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sinking belle posted:+ Agreed with the folks who think they look super cool. Optical media in a transparent/translucent caddy has always seemed like such a sci-fi thing to me, I can't explain it. Maybe it stems from that scene near the beginning of The Matrix with the minidisc Behold... the future!  From http://jasontaylor.dyndns.org/blog/mac-museum/quadra-660av/ which has more information about this particular machine, which is actually a Quadra 660AV in a Workgroup Server case. I don't think that's going to give him much cred on the retro computing forums 
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Feb 9, 2016 13:53
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Pretty sure I was a Quadra 610, not 660AV. The 660 had a hardware accelerated video/sound chip, which wouldn't be needed on a server.
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Feb 9, 2016 14:16
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sinking belle posted:Turns out the second image I posted actually is, in fact, a Professional Disc, and not a blu-ray. Which I would've noticed if I'd paid attention to the logo on it. Very similar look, yeah. The little CDs that they got missions on in the Mission Impossible second go-round (late 80s? I watched new episodes when I was a kid) were always super awesome to me. Especially when the drive started smoking because this message will self destruct.
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Feb 9, 2016 15:51
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Horace posted:Talking about jewel cases, weren't they awful poo poo? Every part of them was a failure. The hinges snapped all the time, the little teeth usually held the disc too strongly for a while before snapping off and not holding it at all, and if you got a booklet with the CD the paper would get hosed up by the semi-circles that were supposed to hold it in place. Then there were those 2-disc cases where the inside part hinged - for a brief period before breaking. Yes, my god, jewel cases were horrible. Never had one that didn't break, and they never looked anything but cheap and ugly Horace posted:Why couldn't they have just shipped CDs in cardboard sleeves like miniature LPs? I have always wondered this too. There will never be a nostalgic revival for CDs that isn't ironic, because cardboard sleeves were often beautiful but a jewel case is always going to look like cheap, utilitarian crap that ages terribly. Scratch or bend a cardboard sleeve, that gives it character. Scratch or bend a jewel box, it belongs in the garbage now. Don Norman of Design of Everyday Things fame has written about materials aging well vs those that do so terribly, and how people factor that in the value they assign to things I guess the rationale was that the jewel case wouldn't let the CD touch the case so it wouldn't scratch, but it's bullshit because my Windows 98 install CD had a cardboard sleeve, and it's still perfect despite getting more airtime than White Christmas
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Feb 9, 2016 17:45
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Jewel cases look kinda OK when they're brand new, but once they accumulate some scratches they start looking like poo poo. And the material is just way too brittle. The really old-school versions with the black middle insert seemed a little more durable, but once everyone went to the all-clear models, they started turning to poo poo. DVD/Bluray cases are a significantly better design, probably because they learned from the mistakes made with the jewel case, and opted for a more flexible opaque plastic.
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Feb 9, 2016 18:10
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Horace posted:
I definitely bought a few CDs that were just in shrink wrapped cardboard sleeves. They were usually EPs or really small/self releases. This would have been around...2005? But you had to be super careful not to scratch them, and they usually just jammed the liner notes in there so it was hard to pull it all out.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:14
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I have a bunch of promo CDs that came in cardboard sleeves, but never bought any actual albums like that. However, I do have quite a few in "replica LP packaging", which is kinda neat.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:17
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At least it's feasible that a jewelcase CD might actually look like a nice thing you'd want to have in your house. That cannot be said of the hydrocephalic design of Bluray cases.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:31
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joedevola posted:At least it's feasible that a jewelcase CD might actually look like a nice thing you'd want to have in your house. That cannot be said of the hydrocephalic design of Bluray cases. I bet I can 
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Feb 9, 2016 20:34
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However I only ever bought one Bluray movie because apparently they all look like poo poo due to film grain effect? (Black Swan looked like poo poo anyway. The DVD looked fine.)
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Feb 9, 2016 20:34
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Jerry Cotton posted:However I only ever bought one Bluray movie because apparently they all look like poo poo due to film grain effect? Film grain/video noise doesn't have anything to do with the media it's played on and pretty much everything to do how the post production was made for that particular film.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:50
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Pingiivi posted:Film grain/video noise doesn't have anything to do with the media it's played on and pretty much everything to do how the post production was made for that particular film. Oh word.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:52
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Pingiivi posted:Film grain/video noise doesn't have anything to do with the media it's played on and pretty much everything to do how the post production was made for that particular film. I swear that someone cranked up the 'film grain' slider to '11' on the Aliens Quadrilogy Blu Rays
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Feb 9, 2016 21:28
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Personally, that's one of the biggest problems I've had with a lot of recent Blu-Ray releases is that they tend to overdo the digital noise reduction and kill a lot of fine detail in the process.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:35
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I picked up the Predator DVD the other day and I swear it changes from crisp and clean to grainy every other shot. And the first few minutes have so many scratches and spots that I had to double check I was watching an actual 80s movie and didn't slip into some kind of Planet Terror situation.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:39
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We used to rent CED players and discs from Blockbuster because they were cheap. The thing about CED is that there's an actual needle in contact with the disk, so they succumb to all the problems that LP records do. Lasers are (duh) much less destructive of the data source. A CED that's been through the rental process is a crapshoot. e: We're major into ancient (i.e. 1970s) British shows. When you see them on a wide-screen hi-def scene, you see a lot of details that were invisible on the original small-screen format. That means the heavy makeup is way visible, as are the visual shortcuts in costuming and sets. Those tradeoffs were completely appropriate when you were looking at a small TV screen and needed to pick up some details and overlook others. Movies fare a lot better than TV shows because the former were always intended to be seen on a big screen. Arsenic Lupin has a new favorite as of 21:48 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 21:45
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I used to buy a lot of CD singles as a kid. Most were in those single jewel cases, but independent/smaller bands just used cardboard slip cases. That should have been the standard as single jewel cases are horrible cheap little things. As for proper CD albums, digipaks are the king. Solid, relatively environmentally friendly, and artwork looks nicer.
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Feb 9, 2016 22:48
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Working in a public library, you found plenty of colleagues from other branches working around the problems with CD-packaging. I've seen KeepCases, Digipacks, ECO-Packs, Jewel Cases, Q-Packs and even Snapcases. All had their downsides in the heavy duty enviroment that was the library. I think the new jewel-case was the best fit for the library:  They were much sturdier than the normal jewel cases, but they had a huge flaw: their booklets were smaller than the ones in the old-style jewel cases, so they never caught on as a replacement for the older ones.
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Feb 9, 2016 23:11
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Goldaline posted:I definitely bought a few CDs that were just in shrink wrapped cardboard sleeves. They were usually EPs or really small/self releases. This would have been around...2005? But you had to be super careful not to scratch them, and they usually just jammed the liner notes in there so it was hard to pull it all out. I got some magazine cover discs in cardboard sleeves where I guess the glue on the sleeve leaked a bit and stuck onto the disc. Lots of fun to try to remove the disc. Hopefully music CD covers were all made better than that!
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Feb 10, 2016 00:16
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Speaking of keepcases, I had a DVD actually snap once while I was trying to get the thing out because the center hub WOULD NOT LET GO. The push type is so much nicer.
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Feb 10, 2016 03:09
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I loved watching people snap the hell out of jewel cases by opening them the wrong way.
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Feb 10, 2016 04:40
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Keiya posted:Speaking of keepcases, I had a DVD actually snap once while I was trying to get the thing out because the center hub WOULD NOT LET GO. The push type is so much nicer. This right here is the absolute worst time I've ever had trying to get a disc out of its packaging without destroying the disc, the packaging, or both:  The spindle the disc goes on is a solid cylinder (no "teeth") the exact same size as the hole in the CD, and which is made of plastic just soft enough that the edge of the hole will gouge into the side of the spindle if you do so much as look at it from across the room. It took a good twenty minutes of twisting and levering to get the disc free and I never dared to put it back afterwards. Complete design failure.
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Feb 10, 2016 05:19
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Jerry Cotton posted:However I only ever bought one Bluray movie because apparently they all look like poo poo due to film grain effect? (Black Swan looked like poo poo anyway. The DVD looked fine.) Black Swan was shot primarily on Super16 film, which is much smaller than the conventional Super35, and therefore has larger grain. It was chosen for this reason. While it is true that there technically should be no difference in grain/noise between DVD and Blu-Ray or at least little should be introduced if the telecine is done well, the higher resolution of Blu-Ray may have made the grain more apparent, as a lower resolution would produce less detail. To correct myself: There is no difference in grain size between S16 and S35 (with regards to the crystals in the emulsion) the grain in S16 appears larger as the frame size is smaller, so the grain crystals are larger relative to the frame. XTimmy has a new favorite as of 07:29 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 07:04
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Lazlo Nibble posted:This right here is the absolute worst time I've ever had trying to get a disc out of its packaging without destroying the disc, the packaging, or both:
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Feb 10, 2016 07:38
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sinking belle posted:+ Agreed with the folks who think they look super cool. Optical media in a transparent/translucent caddy has always seemed like such a sci-fi thing to me, I can't explain it. Maybe it stems from that scene near the beginning of The Matrix with the minidisc I have been lusting over owning a Minidisc data drive for many years. The main one I know about is the MDM111-00:   And the discs which were slightly different to regular audio HDs:  ElwoodCuse posted:The little CDs that they got missions on in the Mission Impossible second go-round (late 80s? I watched new episodes when I was a kid) were always super awesome to me. Especially when the drive started smoking because this message will self destruct. And the ones from that show 'The Pretender' that Jared used to watch back recordings from his childhood:  (sorry it's the best pic I can find at the moment). Humphreys has a new favorite as of 12:22 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 12:15
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Humphreys posted:
Which obsolete, failed technology brought us this image?
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Feb 10, 2016 13:00
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Buttcoin purse posted:Which obsolete, failed technology brought us this image? Well I for one am looking at it through The Something Awful Forums.
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Feb 10, 2016 13:02
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Humphreys posted:And the discs which were slightly different to regular audio HDs: Yet another reason why it failed. If they had used the same discs for data and music, and made transferring music as easy as plopping an MD in your drive and using a regular file manager, MDs would have made most other forms of removable media obsolete, at least until flash memory hit its stride. But instead, you had to either record music real time like a drat cassette tape or use Sony's absolutely atrocious SonicStage piece of garbage software.
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Feb 10, 2016 13:09
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As seen multiple times, Sony's biggest enemy is itself.
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Feb 10, 2016 13:17
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MP3 players, meet the king! iRiver H340, the one to rule them all. Line in, built in microphone, USB OTG and a bitchin' remote with LCD display. 
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Feb 10, 2016 13:22
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afen posted:MP3 players, meet the king! iRiver H340, the one to rule them all. Line in, built in microphone, USB OTG and a bitchin' remote with LCD display. I still have my H320 in a closet somehwere. The thing was great up until the hard disk died. Right around the time it started to die, I installed a 3rd party firmware (I think Rockbox?) which allowed me to playback video on it's 2in 220x176 screen. Apparently the US version was Microsoft DRM capable but lacked video playback. The international version lacked DRM, but could do USB OTG and xvid playback. Edit: Apparently Rockbox is still very active along with a Hxxx series modding community. JayKay has a new favorite as of 13:57 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 13:54
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I'm using Rockbox on my Sansa Clip Zip. It's approximately 10 million times better than the stock firmware.
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Feb 10, 2016 13:58
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the only thing i can remember about the PS1 was the french next to the lens. And Tobal No.1 NE JAMAIS TOUCHEZ LA LENTILLE
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Feb 10, 2016 14:01
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afen posted:MP3 players, meet the king! iRiver H340, the one to rule them all. Line in, built in microphone, USB OTG and a bitchin' remote with LCD display. I had an iRiver H340, and that was one solid MP3 machine. Plug it into a computer, and it would just look like a USB drive, didn't need drivers or software and worked with OSX, Windows and even Linux.Fantastic sound, and the remote was great with physical buttons.
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Feb 10, 2016 14:24
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KozmoNaut posted:I'm using Rockbox on my Sansa Clip Zip. It's approximately 10 million times better than the stock firmware. Holy crap, I could hug you right now I've had this thing for years and absolutely hated the stock firmware. Had no idea I had the option of changing it. You've made a goon very happy  edit: OH MY GOD I CAN PLAY DOOM ON THIS TINY THING
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Feb 10, 2016 15:19
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:edit: OH MY GOD I CAN PLAY DOOM ON THIS TINY THING I KNOW, RIGHT? Yeah, it can do all kinds of ridiculous things. The tradeoff is that you kinda have to get used to the database structure of it, but it's actually very flexible. I like this skin in particular, very clear and readable on the tiny low-res display: http://themes.rockbox.org/index.php?themeid=2122&target=sansaclipzip
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Feb 10, 2016 15:23
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:Holy crap, I could hug you right now You can run Doom on a printer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLHx3vO7KJM
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Feb 10, 2016 15:25
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Rockbox can do amazing things. For example completely loving up my ipod nano in a way that a normal factory reset wouldn't get it working again.
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Feb 10, 2016 15:36
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That faux leather case with contrast stitching is so 90's that the tips of my hair are spontaneously frosting! Actually, on the MP3 player topic: is there a consensus rec about a non-iPod standalone MP3 player these days? The entire standalone category has gone largely obsolete and I'd actually like something of the sort instead of bringing my gigantic phone to the gym.
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Feb 10, 2016 17:12
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Trabant posted:That faux leather case with contrast stitching is so 90's that the tips of my hair are spontaneously frosting! I would just get a Sandisk Clip. They're cheap enough that if you lose one you won't cry, they have good capacity, and they work with Rockbox if you want to fiddle with that. My only complaint is that they're almost TOO tiny. Also a bonus is they don't attract the eye of thieves like Apple devices.
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Feb 10, 2016 17:32
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