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Cassette Tapes On The Wane
jonerik writes "The BBC has an article on the current status of the once-popular cassette tape in the UK and elsewhere. It's been a long climb up and a long fall down for the audio format introduced by Dutch electronics giant Philips in 1963. Having sold 83 million units in the UK at their 1989 peak, cassettes sold just 900,000 units in the UK last year. And yet the cassette soldiers on in the West in niche applications - particularly in the audio book market - and in other countries where CD and MP3 penetration hasn't been as extensive. From the article: 'Keith Joplin, a Director of Research at the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, said that Turkey still sells 88 million cassettes a year, India 80 million, and that cassettes account for 50% of sales in these countries. In Saudi Arabia, it is 70%.'"
In Soviet Russia, cassette tapes you!
Dark Reflection
Macrovision is an analog copy protection system.
Trolling is a art,
http://www.vidipax.com/museum/msm49.html
apparently a lot of independant and underground filmmakers were huge fans of the things in the 90's
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
They were a lot more durable, too. CDs scratch a lot more easily, and you can't repair them with scotch tape.
Because they were analogue devices, you could play them at variable speed or even in reverse, which meant you could get some really strange effects if you tried. You can't really do that with a physical digital system, you'd have to read the information into RAM and then vary the sample speed.
CDs and DVDs decay rapidly in UV light, which means they are worse than useless for long-term storage. Tape, on the other hand, can remain in extremely good shape for decades.
Finally, tape systems are simpler and mechanical, which means that they can be maintained in countries that have little or no technology. I would really not want to try to replace a 16-bit DAC chip in a CD player in the middle of the Sahara desert, but unclogging a jammed lever would be relatively easy.
(For that matter, given the choice of making a DAC chip from scratch, or winding copper to make a motor, it's fairly obvious as to what the minimum level of technology you'd need would be.)
That's not to say that digital formats suck. Well, most do - they're low-cost and low-grade - but that's because manufacturers are cheapskates and not because the concept is flawed. Digital formats should be "better than live", because stage microphones are generally poorer than studio microphones, studio power should be a great deal "cleaner", and RFI interference should be much more controllable.
In reality, CDs are 16-bit 44.1 KHz lossy recordings on aluminium disks (the cheapest type you can go for, which means there may well be errors in the recordings, as well as having no meaningful life-expectancy). Live digital instruments (such as professional keyboards) are often 20- to 24-bit, 192 KHz, and lossless digital amplifiers have been around since the 60s. (Though damn-near lossless high-end analogue amplifiers have been around about as long.)
What we're getting is third-rate crap that only rich corporations can even maintain, which means most consumers treat such devices as disposable. And then people wonder why those who can't afford, or don't even have access to, those rich corporations opt for something that - for all intents and purposes - is just as good but much more useful to them.
For further notes on this, you might want to check out the clockwork radio (1 hour+ of listening time) that is popular in Africa. When you can't go round the corner for batteries, low-tech solutions that produce high-tech results are going to be popular.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)