The very best in obsolete and failed technology...

Czarcasm

I do wonder alright how long the smart television phenomenon will last given that set-top boxes and games consoles are now integrating most of these features like streaming tv remotely and video-on-demand services into the software on their devices. I was using a custom built HTPC for a long time but the one thing that always bothered me was it was about as fast as a UPC set-top box, just couldn't compare to Sky STB on it's own, but now the Sky STB has all the features I used the HTPC for, and coupled that with a slingbox, no need to shell out a couple of grand on a smart tv!

Tokyo

EyeSight wrote: »

Thread title says failed and obsolete...

I did intend the thread to be about failed AND obsolete items, rather than failed OR obsolete items, but whatever goes really

dr Golden

DAB Radio, DRM Radio, Worldspace Radio.

Tokyo

dr Golden wrote: »

DAB Radio, DRM Radio, Worldspace Radio.

DAB is still quite big in Australia....

Molester Stallone

Michael D Not Higgins wrote: »

Again, not a failed technology

But it is obsolete

beauf

Psion Series 5mx
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/12814_Across_the_ages_Nokia_E7_and_P.php

Pocket PC
http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/pda/casioem500/

I picked up MD and MiHD 2nd hand once the MP3 player appeared for next to nothing. They were brilliant.

Getto Blaster have pretty much disappeared now. Hardly see them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPMGw7YLpWY

Tokyo

Czarcasm wrote: »

Actually Polaroid cameras seem to make a re-emergence every decade, a bit like 3D tech, Polaroid and 3D were only ever any good for one thing, and one thing only...

As someone mentioned earlier, format wars have been won and lost their ease to produce and distribute porn!

Yep, Polaroid is back yet again.


These new ones are very popular with people that want to have a print to stick into their travel diary, and they are VERY big in Korea, people that want to actually hand a physical pic to someone as a memento. The film is a bit smaller than the original stock - about 2" by 2"....

I'm surprised that Advantix APS film didn't get a mention. This was the film that promised the world - you could take panoramic, large frame, and standard sized photos, and you could take out a roll of film halfway through and change it for another one without ruining the rest of the roll.



Of course, you had to buy a shiny new APS camera to take the shiny new APS film, and what they didn't tell you is that (a) it took **** photos, and (b) every non standard shot you took cost you twice as much to develop. I remember friends ending up paying between €20 and €30 to get a roll of this stuff developed. It went the way of the dodo pretty quickly, thanks to the advent of digital point and shoots....

Andrewf20

Digital compact cassette player. Had one in our home back in the day.

mickdw

wendell borton wrote: »

The Tupolev tu 144 aka concordski was better.

The Tupolev has a place in this thread. The Concorde does not.
I don't know what you are basing your opinion on but it's laughable. Tupolev was first into the air but only to purposely beat Concorde. It wasn't ready and crashed shortly after if I remember correctly.

The Aggressive Pepper

Molester Stallone wrote: »

But it is obsolete

The thread title says failed and obsolete, not failed or obsolete.

Unknown Soldier

I can't believe none of yis* had a laserdisc player or some laser discs.

The were going to be huge. In fact they were actually huge in size :pac:


*I may have missed it if yis did

mickdw

mickdw wrote: »

The Tupolev has a place in this thread. The Concorde does not.

+1
There was only one major accident with the Concorde and that was caused by debris on the runway that could have brought down any other aircraft that hit it.

bockeys jollocks

mickdw wrote: »

The Tupolev has a place in this thread. The Concorde does not.
I don't know what you are basing your opinion on but it's laughable. Tupolev was first into the air but only to purposely beat Concorde. It wasn't ready and crashed shortly after if I remember correctly.

The soviet shuttle Buran belongs here also.

Molester Stallone

The Aggressive Pepper wrote: »

The thread title says failed and obsolete, not failed or obsolete.

It says obsolete & failed, big difference,

bonzodog2

Digital_Audio_Tape

dxhound2005

dr Golden wrote: »

DAB Radio, DRM Radio, Worldspace Radio.

The DRM broadcasters musn't have heard of it's failure.

http://www.wwdxc.de/drm.htm

The Aggressive Pepper

Molester Stallone wrote: »

It says obsolete & failed, big difference,

Really I thought and was a commutative term.

Tokyo

Not so much of a failure, but certainly obsolete...

Wonder what kids would think if one of these appeared on their TV screens for 15 hours a day??!

end of the road

mike_ie wrote: »

I saw a post online earlier about technology that was available when I was younger, and it got me thinking about the technology that was thought of as the 'best' at the time, only to disappear off into the ether months later.

For me, it was definitely this - the Somy MZ-R909 Minidisc player:



I remember buying one of these back in the day, from O'Connors of Galway when it was still on Shop St. If I remember correctly, I think I paid £220 for it at the time - not a small sum of money. At the time all of my money was going towards getting me through college, but for some reason I had extra money at the time, and after a LOT of thought, decided to splurge on myself. It was going to solve all of my portable music problems - I'd be able to run and cycle while listening to music, no skipping, even had a nice remote with display that I could control the player with while leaving it in my pocket!

I spent hours copying CD's to minidisc, playing the whole CD with the MD player on record, then going through it afterwards and adding the track breaks. OR creating compilation minidiscs by meticulously recording one mp3 at a time from my computer.

No more than six months later, portable mp3 players hit the marketplace for the first time, and my minidisc player was obsolete... I think it sits in my desk drawer to this day. I often wonder what kids would think of it if given one today.

Anybody else have tech from the past sitting in a drawer or a box somewhere that was the best of the best for a sort time??

its a shame the Minidisc never took off, brilliant technology IMO

rolliepoley

I did'nt read the whole thread, so this was probably posted.

I remember watching the fly on one of these in my uncles house over in England back in the early eighties, i never seen one before then, and have'nt seen one since.

Czarcasm

end of the road wrote: »

its a shame the Minidisc never took off, brilliant technology IMO

It really was, but for some things it was just silly, like, what kind of an idiot would go buying these in bulk for storing business presentations on with slides, video (jesus, now I reminded, programming in macromedia flash was some pain in the hole! ), seriously -


GQ Great Quality Mini CD-R Business Card/Credit Card Size 25-pack

Tokyo

Czarcasm wrote: »

It really was, but for some things it was just silly, like, what kind of an idiot would go buying these in bulk for storing business presentations on with slides, video (jesus, now I reminded, programming in macromedia flash was some pain in the hole! ), seriously -


GQ Great Quality Mini CD-R Business Card/Credit Card Size 25-pack

Bloody hell - I remember those. You could get them in all sorts of irregular shapes too. Perfect way to destroy a CD-ROM too - pop one in, CD-ROM cranks up to 10,400rpm, lot of jagged plastic tears your CD-ROM to bits....

4zn76tysfajdxp

Does anyone remember that box with a keyboard you'd put on your TV and surf on the internet with? Had a big advertising campaign in Ireland circa 2000-2001.

5uspect

Daxton Petite Self-possession wrote: »

Does anyone remember that box with a keyboard you'd put on your TV and surf on the internet with? Had a big advertising campaign in Ireland circa 2000-2001.

The Unison set top boxes?
I won two of them at the time from the local paper (tho I think they were really just giving them away) and sold them to buy a Nokia 3210.

goose2005

Daxton Petite Self-possession wrote: »

Does anyone remember that box with a keyboard you'd put on your TV and surf on the internet with? Had a big advertising campaign in Ireland circa 2000-2001.

Unison - the perennial "unwanted gift" in the Buy&Sell

Tokyo

goose2005 wrote: »

Unison - the perennial "unwanted gift" in the Buy&Sell

Unison - the Irish Independent trying to get everyone to surf the net...

Pat Mustard

Czarcasm wrote: »

I do wonder alright how long the smart television phenomenon will last given that set-top boxes and games consoles are now integrating most of these features like streaming tv remotely and video-on-demand services into the software on their devices. I was using a custom built HTPC for a long time but the one thing that always bothered me was it was about as fast as a UPC set-top box, just couldn't compare to Sky STB on it's own, but now the Sky STB has all the features I used the HTPC for, and coupled that with a slingbox, no need to shell out a couple of grand on a smart tv!

I wonder the same thing.

People don't really change their TVs that often. Maybe after ten years or so? On the other hand, few people are still using ten year old computers.

So if somebody buys a smart TV, apart from the additional cost, in five years time the integrated computer (the 'smart' aspect of the smart TV) will be outdated, but you will still be stuck with the TV.

Might be better off connecting your laptop or PS3 etc via HDMI.

Also, there was a story of smart TVs tracking user viewing, even when user settings were set to stop it.http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/smart-tv-from-lg-phones-home-with-users-viewing-habits-usb-file-names/

Czarcasm

Daxton Petite Self-possession wrote: »

Does anyone remember that box with a keyboard you'd put on your TV and surf on the internet with? Had a big advertising campaign in Ireland circa 2000-2001.

Minitel


I remember Gay Byrne on The Late Late introducing it as the technology that was going to sweep the nation and every household would have one...

I also remember being surprisingly non-plussed about the idea simply because it was WAY behind the times! :pac:

There have been a couple of efforts at similar since -

O2 Joggler (a fun, but ultimately heap of shìte device)

Google TV (which Logitech would prefer you didn't talk about)

Tokyo

The Mustard wrote: »

I wonder the same thing.

People don't really change their TVs that often. Maybe after ten years or so? On the other hand, few people are still using ten year old computers.

So if somebody buys a smart TV, apart from the additional cost, in five years time the integrated computer (the 'smart' aspect of the smart TV) will be outdated, but you will still be stuck with the TV.

But by the same token, plenty of households will want access to these streaming services, but don't have a PS3 or similar in the house. And while yes, thy might hold on to their TV's for ten years, the TV's have upgradeable firmware that allow for the addition of new services.

Pat Mustard

mike_ie wrote: »

But by the same token, plenty of households will want access to these streaming services, but don't have a PS3 or similar in the house. And while yes, thy might hold on to their TV's for ten years, the TV's have upgradeable firmware that allow for the addition of new services.

First, the cost of a PS3 plus a 'dumb' TV is likely to be less than the cost of a smart TV. It doesn't make sense to say that people wont have a PS3 in the house if they are prepared to spend extra cash on a smart TV.

Secondly, many households have laptops with HDMI ports. People can stream content on the laptop and play it on their existing TV.

That is interesting what you say about the upgradeable firmware though. It makes the smart TV sound more viable.