, mostly because the movie could be pressed by the same plants that made bootleg CDs.

It was also the format for internet piracy of anime tv shows in the late 90s-early 00s.

Wayne Knight
May 11, 2006

True story: I would download zelda speed runs and burn them to video cd so I could watch them via portable dvd player on long car trips.

Ravendas
Sep 29, 2001




lllllllllllllllllll posted:

Between VHS and DVD there was Video-CD. The funny thing was that compression artefacts and low resolution made for a worse picture than a good VHS tape. Few players exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_CD

VCD is still, in 2012, a thing in Asia. The movie shops I go to here have a VCD section, as do night markets.

Obsolete, maybe, but still in use.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Ravendas posted:

VCD is still, in 2012, a thing in Asia. The movie shops I go to here have a VCD section, as do night markets.

Obsolete, maybe, but still in use.
Actually they are a still a thing in areas with a large Asian prescence. I only know of VCDs existence because of Boston's Chinatown and wondering what the hell that format was.

Bonzo
Mar 11, 2004

Just like Mama used to make it!
I'm remembering a technology from the early 90s but can't remember enough details to do a good search on it.

It was for audio cassettes and was supposed to be a sound quality that was between a normal cassette and DAT. I remember seeing it advertised in Playboy and Bon Jovi was releasing a album in that format.

Kidney Stone
Dec 28, 2008

The worst pain ever!

Bonzo posted:

I'm remembering a technology from the early 90s but can't remember enough details to do a good search on it.

It was for audio cassettes and was supposed to be a sound quality that was between a normal cassette and DAT. I remember seeing it advertised in Playboy and Bon Jovi was releasing a album in that format.

You might be thinking about the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC)?

More info here: http://www.deepsonic.ch/deep/htm/philips_dcc900.php

Bonzo
Mar 11, 2004

Just like Mama used to make it!

Kidney Stone posted:

You might be thinking about the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC)?

More info here: http://www.deepsonic.ch/deep/htm/philips_dcc900.php

Yes, I'm pretty sure that was it!

http://www.amazon.com/Introducting-DCC-Digital-cassettes-Original/dp/B0047HY54Y

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bon-Jovi-These-Days-DCC-Digital-Compact-Cassette-Tape-/380260038490

Ein
Feb 27, 2002
.
There was another format from Philips(I think) with re-recordable data discs in a cartridge. Power Drive, Pd or something like that? Anyone remember that one? It was prior to CD-RW I think.

RoboSpy
Sep 2, 2011
I remember back in high school doing LAN parties with friends on the weekends, and this one guy would sometimes bring a second computer. This second machine had some special motherboard that had like six IDE controllers, and he just loaded the thing with hard drives, and would hook it up to the LAN to serve as a sort of local FTP so we could all share our warez totally legit non-copyrighted files. This machine was a beast - it sounded like it had a V8 in there to power its three PSUs and God-knows how many fans to cool all the hard drives packed in there. It must have cost him a fortune to put it together. It wasn't fast or anything, just packed to the brim with storage space and fans, and we always had to set it up in a separate room so we all could actually hear one another talking.

And how much storage space DID this beast have? 750 GB :smug:

kmcormick9
Feb 2, 2004
Magenta Alert
Did SACD ever take off? I remember seeing players listed in crutchfield for like $2000 in the late 90s

its all nice on rice
Nov 12, 2006

Sweet, Salty Goodness.



Buglord
I just thought of another one: The Zune. I knew I shouldn't have gotten one after my dad did (given his tracked record) but I loved mine. It was a great music player, and I really liked the market. I was sad when it got water damaged :(

Leon Einstein
Feb 6, 2012
I must win every thread in GBS. I don't care how much banal semantic quibbling and shitty posts it takes.

kmcormick9 posted:

Did SACD ever take off? I remember seeing players listed in crutchfield for like $2000 in the late 90s

Nope. I got one too. :( Luckily it plays DVDs and nearly any other format you throw in it as well, but I still feel kind of ripped off. Now I'm probably too old to even notice the fidelity difference.

BTW, I have 7 hard drives in my computer. :smug:

thedouche
Mar 20, 2007
Greetings from thedouche

:dukedog:

Pope Mobile posted:

I just thought of another one: The Zune. I knew I shouldn't have gotten one after my dad did (given his tracked record) but I loved mine. It was a great music player, and I really liked the market. I was sad when it got water damaged :(

My brother has one that was used drat constantly for 5 years and it's still chugging along. I think the service still exists. I think I'd use it of I had a compatible device (15 bucks a month to listen to anything I think).

RoboSpy
Sep 2, 2011
Oh, I just remembered something I think my aunt used to have around - DIVX! It was some sort of weird video rental/video purchase hybrid thing around 2000 that I think was proprietary to Circuit City. The deal was that you had to have this special player that played these DIVX discs, which I guess were similar to DVDs (or VCDs, I'm not really sure). Once you played them once, the disc would expire after like two or three days, and then became unplayable unless you paid a renewal fee to your DIVX account. The player was associated with your account through a modem connection, so if you paid again, the player would know to let you play the disc.

Leon Einstein
Feb 6, 2012
I must win every thread in GBS. I don't care how much banal semantic quibbling and shitty posts it takes.
DIVX was doomed to fail. Does anybody remember those DVDs that somehow decayed or something after a few days? It was supposed to mean the end of late fees, as they were disposable. Of course, DVD encryption was cracked, and ripping DVDs became quite simple.

urzaserra256
Nov 29, 2009
I thought that DIVX was the dvds that decayed within a few days of opening to air?

Bip Roberts
Mar 29, 2005

Leon Einstein posted:

DIVX was doomed to fail. Does anybody remember those DVDs that somehow decayed or something after a few days? It was supposed to mean the end of late fees, as they were disposable. Of course, DVD encryption was cracked, and ripping DVDs became quite simple.

Then someone wrote a nice song about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GekuuNqAiQg

permabanned
Aug 12, 2008

優しい野菜
Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures of those items below, maybe older people can remember those better.

Robotron System 360 clone
Oregon Scientific DShot I digital camera
Western Digital digital camera - I only remember how it looked like, not the model.
Our 1991 Olivetti 286/287 double HDD computer with a massive cooling block over the main CPU.
our 1994 Digital Equipment Corporation double overclocked 486DX33 - featuring an extension slot and a special card to plug the second CPU.
Sony MD player - mentioned in the OP.

Coprocessors in separate slots and extension boards for plugging more CPUs, for that matter.

beepers of course.
Alcatel AA-batteries-powered mobile phone.

permabanned has a new favorite as of 22:28 on Jul 17, 2012

Babunar
Sep 15, 2009
Has anyone got a link to the early motorcycle sat-nav that was a physical map mounted on a cylinder that spun and twisted based on your heading? I think it was Honda, but I'm not certain. It's surprisingly difficult to Google... (I guess motorbike GPS is a hot topic)

Also, I have a Game Gear. I got it in the mid-2000s from a secondhand shop and it is awesome. Eats AAs though.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

thedouche posted:

My brother has one that was used drat constantly for 5 years and it's still chugging along. I think the service still exists. I think I'd use it of I had a compatible device (15 bucks a month to listen to anything I think).

Not only is the service still around, Microsoft's still actively developing it. It's tied into the windows phone stuff, and the PC side is probably the slickest-looking MP3 player software on the market. As for the hardware, I'm convinced the original Zunes are close to invincible. I ran (as in, feet pounding the pavement while the hard drive's spinning) with a brown brick for years, and these days it gets cooked constantly in my car. Still going strong.

Sadly, it fell victim to Microsoft being so drat full of itself. The player was packed with all sorts of "social" features that might have been awesome, except they required all your friends to own Zunes too. And, they picked a case design that looked great in person, but photographed like crap. The brown Zune was done with some kind of plastic-molding trick that gives it a sort of green halo that shifts as the light hits it; the effect looks nice holding it in your hand, but when you take a head-on picture, it just comes out turd-brown. Everything was designed so that, after everyone in the world had one (just like all the testers in the MS labs), they'd be satisfied with the purchase. Nobody ever stopped and said, "so how do we get people to buy these in the first place?" because hey, we're Microsoft and people will buy them because of that.

Nasgate
Jun 7, 2011
Screw Ipods and Zunes, my family used Zen players :smug:
Specifically we all had the Vision M model as seen below. Brother and I had 30 gigs while our mom had the 60 gig version. This was cool because Ipod video players at the time had less storage, worse screens, and were more expensive I believe. Apparently the company is still making mp3 players, but really I don't know anyone else who has owned one or heard of one.


Also i recently received a manual typewriter for my birthday(yes I asked for one) because the internet and solitaire/minesweeper distract me when I use a word processor. The thing is awesome, has both black and red ink strips, makes a cool sound, but weighs a ton and you have to type one letter at a time, which is harder than it sounds.

Nasgate has a new favorite as of 23:05 on Jul 17, 2012

Elim Garak
Aug 5, 2010

Nasgate posted:

Screw Ipods and Zunes, my family used Zen players :smug:
Specifically we all had the Vision M model as seen below. Brother and I had 30 gigs while our mom had the 60 gig version. This was cool because Ipod video players at the time had less storage, worse screens, and were more expensive I believe. Apparently the company is still making mp3 players, but really I don't know anyone else who has owned one or heard of one.


Also i recently received a manual typewriter for my birthday(yes I asked for one) because the internet and solitaire/minesweeper distract me when I use a word processor. The thing is awesome, has both black and red ink strips, makes a cool sound, but weighs a ton and you have to type one letter at a time, which is harder than it sounds.

God I wish they were still making Visions. Now all they put out are crappy touchscreen devices with like 8 gigs of space. I just want mp3 player technology to not have progressed past 2007 I think. I hate every current one I see.

Bobby The Rookie
Jun 2, 2005

Nasgate posted:

Screw Ipods and Zunes, my family used Zen players :smug:
Specifically we all had the Vision M model as seen below. Brother and I had 30 gigs while our mom had the 60 gig version. This was cool because Ipod video players at the time had less storage, worse screens, and were more expensive I believe. Apparently the company is still making mp3 players, but really I don't know anyone else who has owned one or heard of one.

I used this thing to death- if they kept making them and just increased the HDD space and slimmed down the player a bit, I would totally buy one. I remember the battery life being far ahead of iPods at the time, and the interface was really easy to scroll through because you could pick the letter that the artist's name started with and skip right to it. Sound quality was nice, too, since Creative made them. I palmed it off on a relative when I upgraded to an iPod Classic- apparently it still worked, albeit with worsening battery life, up until recently.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Nasgate posted:

Screw Ipods and Zunes, my family used Zen players :smug:
Specifically we all had the Vision M model as seen below. Brother and I had 30 gigs while our mom had the 60 gig version. This was cool because Ipod video players at the time had less storage, worse screens, and were more expensive I believe. Apparently the company is still making mp3 players, but really I don't know anyone else who has owned one or heard of one.

I still use a Zen player, though mine is one of the miniature models. I replaced one of the 30GB hard drive based ones after I dropped it.

There are still SACD-capable players on the go - many Sony models retain compatibility - but the format has basically been killed by Blu-ray Audio.

kopiko
May 8, 2011

Who remembers Electronic Organizers?



Back in the days before mobile phones, these were all the rage for storing friends' phone numbers and dates and times of appointments. Except they weren't. Since there were no mobile phones the few phone numbers of the pitiful amount of friends you were on calling terms with could easily memorized. If you did need to take down someones number, finding a pen and piece of paper was less hassle than powering on your electronic organizer and fiddling clumsily with tiny buttons through the slow archaic process of entering the name and number, and getting it to save properly. The interface was always so unintuitive just about every model of had reminder instructions printed inside the lid. I had one of these things for none other than the fact it was a thing with an LCD screen and lots of buttons. I'd be interested to know if anyone owned one and actually found them useful.

I also had one in watch form



This is a bit more useful because it can tell the time and has an alarm and stopwatch. Again, the phone number storing feature went totally unused, especially since the keyboard was practically impossible to use. You basically had to stab the buttons really hard with a sharp fingernail or pen, which was also a pretty good way to damage it with pen/stab marks. Regardless, to school kids it looked cool as gently caress and got me props in class :smuggo:

Phy
Jun 27, 2008



Fun Shoe
I had a little 2gig flash memory Creative player, with like a ten line LCD screen. No playlist support but by god it was easy to use, just hook it up like a thumbdrive and swap poo poo on and off. And I lost track of how many times I dropped it.

56k
Apr 4, 2004

by T. Finninho


If this thing still exists and works, I am convinced this is how my grandma uses the internet.

Bip Roberts
Mar 29, 2005

56k posted:



If this thing still exists and works, I am convinced this is how my grandma uses the internet.

A few years ago Lowtax saw that someone was posting on SA with a WebTV and then banned them for it.

Edit: "About 91% of visitors are on Windows. Mac users make up 5% and Linux is 2%. The other 2% are permabanned IRC trolls browsing the forums with a text-based browser written in Ruby on OpenBSD. Oh yeah, we have one guy using WebTV but I banned him because WTF."

amishbuttermaster
Apr 28, 2009
Here's another fun musical one: The Roland MC-303 Groovebox. Grooveboxes were in vogue in the late-90s to the first couple years of the last decade. I paid $600 for mine in 1999 and using it was my first real major taste of composition on a full song level. Unfortunately shortly after I got this sucker the far superior MC-505 was released.

These aren't all bad though. The sounds are really dated, even in 1999 but the sequencer was solid and offered a boatload of quantizing and swing options as well the ability to record knob movements in a sequence. Another plus is that it offered X0X style drum programming which I'll always be fond of. For some reason I still own this particular piece of hardware.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

kopiko posted:



This is a bit more useful because it can tell the time and has an alarm and stopwatch. Again, the phone number storing feature went totally unused, especially since the keyboard was practically impossible to use. You basically had to stab the buttons really hard with a sharp fingernail or pen, which was also a pretty good way to damage it with pen/stab marks. Regardless, to school kids it looked cool as gently caress and got me props in class :smuggo:

I had this for some reason:



You put it to the mouthpiece of the phone, push the button, AND IT DIALS THE NUMBER!

I also had the requisite nerd attire calculator watch.

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Creature
Mar 9, 2009

We've already seen a dead horse

kopiko posted:

Who remembers Electronic Organizers?



Back in the days before mobile phones, these were all the rage for storing friends' phone numbers and dates and times of appointments. Except they weren't. Since there were no mobile phones the few phone numbers of the pitiful amount of friends you were on calling terms with could easily memorized. If you did need to take down someones number, finding a pen and piece of paper was less hassle than powering on your electronic organizer and fiddling clumsily with tiny buttons through the slow archaic process of entering the name and number, and getting it to save properly. The interface was always so unintuitive just about every model of had reminder instructions printed inside the lid. I had one of these things for none other than the fact it was a thing with an LCD screen and lots of buttons. I'd be interested to know if anyone owned one and actually found them useful.


These were really massive at my school when I was about 11/12. Christ knows why, we were kids and had nothing except school to remember. But it was still cool because you'd compare who had the most numbers and was therefore the coolest kid.

The special edition of Foo Fighters 'There Is Nothing Left To Lose' came with a VCD of all the videos. Took me weeks of searching for software to play it. Never saw another one.

Creature has a new favorite as of 01:10 on Jul 18, 2012

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