This Secret Computer Plays The Music In Your Favorite Store

Рет қаралды 31,609

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 168

@vwestlife Ай бұрын

There's a text file on the DVD with an end of service date that you can edit to a date in the future, and then burn a new copy of the disc and it will play again.

@DJSubAir Ай бұрын

Can you please try this?

@LidLockTV Ай бұрын

@@DJSubAir I did it with my PlayNetwork Player which is similar to Muzak, and I can confirm, that it does work

@bradcr152 Ай бұрын

@@DJSubAir It works, I've done it.

@DJSubAir Ай бұрын

@@bradcr152 can we see it in a video? Is what's I was eluding to

@chatrkat 16 күн бұрын

Sounds like you’re describing an XD player not a CM-1. They looked identical except for the name on the front. XD’s played proprietary music discs. Those players could be reset to day one with a file found on the Internet by sharp hackers then play any XD disc again. Otherwise the discs only played 90 days generally. How do I know this? I was a service tech with Muzak, later called Mood Media, for 30 years.

@CarlLevine Ай бұрын

This is cool and all, but it does not whip the llama's ass

@TechThrowback Ай бұрын

winamp, WINAMP!

@JessicaFEREM Ай бұрын

oh gosh. winamp tried to open source their software and they did it horribly. so horribly that they took the entire project down out of embarrassment. basically just use wacup instead of winamp lmao

@elphive42 Ай бұрын

It was more out of accidentally sharing multiple proprietary codebases they didn’t have the rights to lol

@thecman26 Ай бұрын

From every direction!

@ATSNorthernMI Ай бұрын

The very first sound/song I ever heard on Winamp.

@richardcarlson127 Ай бұрын

The "NC" is probably for "Not Connected"

@DanielBerzinskas 6 күн бұрын

Or North Carolina - just kidding

@SilvaD702 Ай бұрын

Mood/Muzak is still transmitting via satellite on SES-1 @101w

@fomocopowersgarage7103 Ай бұрын

I never thought about with the mono vs stereo in large spaces. Makes complete sense. I've come across a few of these over the years.

@TechThrowback Ай бұрын

Almost everything you hear in the wild from outdoor speakers, to concerts (2ch mono), to distributed audio is mono. It solves so many problems 🍻

@coreybabcock2023 Ай бұрын

How did you come across them ?

@daveh2612 27 күн бұрын

@@TechThrowbackI have a 4000 sq ft shop that the previous owner installed speakers throughout and has it set up in stereo. It messes with your head when you walk around, makes me almost nauseous for lack of a better term. Using mono across a large area makes sense.

@idahofur Ай бұрын

We interrupt the k-mart music network for a blue light special. :)

@rocketscientist007 Ай бұрын

The cpu is stated on the spec sheet. It's a Motorola PowerPC, the successor to the 68000 series. The OS is probably a UNIX variation. The PowerPC was used in Apple computers after the early MacIntosh's.

@kbhasi Ай бұрын

Yep, I was thinking it ran some version of embedded Linux.

@P-J-W-777 Ай бұрын

We had those at CompUSA before being upgraded to the Satellite streaming system when I was there from 99 to 01 when they were bought out. We would bypass it at night in order to play our own music as well while playing video games on the store systems after closing. Myself and the other tech had to always take care of those.

@TechThrowback Ай бұрын

CompUSA, the greatest computer retail store to ever exist... I think most of my core memories are that place and hunting the rebates with my dad (why does Microcenter suck so much) 😥

@P-J-W-777 Ай бұрын

@@TechThrowback Yeah, i 100% agree! I still have a lot of the stuff I purchased with my employee discount or that I got nearly free when it was discontinued and when we sold off all the inventory after being sold out. I had a great experience working there as a Tech and then Tech Department Manager when I was just 21-23 years old. The things I saw I’ll never forget. The things people did as well as put on there computers was crazy. I ended up downloading the downloaded music from everyone’s computers that they would spend countless hours downloading from Napster or BeatShare. I had a library of over 10,000 songs lol that I never downloaded from any of the illegal sites lmao. I even worked on the Apple computer with the Joe Dirt Script on it which was flown in on helicopter which landed in our parking lot. Talked to the director on the phone and he was pissed when we told him it would take 2 days to get his parts in. They had to put production on hold. Later we got a call back from him apologizing and he even invited myself and my other Tech down to become extras in the movie. I still have his hand written note stashed away somewhere. Had one guys laptop with a bullet hole through the screen all because he was watching porn and his wife was pissed off. Still replaced it for free as he had the screen protection warranty. I ended up going from there to Gateway Country as a Tech as well.

@angrytexan666 Ай бұрын

@@TechThrowback I enjoy your channels and content. I worked at CompUSA and currently work at Microcenter for almost 18 years now. I too have nostalgia for CompUSA, but corporate is much better at Microcenter, plus rebates aren't a thing there anymore, they just give the discount. However, I am interested in knowing why you think it sucks. To see the point of view from a customer, especially you, would be nice. Don't hold back as I am fond of both. Also, if you come to my location, which is closest to you, I will make sure you get the care you deserve.

@angrytexan666 Ай бұрын

In 2007 our CompUSA closed, during the liquidation time I was tasked with making a music playlist and add the announcements every three songs which was totally a violation of DRM lol. I was told that we were concerned with closing down and not staying open so it doesn't matter. We lost the satellite once we started closing.

@P-J-W-777 Ай бұрын

@@angrytexan666 We never got to get that far. Our store closed in 01 after the purchase. I had a quit a few stock options and held out during the initial offer thus waiting to the very end getting 2 dollars more per option lol. Being that we were a smaller town when compared to other locations the Grupo Sanborns closed our location much sooner. It couldn’t have come at a more convenient time as Gateway Country had just built a new store just across the street so that became my new home at least until they closed. Gateway was actually an amazing company to work for which worked out but I still missed the whole CompUSA experience and all my trips to the corporate offices in Addison Texas.

@MisterrJmark Ай бұрын

LOL when I worked at T-mobile...we had a new store built and this was in our server room. I used to disconnect that box and play pandora radio over the speakers. This was back in 2006 -2011. Also it had an output on the back of that box to hook into our phone system to play the hold music from those disks too.

@FeloniousSavage Ай бұрын

I thought my boy John gave up on this channel, heck yeah! Glad to see the new videos 👌😉

@cppctek Ай бұрын

Same. I’d gladly watch this over new car reviews lol

@MatroxMillennium Ай бұрын

My dad has told me about when he worked at a restaurant called Pizza Inn as a teenager and they only had one audio channel hooked to the kitchen speaker... It was always upsetting when Bohemian Rhapsody came over the system because basically half the song was missing

@rickc303 Ай бұрын

That song is upsetting enough because it was overplayed 25 years ago

@arctic6405 15 күн бұрын

funny enough pizza inn still exists and its audio is still as bad as it always was

@cpyt Ай бұрын

Muzak has been around literally forever!

@GothGuy885 Ай бұрын

I remember my dad telling me that back in the late 50's early 60's they had music in one of the offices that he worked in as a manager, and that the service cost $68 a month back then. that was a lot of moola for that time

@tvsteve2 Ай бұрын

JR on the power jack the NC is NOT CONNECTED!

@gregm.857 Ай бұрын

Muzak has been around for at least 60 years. I remember when the music was on special 12" LP records that played at 16-2/3RPM (half the normal speed, for twice the playing time). All the local stores got their signal from one record changer (located in one of the stores) and it was fed around town on leased telephone wires. "Ugh" then, "ugh" now. You get a much better selection with a *commercial* subscription to SiriusXM.

@Trainguyrom Ай бұрын

The bank I worked at a couple of years ago went the commercial SiriusXM route. Unfortunately the roughly 2 hour loop they do created friction with some of our higher up employees so there was about a weekly ticket to IT to change the station despite IT officially not being in charge of the radio (we didn't want to become the mediator of music choice). I did quietly change it to the holiday station for St Patricks Day to enjoy some Dropkick Murphys on the job though :) If it were up to me, I'd do a purely acoustic jazz or classical selection turned way down so its easy to tune out, but I was not in the position to make those decisions

@JessicaFEREM Ай бұрын

once the IA is back online it couldn't hurt to archive the HDD disk image and the CD itself.

@trssho91 Ай бұрын

FYI - NC means not connected

@Wii505 Ай бұрын

Also the warranty avoided if sticker is removed sticker does not mean anything here in the US

@tedmich Ай бұрын

In 1989 Muzak moved to Fremont in Seattle, then downtown Seattle in 1995. Several famous Seattle musicians worked there!

@TheiTunesFanboy Ай бұрын

9:04 It is actually illegal in the US for manufacturers to deny warranties due to removed stickers. 17:58 It probably was not illegal to play music from your iPod in Taco Bell because you bought the music.

@JacGoudsmit Ай бұрын

You may have paid for the music on your iPod but it doesn't belong to you. All you paid for is a license to listen to it by yourself or in a non-public place with a few people. Music in public places like Taco Bell requires a public performance license.

@TheiTunesFanboy Ай бұрын

@@JacGoudsmit That is a valid point!

@aaron71 Ай бұрын

Neat, been in IT for many years and never saw one of these! Thanks for the deep dive!

@coreybabcock2023 Ай бұрын

I really love watching all your videos so far cause i got to experience most of the tech myself and i would go back to Those years in a split second

@FeloniousSavage Ай бұрын

The tale of John Ross and his Taco Bell copyright infringement days.... Saturday 9:00 p.m. on HBO 😂😂😂

@bmiller949 Ай бұрын

Wow. I remember the days of internet radio in 2000.

@Polkametal666 Ай бұрын

I used to live in Charlotte NC in the early 2000’s where Muzak was located, and at the time I worked at Media Play, which sold games, books, movies, and CDs. Every so often a Muzak employee would come by the store and buy CDs to be used by Muzak, in particular the censored or clean versions of albums. I never got to interrogate him as to why they needed to do it, I would have assumed the music would be send to them by the music companies. I always thought it was a bit weird, but neat at the same time.

@codychrisnyc Ай бұрын

Very cool to see inside one of these. I used to work at a Caribou Coffee 20 years ago and they had one of these units. It used the discs to keep up to date. I too unplugged the rcas and hooked up my iPod to play my own music in the cafe 😅

@matthewdropco Ай бұрын

So maybe you can get an SSD drive and try to find a light version of linux and see if you can turn it into a at-home media server? Something you can maybe put VLC on or whatever. IDK. I recently revived a Blue & White G3 tower. I had to buy another case because mine fell while it was in storage. But it's working with 9.22, and 10.4 Tiger (side note, you have to have a browser that works with modern websites because everything is https and has some sort of cert stuff. so I can't even use Safari and apple hasn't supported Tiger or Safari for it in years.) I also found a few Linux distros that aren't too resource hungry. The only real reason I was getting it going again was to be able to use the ADB bus on it for an old ALPS brand keyboard that included a glide point pad thing. I don't care about that as much as the tactile feel of the keyboard. It's not better or worse than my Model M IBM keyboard I use to do my work stuff which involves a lot of typing all day long, it's just different. When I had that computer going in 99- 06 when I got an intel MacMini I just used to love to type with that keyboard for creative endeavors in writing, or poetry, or sending emails to friends or printing out letters and mailing. After I got it all going, but hadn't yet looked for that keyboard in storage, I found a PC version of the ALPS MGL on ebay for a good price and it has the windows key, and came with diskettes as well as adaptors to hook it up to AT or even earlier Mac keyboard port. 2 sep cable heads, one for "mouse" (the glide pad) one for the keyboard. hooked up to the ps/2 to USB adaptor and I can use it on any computer. So I just made my blue and white project a little moot. But I will probably keep messing with it to see which Linux or BSD can run on it. The main issue was the web browser thing. Also, it's pretty slow compared to my 2018 MBP.

@coreybabcock2023 Ай бұрын

Yes we had 72 volt system each speaker had its own transformer

@bmwloco Ай бұрын

SWMBO had a salon. Trying to cancel Muzak was like trying to talk to the Kremlin.

@2dfx Ай бұрын

WAIT! Now I don't need to watch JR go. I know where he went!!! TO TECH THROWBACK!

@518135 Ай бұрын

they used to do it over FM transmission when they first started

@philipboggs3372 Ай бұрын

I have an old security camera system out of a restaurant that was given to me. The air filters on that thing after being in a smokey, greasy environment for years was a nightmare to clean since all the smoke and grease in the filters had a chewing gum like texture.

@FarrellMcGovern Ай бұрын

You should hook up a laptop or something to the RS-232 port. It might be how they configure it, and may give you some more information.

@megamanguy 7 күн бұрын

More than likey these aren't being used anymore, since the new box is a small streamer from Mood Media, similar to a SiriusXM radio. I used to have a big dish and analog receiver that would catch an oldies channel from analog satellite.

@summerlaverdure Ай бұрын

this is a cool teardown! surprised it had a motorola in there but i guess it's really that old. great video, thanks for making it

@JamieStuff Ай бұрын

Yep; that's a PowerPC based chip.

@jrr851 Ай бұрын

Is this an episode of little guys?

@coreybabcock2023 Ай бұрын

Actually I think less than 2 speakers in the store it's legal to hear but yea in cicis pizza we used a Bluetooth receiver hooked up to the Muzak amplifier and then a Verizon tablet on KZbin music and would play music that way we really should have used the hard drive based Muzak internet box we had

@ocsrc Ай бұрын

Usb would give you keyboard and mouse RS232 is definitely to access the device They must have an OS on the drive

@marsgal42 Ай бұрын

That kind of engineering doesn't come cheap, but when you need custom hardware that's built to last you have to spend the $$$ to make it happen. My employers used to do custom hardware but everything now runs on COTS Linux boxes. Ditching T1 trunks for SIP was essential. Nobody at the phone company knew anything about T1 anymore anyway... I hear very similar music feeds at several local stores, likely an updated version of this. Whoever is doing it isn't afraid of "name brand" music - I've heard everything from Madonna to Taylor Swift. Sanitized versions, of course. "I'm a real tough kid I can hannndllle it..."

@69Dartman Ай бұрын

That's a cool piece of Commercial history. Be cool to try and resurrect the hard drive and see if it can be saved. I bet my buddy could do something with it, he builds commercial networks and computers for businesses and regular customers so he's always getting drives working or pulling whatever data he can salvage, he's pretty sharp.

@scoschegn Ай бұрын

Back in my pizza restaurant management days (90s - early 00s) we were using the satellite Muzak receiver. During opening/closing duties when we were not open, we patched in a CD player or radio to play whatever we wanted. The District Manager kept a blind eye providing we made sure it was off during open hours. Eventually they pulled the metaphorical and literal plug when another store started doing it and damaged some of the speakers.

@ocsrc Ай бұрын

There are a few companies that send digital music via satellite In fact, some of those are in the clear So you can put in a cheap digital satellite receiver and a KU band satellite dish on your roof and have free music of any type In fact, you see channels for major stores. They actually have their own channel with the ads added in from the company that is streaming to the satellites Really cool

@nickallain Ай бұрын

When I was in high school, I worked retail. We bought the adapter to override one of these systems and put our portable CD player on whenever the store manager wasn't around.

@paulkesner3315 Ай бұрын

The CM on the disk stands for the model of the player

@endall39 Ай бұрын

Really interesting. I always wondered how that worked. I wonder what the rate of music copyright violation is out there, especially with non-chain stores? Very high I suspect. It was amazing how much KZbin changed when they started cracking down on that. I remember when you had all kinds of good music in videos.

@Bullwinkle39 Ай бұрын

We had a similar system in a hotel i worked at, every so often we would get a disk in the post with the next seasons music, it was mostly pop you might hear on the radio

@texanjimbob1509 Ай бұрын

There was Muzak in an old building I worked in and it was piped throughout the building on 70 volt speakers. Every wire was red to the speakers and I'm sure someone had bootlegged a lot of connections to so many speakers. Same music on 6 floors. It was an old warehouse that was turned into offices.

@GothGuy885 Ай бұрын

wonder how many watts the amp was to drive that many speakers. bet it was Vac. tube amp. they could do the job.

@Default78334 Ай бұрын

I would be astounded if that "300-256" chip isn't NOR Flash (I would suspect 256 megabits) for storing the system's firmware and/or embedded OS.

@blackredonyx 16 күн бұрын

We have a much bigger box than that at my pharmacy chain that I work at, and we figured out how to hook up a phone or player to it… only do it on night shift, I figured it out at a gas station. I worked at years ago that had the same system… We played that stuff whenever😅

@RonLaw82 Ай бұрын

Anyone else get triggered when JR put the cd on the table face down lol

@TechThrowback Ай бұрын

This desk gets wiped down with glass cleaner 2x per video, every speck of dust shows up on camera (but I totally get your frustration) 😂

@RonLaw82 Ай бұрын

@@TechThrowback 😂😂😂😂

@kitcat2559 Ай бұрын

Maybe the drive can be saved if its repaired, if the discs aren't scratched or damaged hopefully

@GothGuy885 Ай бұрын

I also worked at Taco Bell in the late 80's, and we had a BMS that took these large disks that looked like a laser disk. the supervisor told me that you couldn't touch the disks with your bare hands, or it would ruin the disk. I assume it was an CED player for music only, or an early commercial CD system, but not the compact variety for general public use. I don't know if the CED players had disks that were just music, I had one for movies, and the disks were in a magazine. you would slip the entire movie disk into the machine and it would extract the disk, and spit the empty magazine back out.

@jeffvoitek4392 Ай бұрын

Console access via serial and you can probably see the current errors and why it's rebooting.

@m1t2a1 15 күн бұрын

Sometimes the playlist in the grocery store is what I listen to. When did they start playing Rush or Jimmy Buffet?

@stevenemert837 Ай бұрын

Motorola QUICC chips! We had them in the smaller Wellfleet/Bay Networks routers! Hadn't heard QUICC for years!

@drrenard1277 Ай бұрын

Can I use for my twitch streams then?

@branhicks Ай бұрын

We had that exact system at kwik star in 2005ish. One time they added a speaker that wasn't correct which caused the amplifier to get so hot that the musak box on top said hard drive failed

@MMackey27 Ай бұрын

Denied the WatchJRJam experience. There was no 🤘🏼’s up or 🕺 to be found… 😢 🔇 #NoUhnTiss Pretty rad, thanks for the share (and for all the content for that matter across the channels). 👍🏼

@JonasVilander Ай бұрын

Stupid note: If you were disconnecting whatever you were required to play during business(public facing hours), to play stuff when a store was closed, that was never a big deal. It still isn't. Commercial music license requirements usually were more targeted towards high-volume businesses(restaurants, medium-large retail) where lots of people were going in and out.

@inclinerd Ай бұрын

Am I tripping or is this WatchJRGo? Didn’t know he was so into retro tech lol

@alexandrecouture2462 Ай бұрын

Of course it's WatchJRGo!

@inclinerd Ай бұрын

@@alexandrecouture2462 thought so! I was about to ask if he had a twin who also did KZbin, will have to binge watch the rest of the videos on this channel later

@JamieStuff Ай бұрын

That's a nice case that it's in. If I could find one for around $20, I'd buy it just for that.

@haweater1555 17 күн бұрын

Does this have a notice on the button that is property of Musak?

@blaizejosh Ай бұрын

It's odd that it says, "Initializing Hard Drive" like it's going to format the hard drive and erase everything. The typo saying, "Initializing Hard Drive" should say, "Getting Hard Drive Ready" or "Booting Up Hard Drive" instead from whoever made the Muzak computer. .

@gman83090 15 күн бұрын

I have one of the mood player and its from Woolworths one of the supper makets in Australia

@BVN-TEXAS Ай бұрын

NC means no connection aka not used

@JynxGP 7 күн бұрын

Don't tell this guy that literally every in store music for coffee shops and smaller stores around the country are just playing off of some employee's phone lol

@JayrosModShop 9 күн бұрын

Most places I know just put an old iPod into a dock and run the audio through the store. Trust me, nobody cares about music licensing outside of being a popular chain store.

@witmoe Ай бұрын

Where is the link for your tech store i knowwww you selling some of that stuff!

@TechThrowback Ай бұрын

Eh, so far none of it is for sale so I can go back and make shorts... but maybe one day I'll sell a little of the collection 😳

@anthonycronk2001 Ай бұрын

Would be cool to see you set up some dial up internet!

@TechThrowback Ай бұрын

I really need a dial up setup 💯

@DucNguyen-bd5ir Ай бұрын

Where is even that room? The house isn't done yet. There is no space in the barn garage. Where is it I am so confused.

@AlabamaJones901 Ай бұрын

Yooooo I’m 2 minutes into the video and I’m like “I seen this dude somewhere”.

@_Boba_Fett 4 күн бұрын

I swear doesn't this guy have another channel about cars?

@WigWoo1 9 күн бұрын

Instead of paying for these boxes couldn’t you just play public FM radio in your business?

@JB-mk4ry Ай бұрын

Meh. This is all stuff LGR, Mat from Techmoan, etc have already covered. Appreciate the new content, but maybe tackle something that nobody else has done... Maybe set up the Heffner mansion with vintage Radio Shack X10 and use the RS232 adapter to automate it? Also my S80 is ready to drive to Kansas if you want it. :)

@X_millennial Ай бұрын

The 50's and 60's record versions are wild. Haven't seen the CD ones before

@WhitfieldProductionsTV Ай бұрын

our muzak unit was tape.

@NEConforti Ай бұрын

Have collected a few over the years. Not sure what I'll do with them. lmao

@OmegaErkz 12 күн бұрын

This isn't an old car flip video. I am confused.

@Spillmansgarage Ай бұрын

We had one of these at a Dickeys BBQ I worked at many many years ago. I should have taken it with me when we closed. I’m sure it was tossed in the dumpster with the rest of the restaurant.

@hellomiakoda3782 22 күн бұрын

NC in that context is "not connected", that pin does nothing and isn't used.

@11sfr Ай бұрын

You having worked at Taco Bell makes so much sense somehow

@rkzooplays Ай бұрын

Wow this is cool

@jvanb231 Ай бұрын

lidz just wanted employees to bring in cd's of "clean rap" .. at least back when I had a part time job there.

@coreybabcock2023 Ай бұрын

Ohh yes the fumes and air in a Pizza place will get everything all nasty

@coreybabcock2023 Ай бұрын

Actually some Muzak systems was streamed via microwave

@beaker15tyler39 16 күн бұрын

Is this watch jr go? Or am I trippin

@lonewolfrcs1331 Ай бұрын

i did the samething at t he taco bell i worked at but we had the 2nd gen one that had a aux plug and we would blast three doors downs new cd when it came out when we closed as we was cleaning lol

@NoahKainWhittington Ай бұрын

I mean if i own the music i could make my own playlist.

@communistjrotc1 Ай бұрын

Anyone else want to see jr and jays2cents do a video together? Either a var or tech video

@BiteThatApple 4 күн бұрын

Disappointed to see that you didn't actually attempt to read the files within..

@philipcheal552 Ай бұрын

you could have tested the hard drive with crystal disk

@SpaceTech54 Ай бұрын

Welcome to the history of distractions . . .

@tabajaralabs Ай бұрын

NC means Not Connected...

@billiam247 Ай бұрын

Mmm... Taco Bell.

@coreybabcock2023 Ай бұрын

You could try n dunp the drm chip there's a few KZbinrs who are great at it

@echodelta9 15 күн бұрын

Oh! To be able to hear real Muzak in public at low volume and no vocals at all. Oozing strings and soothing trombone sections. Sort of familiar tunes, that's it. Anything newer and it's become a joke.

@jonjohnson2844 Ай бұрын

I love the days where every application needed its own appliance, obviously completely unnecessary for most things these days. I wonder if you could repurpose that chassis for a mini pc or something? Be a shame to see something so well built go to waste.