1985 news story on the debut of CDs

[zinfamous]

Two other things I love about this:
-The CD factory guy's hair
-That someone in the YouTube comments found the audiophile guy on Facebook. It's definitely him. Gotta love technology.

That is the most amazing semirug that I have seen.

 

[mmntech]

And yes, Laser Disc already existed but never had much popularity. My roommate in college in '86 had one (his dad was a contractor who had demo'ed an old record store and found it along with many movies) but the quality wasn't that good for most movies. If the movie was encoded digitally, it would take 2-3 discs to hold the movie which was annoying. So a lot of the movies were analog. So there was little reason to get one (fewer movies, low availability to rent, expensive to buy).

I recall seeing them at a stereo store as a kid and thinking how cool it looked to be able to play movies on a giant disc. A couple years ago, I found one cheap at a thrift store and bought it with a couple movies. They do have a certain charm to them. I love the LP style packaging.

When they were new, they were far superior to both Beta and VHS with resolution and audio quality close to DVD. They were expensive though and multiple discs made them a bit of a pain in the butt.

You can have some fun collecting LD since you can find cuts of films that never made it to later formats. The Star Wars theatrical cuts being the holy grail. I don't own them. They're hard to find and can be expensive.

BTW, LaserDisc is a hybrid format. The video is analogue while the audio tracks are digital. Some films from the mid-90s did support Dolby Digital 5.1.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Nickelodeon used to have a gee whiz science show back in the early 80s. They covered the new CD technology in ~1981. At that time the prediction was that CDs were going to be thicker and encased in plastic, protecting the music. They had a cartoon of a dog carrying a CD around the house to no ill effect on the CD.

Seems every new optical disc format started with the intention of being "cassetted".

 

[mrblotto]

Not completely mind blowing. They came from laser disc. Why do you think they called them COMPACT discs? We already had something larger.

Obligatory (maybe) video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6UKPDxyMw

one of their better episodes IMHO

 

[Hugo Drax]

Television just made its debut in Bhutan in 1999 for the first time.

 

[Jeff7]

Mass broadcasting dates back to 1922, when the BBC incorporated. My Grandma was born a year later. So she's witnessed mass media since its inception. Imagine back then flipping a switch on a box and having music literally come out of thin air. Must have seemed like magic.

We really are kind of blasais about the futuristic wonder world we live in.

Dammit, GPS! How long does it take to talk to space?! It's right there."


"In the future, fancy clocks thousands of miles up in space will send time data to a small consumer-level handheld device. That device will use these time signals and a map to figure out a route for you to drive, even across hundreds of miles of complex roadways. Then it will speak the directions to you as you're traveling."

Mhmm, sure.

 

[IronWing]

Television just made its debut in Bhutan in 1999 for the first time.

The last hope of humanity extinguished.

 

[MongGrel]

I actually remember seeing CD's at least as far back as 1982.

I remember a guy in the base PX hawking them around the time I bought my old Kenwood KL-777Z's which I still use actually, go figure. They still work perfectly.

He did the display thing putting peanut butter on it and wiping it off and playing it vs a turntable. The PX always had the latest things from Japan audio related at the time in Hawaii I guess.

Was too expensive for me at the time, but was pretty far out for 1982.

 

[dud]

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/1984-news-story-on-debut-of-the-compact-disc-cd.280128/

 

[flexy]

I remember the early days when CDs became (slowly) available for PCs.

I was perplexed about the amount of data a CD could hold.
SIXHUNDRED FRICKING MEGABYTE!!

There were compilations with pictures and I just couldn't get over the amount of pictures on the CD.

This was when a hard-drive was 40MB or 50MB and a disk of course just 770KB or 1.2Mb. Imagine SIXHUNDRED....

The first ever Audio CD I heard was "Moving Pictures" by Rush.

And I think it was the very early 90s when I actually bought a CD player. The first one was entire junk from a junk/dollar store which I re-sold the next day...I then bought a Pioneer which was "da newest shit!" just been released at the Berlin entertainment/tech fare. It was absolutely AWESOME! Back at that time I also had a pretty good and powerful stereo, something else which has become rare today with people today listening to crappy MP3s on even crappier headphones.
I had a stereo which could bring the house down and the CD player really made it shine, some tracks/albums were a total new experience listening to them on CD.
One of my hobbies back then was actually scouring local second-hand stores etc. to find bargains on CDs since in stores, normal albums on CD were still very expensive.

>
but was pretty far out for 1982.
>>

Yeah no sh! I got a C64 in 1985/1986...so a CD player back then sure was more ScienceFiction than anything! A truly un-imaginable amount of data on one disk.

 

[CZroe]

All laserdisc movies were analog. Many that fit on one disc only did because the movie was edited down.

He probably means the audio.

 

[CZroe]

Not sure what I was looking into, but I saw this video a few months ago.

it was a related video when I was discussing the MPD-AP20U.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

He probably means the audio.

digital audio was a late addition

 

[SearchMaster]

He probably means the audio.

Nah...I was thinking they had an analog and a digital format for video and the digital could only hold like 30 or 45 minutes. Hell it's 30 year old technology and not something that particularly intrigued me then so it's not surprising I got it wrong

As for the comment about the Star Wars...I'm *pretty* sure he had that disc also but I'm also pretty sure he's thrown it all away since then. And knowing him, he'd probably kick himself if he knew the disc was worth a few hundred bucks.

 

[CZroe]

Nah...I was thinking they had an analog and a digital format for video and the digital could only hold like 30 or 45 minutes. Hell it's 30 year old technology and not something that particularly intrigued me then so it's not surprising I got it wrong



As for the comment about the Star Wars...I'm *pretty* sure he had that disc also but I'm also pretty sure he's thrown it all away since then. And knowing him, he'd probably kick himself if he knew the disc was worth a few hundred bucks.

There were many titles where they release multiple versions for different audio formats and they weren't able to fit them all, so it does sound similar.

 

[Auric]

Yeah, there are fan edits of various movies which incorporate LD and other A/V sources since BD versions are not original or otherwise worse.

 

[gorcorps]

amazing how far we've come. i would love to hear what someone who's 80-100 say about the progress of technology in their lifetime. must be pretty mindblowing.

What if they're disappointed? Didn't many old theories think we'd have colonized the moon by now?

 

[mmntech]

Yeah, there are fan edits of various movies which incorporate LD and other A/V sources since BD versions are not original or otherwise worse.

Harmy's Despecialized Star Wars Trilogy! The only way to get the theatrical cuts in "HD". He did a good job, though there's a few composite shots he did that look weird. Vader's eyes in Jedi for examples. Hopefully Disney gets off the pot and gives the theatrical cuts the professional treatment.

What if they're disappointed? Didn't many old theories think we'd have colonized the moon by now?

Well there's no moon bases or flying cars, but a lot of that technology did come to pass.

 

[skimple]

Yet, only 16 years later....

Original ipod commerical from 2001

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE_bDNaYAr8

 

[IronWing]

Yet, only 16 years later....

Original ipod commerical from 2001

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE_bDNaYAr8

That was awful.

 

[Eug]

Back then, my sister and brother-in-law were very proud of their LP collection. They didn't really see the point of upgrading to CD any time soon.

In 1986 I bought a portable CD player. No not a full-fledged stereo component, but a player I could walk around with like a Walkman. I plugged it into their stereo system and played a few tracks. Totally blew them away, as it sounded way better than anything they had ever heard coming out of that system. They immediately wanted a CD player.

Reminds me of that scene from the Wedding Singer where he brings home the CD player. Only $600! :awe:

I spent something crazy - many hundreds of Canuck bux - for my first CD-ROM drive, attached to my Creative Labs Sound Blaster.

 

[Kaido]

I spent something crazy - many hundreds of Canuck bux - for my first CD-ROM drive, attached to my Creative Labs Sound Blaster.

It's funny how things progress...copying cassette tapes & recording off the radio, then floppies for computers (I tried to skip ZIP disks), then burning CD's when Napster was all the craze, then DVD's when DVD Shrink was all the craze, then USB sticks, and now everything is online. I mean, you can literally buy a one-terabyte USB stick (not drive) these days, but nobody cares because we have Netflix & Spotify now

 

[vi edit]

I remember when CD's used to come in those tall cardboard boxes.

 

[Ichinisan]

I remember when CD's used to come in those tall cardboard boxes.

Like the early "tall box" Playstation games?

 

[Eug]

It's funny how things progress...copying cassette tapes & recording off the radio, then floppies for computers (I tried to skip ZIP disks), then burning CD's when Napster was all the craze, then DVD's when DVD Shrink was all the craze, then USB sticks, and now everything is online. I mean, you can literally buy a one-terabyte USB stick (not drive) these days, but nobody cares because we have Netflix & Spotify now

I still have a working USB zip drive. It's not plugged into anything though.

BTW, when I upgraded to Win 10, I lost Blu-ray function on my machine. My Blu-ray playback software doesn't work in Win 10. But I didn't really care, since I rarely watch Blu-ray these days, and when I do, I do on my sub-$100 standalone Blu-ray player with my TV.

On the computer I'd just be watching Netflix or something.