DataPlay: The futuristic optical disc format that time forgot

In 2001 the future seemed bright for DataPlay when the tiny optical data storage format won Best of Show at CES. Less than two years later it was all over. Watch the video to find out what happened and to see a demo of this elusive format on a rare machine.
This video was made possible due to the kind assistance of
Obsolete Media www.obsoletemed...
Cykik Records www.cykik.com
EEV Blog / @eevblog
Other related videos on my channel
MiniDisc • MiniDisc - An Apprecia...
New Quad Vinyl • Playing the first new ...
Resources Used
DataPlay drive pictures Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.o...
DataPlay Website accessed via The Internet Archive Wayback Machine archive.org/web/
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[@Techmoan]

To show how much smaller this is than a Mini CD, a UMD, a Gamecube disc etc - here's a picture I made imgur.com/a/vWGARLX

[@daftbence]

So cute! :D

[@RaccoonHenry]

what about LaserDisc? that comparison must look incredibly funny!

[@BradGryphonn]

Great collaboration and excellent research mate. Thanks for bringing this to light. I was working in Infotech back in the early 2000s and I don't remember this at all. But then maybe Australia never got to see Dataplay.

[@jimmytvfclassic]

To clean the sticky coating try with WD40

[@roygalaasen]

Could you put the data play on top of the middle of the CD centre hole part to see if it fits? I does seem like it could fit perfectly.

[@FrankOlsonTwins]

This video is already more successful than the DataPlay format!

[@CoalCoalJames]

Savage =P .

[@DogoTheHobo]

the *rippling effect* lol

[@MrNateSPF]

Heck, your comment is already more successful than the DataPlay format!

[@Sean.Vosler]

Probably more profitable too hah

[@deathstrike]

What a shame, if this had matured it would have been fantastic for gaming handhelds like PS Vita and the Nintendo Switch!! Sure the PSP UMD was adequate, but this could have been pushed to perhaps 200GB or better.

[@romanrm1]

I feel one of these days Techmoan could pull a prank on everyone, by inventing a fictional format and doing a full episode about it. And nobody would know the difference. Because some of this stuff is just too crazy.

[@japzone]

You just inspired his future April Fools video....

[@johnmccallum8512]

Beat me to it.

[@uphilliceskater]

Microvinyl.

[@davidbjork5063]

Yes would be good aprilfool. I almost thought this was an prank especially when he tould it holds 500MB. Never heard never seen this. But this is cool. Would have been cool format to have in a cellphone. Burn micro cd with my phone 😂

[@eclipsedbadger]

can't wait for that April Fool's

[@daffiebarrios4870]

The tiny discs are adorable. I can imagine eating this as a child in the early 2000s.

[@spiralhalo]

Bankruptcy saves children 😌

[@matteofabbris7877]

poor 202* kids could only eat microSD

[@ashinylilligant9723]

LMAO severely underrated comment

[@Seth9809]

You stole this comment.

[@amnottabs]

Avril Lavigne, plastic devices with bad ergonomics and the "thinkpad" coat on them, and lasers dying... this video resumed my high school life pretty well

[@perrytheutkonos]

Let Go is a 2000s classic album

[@marcosmota1094]

amnottabs My old Thinkpads' coatings have held up well over the years. Say what you will, but the chemists at IBM knew their stuff, as the keyboard membrane is still one of the best.

[@Lalaland.001]

@@marcosmota1094 which ableton push 1 could say the same.....and that machine is not even from the 2000's

[@SP-qo3pd]

I feel your pain. I was lucky enough to get a PS2 on launch day, but after 5-6 months the damned thing stopped reading blue cds and eventually dvds.

[@iaincowell9747]

@@perrytheutkonos No, she sucked even then.

[@ellioron]

You know, you could just start making these formats up and I'd believe it whole heartedly

[@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot]

He should do that for April Fool's.

[@Di3mondDud3]

You know he wont even tell us when he does

[@DieFischbude]

You mean like this large black spinning discs he shows from time to time? I think he made those up... Whinyll... or what it's called... it's not real... impossible #truther #steeldoesntmeltat33rpm :D

[@ellioron]

@@DieFischbude hahahaha

[@mgscheue]

I know! There seems to be no end to weird formats I've never heard of.

[@peteranderson037]

"We even watched a prototype die doing what it loved: playing 'Sk8er Boi'". Well, we all have our aspirations, I suppose.

[@CaesarBest]

I read this comment just as he was saying it XD

[@ryan.crosby]

Let Go is probably the perfect album to test on an obscure player from 2002, back before Avril was replaced with a clone.

[@UnitSe7en]

It obviously wasn't good enough for her. ...Er, it.

[@twicethemegapower3995]

DataPlay played Sk8erboi Then it said "C-Ya L8erboi"

[@binface9]

A cautionary tale about the perils of listening to Avril Lavigne.

[@TechnologyConnections]

Without doing any research whatsoever (because I'm just feeling that dangerous), I'm guessing this used a red laser diode? I must admit that getting 250 MB onto one side of a disc that small seems like a mild impossibility, and surely it must have required DVD-like pit density. In fact it almost seems like it might have needed more. And wow is that a weird looking laser pickup. It's too bad the mechanism is sealed as this is really intriguing! And the color of the disc suggests maybe it was magneto-optical like MD? The world may never know! What a delightfully obscure thing--thanks for such a great effort with this!

[@tech-vp5xe]

Just binge watched a lot of your videos, you're awesome.

[@ryan8488]

Oh my God, a Camino from eevblog and technology connections commenting. My subscription list is moulding into one

[@spikester]

What they don't tell you is what compression it uses, is that 250MB per side with some form of lossless compression?

[@Tylonfoxx]

a Mini- DVD-R can take 1.4 GB per side, per layer... I think the pits are denser than CDs, but less so than DVDs, provided the system uses a similar laser. I think the area used on the dataplay's two sides could contain more data if it were indeed the same pit density as a DVD... but i'm not an expert on obscure formats or calculating the data density of strange, undocumented media formats :) However, i'm fairly confident it uses a red laser and a density between CDs and DVDs, as the tech was already readily available, and by calculating and comparing the area used for data with the actual space you get You'd likely get somewhere in between CD and DVD density... but considering a blu-ray does 25 GB per layer per side (and 7.8 gigs for minis) it's not that likely it uses another colour of lasers than CD or DVD... Mini CD/DVD/BDs also still have that spot in the middle where it's just plastic... I really think that is what cheats the eye, as more of the near-spindle area seems to be used on the dataplay. Don't CDs and DVDs also need some form of error correction for compensating for scratches? If so, Removing those error correction measures (because it's enclosed) and optimizing the data protocol could also account for why it can do 250 megs per side, even at CD-like pit density... someone should really have a DP disc under a microscope and have a look...

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I got some 8cm DVDs with 1.4 GB storage. So they clearly needed some higher density than CD.

[@TuckOfIron]

So crazy seeing my band's first album on one of these at 8:43. I wonder who these belonged to.

[@goose300183]

Wow! I can't imagine how random that must feel. Was the band relatively unknown? (no offence!) It might be a guy who found out about you while browsing early metal forums or something.

[@TuckOfIron]

@@goose300183 We were pretty damn unknown outside of the early 2010s stoner doom world for sure

[@goose300183]

@@TuckOfIron ah cool, didn't realise it was stoner/doom metal! I will give it a listen at some point, if I can find it! I really like Electric Wizard, Kyuss, Sleep etc. It seems like an odd selection of music the person had on that disc as well, having DP and Gentle Giant next to your music.

[@owenvogelgesang7314]

It’s crazy that someone in the 2010s burned an obscure album to a format that died half a decade prior

[@startedtech]

That's crazy, looked up the album and saw it released in 2011. Totally bizarre that someone burned that disc with an obscure album then for the time. However, I suppose it fits since it's an obscure format!

[@ChevyJakson]

My dad was an optical engineer at dataplay during the development of this device. Allegedly, they "expected" to be able to cram a potential 2gb on each side of the disc for a total of 4gb. Obviously this was an unrealistic expectation, and solid-state memory was simultaneously becoming the preferred storage format which quickly led to the demise of the company....except in Asia, where the device enjoyed (limited) commercial success.

[@mabiniss2]

You should probably contact Techmoan for a follow up video.

[@djdigital3806]

Please contact me. I want to use that medium in my CD 1+2 Turntable @Electronsquared Twitter

[@AlTheEngineer]

Does your dad still own any players or discs?! We would LOVE a video about them, contact Techmoan!

[@SlavicUnionGaming]

he never replied which means hes lying, and just wants attention

[@tankweeb9425]

@@SlavicUnionGaming Or he's dead, just saying.

[@leonoliveira8652]

This IS a pretty hefty disc for its size. It actually looks like some nice retro future reference material for anyone wanting to make a sci-fi story.

[@chumleyk]

I swear they used some in Demolition Man.

[@neorococco]

As a teacher, I have a Logitech presenter's wand that suffered with this sticky coating syndrome. I found that chalk dust from the blackboard seems to solve the problem, it restores the premium feel surprisingly. Give it a go on something cheap or worthless and see what I mean!

[@MarcovandenHout]

I used baking soda on my Logitech remote, which also had this rubber-like coating.

[@jdatlas4668]

Kairu Hakubi In many places around the world blackboards are still wildly common, and even though many are moving on slowly I doubt they’ll be entirely gone for years yet.

[@neorococco]

@@KairuHakubi Even if you don't have a blackboard, you can buy/get chalk easily (in some places it's abundant on the ground, North Hertfordshire in the UK for example!) and just grind a bit up, then use a soft cloth to gently rub some on the surface of the device without getting it in buttons etc, it's really effective.

[@squidspecs]

@@KairuHakubi The reason they use the more expensive options is that schools are legally required to use all of their yearly budgets, or they'll get some really drastic cuts. (at least in the US) Education is already a really small part of the budget as it is, so they'll do anything to keep it.

[@EpicB]

I have a wireless keyboard and mouse set and the keyboard also has that. Aside from that I really like the keyboard.

[@MatroxMillennium]

FYI, it wasn't very common for the actual laser on an early Playstation to die. What would happen is that the transport would wear out. There was a plastic rail that would help hold the laser up as it slid back and forth to read CDs, and unfortunately that rail would wear down over time, causing the laser to rest further from the CD, and it would eventually become unable to focus. As a consequence, a lot of owners of early Playstation units discovered that, in fact, they could still play their games, if they only turned their console upside down while attempting to do so.

[@CoTeCiOtm]

Yeah, that happened on the early, so called "audiophile" versions of the PS1, they later moved the transport further away from the power transformer to avoid heating the plastic (which was in part the cause of the plastic rail wearing out) and replaced the plastic rail for a metal one which turned to be a lot more reliable. Those later models are built like tanks, mine is still working in pretty much perfect condition and that thing has seen quite a hard life from my younger, careless and clumsy self.

[@CoTeCiOtm]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 Yeah, the earlier revisions had RCA outputs and a parallel port, which were removed later on. I got to have the last revision with only the proprietary video output and the serial port, the SCPH-9001, although I don't mind so much not having the ports if the console is more reliable and I use an S-video cable with my console and I don't think there was any revision with an S-video port in the back, not in America, at least.

[@CoalCoalJames]

LOL that reminds me of some CD-R's on the PS2 not working with burnt games even when written properly and one day I found that moving the PS2 into different positions made some of them readable =P .

[@ronch550]

11:52 - I felt a tinge of panic and hopelessness when you said there's really nothing you can do about that rubberized plastic material. I mean, yes I have removed this icky material from several devices (all post-2010 so I dunno why they're still using it long after this device you showed here) with isopropyl alcohol, but somehow I was kinda hoping something could actually be done to restore the rubbery surface. Thanks for dashing my hopes into a million pieces!! 😩 But yeah, I understand. It's the shi**iest material ever to be put on an electronic gadget.

[@jadedheartsz]

yes the Tiger Gizmondo handheld gaming system was made from the exact same material and they will all soon be melted hunks of useless plastic.

[@ff-qf1th]

If you're hardcore enough, you could make a silicon mold of it and cast a replacement

[@josephmadonia5995]

the secret to get rid of the sticky finish on any item is to rub vinegar on it! i promise it works like a miracle and is smooth as silk after.

[@borjesvensson8661]

Well at least it is not the entire inside of a SAAB 9-3 😉

[@marrrrrrrs]

I too, wanna die listening to Sk8r boi.

[@sk8terboi10003]

It would be a good way to go

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

at least the people in 911 had DataPlay to listen to before they bbq

[@Milamberinx]

She said "seeya later, boi" He wasn't good enough for her. Now we know who that song's really about, poor little player.

[@user-sd6jz9tf8w]

SkErEeeE

[@paxhumana2015]

@@tHeWasTeDYouTh , wow, really?

[@compu85]

The comparison of the DataPlay disc to a CD is like comparing a CD to a LaserDisc!

[@5roundsrapid263]

compu85 The DataPlay disc is the size of the inner ring of the CD..

[@bitrot42]

I was hoping for a comparison shot of DataPlay to laserdisc...

[@MrZhefish]

be carefull, they self-destruct after playing the mission briefing....

[@SmolTerribleTornado]

Just like your phone after reading this message

[@justarandomhandlewithnomeaning]

XD

[@justarandomhandlewithnomeaning]

@@SmolTerribleTornado I'm using a laptop

[@xalataf3365]

@@SmolTerribleTornado what do you mean? is this a troll? My phone is still w

[@zwenkwiel816]

@@xalataf3365 love how your phone stopped working but you still managed to hit send XD

[@Firing_Order]

I'd hunt down another one. Right now, there is no documented footage of the computer portion working. It needs to be documented.

[@louiepatouie4168]

No, don't hunt it down, let it die. I use mine as aquarium decorations.

[@MacFyrestone]

@@louiepatouie4168 ( ☉ _ ☉) wot

[@Francisco-Danconia]

LGR should totally do an oddware of that

[@Cyba_IT_NZ]

The disk looks like a prop from any sci-fi/spy thriller movies of the 90's and 2000's that contains the data that the protagonist is trying to get/destroy. :)

[@garystinten9339]

Akin to Johnny Mnemonic.

[@Frigid_Kev]

Never thought I'd ever see a disc smaller than UMDs

[@rydoggo]

I thought umd was close to the size of minidisc

[@dooseyboy]

i'm glad these existed, its very cyberpunk

[@TheZumiezNation]

looks like something you'd slot in the back of your head in Cyberpunk 2077 as an upgrade.

[@Elizabeth142418]

1:56 has a FIRE aesthetic and you can't change my mind on that

[@iriskrane2433]

Me at the machine: “why’d you have to go make things so complicated?”

[@allan.n.7227]

KUDOS to iRiver for driver/software support !!

[@japzone]

This isn't really support, just them never deleting anything. Support would be them continuing to at minimum update the software to make sure it runs on the latest OSs.

[@thestarshavefallen]

@@japzone that's not support... Erm, that would be stupidity.

[@japzone]

@@thestarshavefallen Since when can you not be stupid to support something? 😝

[@tyrgoossens]

Even though I don't use it myself, you have to hand it to Windows for being able to install and use ancient software like that.

[@YAUUN]

@@japzone Nope, that's support. It's passive, but it's still support. Have you notice how much useful older stuff has been deleted from Microsoft's websites since the release of Windows 10? Even Technet is missing stuff. And I'm not talking about 3.1 & 95 era stuff. Useful XP & Vista stuff that's still functional on 10, more functional than what ships with it. Plus technical articles & videos about Windows internals stuff thats still relevant. Although to be fair, some of those videos are in formats that are only supported by VLC these days.

[@runetech]

Now that you've done the video every Dataplay unit ever manufactured will show up on Ebay. So I suspect a follow up will be forthcoming... :)

[@MarkTheMorose]

"Worked when played last".

[@joshlawson3125]

I have one

[@YAUUN]

Probably a crate or 2 sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

[@wildstarlights2]

I so wish. one came up yesterday for £400 no cables

[@wildstarlights2]

@@joshlawson3125 would you be interested in selling it?

[@lukmly013]

500MB!!! That's quite large for such size and time. Imagine if it kept evolving. Maybe it could hold like 25GB. Or even more although it wouldn't be worth the price I believe.

[@procrastinator1842]

I guess, but now we have 1TB micro sd cards...

[@PascalGienger]

@@procrastinator1842 Yes but without power they lose information already after months. 1 year without power is a critical point. They lose data.

[@blufudgecrispyrice8528]

Is this true for all flash storage?

[@jameshodgetts7541]

@@blufudgecrispyrice8528obviously the longer something is in storage, the more chance there is of it going wrong, but I personally pulled out an SD card from about 2003 (well, thats when the images were taken anyway!) from an old camera and it worked fine 20 years later! With the reduction in quality we tend to get now, i wouldn't trust SD cards to last forever, but then again, no storage medium is perfect.

[@dustojnikhummer]

@@PascalGienger And discs rot. So what?

[@MrJonline]

DataPlay - Write only, Read once.... RIP

[@justinpipes85]

Haha.

[@Chris-Workshop]

lol

[@richardburke9861]

Haha perfect

[@lint2023]

Flash from the past! I have a Dataplay disk, unrecorded. I worked at Imation and was involved with the disk development. It was exciting for a while.

[@cjc363636]

"We certainly don't have all the answers yet." Has to be one of the worst pre-rollout CEO statements I've ever heard!

[@bluedistortions]

Well.. considering they were days before bankruptcy and no clear plan to adoption by any major company, I think he was saying as little as he could without sounding completely delusional.

[@bami2]

The disc reader committing seppuku after playing avril lavigne only seems like a logical conclusion.

[@RaccoonHenry]

furthermore, it sang a beautiful swansong of skips, whirrs and clicks, infinitely more beautiful music than that lowly 2000s happy punk

[@manchesterunitedno7]

@@RaccoonHenry Is that even a punk? The rest of her debut album full of sappy ballads. Avril is as punk as Vanilla Ice is hip-hop

[@UnitSe7en]

@@RaccoonHenry Avril Lavigne is punk. Hahaha . No, stop. Hahaha. Please stop, you'll make me burst my hernia. Hahahaha.

[@fallingwater]

Jesus, this debate takes me back a decade and a half.

[@EoinJones]

@@fallingwater I was at the Roskilde festival in Denmark that year and they had Korn on one stage and Avril Lavigne on the other at the same time.

[@hawyercruz3618]

What the heck?! ANOTHER format that I didn't know it existed. I love this channel so much. Shout out to LGR and the 8-but guy too!

[@gluee8674]

for sure

[@chinabluewho]

I like to think that my kodak 4000 disc camera will be featured on here someday.

[@wildstarlights2]

ever heard of the CED disc?

[@deltaboogaloo633]

... Technology Connections

[@imhafdhom]

Ikr! I was attending to my studies at that time, and all my assignments were submitted in floppy disks. 🤣

[@freshprinceofcharlotte]

"Died doing what it loved, playing skater boy" 😂😂😂

[@dacus7]

I hope this does not violate the "not going on and on about the player breaking", but as someone that has worked with at least a dozen types of optical drives, that was NOT the sound of a failed laser. To me it sounded like the sled that moves the laser across the disc was stuck. Another possibility is that the home position sensor is not making good contact and the sled motor is perpetually trying to bring the laser back to the home position. Moot points since you are not going to destroy the player trying to make it functional again, but just wanted to throw in my .02 on a more likely cause of that noise.

[@ddragon8154]

I'm not so sure about the sled part here. Techmoan included some footage of a teardown (I doubt one he's done, given player rarity) and you can clearly see the optical heads are on an armature, like in any modern fixed disk. :-) Doesn't say this isn't an actuator failure by any means, mind you! :-)

[@dacus7]

I listened to the sound again and looked at the teardown picture. Definitely hearing a grinding sound every time the drive tries to spin up. While I could believe that the ancient laser controller chip could be out of spec and fried the coils or something delaminated inside the optical pickup block, the fact that it worked once makes that less likely. My money is still on the sled, albeit not a more traditional gear or worm motor, My guess is that a gear inside that box that controls the "sled" shrunk from age, fell out of alignment, and got stuck after the first successful playback. All moot and theoretical of coarse since we will never really know.

[@jorgepais2876]

Is it possible to relate the malfunction with the previous use of the pre-recorded single-sided disc?

[@manuelvasquez8974]

The copyright protection reminds of around 10 or so years ago when there was a bit of a panic around certain Sony CD’s that secretly installed a DRM that couldn’t be manually uninstalled from your computer. Depending on your player, I believe it could’ve locked you out of downloading music entirely, if memory serves. I remember there was a certain album by the Coral I wanted and didn’t buy just because I wasn’t tech savvy and would’ve never figured out how to fix it. Copyright protected on formats like that could be a really interesting video, especially considering those CDs are still floating around in the market at retail shops and online.

[@ayuchanayuko]

You mean rootkits? That stuff was nasty when malware started taking advantage of the concept.

[@manuelvasquez8974]

Ayu Natsume can’t say for 100% certain but I think that was it. Glad such copyright protections never caught on in any major way

[@MD-eb6iu]

IIRC us Mac users were unbearably smug that it didn’t affect us.

[@mattx5499]

The funny stuff is that there were so many optical formats out there and people still prefer standard CDs for physical music media. Even pendrives and SD cards were sold as music albums were somehow unnoticed. I think that DVD/BluRay players and drives backwards compatibility made CDs immortal. Everyone have something to play CDs at home like a gaming console for example.

[@EarthSurfer]

One feature not mentioned was the DRM system of the DP environment. The original intent was to allow customers to purchase tracks online and burn to the DP media while protecting the digital format from illegal copies. Additionally, there was functionality to “unlock” additional content for a fee on prerecorded media. (Does anyone remember the US Circuit City “DIVX DVD” fiasco?) Of course cheap CD-R media and NAPSTER killed any chance for the DP format. I had friends and former coworkers (engineers) working for DataPlay. I think the best tech lingered on for a few years following bankruptcy with an attempt to make it an optical media format for laptop computers. I know DP moved from Longmont to Boulder, Colorado sometime in the mid-2000s since the company logo was on the doors of an adjacent building to my office on the bike path.

[@CardboardSliver]

Oh God I remember DIVX. I remember you could buy a PC from CC with a DIVX DVD drive. I thought it was a sham, and stuck to good ol buy it and own it DVD.

[@TheRealColBosch]

It really shows how short-sighted the recording industries behave. It's their own greed that has led directly to the problems they're facing today.

[@EarthSurfer]

@@TheRealColBosch Definitely don't "mis-underestimate" the ingenuity of students on limited budgets...

[@LennyNero2019]

Oh I remember DIVX discs from Circuit City, got 1 or 2 to try at the time, you had a limited amount of time to watch it (48 hours from the moment of the start of first playback as I remember), and then was supposed to throw it away. Like a rental without the need to return the disc.

[@LennyNero2019]

DRM is what crippled the Minidisc most of the years. SonicStage with its upload copy counter, etc.

[@adriangrozea8003]

Techmoan and Avril Lavigne. That's a combination I've never thought I'd see. :)

[@stemid85]

Early 2000 was so weird. In the same breath almost I used floppy discs, portable cd players, minidisc player, zip drives and now I heard about dataplay too. 4 years earlier in 1996 I was listening to Tupac on a walkman. Around 2004 I was listening to Rob Zombie on my first mp3 player. And as a kid my parents would play vinyl records for me. What a time to be alive.

[@notsorandumusername]

In early 2000 I regularly recorded digital satellite radio on analog VHS - in long play modus for 8 hours straight! It sounded more than fine, better than most casssette decks. Noise-free hi-fi stereo. Rotary heads for the win.

[@milesprunier1198]

I love how spontaneous and unrehearsed your videos appear! The fact that the DataPlay unit croaked while you were still producing this video only adds to the great "real" feeling of your presentation!

[@256byteram]

I always thought there was something wrong with the early 2000's. I think this summarises it nicely.

[@mbii7667]

Wrong? Why wrong?

[@SomeOne-gs7sy]

2:07 That smartphone design is so ugly that everyone died. The end.

[@Blakbox92]

it reminds me simultaneously of a turn of the millennium PDA, a walkie talkie, and a prop from a late 90s-early 00s sci fi series.

[@Bismuth83X]

That didn't help at all!

[@bluedistortions]

It's very late 90s

[@softdorothy]

It was doomed. Timing is everything. A small device with white earbuds had just appeared on the market at about the same time.

[@georgezee5173]

Nah. It wasn't until 2005 that iPod sales skyrocketed. At least, worldwide. Anyway those DataPlay discs had the inconvenience of looking too much like a toy-thing. Sometimes in technology smaller doesn't reflect as more desirable or even practical (just imagine how easy it could be to lose one of those discs and having a hard time finding them back).

[@thejosie]

I remember seeing the Sony one in 99/00. Way ahead of it's time. MP3 cd's were taking off unfortunately.

[@thejosie]

@@danfuerthgillis4483 Rios were bomb. I always wanted one.

[@danfuerthgillis4483]

José Explosion Yep and the battery went for days. USB charged, mic recording and even had line in recording 1/8 jack lmfao.

[@thejosie]

@@danfuerthgillis4483 I would have sold my left nut for one, growing up poor sucked

[@AndersEngerJensen]

Hmm, I don’t think I’m going to release my albums on this format after all... 🤪 Sticking to cassettes and vinyl for now. 😎

[@roland985]

And we’re happy for that 🤑

[@Ask_Will97]

But what about MiniDisc? :D

[@AndersEngerJensen]

Will After checking prices, they aren’t half bad actually. I always thought these obsolete formats were insanely expensive to reproduce, but I found one company that seems to be good. Stay tuned, I may actually add to the selection if there’s a demand for it. :)

[@Ask_Will97]

Anders Enger Jensen that’s fantastic! Sign me up for the pre-order ;)

[@Techmoan]

Yep - me too.

[@FranLab]

For a quick fix I have treated those sticky coatings in the past by dabbing on some cornstarch (baby powder).

[@Fireship1]

Fran Blanche Fran! You hang out here too?

[@n111254789]

Love your channel good to see you here!

[@solidamber]

Baby powder is talc

[@jacksons1010]

ian gee Baby powder made from corn starch is very common as well.

[@AustrianAnarchy]

Good choice. Cornstarch based baby powder avoids the asbestos possibilities that come with talcum powder.

[@su9cp]

I wish I was a teen or an adult on those early 2000s years just to have the opportunity to experience this type of tech even if they didn’t succeed

[@BlaineEvans]

I remember seeing these on the ZDTV's CES coverage when I was in high school. I was convinced DataPlay was the future, and absolutely stoked about it. Then, of course, I never found it in any stores.

[@5roundsrapid263]

Blaine Evans ZDTV? That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time! I watched it constantly.

[@KiraSlith]

I think this is the first time you've shown a oddball storage medium I don't still have or haven't had before. I don't know if I should be impressed at your knowledge of formats or disgusted at my own track record of format purchases.

[@NGC1433]

So you have a tefifon???

[@KiraSlith]

@@NGC1433 It's my grandmother's, and its in storage *somewhere* but yes, I've USED a Tefifon. was something that her mother brought across when they came to America fleeing the Nazi Regime. Only has one cartridge that I know of, thing was in aweful condition last I saw, probably not doing any better now it's been in the heat and moisture of JB Storage at the edge of town for the past 14+ years.

[@colinantink9094]

nmeunier not a certain Major from a certain Star Trek show then?

[@colinantink9094]

nmeunier huh. Same pronunciation as me then. Never really thought there was any other way.

[@colinantink9094]

nmeunier great! I’ve now forgotten something to learn about the Uber useful entomology of Kira! Thanks! Seriously though that’s actually interesting.

[@panta_rhei.26]

tech in 2019: Artificial Intelligence will soon become smarter than humans tech in 1999: we made a tiny cd

[@CretinH]

Ok libtard

[@Flarexxxx]

Simpler times

[@grn1]

AI won't be smarter than humans anytime soon. Neural Network AI (Level 2) is really good at certain task and can find certain types of solutions faster than humans can but it's nowhere near general artificial intelligence (Level 5). No matter how much certain people or companies may try to hype things up we'd need some pretty drastic changes to both hardware and software for AI to be able to generalize. Until then we'll continue to have AI that's really good at one thing and terrible at other things. For example you could have an AI that's really good at identifying eggs but it you put a ball in front of it, it might assume it's an egg because that's all it knows or it might just crash or throw an error code and set the ball aside in any case it's not going to know it's a ball.

[@panta_rhei.26]

@@grn1 It all really depends on what you think "soon" means. To me in this context that means within the next 50-100 years. Granted I may be comparing apples and oranges, but what would computer scientists in the 1940s and 50s think about modern computing? Would we be on course with where they expected us to be, further ahead or behind? Do we have technologies that were unforseeable 75 years ago? I guess it's hard to estimate a rate of improvement for technology that can have so many breakthroughs. Let's just say I'm optimistic 😊

[@grn1]

@@panta_rhei.26 As you said it's impossible to know for sure but it would require radically different architecture to what we're using now. There have been some experiments with different architectures that might bring us closer but most of those are underfunded and/or so experimental that there's a higher chance of failure than success. Even if those technologies do pan out there's still the issue of software, new hardware won't have any highly optimized software engines or coding languages. In the timeframe of 50-100 years it may happen but when most people hear soon they think 5-10 years which is unrealistic (and if we did manage to create Level 5 AI in that time and it was immediately commercialized I actually would be worried since the tech is far too complex to guarantee safety in such a short timeframe). On the note of what technologist from the 40-50's thought in most cases we are far behind what they thought would be possible. At that time Nuclear was a big thing and everyone was trying to make Nuclear tech but then people realized the dangers of that technology and now even the Nuclear tech that is promising get's underfunded due to fears of radiation (even though fusion is safer than fission). Once transistors came around they thought computers would be far more advanced by now than what we actually do have because they failed to understand the limits of Moore's law (quantum tunneling). One thing most of them didn't forsee was flat screen monitors and the actual way the internet has developed. I read a lot of tech articles and have been for a long time and while I try to be optimistic I also know to take everything with a huge grain of salt. DataPlay seemed like a great and promising tech but we know how that story ended.

[@THX-vx8vm]

You never cease to amaze me by finding the most obscure media formats I've never heard of.

[@lemonlateralus]

"Ah I see you've played compactey discey before!"

[@NewFalconerRecords]

Knifey-spoony. I see what you did there lemonlateralus

[@leaf16nut]

underrated comment

[@StraboSE]

Those silver curves in the promo animation!

[@bungalowfeuhler1541]

The producer for the best band I ever worked with was obsessed with using the latest tech. They recorded all our songs onto these stupid things. I have no idea where they even got the gear. They even had this fancy mic that recorded live onto them. It actually worked really well for the time. Now I would have to spend tons of cash on antique gadgets if I ever hope to hear our music again.

[@Darxide23]

That rubber coating is literally decomposing. There is nothing that can be done to reverse the process anymore than you can reverse an apple going rotten. You can prevent it if you have something with this coating on it that's still in good condition, but you'd have to seal it with something. A clear resin or epoxy or something similar. It should completely cover over the rubbery coating which will prevent it from falling apart and it won't have that gummy feeling to it.

[@Milamberinx]

It would be my luck that the plastic inside would melt, and leak out some hidden recess, and I'd be left with a resin back of electronics with a mold for a case.

[@sweeetjuicetv]

it’s such a shame that the company was too small to get past their bankruptcy, as they clearly had a vision for the dataplay format and its future potential! i do hope that your searches find fruit, and thanks for making these great videos exploring old forgotten media and formats, keep it up!

[@JohnDoe-wq5eu]

The early 2000's we're just chock-full of this kind of stuff. I graduated high school back in 99, and let me tell ya that was a much much different world. Until the rise of SD cards really took over every company tried to throw it's hat in the ring of trying a new format. Of course in the end it was all about cheap plentiful CD and DVD writable media.

[@dcarbs2979]

I was doing music production then, and we were encouraged to save to Zip drives! Good luck finding the hardware to play them now. Only hold about 100mb too.

[@redflthcui]

and then you even had sd cards for sale that were full albums. Or an i the ONLY one that remembers those being around for about a hot minute?

[@JohnDoe-wq5eu]

@@redflthcui I remember that but certain details I forget like were they rewritable or single write?! Because if they weren't rewritable I just couldn't see the point of it but on the other hand if you wrote over it what was the point of getting music on in the first place. A real catch 22.

[@redflthcui]

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu from the articles I've looked up. SanDisk Slot Music was what I was thinking of. They were indeed rewritable, you had an album art, liner notes plus music tracks. Then there was extra storage space for you personal files you wanted to add. They also were not copy protected as well. When SanDisk changed to SlotRadio format is when it all goes down hill. Some very very bad decisions were made and they killed a format that might have had at least a limited future.

[@JohnDoe-wq5eu]

@@redflthcui The problem almost always is they will do what is best to make them money first and foremost not for the customer. That's basically what the first 10 years of "digital audio" and all that nonsense taught me. They're always trying to find a way to make sure people don't copy music easily, proprietary formats etc just every possible thing to annoy the customer.

[@fredashay]

People will always reject a format that includes copy-protection/DRM whenever there is a non-protected option available.

[@bradchervel5202]

I am still wanting a muppet in a liquid spinning around in a cube.

[@CatsMeowPaw]

Oh look, onerous DRM kills another format. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you.

[@peteranderson037]

I don't think it was the DRM that killed the format, though DRM does need to die a horrible fiery death. The early 2000s were just a really bad time for a new data storage format to come out specifically for music. As Matt mentioned in the video flash memory prices were dropping like a stone every day meaning that it was in competition with the iPod and other portable MP3 players. It also had to contend with significantly cheaper portable CD players that could also play data CDs loaded with MP3 files at a time where you could buy 100 disc spindles of blank CD-Rs for a few dollars. The DRM didn't help, but it was only one nail in the coffin.

[@sietuuba]

@@peteranderson037 All the iPods of the era used mechanical hard drives, didn't they? No USB either, it was FireWire or nothing for a while anyway. That non-standard connector for the USB connection on this one is pure evil though. That kind of industrial design thinking is straight out of the dark ages of consumer electronics. Anyway, this must have competed with Creative MuVos and Nomads, none of which I ever had either, but would have liked if I didn't already have a Sony MiniDisc. That sleek format though is really cool; such a lost opportunity in an alternative future history...

[@sjarken3979]

DRM was one reason, but the high price for the discs was another. And burning a normal cd was very cheap, even back then.

[@SenileOtaku]

@@sietuuba It's not an entirely "non-standard" connector. It was popular for digital still and video cameras some 12-15 years ago. It is a USB-B-type connector fitting in between the standard USB B connector size and the 4-pin Mini-B, it just fell out of favor eventually in favor of the 5-pin Mini-B and the Micro-B.

[@flamaest]

I was at the consumer electronics show when dataplay was first announced. I remember that they bragged about spending over $1,000,000 on their Show Booth, had multiple celebrities signing autographs, and were showing their dataplay hardware, one-off prototypes, and giving out free coffee and food. it was like they were just throwing money around. I was lucky enough to pry a couple of data play recordable and pre-recorded discs away from one of the engineers which I will never part with. This is a true piece of consumer electronics history.

[@gojikranz]

I love that the only home recorded dataplay disc around has gentle giant on it. Great band.

[@zabtronics]

If these weren't write once and flash storage hadn't started to get cheaper I could have seen these being a big success. 10 bucks for 500mb? And on that little disc? It was a great concept

[@voltz15]

I would have liked this technology at one point, but I look at where we are on microSD and it freaks me out how far we've come.

[@voltz15]

256gb and you dummies still aren't happy. XD

[@svenzo1199]

Are you ever gonna run out of obscure audio formats? If so I hope it isnt in a long time.

[@nakyer]

*Svenzo1* Wait 'til he tells us about "The 1992 release of the cheese sandwich audio player, which could store up to 500mb of data/music, depending on the type of cheese used."

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

Svenzo1 So you hope he runs out of formats soon?

[@svenzo1199]

@@johnfrancisdoe1563 Dude did you read my comment? If so read it again with your brain turned on.

[@fargeeks]

Alot of these obscured formats I have never heard of before

[@toughmanrandysavage3077]

I got a old laptop covered in that rubber coating and it was like sticky glue it took forever to remove it and it was everywhere on my counter.

[@mikatu]

Honestly, I think that format had a big potential. I could see me using it instead of an ipod, as long as the discs were RW.

[@haraldhimmel5687]

Not for long with the Ipod Mini just around the corner with 4gb capacity. Too little too late. Optical media needed a damn good reason to exist at the time, like the DVD.

[@TVperson1]

Reminds me of that scene in Men In Black when 'K' shows 'J' that really tiny CD

[@justinpipes85]

"Looks like I'll have to buy the white album again."

[@5roundsrapid263]

I thought the same thing...

[@powersurge91]

@@5roundsrapid263 He had to wait until itunes came out I guess...

[@Efferheim]

It substitutes “cat play” for “dataplay” because Data had a cat named Spot.

[@glorifiedng]

When I see those discs I think of Agent K: "It's a fascinating little gadget, It's going to replace CDs soon, so I'll have to buy the White album again."

[@gato38]

oho! Gentle Giant nice to see some Prog kicking around!

[@MP-Fin]

Yeah my first true love in music was prog rock. Started off with Dream Theater, then came the classics, Pink Floyd, King Crimson... 👍🏻❤️

[@ikannunaplays]

I actually really wanted one of these back in the day

[@vwspeedracer]

Interesting to see that it's variable bit rates while playing back that prerecorded disc.

[@leonkernan]

Well it's not like any other noteworthy music players were first revealed in 2001 to steal it's thunder..

[@charperbonaroo]

For those few people not getting it: iPod was released in 2001

[@neoasura]

We get it, we just didn't want a 1st gen iPod at the time, they were very expensive for what they offered in storage. And the first gen only worked on Macs, which was NOT mainstream in 2001.

[@gwishart]

The Creative MuVo?

[@DAndyLord]

It's weird to think that no iPods were destroyed during the 9/11 attacks, and likely, very few Windows XP computers too.

[@jimandaubz]

Yaaa... I don't think I even heard the name ipod until the ipod mini, and video came out. Nobody paied attention to that backwards product form that backwards company And I am a white middle class male, who was in that disposable income age bracket in 2001. I was the target audience. Problem was; The ipod wasnt all that special or diffrent there where plenty of mp3 players by 01 some being released in the 90's and at the time in 01 they out performed the ipod, by a long shot and most came with convenatnt things like removable flash storage, so you could store even more songs, and really, no one wanted to have hard disk platters playing there portable music, that was a terrible idea. Why did apple use an actual hard drive?! Especially when the competition was all solid state, and sure at the time a single sd card could not quite keep up with apples mini hard disk, it only took two sd cards to out perform that ipod for pod people, and well, sd cards dont skip, hard disk platters do, and when they do, your data is damaged. There is just no nice way to put it. Apple devises are not landmark. The Itunes store was however the landmark as that grew then apple grew, and quickly with the napster scandal driving people to find legitimate music online; eventually forcing the name ipod into everyone's eyeballs, as they slowly became the only one stop online shop to buy music digitally, and no one wants to buy a wall of cds

[@misterakt]

never in my life would i have expected to see Gentle Giant mentioned in a Techmoan video!

[@daemonspudguy]

Mat seems to be a bit of a classic-era prog rock fan. His example of an album that would never have worked as a collection of 45 rpm singles was Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd.

[@nabukuma]

That album brings back good memories

[@dorkultra]

what if all the secrets in the universe were held on a DataPlay disc? We need to find a functioning player

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

At that point I'd just use a microscope :P

[@Nolroa]

The answer is 42

[@Milamberinx]

It's not worth it, just start again... ...so when we rub these sticks together... fire!

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

Nope. It's not stored on a DataPlay disk. It's stored in some forgotten PacMan machine, somewhere in some old gas station or an old roadhouse that hasn't been renovated since the 80s or something. It'll be revealed when you win level 99 on that special machine. And only then.

[@Brinta3]

You sound a lot like James May. That’s a positive thing.

[@thediamonddust]

Ha! I was sat here scratching my head thinking who the hell is it who he sounds like!? Cheers 😁👍

[@oxcart4172]

Hopefully he won't start smashing things up like an angry child...

[@goose300183]

The accent is different, but the timbre is similar. I honestly hadn't made that connection before though.

[@matthewday7565]

In some ways, a perfect illustration of the problems which might be found reading today's media in the future.

[@LordSandwichII]

9 year old me has just had his mind blown! I remember thinking how it would be great if CDs were really tiny.

[@brodriguez11000]

Kind of reminds me of the kitty hawk hard drives. Small indeed.

[@twocvbloke]

That sticky coating can be de-stickied with a good soak in some biological washing powder/liquid solution, I've done this with a few sticky things of mine and so far it's helps up nicely and not damaged logos on them... :)

[@Colt45hatchback]

Also works on steering wheels that start leeching their oils out, had a poverty spec 93 lancer with a plastic steering wheel, tried everything, still sticky after a few hours... Decided to try laundry powder and a bucket overnight, worked wonders

[@ThumpertTheFascistCottontail]

That biological laundry powder is also fantastic for dissolving corpses.

[@krzysztofczarnecki8238]

That depends- this rubbery coating that comes off and/or turns into sticky, discolored goo can be semi-transparent, so the logos can be under it, but they often happen to be on top of it, especially in cheaper devices, and then they come off. The only way to tell is to scratch a bit off on a less visible part of a logo. While you can mask off a logo with some masking tape, the edge of the remaining goo around the logo will be ugly and noticeable, the plastic underneath might have a slightly different color as well. If it's sticky and dirty, but still fully coated you might be surprised. I had a computer mouse with black coating like this that was actually white underneath.

[@twocvbloke]

The last sticky plastic thing I cleaned was what I dubbed "Lemon Mouse" (see my Instagram pic below), it was horribly sticky, and after soaking the plastics overnight in a solution of washing powder, it was de-goo'd and feels like new... :) instagram.com/p/BkX8AYRg6I0/

[@deus_ex_machina_]

@@ThumpertTheFascistCottontail First-hand experience?

[@petermarshall1634]

This is really cool! I wish they weren't discontinued :(

[@austin.lewis77]

I would have LOVED this as a kid.

[@cliffh1416]

So, you received these poker chip sized data storage devices through the mail? And no couriers were shot in the head on the way to (your) House? Sorry, I couldn't resist ... :p

[@xanx3572]

Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

[@DasGanon]

Ain't that a kick in the head

[@Aimede]

House Always wins

[@roughy762004]

this format should be resurrected in a Blu ray format.

[@jasonowen5675]

With a sapphire glass coating

[@Wagoo]

I was using a CD player that could play mp3s when this came out.. and by 2004 I had a 40GB iRiver.. it took a LONG time for flash to catch up to that (mini 1.8" hard-drive using) iRiver!

[@AfferbeckBeats]

In 2006 I saved up and bought myself a 30GB Creative Vision M. It was great, could play music and videos. I would watch pirated TV shows in the palm of my hand on the schoolbus! But I only had it a few months before it got yanked off the table by the headphones and smashed into the tiled floor. Dead, thanks to that 1.8" hard drive. Then the next year they released flash models.

[@Deinorius]

I had a 5GB tiny 1,8" drive iRiver MP3 player. I loved this thing. But it wasn't too shock proof. Later on I bought my second Flash player, the SanDisk Clip with 8 GB. Damn, this was the best ever! And now you just need your smartphone with 32, 64, 128 or even more GB and have the ability to do any shit you want. Still feeling some nostalgia.

[@Oyuel]

FYI. Searching eBay today I found two items from a seller in Italy: a pack of blank discs and a few optical drives from inside.

[@breaking4u]

Wow that would be a holy grail in a beck music collection

[@RuhrRedArmy]

I'm disappointed that this didn't take off. A very compact physical format for music is an appealing idea, at least to me.

[@kurtownsj00]

The NECESSARY file conversion was what killed my MiniDisc experience too. And while transfer speed wasn't the problem, the slow process of converting each and every song coupled with smaller than expected disc storage space (I knew the numbers before I got my NET MD MZ-N510 Type-S walkman but I assumed everything would be....faster, or the ATRAC3 compression better quality) meant I dreaded rewriting MDs. I still have my player within reach to this day, and enjoy listening to some highschool-era discs I made, but never again will I bother to go through that mess. :P

[@juanmartinwendler3601]

Yup... I got tired of conversion process and hooked up my MiniDisc via TosLink to my cable box and recorded music off those MusicChoice channels... If I remember NETMD programs eventually failed after WindowsXP. Still have some MD equipment even after selling some on eBay. Too bad it never took off in the US as it did in Japan and it may have actually replaced cassettes

[@deusexaethera]

Oh god, it wasn't rewriteable? No wonder if tailed.

[@gwenynorisu6883]

Yeah, Minidisc may have been DRMed and had other issues, but you could at least overwrite the discs to your heart's content...

[@northsouthy74]

Actually CDr was that expensive when it came out, I remember a failed burn being a ohh fuck noooo moment and they took over half an hour to burn at 2x

[@film79]

@@stevethepocket yeah but to be fair for the price of one data play disc you could get like 80 CD-Rs

[@TheExileFox]

@@stevethepocket Fun fact since 2014: I can get DVD-RW discs that are good quality cheaper than standard blank dvd's.

[@mrmeow1012]

Nobody noticed he wrote if tailed at the end instead is it failed

[@bio4210]

I see the previous owner of those discs was a person of culture, gentle giant and deep purple. Gentle giant was especially surprising the see.

[@jacobyne]

"Good morning Mr. Phelps. ( *important mission details ensue* ) (...) This dataplay disc will self-destruct in 5 seconds"

[@S7EVE_P]

I think this would have been a great format for the car. I still use CD's in the car and they take up so much room, whereas with these they are much more compact. Shame it failed really.

[@markpenrice6253]

Tapes were about the ultimate car format, I feel, before MP3 came along. Not too bulky, well protected media surface (so you can pull one out of the deck and toss it on the passenger seat without worrying about damage), easy to find, grab and handle, and you could get it into the player eyes-off without the issues of adding fingerprints or putting it in upside down (at least once auto-reverse came along, but if you were at the end of a side in a non-reverse machine you could at least rewind). Quality was good enough for the environment (quite a bit of high frequency background noise, masking the poor treble response and the hiss), and if your deck and tape were in good condition they were entirely reliable. Plus, make your own mixes from any source without needing a CD burner or whatever. And they don't have the problem I've encountered with MP3 decks that of being buggy enough to sometimes not recognise your USB at all, or glitching out and corrupting the entire stick (the equivalent of chewing 100s of tapes, or scratching 100s of CDs all at once; if your player starts destroying individual media, you get the message after the second or third and stop feeding the beast, and the lost tapes/CDs are generally easy to replace) A slightly smaller or particularly a thinner cassette with the development of higher quality media or digital encoding might have been cool, but actual micro-cassettes may be a step too far. They'd be TOO small - hard to deal with without pulling over, and need dedicated storage to stop them getting lost. It's bad enough keeping USBs or cased memory cards (never mind uncased) in order, or even small format MP3 players plugged into the Aux. I feel that may have been the problem with Dataplay, too. They're about the size of SD cards, or maybe Smartmedia, which are on the border of being a bit too small for handling in any way other than directly transferring from retail package to a host device, then directly between hosts. They're too easy to drop or lose, or get mixed up with a tangle of things in a pocket or glovebox, which doesn't happen with a larger medium.

[@markpenrice6253]

But interestingly the CD format size is apparently a result of a requirement that the case dimensions / the diameter of the medium itself be no larger than that of the longer axis of a tape (or its box), to help with deck packaging, making storage racks and boxes, fitting them in pockets, making practical portable players, emphasising the size vs vinyl discs by showing them off with a tape on top etc. Possibly the mini CD size is meant to be equal to the short axis, or the average of the two, to further improve the portability and comparison with the older format. Shame that a stack of mini CDs equal to the playing time of a typical blank tape is at least as large a volume as a boxed cassette, if not larger, and they're less convenient to use (lots of swapping, and they tend not to be auto-changer compatible except for bulky carousel types). If they'd progressed the technology and not released 8cm discs until coming up with a higher density recording standard (that 8cm compatible players could have the playback hardware for), and maybe a subtle downgrade of the audio quality to save data (could probably get away with 36.75kHz and 12-bit resolution with nonlinear encoding or a form of NICAM style companding, which would be equal to or better than MD-LP or MiniDV LP audio quality, the former of which I found perfectly good for the car), we could have had an hour of playback from a tape-like size package (especially if it's put in a thin, lightweight, floppy-disk-like caddy for protection, which full size CDs could also be put in). That's enough for the greater majority of albums, and those which would need to be cut down would likely be those which were extended for the CD version anyway. Problem is the sound quality, random access and improved durability would be the main selling points, and I dunno if the consumer market would have been so bothered vs the disadvantage of non-recordability (just look at how badly pre-recorded MDs sold). However it wouldn't have been as difficult to make a dual-format deck as for full size CDs. In fact thinking about it ... if you could make the head mech thin enough ... or have some kind of autoreverse system either for the sled or the disc itself (or make it manual, even), putting it in a caddy or slipcase would make it far more practical to go double-sided (and reduce the size of lead-in/out areas, maybe the amount of error correction, etc). We need to have about a 30 to 50% length increase per side to hit the target play time... Reduce 16 to 14 bit encoding (same as the original CD suggestion, and it could remain linear) and we can fit about 50 minutes. The frequency reduction suggested above covers the rest. That'd be a pretty much imperceptible change to the majority of people (audiophiles are unlikely to be buying it anyway), and could be entirely achieved with pretty minor adjustments to existing CD tech (number of bits to decode in a word, decoding frequency, motor speed - it might even just be a software tweak). Could have done that long, long before Minidisc came along. ...and now I'm remembering that I always wanted a Minidisc player for the car and was never able to stretch to it. And I don't know if they made Long-Play ones so I could use my collection of MDLP mixdiscs. That would definitely have been a superior car format. Kinda sad it didn't catch on with any particular strength.

[@Reepicheep-1]

I miss having a cd or tape player in my modern Civic. On the other hand, I've a 64 gig flash drive the size of my thumbnail that disappears into the USB slot in my armrest. Dozens of CDs ripped lossless and available. With extra room.

[@dhsredhead]

Imagine how many you would end up losing between the center console and your seat though.

[@oldveryveryoldmanfromthe1900s]

Use your phone

[@ktvx.94]

Gotta love the designs of the devices that would've supported this. They look as outlandish as possible, probably trying to convey how futuristic this was at the time

[@briangiles8979]

Wow, how much some things have changed. This reminds me of high school days recording tons of mixes on minidisc. I thought I'd be using those for years to come. Then came iPods, then iPhones, and now I can listen to almost any song I want on demand thanks to Apple Music. Makes me wonder how I ever got along without it lol. And that Avril album is great top to bottom.

[@pingozingo]

They should've used this for the PSP

[@swarmrunner]

Actually a UMD is better and has more capacity.

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

@@swarmrunner what i dont understand Is why they didn't used mini dvd , a single sided one has thr same capacity as the und used by the psp

[@Nolroa]

@@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977 I would believe that they did not use the mini DVD format because it could not be smaller in dimensions. If they had used this format, the PSP would be larger and more bulky, It would be impractical to be considered a portable console.

[@planchetflaw]

A person in Italy was selling a factory box of 100 red blank discs on eBay recently. Along with a few retail display boxes containing 5x 3 disc blanks. And 10 drive engines for them.

[@Kitt96]

"Thats not a knife, this is a knife" Love all your references.

[@sailormoonfan224]

Oh my goodness, these are teeny-tiny!

[@redsquirrelstudio6018]

Honestly, it's kind of a neat piece of hardware. Imagine the Switch using a modern version of it?

[@marzuqahmed218]

The psp was kind of like that. (But instead of data play it used the UMD format.)

[@grn1]

Solid State memory (which includes flash) is overall much better. The disc itself may (potentially) have a longer life but the speeds and longevity* of the disc reader are far inferior. The next gen PS and XB systems will not only use SSDs but will require games to be copied to them since Disc formats just aren't fast enough. Switch uses a cartridge with solid state memory (or flash) so it doesn't have to copy things over to it's SD card. *Disc readers have moving parts which makes them more likely to break from a drop or even just normal movement and the disc can get scratched as well. The switch is completely solid state except maybe a fan (not sure if the main unit has one or not as I do not yet own a Switch).

[@goose300183]

@@grn1 Yeah there's a fan in it for sure. It's almost silent though, but you can feel the hot air leaving the casement.

[@goose300183]

@mshesh16 hehe it's an actual word, and it doesn't quite meaning "casing" or "case". But it sort of does as well. Here in the UK, we call certain types of windows 'casements'. What I was trying to describe was 'the window in the case through which hot air escapes'. I didn't use it 100% right though, and it probably depends on context quite a lot. The youtuber AvE says 'casement' to just mean 'case' as well. I watch his videos, so that was probably in my mind too.

[@bareknuckles2u]

Mt first mp3 player was an iriver. It sounded great! Unfortunately, it was in a carry bag with a bottle of Gatorade that wasn't sealed properly and...well, you can guess the rest! rip!