I don't know if I'm losing my marbles, but I don't ever recall a time growing up when my family (or anyone else I knew) were buying a new VCR every year or two.
We have crazy powerful DSPs (like a low end GPU), advances in coding and error correction codes, and highly advanced lossy compression algorithms now 8)
Previously on HN: film on vinyl LP (pretty terrible, not much to work with), super high quality VHS reading by hooking up ADCs directly to the video heads + software, and VHS tape streamers (IIRC 1-2 GB with circa 1993 cheap hardware).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KueSbYs7yMU
https://github.com/simoninns/DomesdayDuplicator
https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode
But actually, I spent a few months in a room with a stray cat and all of my DVD and Blu Ray disks and didn't watch a single one. Instead I watched stuff off Tubi, Apple TV, Peacock and my media server. When it was time to clear that room out so tenants could come in I gave most of my discs to the reuse center (sure was agonizing to decide which version of Superman II I wanted to keep!)
Lately it seems like the market for used Blu-Ray players has been flooded with awful Sony units which take more than 30 seconds to boot even if all you want to do is eject a disk. I donated one of those and my NVIDIA Shield and got a used PS4 because even if the boot time is way out of the "consumer electronics" range at least it is a freakin' game console and unlike the Shield I can leave the controller plugged in and expect it to be charged when I want to use it... And the Plex client is great.
Meanwhile, the "basement" VCR my dad bought new in '85 still works to this day, but that one was less programmable, so we always used the cheap ones to record off the air.
Even VHS tapes were much more expensive than DVDs right up until DVDs.
But I’ve never heard of a “VHS player” —- always a VCR or a VTP for a playback only unit as uncommon as they were.
At an ambient relative humidity of 90%, the tapes themselves would become mouldy at an alarming rate. We did therefore check for mould before playing them, as this could have rubbed off onto the VCRs and then might have spread to other tapes.
We only ever replaced ours once.
A mate of mine had 4 in a stack for the purpose of duplicating and distributing VHS tapes illegally. I think 1 of them stopped working.
Another mate had one that wouldnt rewind faster than playback speed. But they just returned the tapes in dickhead mode rather than paying for a new VCR.
It was positioned and priced as a professional device.
In 1990 you could get a decent portable CD player for about $100. That was enough for most consumers.
I wasn't able to do DAT because of the extremely high prices. So I mainly ended up with copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy analog cassette, which usually sounded terrible (lots of tape hiss and distortion).
Analog cassettes had their own issues: dual tape decks made very poor copies (I think this was some sort of copy protection feature) although you could use two decks. I was really glad to see analog go- these days, nearly eveyrthing is digitally recorded, with all the conveniences of digital, and many old reel to reel tapes and DATs have been captured with high quality devices.
It's also kind of funny that I lived through the entire CD era- from the first obscenely expensive CD readers to an age when everybody could buy a cheap blu-ray recorder to CDs being obsolete.
Where I worked had mostly moved to sound devices and such for high quality 2 track recordings. Portable Sadie or pro tools for multitracks.
There was a time period where DJs were passing around DATs of unreleased tracks, and some DJs would try to play sets from them. They had the advantage of not being destroyed by the sand on the beach, but had the distinct disadvantage of no pitch control for proper beat matching. I did have access to two studio rack mounted DAT machines that did have pitch control, but they were top of the line very expensive units which is why no DJ was ever going to have them.
amusingly, I won a contest for widmer brewing in the 90's when they were looking for interesting toasts to put as phrases under their bottle caps: "To Disc and DAT".
unfortunately, I have a bunch of masters and backups of a digital 4-track on dat, and am unable to access them due to the unhappy deck.
Audio distribution dominates the consumer market and CD’s can be pressed much like a vinyl record. Basically, producing a full fledged CD takes about the same effort as manufacturing half the cassette case for DAT.
A CD is a mechanically stamped plastic widget. A DAT tape requires a BOM and assembly before loading it with data.
It did have a Streisand effect though.
There's a vinyl record label called Deep Jungle [0] which specialises in sourcing unreleased (or very limited pressings originally) 90s jungle/drum&bass straight from the artists - for a fair price.
Each release has a backstory often involving getting boxes of DATs down from the attic! The music is remastered with modern technology.
Demand is high (literally selling out within minutes!) as the label covers both older customers (who went raving in the 90s) and the younger generation exploring older music.
Everyone in DnB documentaries talks about going to Music House with DATs to get dubplates cut to play in the clubs later on that evening.
This would have been before CD-Rs were commonplace, early 90s.
In fact they were portable. Cheap, certainly not.
Sold my beloved Sony TCD-D100 some years ago, as it was just sitting around. Beautiful device.
Also check out the TCD-D10. Truly a gem of 80s design.
PaulHoule•4h ago
My reuse center got two DAT decks, one of which looked terribly trashed, for $200 a piece. Nein Danke!
SpecialistK•4h ago
PaulHoule•4h ago
SpecialistK•4h ago
PaulHoule•17m ago
SpecialistK•4m ago
For recording MDs I use a Sony MZ-N920 with Web MiniDisc Pro.
chem83•1h ago
On the software end, web.minidisc.wiki has come a long way and there are even projects to expand the functionality of player firmware. Cool hobby, if you're into that.
timeonecom•1h ago
linsomniac•1h ago