You would think merging two existing products wouldn't be too bad but every similar product I find is well over $1000 USD when new. I have to believe there was a mini disc version at some point or something using Sony's data disc that looked like a mini-disc.
But "large' video capable LCDs weren't an existing product back then. I would love to remember the year I went to an AV show where Sharp were exhibiting the prototype of a 20" LCD TV. It merited its own display room with a security guard looking after it (maybe to stop competitors discovering its secrets). Meanwhile you would pay $1000 extra for a laptop with a 10" TFT display capable of displaying video. The problems was that yields were terrible with them having to make dozens to get one that worked properly. Wondering how LCDs ended up so cheap I did some research. One breakthrough was working out how to test the transistors on the glass before fastening it all together and filling it with liquid crystal. Until then the manufacturing was similar to Sony's ill fated Chromatron. Do all the assembly processes then test it and find you have produced landfill. To round off the Chromatron story shadow mask TVs needed dozens of adjustments. However, the key thing was they could be done after manufacture. p.s. seems I was wrong about $1000. To quote Google AI Examples from the period: IBM ThinkPad 750C (1993): When this laptop was released, a model with a 10.4-inch VGA color TFT display was priced at $4,699. This was a significant jump over the $3,199 monochrome version, with the TFT display accounting for over a third of the total price.
I wonder how many of those laptops are sitting forgotten at the local thrift store. They were so expensive and it took quite awhile for prices to come down.
I forgot to post a couple of boomers I've had for years, the Emerson XLC-555 and the Sharp Sidekick 3T-50B. While Emerson mostly put out crappy boomboxes, this made in Korea Version is an exception, it's a pretty heavy boombox, I've found early 80's Korean Equipment to still have more metal than plastic inside. These seem to have hit the collectors radar, I'd see them every once in a while for cheap, not so much anymore. My Sidekick seems to be missing the sun shield, maybe a good 3d printer project? These can look neat on the shelf but it's not as cool as some of the other brands similar styling like the Sony Jackal. I think the Sidekick was the "budget" option back then but even in the late 70's these weren't cheap.
