Failed Technology

[chudleighpaul]

HD-DVD, DVD-Audio, SACD, Elcaset, DAT.

All the above were excellent products, some a lot better than the competion, but failed to excite the imagination of Joe Public, and therefore were commercial failures.

Can any of you guys add to this list?

 

[bigboss]

Betamax

 

[Anonymous]

We will have to See how 3DTV goes...........

 

[Anonymous]

Rover

 

[chudleighpaul]

Did Betamax actually fail? I know it did in UK, but in some countries it was the lead product.

 

[bigboss]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.comment

 

[Anonymous]

dim_span:Roverrover , er , excellent

 

[matthewpiano]

HD-DVD failed because it wasn't as good as Blu-Ray Disc.

Betamax became a professional format with a very long life.

SACD is still alive and well in classical and jazz music where there are still substantial numbers of new releases, not least on the excellent LSO Live label. Marantz, Denon, Sony, and Arcam (to name only four) continue to launch new SACD players.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Indeed - SA-CD is far from failed. More players coming out to play it, plenty of classical labels releasing new content...

 

[chudleighpaul]

Mini-disc?

 

[Amyl Right Mate]

matthewpiano:Betamax became a professional format with a very long life.

Ditto DAT, which also found use in tape drives for data backup.

 

[Amyl Right Mate]

DCC?

 

[Anonymous]

umd?

 

[matthewpiano]

chudleighpaul:Mini-disc?

Rather than failing, MD became a niche product. It has had enormous use amongst musicians over a long period of time. I have several customers who still come in to stock up on blanks every now and then and we still sell the odd Hi-MD Walkman (the MZ-RH1).

However, the format is in its very last throes now with most musicians having moved over to hard drive based recording, either on a PortaStudio or using a PC and software such as Cubase or Logic.

 

[Anonymous]

matthewpiano:HD-DVD failed because it wasn't as good as Blu-Ray Disc.

Elaborate....

Btw, I know but other's may not.

 

[landzw]

I was going to say mini disc too , and i thought this was going to be the cd destroyer , it was smaller , less likely to be messed up be being left around , recordable which at the time cd-r wasn't a big thing when MD was released but i can see the psp uses the same MD tech .

For the person that said blu ray was better than HD DVD the only thing Blu Ray did better was its discs were able to store much more data , but this was shown and still is , in the price .

The only reason is blu ray won is the PS3 which tipped the scales in sales and warner pulled out of the HD DVD production

But is blue ray about to be added to the list? Or is the blu ray 3D going to be added ? i just cannot see there is room for both and as blue ray sales aren't great i think its needs a few more years before blue ray is going to be excepted by the majority over dvd's

 

[chudleighpaul]

Some of these products achieved niche market success, but did not become general consumer successes, this was the original question.

 

[bigboss]

landzw:

blue ray sales aren't great

Errr.....not really. People forget that DVD took a lot more years to succeed over VHS, & blu-ray format is only a couple of years old. Also remember that blu-ray format was introduced around the time when the economic recession started.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hnr5PATijYLBdaaGLuj66eAceyTw

 

[Anonymous]

sinclair c5 that silly car

remember that one

 

[chudleighpaul]

How many of you remember the Rabbit Phone? That was a real turkey. (If you dont mind the pun!)

 

[lonely boy]

CED or "SelectaVision" - RCA's video disc format that used a high-density phonogram and stylus pick-up system, which when it eventually came to market in 1981 was then hopelessly out of date. It lost the company an estimated $600 million.

 

[landzw]

Bigboss you have 2 different results , the results i found was a good 123% in the UK more than the year before ,but compered to the amount of dvd's that was sold it was only a scratch . dvd's 243.5million , blue ray 8.4 million

Blu Ray has been out since 2006 and was in the start of the format war in 2007 which by 2008 it had won .

2010 you see another healthy growth of sales and thats why i said its still a few years away before it will start to equal the sale of dvd's . As dvd's took 10 years to kill of the VHS

Thats also why i said with blu ray being such a young recognised format , i personally think there cannot be room for a 3D format and blu ray as it stands now

 

[bigboss]

You cannot expect blu-ray sales to be close to DVD sales within 2 years, especially considering blu-ray players were more expensive than DVD players & the recession was on. Although small, the blu-ray sales were definitely encouraging. Yes, it will take a few years for blu-rays to overtake DVDs.

How can you compare 3D format & blu-rays? The 3D format will only complement blu-ray sales. 3D films will come out on blu-rays only & not DVDs. If 3D succeeds, blu-ray sales will accelerate, taking it closer to DVD sales. Blu-ray players from 2010 will be capable of playing both usual 2D blu-ray discs & 3D discs.

 

[Anonymous]

I don't remember DAT being a failure at all ? Every recording studio from the largest to the amateur home bedroom job would have a DAT in it's system. Most home studios used this format for all their demos and masters back before burning your own CD's was such a doddle !

 

[RobinKidderminster]

8 track tape in-car. Lasted for months !