Originally published at: Remember the 1990s' Digital Compact Cassette? Still going strong in 2023… for some | Boing Boing
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TIL this format existed. Very cool!
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Philips was pretty innovative back in the 80’s and 90’s but they seem to have struggled mightily with execution on most of their proprietary technology. My parents bought a CD-i player but it also failed to gain acceptance.
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No. I don’t remember DCC, either. Never come across it before.
But I do remember DVC - still got a working video camera/recorder and recently ‘digitised’ several ‘home movie’ tapes to my PC (yeah it was digital to start with, but now it’s .mov or .mp4 files on my PC, not on a tape that needs dedicated hardware to view).
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DCC was legit. Sounded really good. The weak spot, as with any similar cartridge format, is that the tape transport has to be in perfect working order. A little too much tension here or too little there and suddenly you’ve got tape spaghetti. DAT had that same limitation on the pro side, it was all fun and games until the pinch roller rubber got gnarly and started pulling tape out like a kitten working a toilet paper roll.
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I find these everywhere, most people buy them as decorations because they’re like LP-sized full color movie posters. I have a couple at my desk.
Only once have I seen the player, at a thrift store in Florida, although a few years ago some guy locally was selling a gigantic collection of the discs, and I think he was including the player.
As I understand it the idea that “it killed RCA” is a myth (or so someone who once worked for RCA told me), but the technology was still very flawed-- if you tried to freeze a screenshot it was really just creating a mini loop, and since those discs are analog microgroove things, you’re wearing out that section of data.
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Yes!
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Came here to post this - you are doing the Lord’s work.
Also, that RCA sting of the Tomita ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is a seriously classy little intro.
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DAT? Minidisc? Memory stick? Betamax? Lots of commercially failed Sony consumer audio/video efforts.
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I worked for an indie record distro back in the 90’s when these came out. We carried a handful of titles on the format, but every single person there just kinda scratched their heads about it. We understood the pitch-- same size as regular cassettes, you can play your regular cassettes in the player too-- but it wasn’t a big selling point. Most of the people there were musicians on the side, so they had stacks of DAT tapes at home from their own band’s studio sessions, which weren’t compatible with DCC players. Analog cassettes were for the car or your Walkman, you didn’t need high-end audio for that.
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The other problem with DCC and MD was that they used lossy compression, so audiophiles (and pro audio folks) turned up their noses and stuck with CD or DAT, while cheap and ubiquitous cassettes ate at DCC’s and MD’s marketshare from the other direction.
I think my wife still has an old MD player somewhere…
In the late 00’s I noticed MD player/recorders popping up at every yard sale. I bought one, used it briefly to do some live recordings, was not impressed with the sound quality. A friend of mine bought one of the 4-track MD ministudios (Yamaha?), and I thought that was a pretty good use of the technology at the time.
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