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Devices in Decline - News Story on Obsolete A/V Tech
- Thread starter Wigwam Jones
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Nick_the_'Nole
Super Member
*Puts the rotary phone atop the old typewriter to make room to turn the monitor enough to read the article, while Johnny Cash plays on an 8-track in the background.*
What's this about dead technologies?
Seriously, interesting read, tho. Wonder how long it'll be before cassettes are included in that designation as well. They're gettin there now...
And I only wrote that top part for effect. The typewriter and rotary phone aren't in the way of the monitor, and it's Ted Nugent that's playing on the 8-track in the background.
What's this about dead technologies?
Seriously, interesting read, tho. Wonder how long it'll be before cassettes are included in that designation as well. They're gettin there now...
And I only wrote that top part for effect. The typewriter and rotary phone aren't in the way of the monitor, and it's Ted Nugent that's playing on the 8-track in the background.
I thought the related article was pretty good too.
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/8/4/features/8276236&sec=features
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/8/4/features/8276236&sec=features
I think FM radio might be next, at least I know there are a few conglomerates hoping so. Lets hope it stays at least as one of the last free forms of entertainment. Cable TV is eating at that, soon there might not be any "free" TV either. I bet something will come along soon and replace MP3's. A faster, higher compressed and better sounding technology. MP3 players are getting too cheap, time to make Joe Consumer buy something newer and more $$$.
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
Something did come along and replace MP3's with something that sounds better - Ogg Vorbis. But you have to be a Linux fuh-reek to know that.
Best,
Wiggy
Jeffhs
Super Member
FM radio already has been phased out on many cable-TV systems, including the one serving my small town. With 30 channels of CD-quality music available on our system here (and many other digital cable systems nationwide), there is little reason to listen to FM anymore. The programming is much more diversified as well, and of course there are none of those pesky things called commercials interrupting the music. For example, channel 428 on Comcast digital cable here plays easy-listening music, which went out of style on regular FM radio in northern Ohio (and, I suspect, on FM stations throughout the country) some 15 years or more ago. (The last easy-listening FM in this area finally switched to rock in 1990, IIRC; a similar station in Detroit followed suit not long after.)
There are other types of music available on digital cable as well: classical, jazz, show tunes, and of course modern rock and oldies, among others, all minus those annoying commercials which have been on AM and FM radio since their inception.
As far as I am concerned, digital music on cable was well worth waiting for (I've had it about a year), as I am fed up with commercials, loudmouth DJs who don't know when to shut up (some of these people are even on two or more stations at once, often at the same time [!], thanks to a technique known as voice tracking) and other annoyances I put up with on standard AM and FM radio for more years than I care to remember.
The commercial-free music channels now on many if not most cable TV systems in this country, not to mention satellite radio services the likes of XM, Sirius and Delphi, may well eventually kill FM radio as we know it today. It's only a matter of time, IMO.
As to cable TV: Many of us in fringe areas don't have a choice if we want good TV reception; even folks in prime signal areas have, for the most part, done away with antennas in favor of cable because of the improved local reception, not to mention the sheer number of channels available on most systems today. The television reception in the small town where I live (which is a fringe area, located some 45 miles from the transmitters of the major network stations) is so bad the only way to get really good reception is with cable or DBS. Most folks here have one or the other, having done away with their old-style antennas years if not decades ago; the only active TV antenna I've seen here that's still in use is on the roof of the local bowling alley, just up the street from me. This antenna has recently been replaced by a fringe-area model and has been on a rotor at least as long as I've been here, and probably longer. A building next to the bowling lanes has a TV antenna on a tower with a rotor, but the antenna has lost so many elements it's a miracle it (or the rotor) still works, if it does--which I doubt.
The few television antennas remaining here, such as the one I mentioned above, have in many cases seen better days. These antennas are relics of times before cable and satellite, when the only way to get any kind of TV reception from Cleveland was to put up a fringe-area antenna on the roof of your house; even at that the reception was not the best, or so I'm told (I've only been here since late 1999 and have had cable the whole time, as I live in an apartment). I have even found that one channel, NBC channel 3 in Cleveland, is not watchable here using rabbit ears (in fact its signal doesn't reach here at all), and the other two VHF stations are poor to fair at best. Ironically, the four UHF stations serving Cleveland (including channel 19, the CBS affiliate) come in here the best of the lot using rabbit ears. Go figure.
gonzothegreat
Super Member
So will collecting antennas soon merit an Ak forum? It could happen. Remember when Radio Shack used to have pages of TV and FM antennas in their catalog (even in their late 80s catalogs)?
All this talk of antennas reminds me of the Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes where Boris Badenov has an army of metal munching moon mice make mincemeat out of all the TV antennas.
Personally, I'm too young to remember any of that. My folks had cable when I was in second grade. Superstations from Milwaukee, Chicago, NYC and Atlanta blew away the local stuff.
All this talk of antennas reminds me of the Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes where Boris Badenov has an army of metal munching moon mice make mincemeat out of all the TV antennas.
Personally, I'm too young to remember any of that. My folks had cable when I was in second grade. Superstations from Milwaukee, Chicago, NYC and Atlanta blew away the local stuff.
Ogg Vorbis is not easily ported to different OS'es which is why it hasn't caught on yet. On top of that, it ay run smoothly on Linux but file sizes are large and the overhead to run software to play such files is high. Sound quality is audibly negligible so the benefit is low compared to the cost associated with it. Cost being the horsepower and converters needed to run it in anything but Linux.
Until Linux gets mainstream acceptance and starts taking a chunk out of the Windows market, stuff like Ogg Vorbis will be just a cult software package.
As far as FM radio being dead, it's far from it. It seems to me that the people who access to the Comcast music channels or thier Direct TV type music channels think that this is all anyone listens to. Realistically though, only about 50-60% of the entire U.S. population has access to cable and last I saw I think it was something like 70% of all U.S. households own a computer. If radio is dead, what do all these people without those access points listen to?
Honestly though, two words, Howard Stern. That guy is going to make or break FM radio. If he does end up leaving and going to satellite radio, well, buy stock in the radio companies now! The minute he moves, satellite radio is going to skyrocket in a matter of months. With the new technologies coming out too, it will be cheaper to get in on it too. Stern has just under 18 months left in his contract. So unless something happens before then, he's gonna be a little while. When he does though, you're talking about roughly 9 million listeners turning off thier transistors and powering up thier new XM recievers. Me, I'll be buying stock and getting me some cash for audio equipment!
What is the next technology to go down the tubes? Well, broadcast radio is high on the list and so is VHS. Hell, even CDs are threatened with extinction. But honestly, the next technology to go down the drain is TV. With the advent or HDTV and the hardware it uses to send, reciever and decode signals, you are looking at a licensing agreement frenzy between manufacturers and broadcast companies.
Speaking of licensing, another technology with an amazing amount of potential is Voice Over IP phones. This stuff has the potential to wipe the floors with regular phone service. If they get ever get over thier greed and lay off on the nazi licensing terms, they might actually be able to put this stuff in every house in America for simply the price of a new phone line and a decent cordless phone. That would also take a huge chunk out of broadband companies because the phone service would be on the level of a 100BaseT line connected to a digital trunk. Cable (whose technology already is obsolete) would be a thing of the past because it would be too slow. DSL lines would quadruple in speed with an upgraded network too.
There is all kinds of speculation but those are teh two technologies I see with the potential to eclipse what they are replacing and do it so fast everyone will have to stop for a second to think about what just happened.
Dennis Gardner
Jazz Nut
Howard won't transfer 9 million listeners who have to pay to here him. But it will grow satellite to higher levels. His whole listening audience make up only 3-4 percent of our country.
FM will stay alive as long as businesses are able to keep them alive with advertising dollars. Programming isn't what keeps radio alive, its ads. Most who buy radio ads rarely get to pinpoint all their ads to certain programming anymore, you are forced into packages that cover all time slots.
Satellite in autos will become free or near free (included in the new car price) in new car lineups. You will get free XM for as long as your warranty lasts. It will come along with different auto makers signing onto the satellites just as they have been using branded radios for the lineups for years. Bose, Infinity,JBL, etc.
Cable TV and satellite offerings will stay around as long as their technologies can keep up with the demand for Hi-def, once the general public understands how much better HD is and all broadcasts are offered in the higher res format. It will be as much a quantum leap in quality as FM stereo was over AM.
FM will stay alive as long as businesses are able to keep them alive with advertising dollars. Programming isn't what keeps radio alive, its ads. Most who buy radio ads rarely get to pinpoint all their ads to certain programming anymore, you are forced into packages that cover all time slots.
Satellite in autos will become free or near free (included in the new car price) in new car lineups. You will get free XM for as long as your warranty lasts. It will come along with different auto makers signing onto the satellites just as they have been using branded radios for the lineups for years. Bose, Infinity,JBL, etc.
Cable TV and satellite offerings will stay around as long as their technologies can keep up with the demand for Hi-def, once the general public understands how much better HD is and all broadcasts are offered in the higher res format. It will be as much a quantum leap in quality as FM stereo was over AM.
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Dennis, I don't think it's ads that keep radio alive, it's listeners. No sponsor in the world will pay to run an ad if nobody hears it. So it's kind of a symbiotic relationship. I do think that the small college FM stations will be around for a long time. Unfortunately, they, I believe, are regulated to only a few watts and at certain lower FM frequencies. Luckily I think the public radio stations will be around awhile, at least as long as government funding allows. As far as Howard goes, I rarely listen to him, I know alot of people do, he's been banned from Chicago radio now.
Dennis Gardner
Jazz Nut
Radio didn't die when TV came along, the main listening audience just went mobile. Radio of some sort will always exist simply due to the fact that video doesn't work for drivers. Satellite radio really does hit a sweet spot in that you can listen to your choice of programming anywhere you are. I think small towns will have room for local radio broadcasts of sports, news, and local events for quite some time to come.
It is interesting to talk about what will come and go and look back to what has already happened and why.
I love new technology as much as anyone, but find myself becoming more nostalgic about the music of my youth with each passing year, & I said that I would never do that!
It is interesting to talk about what will come and go and look back to what has already happened and why.
I love new technology as much as anyone, but find myself becoming more nostalgic about the music of my youth with each passing year, & I said that I would never do that!
heathkit tv
Brillyint jeanyus
I read somewhere that there are far more radio listeners today than even during the Golden Age of Radio. They're mostly car drivers and occupants now, and the rush hour periods make up the majority of the listening time (and to a lesser extent, background music at work)
As for Stern, I doubt a high percentage of his listeners (me being one of them) would pony up for the monthly fees of XM....some certainly couldn't afford it even if they were willing to pay.
Anthony
'
As for Stern, I doubt a high percentage of his listeners (me being one of them) would pony up for the monthly fees of XM....some certainly couldn't afford it even if they were willing to pay.
Anthony
'
Drybasement
Hold the ketchup...
Magnetic tape media will be the next to go.
Video VHS
Audio cassette
The 3 1/2 inch floppy
The equipment may be around for awhile but it won't be long until their demise either. Floppy drives are optional equipment on Dell computers now. You pay extra for them. CD players are becoming standard equipment in automobiles. Cassette players may soon become optional equipment. After many years of producing the worlds finest cassette decks, Nakamichi has stopped making them. Soon the boom box industry will too.
DB
Video VHS
Audio cassette
The 3 1/2 inch floppy
The equipment may be around for awhile but it won't be long until their demise either. Floppy drives are optional equipment on Dell computers now. You pay extra for them. CD players are becoming standard equipment in automobiles. Cassette players may soon become optional equipment. After many years of producing the worlds finest cassette decks, Nakamichi has stopped making them. Soon the boom box industry will too.
DB
Dennis Gardner
Jazz Nut
Magnetic media had at least a 50 year run, not bad with advancements we've seen in other realms of the world.
CDR pricing is now lower than floppies.
CDR pricing is now lower than floppies.
No it isn't. Go to any major database or data-mining house like my company and you'll see that we have a magnetic backup tape budget in the hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly. It may go away for the small peanuts consumer but for places like us needing to backup terabytes worth of data on a regular basis, CD-R's and CD-RW's are childs play. It's HP 4mm and Sun Microsystems DLT's all around not to mention the massive backup archives that take up an entire server room all to themselves.
Cassette ausio tapes are gone, floppies and ZIP disks are going away too but the DAT technology in the high density tape cartridge drives will still be living on for years to come. Especially since they have gotten density levels up to around 400 GB on one tape.
Drybasement
Hold the ketchup...
I had forgotten about that. On occasion, I have to do some work in a "major corporation's" mainframe computer complex. A rather larger building at that. Anyway, the tape storage room is absolutely huge. Scores of people who do nothing more than care for this backup data. I'm surprised, though, that technology hasn't come up with a better way to do this. I mean, magnetic tapes do have inherent flaws. The shelf life isn't more than 7 to 10 years isn't it. Am I wrong? I'm not an IT person.
DB
heathkit tv
Brillyint jeanyus
Last time I looked, the hard drives in PC's are based on magnetic recording principles........for the most part these offer the densest storage for a given physical size. YMMV as technology progresses.
Anthony
Anthony
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Jeffhs
Super Member
I didn't say FM radio was dead, or going to become obsolete any time soon. If you look at my post again, you will see that I said FM may well become obsolete some day; it's only a matter of time.
Perhaps I was a bit hasty in putting that last phrase ("only a matter of time") in that statement, although with everything going digital these days, it wouldn't surprise me if FM radio as we have known it the last 50-odd years, and as we know it today, is replaced by something that doesn't hog 20 MHz of spectrum space; after all, this is frequency spectrum the FCC might eventually find better suited to use in the overcrowded public service bands--think about it. Most of what's on TV these days is a waste of the stations' RF and DC power, not to mention money. Witness what has happened in just the last 34 years to the UHF television spectrum. Once spanning 70 channels, 14-83, the upper 13 channels were reassigned in 1970 to land-mobile and public service radio; soon, the channels above 50 will be reassigned for the exclusive use of HDTV stations. This leaves only 36 channels for analog UHF TV stations. When the FCC abolishes analog TV in 2006 or so, the entire UHF band (what's left of it[!]) may be, probably will be, reassigned somewhere else.
Cable TV, as I mentioned in my last post, is subscribed to these days even by people in the primary service areas of their area's local stations, for the improved reception of local stations and the satellite networks such as TBS, TNT, CNN, ESPN and the like. There will always be people who do not or will not have cable and/or DBS, but they are in the minority.
I do not believe, however, the percentage of viewers still using antennas is 60 or 70, as you say. Many people these days go to at least basic cable if their outdoor antennas are falling apart or are destroyed by wind, etc. I saw that happen in my old neighborhood by the beginning of the '90s, and am seeing that more and more here where I live now. The old antennas are in many cases still on their roof or chimney mounts, long since forgotten as the residents of the homes on which the antennas are mounted now enjoy the clear reception and greater variety of programming on cable or DBS.
As I also mentioned in my post, folks in fringe areas do not have a choice if they want good reception. For them (or for satellite subscribers whose systems do not for any reason include local channels), the cable companies have a basic level of service which provides only the local channels in a given area, although many people will subscribe to a level of service which includes the satellite networks, if only to get more channels than the basic package offers.
VHS video cassettes are still around but are becoming obsolete, as you mentioned. Many, but by no means most, TV viewers now have DVD players; most movies these days are being released on DVD, not VHS. One of the reasons I personally do not own a DVD player yet is that my TV set (an RCA XL-100 19" table model purchased new almost five years ago) has no video or audio inputs, let alone an S-video input, which I understand are all necessary for a proper DVD player hookup, so I guess I'm stuck with my VHS VCR for the time being. That works out great for me since all my movies and old TV shows are on VHS cassettes, some of which were taped 20+ years ago and still look great. My video collection consists of over 50 VHS cassettes; I shudder to think what a job it would be to transfer these to DVD if I had the equipment to do so, which I don't at this time.
I don't see CDs becoming obsolete for quite a while. This is still a relatively new technology, having been introduced only a few short years ago. The technology used to record and produce CDs will no doubt evolve as time goes on, but the discs themselves, and the equipment to play them, will still be with us for many years to come, although the players will also continue to evolve as the state of the art does.
Automobile stereo will indeed change; in fact, as you noted, it already has, and will continue to evolve. Many if not most new cars today have AM/FM/CD stereos as standard equipment, whereas only a few years ago cassette/AM/FM systems were all the rage and often standard.
Audio cassettes may become obsolete eventually, the same as VHS video cassettes; however, for people who, like myself, have a large collection of audio cassettes, the players won't go away just yet. Even if and when the production of new audio cassettes eventually ceases, collectors will still have their old reliable decks around on which to play their old tapes. Audio cassettes can and do still produce good quality music, if not super high fidelity, so I would not write off these little wonders just yet, or at all. I listen to my cassettes quite a bit; they still sound good to me, even though I am practically deaf in one ear and don't have the greatest stereo system on Earth.
Speaking of cassettes, there was a technology about 30 years ago called the Elcaset which promised even higher fidelity than the standard cassettes of the time. It used cassettes just a bit smaller than today's VHS video cassettes, IIRC (if I am wrong, please refresh my memory on this), which of course required a player to match. The Elcaset never caught on with audiophiles in this country, so the whole thing was scrapped and forgotten, IIRC, before the end of the '70s.
I don't know if anyone here on AK has any original Elcaset cartridges, of if there are any surviving Elcaset decks in the hands of AKers or other collectors. If so, I think it would have the makings for an interesting thread.
How about it? Has anyone here had experience with the Elcaset? If so, what were your impressions of it?
My own home stereo system, bought new nearly five years ago, has a 3CD changer and dual cassette decks, not to mention a digital AM/FM tuner with 32 presets, but no turntable for vinyl records as standard equipment (an external turntable with a preamplifier is, however, available from the manufacturer as an accessory). Most mini and micro stereo systems made today do not include built-in turntables for the simple reason that vinyl records are, you guessed it, obsolete. I once owned a stereo system with a BSR changer, which sounded fairly good for a system of that vintage (I bought the system new in the early 1980s). However, I'm sure today's cassette decks and CD players sound much, much better than even the best vinyl phonograph records, just as LPs sounded better than the old 78s.
heathkit tv
Brillyint jeanyus
Isn't there a finite shelf life to recorded magnetic medium? I mean to say, doesn't the recording dissipate or degrade after X number of years regardless of how it's stored?
Then of course there's the physical aging of the tape itself....bottom line is that no storage medium is forever short of glyphs!
Anthony
Then of course there's the physical aging of the tape itself....bottom line is that no storage medium is forever short of glyphs!
Anthony
Jeffhs
Super Member
I read somewhere years ago that magnetic tapes do not wear out. Some record companies have made perfectly acceptable CD copies of master tapes recorded thirty or more years earlier. I personally have cassettes I recorded from old phonograph records 20+ years ago that still sound good today. Also, as I stated in an earlier post, I have VHS video cassettes of TV programs I taped in the mid-'80s; these still look as good today, almost 25 years later, as they did when I first taped them (when the programs themselves were new), even though the VCR on which I taped those programs is long gone (I've gone through four VCRs in twenty years and just purchased a new one about a year and a half ago--they don't make them like they used to!).
I can see how storing any kind of magnetic recording tape, video or audio, in an excessively damp or dry environment could (probably will) affect the life of the recordings adversely, but for tapes stored in air-conditioned environments such as homes, the shelf life should be indefinite, at least in theory.
I agree with your last statement. Nothing lasts forever, but with proper care, most audio and video tapes should last years or decades. Even CDs should last a very long time if not abused; I read somewhere not long ago that most music CDs should also last many years--one estimate actually was so bold as to state some prerecorded CDs have a life span of--now catch this--50 to 100 YEARS!
If that's true (which I doubt), the CDs we have today will outlive us by many years. Imagine your children or grandchildren coming across your CD collection 25 years after you're gone. "Wow!" they might and probably will say (for example). "Do you mean they actually had music like this back in 1980 (or whenever the music was new)?"
However, the life span of data CDs under certain circumstances, according to experts, is, or could be, much shorter. I read an article in, I think, PC World magazine recently, which stated that some data CDs begin to lose their coding after only two or three years. I have program CDs, however, that were bundled with my computer when it was new nearly five years ago; the disks still work today, every bit as well as they did when I first used them to set up the computer. They continue to work well when used to restore programs lost due to system crashes, etc.