A very good friend of mine had one of these when I was a kid. We called it laserdisc. I couldn’t tell you how that started.
So, when I got to high school and they were using actual laserdiscs I said, “Where’s the cool outer shell? Is this just like, a school laserdisc setup?” Some kids argued with me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I clearly remembered watching Star Wars on them and being mesmerized by that case.
Years later I got to thinking about it and googled “laserdisc with hard casing, mechanism removes disc when played”. Nothing. I chalked it up to it being some kind of false memory. Maybe I was just remembering the sleeve and my buddy was putting the movies in the player in a way that made me think it worked like that.
It wasn’t until years later that I seen a techmoan video in my feed and I was like, “THAT!! That’s what I’ve been talking about all these years!! It’s fucking vinyl! NO WAY!”
I was always tech obsessed so it nearly drove me crazy anytime I thought about it. He’d been dead for years so I couldn’t ask him. His dad and sister had no idea what I was talking about. “He traded a lot stuff around so there’s no telling what he had. There was mismatched technology all over this place.”
A brilliant idea ruined by some dingus at RCA insisting on an hour per side. Y’know. Like how records aren’t.
Also, they whiffed on the cotton-gin problem. They spent ages formulating metallic vinyl. But… the signal is just pits. Same as Laserdisc. All they had to do was press normal vinyl with a shitload of tiny holes and then put metal in 'em. Nontrivial! Probably a hideous cancer risk. But metal powders and some kind of glue are easier to work with when they don’t have to withstand a ten-ton press and still act structural.
And genuinely - the consumer hardware was so cheap. It’s just a flake of metal in a stylus, which changes capacitance when it’s over a pit, and if you amplify that wiggly line, it’s a standard TV signal. That’s all! Even with 1960s technology, that could’ve been pocket-sized, if not for the stupidly tiny grooves that skipped over any micrometer of dust. Lasedisc does the same analog-binary video signal, but it needs a laser and laser tracking and electrical conversion and yadda yadda yadda. RCA’s solution was like a phonograph, but simpler. They could’ve sold Star Trek TOS episodes as soon as they aired - if only they’d told people to flip them in the middle.
Wait until you learn about SelectaVision, the vinyl record that played videos and still used a stylus.
Oh so it’s a helicopter
LaserDisc ran at up to 1800 RPM also in a 30cm form factor
In the Tech Connections video on them, they sound like they’re taking off when they spool up.
A very good friend of mine had one of these when I was a kid. We called it laserdisc. I couldn’t tell you how that started.
So, when I got to high school and they were using actual laserdiscs I said, “Where’s the cool outer shell? Is this just like, a school laserdisc setup?” Some kids argued with me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I clearly remembered watching Star Wars on them and being mesmerized by that case.
Years later I got to thinking about it and googled “laserdisc with hard casing, mechanism removes disc when played”. Nothing. I chalked it up to it being some kind of false memory. Maybe I was just remembering the sleeve and my buddy was putting the movies in the player in a way that made me think it worked like that.
It wasn’t until years later that I seen a techmoan video in my feed and I was like, “THAT!! That’s what I’ve been talking about all these years!! It’s fucking vinyl! NO WAY!”
I was always tech obsessed so it nearly drove me crazy anytime I thought about it. He’d been dead for years so I couldn’t ask him. His dad and sister had no idea what I was talking about. “He traded a lot stuff around so there’s no telling what he had. There was mismatched technology all over this place.”
Woah! Crazy that something like that existed.
A brilliant idea ruined by some dingus at RCA insisting on an hour per side. Y’know. Like how records aren’t.
Also, they whiffed on the cotton-gin problem. They spent ages formulating metallic vinyl. But… the signal is just pits. Same as Laserdisc. All they had to do was press normal vinyl with a shitload of tiny holes and then put metal in 'em. Nontrivial! Probably a hideous cancer risk. But metal powders and some kind of glue are easier to work with when they don’t have to withstand a ten-ton press and still act structural.
And genuinely - the consumer hardware was so cheap. It’s just a flake of metal in a stylus, which changes capacitance when it’s over a pit, and if you amplify that wiggly line, it’s a standard TV signal. That’s all! Even with 1960s technology, that could’ve been pocket-sized, if not for the stupidly tiny grooves that skipped over any micrometer of dust. Lasedisc does the same analog-binary video signal, but it needs a laser and laser tracking and electrical conversion and yadda yadda yadda. RCA’s solution was like a phonograph, but simpler. They could’ve sold Star Trek TOS episodes as soon as they aired - if only they’d told people to flip them in the middle.