Digital portables archaeology

"The Walkman has Landed" (2000-2001)



For Sony NW-MS7 and NW-MS9, the first 2 MemoryStick players. I suppose Sony was trying to completely reboot the Walkman brand... and for good reason, it faced much fiercer competition in the digital music space out the gate. Plato the Blue alien is quite weird looking... I don't particularly see him as endearing. Nevertheless, these posters are really cool.

 

Rio "Bring It" print ads (2002)

 

PC Mag's first review of the iPod (2001)



You NEVER see reviewers so positive about a tech product today... everyone wants to moan and whine about little compromises they have to make... instead of highlighting the positives.

 

Motorola Razr V3 "Music" (2005)



This is an old web ad showing the 2005 Motorola Razr V3 atop a mountain of jewel cases. This phone was the absolute hotness at the time... everyone wanted one... and for good reason. It was a phone so slick and premium feeling, you'd have sworn Apple came up with it. From my memory, this was one of the first phones that offered MP3 ringtones... meaning people's ringtones got crazy for the first time! MP3 playback wasn't ideal from my recollection... it had a custom Mini USB headphone out... for Razr buds only, and I seem to remember Verizon charging a fee for the ringtones feature...

(Most don't realize that you can use MP3 ringtones on the iPhone today as long as you use GarageBand for iOS to import the MP3 and export it to an iPhone ringtone.)

 

Mazda MP3 (2001)




Nope, there's not something missing here... Mazda literally chose to name this car the 'Mazda MP3'... and this print ad claims it's not a sedan, but rather an MP3 player on wheels that lets you downshift as well as download! This is really just an '01 Protege with a performance Kenwood excelon sound system built in and a few other gimmicks. Goes to show you, MP3 was such a trend at this point, and even Mazda was trying to get in on the action.

 

I recently bought this JVC Alnea 6GB XA-HD500S digital audio player.
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/jvc-alneo-xa-hd500-mp3-player
Only because the unit was relatively complete with cradle, I made an offer.
Now I have it, the clock screensaver reminds me of the Nokia (8910?).
Although it was announced in December of 2005, the original buyer bought it at the end of November 2007.

 

Video CD was biggest in Asia. Probably because there wasn't any region coding or that sort of thing. I never tried it but I guess copying a Video CD would be as easy and cheap as copying an audio one.

My only experience with video CD was with a Philips CDi player which came with the Digital Video Cartridge (originally a £100 add on). I was surprised by the quality which was similar to VHS. You don't have to look hard to find some players on eBay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/145874278962

It was really a stepping stone to DVD. My search showed that most early DVD players could play video CDs.

 

In some regards it was worse. Could not do "reality" frame rate, but was ok for movies.

 

After getting a Blu-Ray player a colleague said he was still buying DVDs, because they were cheaper and "It isn't as if a movie is going to be any funnier because it is in High Res".

Since we do all our TV viewing on a 32" TV I completely agree. I bought a Blu-Ray player recently but have yet to buy any Blu-Rays. In contrast I buy DVDs because for us they work out cheaper than streaming. With a series like "The Gilded Age" the story is as important as the visuals.

 

I am checking the calendar to see is it 2008 or something More than fifteen years ago I bet on HD DVD and lost. Have a machine and half a dozen discs. Then I bought a BD player. And another one. And another one. Presently, no one buys physical media. Local thrift store is full of DVD and BD players and discs. For $15 I can get a working BD player with a remote, but my wife will kill me if I do. Since I had switched to BDs, I decided to buy only the movies I re-watch, no fluff anymore. I buy used DVDs for $2-$3, sometimes for as low as 50 cents. I was an early adopter of BD, and the Planet Earth was THE set to buy. BD is so much better than standard def, no comparison. As for 4K, I don't have a player nor discs. This is where the returns have started to diminish for me. I don't have an 80-inch TV, it is only 50 inches, a 2007 plasma, works just fine.

 

It was probably fifteen years ago that my colleague made that comment. I only paid about £20 for my first (used) BD player. A lot less than the £140 I paid for my first (new) DVD player. Yes you can get cheap DVDs in charity shops here. I don't think BDs ever really caught on here in the U.K. as DVDs typically outnumber them by about thirty to one.

I can understand the attraction of Hi Res for something like Planet Earth where it is all about the pictures but for drama - not really.

The problem here with streaming services is that are too many different ones which adds up. I just checked and Netflix would be £10.99 a month. In contrast The Gilded Age Series 2 (which might not even on Netflix) is on pre order on Amazon for £19.99. At an episode a week that costs less over two months and still retains a bit of value after being watched. About every six months we seem to have a conversation where my wife asks "can we subscribe to ....... so I can watch ..............". The answer is "No because we can save money by buying the DVDs from Amazon." After The Gilded Age we will get The Crown Series 6.

I still subscribe to a streaming service but don't know why as there is little worth watching on it. At least the box is useful for catching up on Free to air services.

p.s. This will astound you. With no new players being made it does seem to be as extreme as the films.



By coincidence the advert I got before that was for the streaming service I already subscribe to.

 

Meh. VHS will never come back, just like compact cassettes will never come back. There has been talk about cassette comeback for at least fifteen years, but there is no good tape, no good machines, no Dolby NR, it is all junk, junk, junk. Even the half-decent Teac is not offered anymore. Even worse with VHS, no one makes the machines.

Incidentally, I made quite a few VHS-related myself, but I don't want to spam the forum and this thread with irrelevant info... too much

I think this is one of my better-produced videos on the topic, and it hearkens back to the "digital" in the topic title hope you'll like it. It kills me that it has fewer than 1k views. OTOH, it is not about VHS per se, but about SVHS. Still, in 2024 I don't see why standard VHS should fare any better. Frankly, it is a crappy format.



Same goes for compact cassettes. I haven't been using my cassette deck and walkmans much lately.

 

A good, interesting Youtube video. Two comments

• Never underestimate what consumers will put up with if it is cheap and convenient. I have read that the reason Philips sunk so much money into Laserdisc is that, despite inventing the home VCR (N1500) they didn't believe anyone would accept VCR quality for Movies.
• Also don't forget the plummeting cost of hard drive storage. Back in the early 1990s we were paying £3000 each for 300MByte hard drives at work and they were barely a one man lift. Most of the early PVRs used 80MByte drives but as you said in the video that was adequate for timeshifting a couple of shows.

Finally, by complete coincidence, this was in the news tonight
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c99wngrw4nxo

It sounds as if there is still life in physical media.