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Father of the CD, Norio Ohga, Dead At 81
lightbox32 writes "Norio Ohga, who was Sony's president and chairman from 1982 to 1995, died Saturday at the age of 81. He has been credited with developing CDs, which he insisted be designed at 12 centimeters (4.8 inches) in diameter to hold 75 minutes worth of music — in order to store Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its entirety."
Back in the day, the problem with Beethoven's ninth, and cassettes in particular, was the times of the movements. From one version:
1st Movement: 13'32"
2nd Movement: 13'09"
3rd Movement: 14'21"
4th Movement: 23'22"
There is no way to put these movements on a two sided cassette without having about 17 minutes of unused space, unless the 3rd movement was split between sides.
So what many (if not most) versions on cassette would do to conserve tape is put the 1st, 2nd, and PART of the 3rd movement on side A of the cassette, and the remaining part of the 3rd movement and the 4th movement on side B. It was kind of jarring to have the tape fade out in the middle of the 3rd movement to switch to the other side.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Don't forget LaserDiscs. Unlike DVDs, they didn't compress the audio or video. If you want to watch the Star Wars trilogy (before George Lucas butchered it), LD (or an LD rip) is the only option.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Yes, the packaging sucked! The tabbed hinges on the case cover are fragile and break when dropped from any height. The only thing holding the product together was the shrink wrap, which was impenetrable. But the music industry cartel was so powerful, the packaging experience persisted unchanged for a quarter of a century! And then the industry died.