Sony Discontinues the Walkman 250
Ponca City writes "Crunchgear reports that after selling 200,020,000 units worldwide since its inception over thirty years ago, Sony has announced that it is pulling the plug on the manufacture and sales of the Walkman, the world's first portable (mass-produced) stereo. Magnetic cassette technology had been around since 1963, when Philips first created it for use by secretaries and journalists, but on July 1, 1979, Sony Corp. introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2, a 14 ounce, blue-and-silver, portable cassette player with chunky buttons, headphones, a leather case, and a second earphone jack so that two people could listen in at once. The Walkman was originally introduced in the US as the 'Sound-About' and in the UK as the 'Stowaway,' but coming up with new, uncopyrighted names in every country it was marketed in proved costly so Sony eventually decided on 'Walkman' as a play on the Sony Pressman, a mono cassette recorder the first Walkman prototype was based on. The popularity of Sony's device — and those by brands like Aiwa, Panasonic and Toshiba who followed in Sony's lead — helped the cassette tape outsell vinyl records for the first time in 1983 as Sony continued to roll out variations on its theme with over 300 different Walkman models, adding such innovations as AM/FM receivers, bass boost, and auto-reverse on later models and even producing a solar-powered Walkman, water-resistant Sport Walkman, and Walkmen with two cassette drives." For now, at least, the Walkman brand lives on for some of Sony's media players and phones.
Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to believe something that was once the #1 format for music (late 80s and early 90s) is now foreign to anyone college aged or younger.
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The same thing has happened to floppy disks and VHS.
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VHS was an inferior format anyways. BetaMax ftw (unfortunately it lost the format wars).
Re:Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:5, Funny)
pfft, wandering minstrels FTW!
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Re:Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bluray's not owned by Sony (like beta was). Bluray is owned by multiple companies under the umbrella organization called "Bluray Consortium" similar to the DVD consortium.
BTW vhs was also proprietary. It was owned by JVC. I didn't see that our lives were harmed by that fact?
And CDs and Cassettes are also proprietary.
The world did not end when they were dominant.
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...CDs which came out of cooperation of only two companies, one of them being Sony (the other Philips; "S" and "P" in S/PDIF, too). Which is also exclusively responsible for the most widespread FDD standard, DAT, Hi8; cooperating on MSX, DVD, miniDV or HDV.
So many of those horrible Sony formats.
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Its like saying Android isn't owned by Google
Re:Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:5, Informative)
>>>BetaMax ftw
Myth. VHS and Betamax have almost-identical specs (see below). In fact VHS has one advantage Betamax did not have: It could hold 10.5 hours per tape, while Betamax maxed-out at just 5.5 hours. VHS is the superior standard, and that's why it won.
VHS Bmax feature
yes yes Hi-Fi sound?
250 240 Lines of horizontal resolution (420 for Super VHS)
3.0 3.0 Luma Bandwidth in megahertz (5.5 for Super VHS)
0.6 0.6 Chroma Bandwidth
10+ 5.5 Hours of record time
Oh and before you mention professional usage, that's BetaCAM not betamax. Completely different format (like Mac vs. PC vs. Amiga floppies). While Betacam was superior to VHS, Betamax was not. It was mostly identical, or inferior (in terms of record time).
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Myth. VHS and Betamax have almost-identical specs (see below). In fact VHS has one advantage Betamax did not have: It could hold 10.5 hours per tape, while Betamax maxed-out at just 5.5 hours. VHS is the superior standard, and that's why it won.
WTF? I have a VHS VCR, though I haven't used it for 10 or 15 years.
The longest readily available tape was the T-120. At the standard settings, it was enough for two hours of video. You could record in Extended play mode for six hours, but the results were horrible, and often quite fatiguing on the eyes. I never used the EP mode, and was even a bit leery of the medium speed setting (4 hrs).
10.5 hours per tape sounds like a security tape setting. "At 10.15 this morning, a grey blob entered the store, and subs
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The longest readily available tape was the T-120.
I have a stack of VHS tapes sitting behind me now (I am going to transfer some of them to DVD). Most of them are 4 hour tapes, but some of them are 5 hours in length (300 minutes). The 10.5 hours would be using the EP mode to double the length. Maybe they had 15 minutes extra tape to give it the extra 30 minutes to which the GP referred. I've never timed one to see.
However, when the VHS/Beta wars first started Beta could do 60 minutes while VHS recorded 120 minutes. They both kept improving, but VHS always
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T-120 (2/4/6 hour) and 160 (2:40/5:20/8 hour) tapes were common in the US. Betamax reached tape length parity when Beta II/III speed decks came out along with L750 length (1.5/3/4.5 hour) tapes.
The primary quality advantage prior to the SuperBeta format extension was how it stored chroma information. Betamax had slightly higher chroma bandwidth then VHS and stored a reference color burst on the tape. The latter helps as the tapes age. I just digitized a nearly 30 year old Betamax home movie last night, and
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>>>Betamax had slightly higher chroma bandwidth then VHS and stored a reference color burst on the tape.
That's BetaCAM not betamax. VHS and Betamax both used the same "color under" system, with just 0.6 MHz bandwidth. i.e. No difference. In fact some have claimed JVC simply stole a Betamax deck and copied its design, since they are near identical, but nobody's been able to prove it.
Another disadvantage Betamax had was the tape-handling system. In made rewinding and fast-forwarding a tedious pro
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(Replying to self) I see now that the half hour difference noted was due to PAL/NTSC differences. See the VHS tape length table [wikipedia.org]. I also see that there is a difference between the definition of the tape speeds (SP/LP/EP) between PAL and NTSC. How confusing!
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EP wasn't common on PAL models, possibly because they ran slower to begin with (despite the fact the total number of lines per second is almost identical to NTSC... huh?). But I did have a late model that included it.
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The longest readily available tape was the T-120. [..] 10.5 hours per tape sounds like a security tape setting. "At 10.15 this morning, a grey blob entered the store, and subsequently pulled out a dark gray blob, and brandished it at the cashier."
Well, you'd be surprised; I got a watchable 12 hours from my most recent (circa 2004) VHS recorder.
To be fair, this was a PAL model, and PAL tapes ran slower for some reason (*). However, by the early-90s, E-180 and E-240 tapes (**) were already widely available and the most common.
So I had a few E-240 tapes and used them on EP (one-third speed) which was actually quite watchable on a portable set; slightly inferior to standard play speed, but not as much as you'd expect. (***) 'Course even then I knew
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The reason is 50 Hz frame rate for PAL and 60 Hz for NTSC.
The 50 Hz frame rate (half frames actually which leads to 25 full frames per second) is also the reason why cinema movies (which use 24 fps) are sped up on PAL video.
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VHS was an inferior format anyways. BetaMax ftw (unfortunately it lost the format wars).
Betamax was introduced in 1975.
The color TV with RF input only - essentially every color set built since the introduction of color in 1954 - would have had a resolution no better than about 300 lines.
The ability to record a movie or a football game on a single cassette was of more immediate value than video enhancements to be seen only on a static Indian Head test pattern.
VHS manufacturers found a better solution to the
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Sony always seemed to put a heavy emphasis on miniaturizing home camcorders. One could never figure out why though, since the market didn't really care in the 1980s. The BetaMovie was a technical masterpiece or a hack depending on who you talk to. It used a tiny 1 head high speed recording drum. The rest of the camcorder was pretty primitive though, the view finder was optical and employed a system similar to a SLR camera. This made it tough to judge lighting in a room, a problem when using a camcorder rate
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It might happen faster to iPod... (which itself is widespread only in few places)
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And cassette Walkman wasn't the only portable cassette audio player...so? (though it seems its trademark became more universally genericized)
Re:Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Some formats/technologies are inferior even at the time they were made, but justified by the compromises of the time. In this case, analog cassette tape was relatively low-fi(gradually improved, but wow and flutter really sucked), had to be rewound, and was vulnerable to tape-chewing incidents. Even at the time, it was justified against reel-to-reel only by cost and portability(nice thing about tape is, for all its vices, you can always make it better just by making it bigger) and was at best sonically even with vinyl, but again smaller and cheaper. People who are into 'retro-chic' tech are rather less likely to latch onto the compromise tech, unless the good stuff was so wildly expensive that it remains unreachable to them to this day.
2. The 'futuristic'-'contemporary'-'obsolete'-'retro'-antique' progression: As a technology ages, its appeal changes in a rather nonlinear way. During the 'futuristic' stage, it is lustworthy; but either absurdly expensive or not actually ready for the real world. High mindshare; but zero marketshare. The 'contemporary' phase marks the peak of a technology's marketshare, when it is the basis of the vast majority of whatever systems it is relevant to; but this actually weakens its appeal. People might value what it does; but it is common to the point of banality. 'Obsolete' is the nadir of something's appeal. Marketshare is still quite high, albeit with gradually declining install base; but it is perceived as actively inferior to whatever has become 'contemporary'. It is often still architecturally similar, so it has no exotic appeal; but is worse, slower, uglier, whatever. A wintel from 1995 would qualify. Architecturally, it is nearly identical to one of today, only worse in basically every respect. 'Retro' is a stage that only some technologies every achieve. Here, the technology has become sufficiently alien from whatever is 'contemporary' that its flaws and quirks are seen as charming, rather than directly compared against the present, and any unique advantages it had have rabid fanboys. Things like record players, c64s, anything BeOS(retrocomputing in general, really), are here. 'Antique' is somewhat similar to retro; but applies to technologies so old or esoteric that they have basically fallen out of the market. Only a few hardcore specialists or obscure hobbyists have them, production is either artisanal or nonexistent, and so forth. Edison cylinder machines, difference engines, Thinking Machines systems, and the like qualify.
Tape is a poor contender on both points. Even during its time of greatest popularity, it was always the poor cousin to something cooler; but either more expensive or less portable. It also seems to have missed out on 'retro'(with the very limited exception of being a useful source for found-sound artists/musicians of various sorts); but still has decades to go before it has a shot at being antique.
Re:Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:4, Interesting)
That just reminded me of this [wikipedia.org]. It seems some indy film makers still enjoy "the look" this cassette camera generates.
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With a good turntable & needle, Vinyl will blow most 4-track compact cassettes out of the water. TDK SA and SA-X Type ][ tapes will be *very* good though, and MA-GX type IV tapes are even better.
My first *real* setup was a late '70s high-end DUAL with a Shure V15 type IV MicroRidge cartridge (bought in 1988). No hum that I could hear, minimal static, and since I take care of my vinyls, no skipping.
I still have that cartridge, but with a standard Midrange belt-driven turntable for the moment, waiting for
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Not a fan of hip hop or breakbeat then, huh? Mmm, scratching!
This right here is how vinyl survived and reminded popular. DJing with anything else wasn't practical until CD based mixers became available. That and the jukebox infrastructure in countless diners. Yes, there are STILL 45rpm jukeboxes in operation. Most popular singles are available on 45rpm if you look hard enough.
Re:Daddy what's a cassette? (Score:5, Interesting)
It was also the first convenient format for file sharing.
Reel-to-reel tape decks were "servers" to which vinyl records were ripped. Sneakernet took care of the logistics.
Now help me find my lawn...
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Obligatory (Score:2)
Indeed: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
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Reel-to-reel != cassette. Reel-to-reel is the AEG Magnetophon system and all of its derivatives, where you have two reels that are placed on the machine separately, and you have to thread the tape manually from one reel to the other.
Reel-to-reel decks were large and costly enough that I don't expect them to have been very popular for vinyl ripping. An 18 cm reel cost as much as an LP, iirc.
Cassette tape decks were the instruments of the first large-scale music pirates.
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"I don't expect them to have been very popular for vinyl ripping."
I must have been hallucinating the many reel-to-reels we used at the time (early 1980s). Standard procedure was buy an album, play it once, then rip what you like. Store vinyl, play reel-to-reel for long listening sessions, and rip to (expendable) cassette for car or Walkman use. Typical processing included Burwen Research boxes for reducing noise on imperfect LPs.
The home PC replaced a LOT of once-expensive equipment.
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Twin-deck home units were very common for that purpose.
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I still use cassettes and also record new ones (from vinyl records). My reason is that
1. I have a lot of cassettes already, copying them to CDs or MDs or whatever would take a long time and cost a lot of money (because I would need the CD or MD recorder and a lot of blank media) and would get me no result (a CD is bigger than a cassette anyway).
2. I have enough tape decks - one in my car, two portables (one bigger, one smaller) and one stationary tape deck at home. I also have two lower quality tape decks t
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>>>I'm locked in to cassettes.
>>>I also record TV shows to VHS tapes.
My brother! I've found you. ;-) When my Metal tape deck died in 2003, so too did my recording off the FM radio. No great loss. There's really no need anymore, because you can rip any song you want off Youtube and store it on c: or on Googlemail.
But my Super VHS? Still use it. It creates perfect DVD-quality copies from my DTV converter box, which I can store indefinitely on my bookshelves.
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Music sound quality on youtube varies from video to video, but you can find a video with good enough sound quality. However, a lot of the music I like can be only found on records and tapes, so I either have to buy the record or borrow it and copy it to tape (depending on which option I find). And the audio quality of a tape is quite good too - Imation TDK SA tapes might not be what they once were, but they are still quite good. There are also higher quality cassettes, but they are more expensive.
I use regu
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But my Super VHS? Still use it. It creates perfect DVD-quality copies from my DTV converter box, which I can store indefinitely on my bookshelves.
More like until the VCR dies. Tape doesn't last forever either, particularly if it isn't stored correctly. You might want to check out computer based DVRs, its a lot easier to work with... plus its random access.
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But my Super VHS? Still use it. It creates perfect DVD-quality copies from my DTV converter box, which I can store indefinitely on my bookshelves.
until the iron filings on the plastic tape inside become damaged due to magnetic and/or electrical fields...
or the tape stretches, or melts...
Admittedly, "burned" CDs can become unreadable after a few years, too, due to the ink fading...
It seems no storage medium is perfect; I prefer a storage medium that won't be degraded simply by reading the data stored on it.
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Well, if the music of your favorite artists is available for download - great. In my case, it's usually not.
Also, I don't care about having to turn the tape over. After all, I have to turn a record over almost twice as frequently. With MP3 I usually have to select each and every song or spend time making a playlist. And TDK SA90 that costs ~1.5EUR when used with Dolby B has great quality.
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"Stuffy's Frozen Parachute Band". I think I will hang onto my no-label, white demo vinyl, it's probably the only one in existence. Maybe someday I'll get around to fixing my old turntable, & create a digital copy - hey you're right! It would be available for download!
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The music of my favorite artists might be available for download, but I could not find more than a few songs. Even on eMule. The probable reason is that the music was popular in my small country and not in the entire world. Anyone who still has the records and tapes is most likely much older than me and even if they use computers and the internet, they probably don't want to bother with copying the records to the PC and making them available for download ("why me? Everybody else can do it too"). And most of
Back then "walkman" was fine? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowadays this would be called a Walkperson.
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Would you please think of the differently-abled?
Don't forget the Micro-Walkman (Score:3, Funny)
Checking some history, one interesting tidbit... (Score:3, Interesting)
When Sony released the first Walkmans, they featured two headphone jacks and a "talk button." When pressed, this button activated a microphone and lowered the volume to enable those listening to have a conversation without removing their headphones.[2] Sony Chairman Akio Morita added these features to the design for fear the technology would be isolating. Though he "thought it would be considered rude for one person to be listening to his music in isolation" (Morita quoted in Patton[3]), people bought their own units rather than share
(emphasis mine)
Hm, maybe communicating across the wall, via IM, with the family/etc. isn't so bad after all...
(the topic of "soundtrack to life" also worth noting, where the above quote came from [wikipedia.org])
Music industry probably freaked out.. (Score:2)
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http://www.cracked.com/article_18513_5-insane-file-sharing-panics-from-before-internet_p2.html [cracked.com]
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music [wikipedia.org]
Home Taping is Killing Music (Score:2, Informative)
Obligatory YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3jkUhG68wY [youtube.com]
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In 1995 I attended a COMDEX with an exhibitor badge provided by IBM. While there I met some tinfoil-hat guys who lectured me on how the RIAA was Evil (They pronounced it with a capital E, don't ask me how) and told me about how they were planning on device-to-
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The Dead Kennedys released a cassette with the second side left intentionally empty... probably due to the fact that there were a dozen songs, but they were each only 2 minutes or so in length.
Quote: "Home taping is killing the music industry. This side left blank so you can help!"
No story about the Sony Walkman is complete... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Almost sounds like a patent troll to me. What's the likelihood that between him receiving the patent in 1977 in Italy of all places and Sony pushing out the first walkman in 1979 that sony actually ever looked at that patent? Unless they found out within the same month about the patent, immediately begin research and development, while at the same time having the factory set up to produce them before they were even designed... it seems unlikely that they "stole" anything. More like coincidence that more tha
I owned one (Score:2)
I remember buying this at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas when it came out.
Fresh out of college with no experience, and with a starting salary greater than what my uncle earned with 30 years experience as a skilled machinist, I paid $300 if I recall.
Which was a lot of money at the time. I remember hesitating before buying it, but rationalized that after four tough years in college, and given my salary, I had earned it.
It was robustly built and had many parts made from metal, and it lasted for many years. (Un
Tune in, turn on, drop out (Score:3, Insightful)
Way back in the early 80's, an old, wise Princeton professor complained about this new trend of students constantly wearing Walkmans. His comment was, "They seem to think that life must have a soundtrack album, like a film."
Another comment was about the trend to wear long black coats, or sectional down jackets: "They either try to look like Raskolnikov or hand grenades."
Nowadays, when I'm out and about, most of the younger folks seem to be "tuned in." To the extent that they cannot hear a car honking at them when they ride their bikes through a red light.
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To the extent that they cannot hear a car honking at them when they ride their bikes through a red light.
Darwin has something to say about this practice. It happens here a lot too, and I could not imagine anything dumber. Cycling is dangerous enough as it is without blocking one of your critical senses.
Best one (Score:2)
My favourite Walkman - and I've still got one - is the one which is exactly the same size as a compact cassette case. It uses just a single AA battery and is an utter masterpiece of miniaturisation. There is a slight trick to how they get all the guts and motors of a cassette player within the size of a standard case, but it's still very clever.
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Also still have such late one...somewhere. One of the best things about it - battery life.
I estimate around 90 hours. Once I popped in a new AA battery on Thursday, listened a bit that day; also during Friday, in the evening - on a train trip to home city, then a walk through it; and...I forgot to turn the thing off, when putting it into a wardrobe together with my coat. A trip back was Tuesday noon; it was still working. In fact, the battery was good for normal listening, around two hours each day, almost
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iPod nano where the volume of battery is of course not that much different; nvm how the battery tech / energy densities supposedly improved greatly.
Everything settled on 20-30 hours. And, somehow, mp3 players using AAA (yes, smaller - but with ratings easily compared, ~2.5x smaller) are fairly pathetic (much worse than iPod nano, less than 10h - so with AA one would expect at most 30, still far from my Walkman)
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Re:The Walkman was the end of the music industry (Score:5, Insightful)
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And yet Sweden, the country which gave us The Pirate Bay, is the only place in the world with sustained physical sales.
But execs don't want to hear that much, preferring to think in the categories of their "superstars" (while in Sweden it is simply a case of many great indy acts)
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and before 'downloading' there were live shows, tapers (people who were allowed or not) and 'tape trees' where the parent or seeder gets 3 or more child nodes to send blanks and postage (B+P) 'up' and the parent copies the tape 3 times and mails it down. alternately, content is sent up in one cassette (or DAT, or later cd-r) and then content from the tree (what everyone wants for this particular trade, this show or whatever) is copied down to new tapes and exchanged downward to the child nodes.
customarily,
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Then you will recognize my username.
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Let's try that again, to make a point:
Once those player pianos were possible, the music industry was not able to sell any more tickets to performances. Artists went to get real jobs and that is why all music you hear is only done by amateurs.
Same sea change. Music is still being done by professionals.
As much as technology changes, the *situation* is still the same. Human behavior is the same. Supply/demand curve stuff. If they want to overcharge for it, I won't pay *their* price, and can either not get
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So back in the days of cassettes and VHS, everyone could share their entire music / video collection with anyone else in the world, more or less instantly, and there was no degradation in quality?
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The best you can compare is what VHS did to the film industry. A few obscure independent movie makers is all that you have left.
And all this because of piracy. Right?
You joke, but unauthorized copies are causing losses to the film industry.
After all, who would pay to watch shitty [imdb.com] remakes [imdb.com] when you can download [btjunkie.org] the original? [btjunkie.org]
The real news... (Score:2)
I'm surprised they held out that long... (Score:2)
Even though the cost of a gig of flash and some cheapass SoiC may well have fallen below the cost of a tape transport, that only really helps in an environment where computers with which to load and reload the resultant low-end mp3 player are ubiquitous. Tape, while it imposes higher fixed costs on the player, allows extremely cheaply duplicated cassettes to be sold and swapped(and unlike cheap optical
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In the first world, wearing a tape-player in public is practically a diagnostic signal of mental illness, now, that's how downmarket they are.
I'm pretty sure that my DAT Walkman will still play music better than any MP3 player on the market (at least at typical 100-200kbps MP3 bit-rates).
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I'm pretty sure my Sharp MDS-702 plays better then most MP3 players. Your DAT deck is, of course, lossless, and similarly unappreciated.
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There is nothing particularly technologically wrong with DAT, particularly given its origins in a time when tape was pretty much the only economically viable way of storing substantial quantities of data(DV/mini-DV is in a fairly similar boat); but comparin
Actually, I invented the walkman (Score:2)
I just Googled Astraltune and it appears that Sony paid them millions for the "idea" in 2004... stupid.
I had one of these! (Score:2)
Good times.
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The blue model. It had that funky "hot line" button and a mic. I was convinced there was a way to make it record, but I was a child then and didn't realize that no record head, no recording. Good times.
Oops, I meant no erase head no recording.
Huh... people still buy Sony products? (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting... I would have thought that the massive virus/rootkit/audio CD thing would have killed them by now. Or their yanking the plug on advertised features of their products. Or suing their users for using their products in innovative ways.
Whatever. Sony, you can pretty much do what you want. Anyone who is still a customer of yours evidently enjoys the pain.
Vertical assembly (Score:5, Interesting)
In manufacturing, the Walkman was notable for its construction. It was designed for automated vertical assembly. In vertical assembly, all components are inserted by simple robots which move straight down to add a part to the base. The base is designed to support and align the parts so that this simple approach to assembly will work. It's fast, cheap, and fully automated.
Apple tried vertical assembly briefly. The Macintosh IIci was designed for vertical assembly. The power supply went in vertically and clicked into the motherboard. No internal cables. Then they went over to outsourced manual assembly with cheap labor. Swatch watches also used vertical assembly. Simpler cell phones are often assembled in this way.
Plato (Score:2)
Oh no, so no more of those Plato ads [google.com]?
Not killed by the Ipod! (Score:2)
I've seen in other stories, though not here, that the Walkman was killed by the superior Ipod.
I hope that myth doesn't proliferate here.
There were hundreds of mp3 players out before the ipod, which was just a better (cleaned-up) and cheaper implementation of digital "medialess" technology.
The walkman was wonderful for its degree of portability at the time it came out.
What could possibly kill the mp3 player, or the music-streaming service? Envision your answer now.
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Yep. You also can't copyright a name in the UK. The only thing you can do is trademark them.
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Thanks for the insightful comment. Everyone here at /. was at loss without this important clarification. Now can we get back to nostalgic memories of childhood days and leave silly pedantics alone for a few minutes?
Jesus, some people never quit.
BTW, "but not as poorly worded" is also a poorly worded sentence, but I'll leave it as an exercise for you to fix on your own. I don't believe in FTFYs.
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Ya know, for the longest time I thought that FTFY meant Fuck That, Fuck You. Maybe it still does.
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I went for "Fixed That For You", but your definition also hold water, if needed.
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No, just that I believe most people here understood that the summery was talking about a trademark and not copyright, and the parent just came off as a show off.
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I'd feel somewhat more differently if Sony were still the company of the 70s and 80s, a Japanese company concerned with quality and style trying to prove its product to the world. Now they just coast, especially in Japan where their brand is still synonymous with quality because of their past successes, building for next quarter as opposed to the next 5 years (with the exception of the PS3, and even that has been mishandled). There was a reason I still have two working Sony Walkman tape players from the 80s and a working Betamax player (and a still-working set of Beta tapes including Raiders of the Lost Ark), a working 20" Sony Trinitron from 1987(ish), and yet I went through 6 PS2s and 2 PS3s. And I certainly didn't lose the ability to record TV shows on that Betamax player through a firmware update.
Funny....
I have an original PS2 (the big bricky one), and it outlasted my PS3. Blu-Ray drive blew up right after a firmware update. The fact that Sony has to issue press releases that firmware updates aren't the cause of drive failures, kinda says sumpin, no?
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You should learn to count in English.
billion = 1e9
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man, learn long and short scales [wikipedia.org]
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Am I wrong, but is that more units than the total human population? Needless to say... Dead man Walkman.
I think you need to learn how to count again. The last time I checked, 200 million (if counting the cassette-based units; 400m otherwise) was considerably less than 7 billion.
Yeah, but check the timestamp on that original post - it was from 1348AD. Those Dark Age web browsers were really slow...
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You're behind the times, their flash Walkmans are quite open. Likewise SE phones with music player functionality.
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You probably still have a chance, since they just announced they are discontinuing it... I doubt this will increase demand.
You may have troubles finding a store that still carries them new, however, chances are you could find an old one on eBay if you looked hard.. they were that popular that there are probably many old ones whose owners don't want them anymore, and hope to sell to collectors/hoarders of odds and ends.
I wonder what's more difficult - finding a new Walkman, or finding music on cassette to listen to on that Walkman?
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You can always put music onto a cassette. Never hear the term "Mix Tape"?
Re:Didn't know they still made it. (Score:5, Informative)
You can always put music onto a cassette. Never hear the term "Mix Tape"?
No, no, *please* don't do that! As the campaign from the Walkman's glory days informed us....
;'-(
Home Taping is Killing Music... and it's Illegal. [wikipedia.org]
I still feel guilty about how copying some of my parents' LPs had caused the end of the music industry by 1988.
*cough*
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