Was it the CD?

I came across an old advert in a National Geographic mag, that trumpeted the marvels of DCC over cassettes.

It seemed to have died off extremely quickly. After a little searching I found this Ebay link and noted the interest in the bidding.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Philips-DCC-170-Digital-Compact-Cassette-Recorder-/150913324313?nma=true&si=%2BNpQFygQSDBfGanS0yW1T3fG%2B0g%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

G'day Brutus, I have  a NIB DCC player.  I think simply that the cassette medium had reached a impasse with access time to go to next song or finding a song.  Even with super fast REW or FF it could not compare with instant CD or MD and eventually MP3 players.   Also only a very few portable models were mfg./sold.  Its a very high end performance recording /playback media yet as you say it died a fast death.  I really don't have good explanation    

Here is a expansive Topic I did on my player and a lot of research information from the internet.  Also my impression of its sonic performance which  is stellar.

index.php?board_oid=193392314111653483&content_oid=193392314111820449

Panasonic RQ-DP7  DCC player

Thanks John for the explanation. I hadn't seen even the DCC media let alone the players in stores very long so curiosity got the best of me.

You're probably bang on with the search limitations compared to other media of the day. Ultimately I guess we as consumers embraced the CD instead. Much like the more drawn out Beta/ VHS battle, or Bluray vs. HD

Your NIB model is indeed a keeper John. If history proves right, your player will become highly sought after, given the short shelf life it had.

Cheers for the info John.

This is a piece of history...

It was a format war, the same war which Sony's Blu-ray won over the Toshiba's HD-DVD. This time it was DCC vs. MiniDisc.

Back then (1993) Phillips introduced a successor to the cassette (they invented in 1964); the DCC. This time it was digital (the new hype) and near CD quality.

While Sony introduced their new format - The MiniDisc which was far more attractive, it offered very fast access to tracks and editing feature. 

Phillips's big mistake was to upgrade the format, but still it was too bulky and out of date. While Sony Invented something completely new based on the success of the CD format even resembling a tiny CD.

The main reason Sony's Minidisc won the format war because it was a portable solution: it was digital, smaller and it was new.  However, Phillips's DCC targeted it as Hi-Fi deck for home use with near CD quality and therefore it was a bit more expensive.

It is very mysterious why consumers preferred some formats over the others.

Like with the VHS video cassettes over Betamax (superior), and the Dolby C vs. dbx (superior). Although the DCC was far superior to Minidisc, this time the Minidisc was on top.

Interseting info TheLion.

I also noted that some DCC machines were backwards compatible with analog cassettes which in the grand scheme of things would appeal to many that had extensive store bought and mix tapes.

Yet, the same logic was also defied when the CD came out

It's interesting that the unit plays both cassette and DCC, the digital cassette is smaller and has an access door.  I just picked up my first player, a rack mount Yamaha, haven't played with it much though.  We used to have a Phillips Unit in the lab that was fun. 

Some cool stuff from Popular Science June 1991 on Google Books about the "New Technology"

http://books.google.com/books?id=J3sUn8WV22MC&pg=PA78&dq=digital+cassette&hl=en&sa=X&ei=w_KWUMcaxZvIAcq2gLAD&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=digital%20cassette&f=false

Hope the link works....

The heart of DCC, the codec itseft never actually die, it now what we listen to and known as MP3 format now, just was improved over the years and moved away from the cassette format. All DCC decks uses Precision Adaptive Sub-band Coding (PASC) compression to code the digital information onto tape. This coding method is considered by many to be superior to the ATRAC coding method used in the Minidisc system. Proponents of PASC point out that PASC has a frequency response that is superior to most other digital audio formats (5-22,000 Hz).

The DCC codec is really the same thing as MPEG Layer I, a.k.a. MP1, the ancestor of MPEG Layer II and III, better known as MP2 and MP3. MPEG-1 layer It was also used by the Digital Compact Cassette format, in the form of the PASC audio compression codec. Because of the need of a steady stream of frames per second on a tape-based medium at 384 kbit/s. Layer 3 would be mp3, Is was in (July 1999) the most powerful algorithm in a series of audio encoding standards developed under the sponsorship of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and formalised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

As far as the tape format, not the codec used in the format. Philips marketed the DCC format in Europe, the United States and Japan. According to the newspaper article that announced the demise of DCC, DCC was more popular than MiniDisc in Europe (especially in the Netherlands), however this claim has yet to be verified. Sony claims that MiniDisc was vastly more popular than DCC in Japan, but very little evidence of this exists.

DCC was quietly discontinued in October 1996 after Philips admitted it had failed at achieving any significant market penetration with the format, and unofficially conceded victory to Sony. Main reason it failed, was cost of decks and timing and the fact you can skip over track on Md disc, like a CD and much smaller size, but not because MD was better, as DCC used a much better codec, it wasn't till Hi-MD format came out years later that MD format was better in terms of audio quailty.

@Mister X thanks for the link!

@Retrodos. I was unaware that the DCC morphed into present day music formats, Thanks for the info Retrodos

Cheers!

for those who may be interested :

http://www.leboncoin.fr/image_...432608986.htm?ca=2_s

regards

Because there were no batteries available anymore!!

lol you need a recorder... the player itself was kinda expensive.

dont know what size battery it take's - read

somewhere that this place may have the batteries

http://www.dutchwest.co.uk/

hi everybody !

-batteries are replaceable ...

-it is a recorder ("enregistreur" meens recorder in french)

as you can see there is a red button in front of it !!!

 http://jonathan.dupre.free.fr/...dex.php?/category/95

regards

nice topic, for myself, i find that having the right format basiclly is just as important as have the right equipment!

either tape or cd, i find its having the right recording by the correct recording label for the eara of the artest eg. beatles... apple or EMI and parlophone 

well .. think the MD didn`t "win" anything. when i bought one in 1996, i was the only one in my class ... it was portable audio for snobs (like me at that time ) ...  most other ppl took cassette or discmen... after that, end of 90s, beginning 2000s, they took mp3 ...

if it was a format "war", it was on a little battlefield beside...