21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (4 page)
Read 21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) Online
Authors: Steve Stack
Despite the fact that Betamax came out two years before VHS, and was widely perceived to be of better quality, it ultimately lost the battle with its younger, chunkier partner, and became a classic example of how not to establish a new technology format in the marketplace.
Sony created Betamax for the professional and home user in 1975, but made a few bad judgement calls which meant that they went from 100% of the market upon launch, to 7.5% only ten years later.
JVC tried to make VHS as cheap and widely available as possible, licensing the technology to many other companies. Sony attempted to hold on to the perception of quality, thereby ending up with fewer machines on the market at a higher price. Consumers were eager to own video players, but were not keen to spend thousands of pounds on them, with many opting to rent. In the UK, the leading rental shops were part-owned by JVC so they really got behind VHS, and it wasn’t long before the format dominated. So much so that anyone owning a Betamax felt like a bit of a numpty, and no amount of declaring, ‘But the picture quality is amazing’ really made them feel any better.
Betamax wasn’t helped by the fact that it had a shorter running time than VHS, especially in the US with the NTSC format. Sony also made the decision not to allow porn on Betamax. Many analysts believe this last point to be the biggest reason for its failure – a sure sign of our times.
By the late ’80s, Sony pretty much knew the game was up, and started getting into the VHS market themselves. The last Betamax machine was produced in 2002.
But at least Sony learnt from their mistakes and were never again to see a new format fail in this way. Just look at the huge global dominance of the minidisc!
Dodo Rating:
Such is the fast moving nature of technology that some inventions seem to die out within a short time of being born. This was the case with the minidisc.
Sony launched it in 1992 as the future of home recording, and it was intended as a high-quality alternative to analogue cassettes. With music lovers converting their album collections to compact disc, it made sense that they would want similar quality for the stuff they recorded at home, didn’t it?
The minidisc hit problems early on because it found itself up against the digital compact cassette (DCC) from Philips, and consumers weren’t sure which format to go for. Sony put their weight behind their invention by releasing albums by lots of Sony artists on the format, and also by licensing the technology to other hardware manufacturers, thereby increasing the number of players on the market.
Ultimately, though, people just weren’t all that fussed about digital home recording. They were perfectly happy paying a few quid for a five-pack of TDK blank tapes, as they were mainly using them for mixtapes, voice recordings, and other stuff that didn’t rely on incredible sound quality. The format was popular with professionals, and some studios still use them to this day, but the high price just put most punters off.
Anyway, less than a decade after the minidisc, a small white oblong called an iPod was launched, pretty much changing the face of portable music forever.
Dodo Rating:
They were the future, they really were.
But now the future has arrived they are nowhere to be seen.
Laserdiscs hit the market in the late ’70s, offering a high-quality alternative to VHS and Betamax video cassettes. A forerunner to both the CD and DVD, they were much larger than those formats – just a little bit smaller than a 12” record – were double-sided, and contained analogue data, rather than digital.
Picture quality was better than video, but discs and players were a lot more expensive so, in the UK at least, sales were restricted to early adopters and show-offs with loads of cash to piss away on fancy gadgets. There was a better take up in the US, and the format was a success in the Far East, particularly in Japan.
As the technology improved, the discs were able to carry and process digital image data as well as additional audio tracks. The first director’s commentary was on a laserdisc, an idea that DVDs made their own nearly 20 years later.
Ultimately, they just didn’t catch on over here. VHS tapes dominated the market and there simply wasn’t the range of titles available, or the enthusiasm from retailers, to give laserdiscs the kickstart they needed. It didn’t help that longer films had to be spread over two or more discs, and in the end they were consigned to the cupboard marked ‘Nice Idea, Wrong Time’.
Dodo Rating:
It is rare for us to come close to understanding what it was like for Neanderthal man to discover fire or for Victorians to witness electric light, how the first people to watch a cinema projection of a steam train ran out of the theatre in fear, or the sheer wonder of the first television pictures.
But anyone who was around when Polaroid cameras came out will have some inkling.
That first shot, the picture being ejected with a robotic whir, ripping the protective wrapper off and then watching as slowly, ever so slowly, an image began to emerge.
It was magic, sheer magic. The stuff of witches, wizards, and sorcery.
Instant cameras (they weren’t just made by Polaroid but their name became synonymous with the technology, just as Hoover’s did with vacuum cleaners) had been around since the ’60s, but it was in the ’70s that they started turning up in people’s homes and were more widely used. The distinctive print with its thick white border has become an icon.
In this modern age of digital cameras, the Polaroid is viewed as an antique, although it still has a cult following. The company announced that it was ceasing production of instant film in 2008, but had to reverse the decision a year later due to overwhelming public demand.
So, not quite extinct yet, but certainly endangered.
Dodo Rating:
By which I mean that legendary array of plastic boxes that invaded our homes during the 1980s and seemed remarkably cool at the time, but actually had less memory power than it has taken my laptop to type this paragraph.
Today our homes are full of notebooks (the computer version!), iPads, desktop PCs, Playstations, Wiis, Xboxes, and hand-held consoles, and we spend our time playing photo-realistic war games, challenging people on the other side of the planet to games of Scrabble, and hurling angry birds at a group of military pigs.
Back then it was the ZX Spectrum, Vic 20, and BBC Micro, and we lost hours trying to guide a miner through a series of caves, taking a bloke called Horace skiing, and typing out ‘PICK UP SWORD’ and ‘GO EAST’ on text adventure games.
But here’s the thing, we would never have had the former without the latter, no matter how quaint and antiquated they may seem today.
Here is a quick whistle-stop tour through some of the more iconic home computers of the time.
Sinclair ZX81
The first home computer that you could purchase from the high street, the ZX81, was the brainchild of calculator king Clive Sinclair, and, launched in 1981, sold over a million units. There were computers available for home use before, most notable its predecessor the ZX80, but they all came in kit form and had to be soldered together. The modern, sleek ZX81 came pre-assembled and pretty much ready to go.
Weighing in with a whopping 1KB of memory (check the size of the next email you send and compare), it had no moving parts and
relied on a membrane keyboard (you just pressed hard on the plastic shell) and plugged straight into your television. You could expand the memory with a RAM pack that slotted into the back, cranking power up to 16KB (again, check that against the size of one email today) but the pack was top-heavy and often had to be stuck to the main computer with sticky tape. There was also a printer, a small device that appeared to use that shiny toilet roll they used to have at primary school.
Of course, the greatest achievement of all the 1980s home computers was that they brought gaming into the home and, even though they seem prehistoric by today’s standards, ZX81 games such as
Flight Simulator
and
3-D Monster Maze
have now achieved legendary status.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
The follow-up to the ZX81 came out a year later, and boasted colour graphics rather than the monochrome of its elder sibling. It was the home computer that truly revolutionised the industry, selling over 5 million units in its various guises, and launching some of the most popular computer games ever.
It was an odd beast, though, and not the most practical of machines. The rubber keys on the keyboard contained multi-functions that could only be accessed by pressing SHIFT or ALT or other more elaborate combinations, and I am pretty sure there are some functions that have still never been used to this day. The rubber keys also made it a bit of a pain to type on, so it lost out in the home programming stakes to its more robust competitors. However, most users only ever pressed Z to move left, X to move right, W to go up, and S to go down, anyway. Sinclair finally relented and included a more traditional keyboard on later models, but the rubber keys remain the distinctive feature of the Spectrum.
Although the early models came with no joystick ports, the Spectrum was a popular gaming machine and spawned numerous classics such as
Manic Miner
,
Jet Set Willy
,
Horace Goes Skiing
,
The Hobbit
,
Daley Thompson’s Decathlon
, and
Lords of Midnight
. It is credited with inspiring a generation of gamers who went on to create the classics of the 1990s and 2000s.
Commodore Vic 20
Despite the fact that it had lower memory than its competitors (3.5KB compared to the Spectrum’s 16KB), the Vic 20 became the first home computer to sell a million copies, and was one of the most successful machines in both the US and the UK.