The Biggest Failures in Consumer Audio/Video Electronics History

[WaynePflughaupt]

According to other sources online, Laserdisc didn’t die in 1997. Titles were released until 2000, and Pioneer pulled the plug on the last players in 2009.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

And that's just it. With a bit of forethought, good quality cables, only using CEC/ARC when the gear allows for it to work seamlessly (which is rare), and the ability to upgrade easily, I have just not found HDMI to be near the headache that many others have found it to be.

What causes the infamous “handshake” issue?

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Montucky]

What causes the infamous “handshake” issue?

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Touche, my friend. Touche.

 

[mntwister]

Very well written, great article. I was a huge laserdisc fan, when the original MCA Discovision videodiscs came out, you could actually own a movie in stereo sound at home, what a thrill that was for me. I remember fondly my first Discovision discs Xanadu and Flash Gordon, then The Blues Brothers. Having been an audio buff and movie fanatic all my life it was a huge thrill to watch these discs on my 46 inch rear projection TV (which had such low light you could not even see the picture from an angle) and listening to the soundtracks in dolby surround sound.

Yes I had an 8 track player, and quad Pioneer receiver, and some others in the list.

I think the saddest of the above is 3D. The way it was rolled out was one of the worst ventures of the studios and electronics companies ever. First, the studios started to release their very first titles as exclusives to Panasonic and Samsung, so with so few titles available (maybe 10), you were not guaranteed to be able to get half of the titles unless you paid a fortune on Ebay. The glasses were another problem. Asking working families to pay over $150 for a pair of active glasses, in a family of 4 or 5, was a big road block. And then of course 2 types of 3D (active and passive) confused the consumer even more! I truly believe that with 3 channels of 3D television on DirecTV (ESPN, one I can't recall and Direct's own channel) and continued blu-ray 3D releases, this format might have been a success, maybe not a huge success, but I think it would have sustained itself for much longer. The final straw came when the television manufacturers decided to expire 3D, many of the last models were made in 2016, but LG and Samsung had already quit, even with 3-6 3D releases a month on blu-ray including the Star Wars movies, leaving so many people without an option to buy a new TV to play their blu-ray 3D collections. I think the electronics manufacturers really screwed over alot of people with collections not offering ANY TV in their line that would play 3D. And of course there was Disney, who started releasing, with FROZEN, no 3D version in the USA.

So was 3D really a failure? I know of lots of people looking for a 3D television even now. Did the electronics companies cause it to fail? That's a more accurate bet in my opinion. Not everyone minded the easy task of putting on a pair of glasses.

 

[minirips2]

A friend of mine convinced me to buy a Sony Minidisc player because he found a great deal on them. There is no such thing as a great deal on a Minidisc player. Incredibly inconvenient by modern standards, with the exception that you could record on them from a CD at a rapid rate.
The same friend convinced me that Apple's Ipod was the ticket. Better by far than the MD player, but the hard drives never proved reliable. Ipod Nano was so darn small, I couldn't use it without glasses, and operate it because my fingers are both too large and insensitive from years of work as a mechanic.
Technology marches on, and what seems like the coolest technology today will one day be a garage sale item or dust collector, unless enthusiasts commit to keeping a format alive, as we see with vinyl.

 

[bobbybluz]

Both DAT and Mini-Disc found homes in radio. The last station I was at still had MD's in use two years ago when I retired, they were the staple for PSA's and commercials. DAT was also used in recording studios (I actually have an Alpine car DAT player as well as rackmount Tascam decks) for many years.

While the 8-track had far more bad than good it did offer the first device a user could record material of their choice on and play back at home when the recorders later came out along with in their cars or on portable devices. Don't forget that Bill Lear not only made the 8-track popular he was also behind the first practical car radio and the company that produced it still exists today as Motorola.

 

[panteragstk]

@sholling well, HEVC is about 50% more efficient over AVC so you downgrade AVC bitrate by half and use other half for HEVC - why not. Boost HEVC once transition is done or more likely just shove in more channels.
I could tell you than NYC area analog FM radio stations got significantly worse in audio quality and reception since into of "HD" radio stations. Coincidence?

edit:
Original ASTC was designed to use mpeg2 aka H.262 and in 2008 upgraded to include h.264/AVC.
Not sure how many station switched to AVC, but here's a visual guide clearly shows that avc provides 60% savings of bitrate compared to MPEG2. So switching from mpeg2 to HEVC should provide about 80% savings so nothing to sneeze about.

I've been using OTA for a long time and I haven't seen any that aren't mpeg2 FYI.

I think you hit the nail on the head in a different post. We'd probably get 4k out of our STBs if the providers didn't want to use the same massively out of date/under powered boxes until the end of time. Maybe that will change when the all move to Android TV as their OS.

 

[gdgates]

""Although the players were about the same price as a VCR, the movie discs were incredibly expensive—as much as $35 ea., and that’s in 1981 dollars!"

In 1981, $35 was actually pretty cheap to purchase a movie. 95% of the time, a new release on VHS was in the neighborhood of $89-$99, the dreaded "priced for rental" that I saw so often. I purchased dozens of laserdiscs for half of what my friends were paying for tapes. If you'd like to buy them for next to nothing, they're still in a closet somewhere.

 

[Montucky]

Technology marches on, and what seems like the coolest technology today will one day be a garage sale item or dust collector, unless enthusiasts commit to keeping a format alive, as we see with vinyl.

But hey, we sure had fun along the way! Personally, I've enjoyed the transitions in mediums and the devices we play them back with. Funny how I went from vinyl as a kid (and a bit of reel-to-reel), to tapes, to CDs, to MDs, to MP3s, then to SACDs and Hi-Res digital files, and then ended up getting back into vinyl at the very end of it all. Funny how that works.

Truth is, after my next move, I will be actually be on the hunt for a good quality LD player. There's honestly some movies that still hold up as MY "reference" versions on Laserdisc (See: Star Wars). Maybe it's my rose tinted nostalgia glasses, but I want to get back into it for a bit of tech geek fun.

 

[audioman]

I have been dabbling with audio growing up as a kid since the early 70's. Too young in the 60's. Late 70's when I was in high school I started getting as much info on audio like all those inquiry letters and info packets from stereo review without even subscribing. I might buy a magazine when my parents give me allowance money to get one. I was an avid reader of the late engineer JULIAN HIRSCH of stereo review. Anything new he reviewed. Because I was poor I only dreamed of having those audiophile audio and speaker systems. In fact some of the old technologies be it amps to loudspeakers will blow away a lot of mass market garbage even some of the audiophile loudspeakers of today. Very few loudspeakers today can match or supercede INFINITY'S RS, beta or point reference series just a few manufacturer examples. Audio hasn't really advanced much except in the home theater arena in regards to processing and recording process but that's in the studio. As far as home equipment, unless they come up with everything wireless and holographic that is LOSSLESS in transmission, not much to get excited about. Atmos is nothing great or to get excited about. Reducing the price of audiophile great of music server for dsd recording and playback for the home would be good for the industry and I am not too sure either whether dsd music servers can really replace audiophile
cd players. audiophile turntable and cd players are still the audiophile's choice as far as I am concerned.

 

[audioman]

According to other sources online, Laserdisc didn’t die in 1997. Titles were released until 2000, and Pioneer pulled the plug on the last players in 2009.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

unfortunately, though they may have been still manufacturing it, NO ONE was buying it cause you wouldn't find it in main stream audio/video stores. I was a former home theater installer between 1996 and 2002 before returning and retiring in the military.

 

[Paul Scarpelli]

That list is an excellent "Hall of Shame" and I don't disagree with any of the choices. You may take some heat for your Atmos comments, but they're spot on. In most cases, take the money spent on adding Atmos, put it into your front speakers and subs, and most likely you'll come out ahead.

 

[sterling shoote]

But hey, we sure had fun along the way! Personally, I've enjoyed the transitions in mediums and the devices we play them back with. Funny how I went from vinyl as a kid (and a bit of reel-to-reel), to tapes, to CDs, to MDs, to MP3s, then to SACDs and Hi-Res digital files, and then ended up getting back into vinyl at the very end of it all. Funny how that works.

Truth is, after my next move, I will be actually be on the hunt for a good quality LD player. There's honestly some movies that still hold up as MY "reference" versions on Laserdisc (See: Star Wars). Maybe it's my rose tinted nostalgia glasses, but I want to get back into it for a bit of tech geek fun.

I've come back to vinyl; and, I did not see it coming back, or myself going back to it. It's perplexing; but, right now, I think I might be listening to LPs again simply because when I use iTunes, I find myself using all of iTunes power all at once in a quest to hear everything that was ever recorded. Doing that, precludes me from ever actually being relaxed with the music I have playing from iTunes. With an LP, I don't have that opportunity to fidget forward.

 

[gdgates]

I've come back to vinyl; and, I did not see it coming back, or myself going back to it. It's perplexing; but, right now, I think I might be listening to LPs again simply because when I use iTunes, I find myself using all of iTunes power all at once in a quest to hear everything that was ever recorded. Doing that, precludes me from ever actually being relaxed with the music I have playing from iTunes. With an LP, I don't have that opportunity to fidget forward.

I can't do vinyl again, having suffered through it the first time. One snap, crackle or pop and I'm done. But I totally agree with your sentiments regarding having the entire recorded universe at your disposal with the click of a mouse. I've had Zune/Groove/Spotify/iTunes/Amazon accounts for years, and while I love sampling whatever I want, I do miss the days when I had to budget and research and choose very carefully. Because it was an actual investment, I eventually knew every note and lyric, and more often than not, every word on the liner notes to boot. These days, even if I really like an album it's hard to give it repeated listens, as there's always some new shiny thing I need to check out.

 

[theSteam]

Are you saying that
Atmos-Enabled Speakers 2015
Are out (crap) ??
Or the whole idea of Dolby Atmos?

 

[randyb]

In order to have winners, you inevitably have to have losers. Innovation works that way, no? I still have a Sony Dat player, any offers...hehe?

 

[little wing]

I hope to see HDMI on that list, some day.

I call it 'Horribly Defective Media Interface'.

I want to love it, because it made coaxial, optical, rca and composite video cables disappear in my system, but your right. HDMI can be a total PIA, especially that ARC s@#t

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

What causes the infamous “handshake” issue?

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Touche, my friend. Touche.

Is that all ya got? I was hoping you could tell me what causes it!

I thought it was mixing new with older versions, but we’re using a brand-new Roku with our 2007 Pioneer plasma TV, and it works fine. So I don’t know what to think.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[sterling shoote]

I can't do vinyl again, having suffered through it the first time. One snap, crackle or pop and I'm done. But I totally agree with your sentiments regarding having the entire recorded universe at your disposal with the click of a mouse. I've had Zune/Groove/Spotify/iTunes/Amazon accounts for years, and while I love sampling whatever I want, I do miss the days when I had to budget and research and choose very carefully. Because it was an actual investment, I eventually knew every note and lyric, and more often than not, every word on the liner notes to boot. These days, even if I really like an album it's hard to give it repeated listens, as there's always some new shiny thing I need to check out.

Yes, that one pop, just one, does me in too. Now, the vinyl I buy today is mostly used and sure to have a lot of pops so I c digitize it using a declicker. That gets rid of all pops except those which are really awful. I can not discern it downgrading the music. Once I import it into iTunes if I discern there is still a pop that has come through, I'll just buy that particular song from the iTunes Store and put it into the album. This works out pretty well. I'm saving money, and enjoying the outcome.

 

[scoraber]

Clever Little Clock, anyone?