@@johnnychang4233Sony still produces incredible products. There are many more innovative Sony devices AFTER that marvelous PS3 which you so unjustly mock. If you're following this channel, then you know that it didn't all 'end' with the PS3.
we made beyblades out of anything we could and used to make a bowl by lining our fists around a square of concrete. the winner was the guy that bled the least.
@@billmcmahon2211 When I was at school there was a kid with a digital watch. I don't recall his name but referred to him as "the kid with the digital watch" and everyone in the electronics club knew who I meant.
I was around back then. While the available tech was interesting and sometimes impressive, I was also extremely aware of its shortcomings. Screens other than big Trintron CRTs were all awful (no exceptions), especially on portable devices. Pixel density, viewing angles, colors, and reaction times were just horrible on any LCD. The devices weren't much better: Everything was slow and clunky, usability dubious, things crashed or malfunctioned all the time. Materials, including of high-end stuff, were either creaky hard plastic or awful rubberized surfaces that even back then started to disintegrate rapidly. Even more annoyingly, tech was often already outdated the moment you bought it, which was the flip side of the rapid progress we experienced back then. As for DVDs, they looked great on CRTs (well-mastered ones at least did - the quality varied a lot), but even back then I was so annoyed by having to switch between them, wait for them to move to the desired section, etc. that I was turning them into .iso files instead of using them directly.
USA viewer here. Decades ago, I found, in a local Target store on its 'bargain table', a rather large pile of devices very similar to what you are displaying here. I had cash in pocket, so I bought a large amount of them because I was young and reckless. In a relatively short period of time I re-sold them on ebay for amounts of money that, at the time, were amazing to me. It paid my "COBRA" health insurance premiums for over EIGHTEEN MONTHS. In the USA, that was a big deal.
@@AB-wf8ekcobra is a program, not a company. It allows you to continue purchasing health insurance at the rate your employer was purchasing it for. Usually employers pay 2/3 the cost and you pay the other 1/3, so after you lose your job, you get to pay the full amount. Which, especially before Obamacare, is still much cheaper than getting the same type of coverage straight from an insurance company.
Before the newspapers it was the pamphlets. And before pamphlets people didn't travel. People pretty much lived in the same couple of villages or maybe towns for their entire lives.
Precisely. I remember a newspaper column (ironic, isn't it?) from the 1920s. The author complained about people reading books, magazines and papers on the tram and elsewhere instead of talking to one another. People were obsessed with their papers in particular. Before WW2, larger city newspapers had several editions throughout the day that would get rapidly updated with the very latest news, with some news addicts buying each and every one of them (so morning, mid-day, afternoon, evening and even late night editions) to keep up to date. Similarly, letters and packages would be delivered several times per day. There were riots in the streets any time the steady supply of newspapers was interrupted, e.g. because printers or delivery boys were on strike.
@@no1DdC It's almost like people want to relax after a long day, by just sitting in their own thoughts and thinking about nothing, instead of having to keep up with an conversation
I'm about to get my first LaserDisc player this week, I've wanted one since I was in the 6th Grade and now since I'm in first year university and I get monthly allowance I finally saved up for one 7 years later, I watched your LaserDiscs videos a million times growing up. My model is the Pioneer CLD D925 with the remote in beautiful condition plus 53 LD discs. I'm so excited. Funny enough it's the same player you have. Would love for you to revisit laserdiscs in the future Techmoan! Love from South Africa 🇿🇦
I'd be interested in knowing if there are still any films/'content' that has been released on LaserDisc but that has still never been released on Blu-ray. There must surely be a handful.
@@MrPoiuytre91 Paul Simon's Concert in the Park was never released on Blu-Ray. It was released on VHS and LaserDisc back in the day. The reason is that a contract with Pioneer was made that meant that this could not be released on any other digital physical media in the future (probably done in order to get more people to buy Laserdisc). And so it has only recently been released on DVD after a big campaign on Facebook. But never on Blu-Ray.
I realize that you won't be interested in doing this as it's too risky for such a rare product, but depending upon the battery unit's construction it might be possible to replace the actual cell inside. This is outside the scope of this channel, but worth mentioning in case someone else has one that they're willing to risk.
Before the smartphone, the magic of going to the electronics shop with your salary; CDs, cassette walkmans, boomboxes, midis, hi-fi separates, DVDs, camcorders, cameras, VCRs etc. It made work feel worthwhile coming home with something nice. I miss those days 😢
In an early noughties Argos catalogue, the most expensive mobile is cheaper than the cheapest MP3 player or the cheapest digital camera ! Of course all the mobile did was make calls, texts and play snake.
@@AtheistOrphan We used to always have the latest issue in our coffee area at work. Now people just sit there doomscrolling their phones. p.s Google Retomash Argos for some nostalgia.
The Six Million Dollar Man was one of my favorite shows as a kid in the '70s. I remember drawing up charts of the whole week's prime time schedule so that I knew which nights I needed to be ready to watch something. No VCRs, so if you missed it, you missed it. If you were lucky, you might catch it as rerun a few months later. (They hadn't figured out interleaved reruns yet, so it was the whole season in fall and winter, then the whole season again in spring and summer.)
At least we are no longer bound by the physical size of the media like a 120mm disc. Now we could store all data on a (micro) SD card with the size of your thumbnail and use it on our smart phone or tablet for example. Less "one trick ponys" to carry around😅 Watch a movie - smart phone Make a phone call/send a text - smart phone Listen to music - smart phone Write an Email or browse the internet - smart phone Read ebooks or documents - smart phone... I don't miss carrying a feature phone, mp3 player, ebook reader and laptop to do all of the above.
@@kuebbisch The issue is that if everything you do is through an anonymous little box your body gains no physical pleasure from changing from one thing to another. Our brains are a mass of different things; our bodies like doing different stuff. you list 6 things that needed at least 6 different skills; or involve hours of planning. That's what this channel is tapping tons. In 30 years what will you be nostalgic about?
Thanks for taking the time to make all these videos documenting all these forgotten products and formats. Its funny how quickly technology changes and how something that was once cutting edge has no be relegated obsolete by the advent of smartphones that do everything including act as tvs and video systems. I remember when those tv wristwatches were new and people were amazed at them.
I didn't know such DVD Walkman existed even I'm Japanese, and it shows that I was not a Sony enthusiast any more at that time after cassette (and "reel to reel") tape era.
I think it's amazing it took almost a quarter of a century for me to know this existed. Sony just kept shoveling consumer electronic ideas into the abyss around this era. What an octopus of a solution for portable video. My goodness.
We have evolved a bit since then. When I was traveling for work regularly a couple years ago, I ripped Blu-ray discs (from Netflix) to the memory card in my phone and watched movies on it during flights. It's just a little less clunky.
That would have been perfect for my commute into Manchester on the train, and with the usual delays on that journey, I could have watched most of a DVD! Thanks again for the video. 👍🏻
In the mid 2000’s I purchased 3 Axiom 3.6 inch Personal DVD players. These were great units. They could play video, broadcast TV if you had the antenna plug in, and CDs. Got them for $60 each that year. Ran them into the dirt.
But why did you need three of them? In the summer of 2007, some of my classmates were working in a repair shop as an apprentice and there were *mountains* of these portable DVD players from warranty returns, waiting to be sent out to an e-waste facility. They were branded Lazer, Coby, Orion, and who remembers what else, most of them were the same with minor changes and different branding. Most of them were bricked, in some of them only the DVD portion failed. They brought dozens of mp4 players back to school from the scrap heap, but unfortunately only a few of these DVD players. I hoped to get one with a working TV section, and I wanted to use it with my camcorder to watch the footage on the go on a bigger screen (they had AV input). Who thought at that time that less than 10 years later we will be able to record broadcast quality 4K videos on our phones... Of course on occasions I would still prefer a camcorder, you can't beat a proper lens with 20-30x optical zoom, but for everyday stuff, a good smartphone camera is well enough.
Products like these are always insane in hindsight because we have miniaturized them to the point that even thought they’re just screens in our pockets, we _still_ don’t spur-of-the-moment go “hey, I think I’d like to start a feature length film on my phone,” and yet you were expected to pay $1,600 to use the most cumbersome equivalent.
Okay grandpa Ned Ludd, let’s get you to bed. Seriously though, this would have been the equivalent of $3200 today. for that money, you could buy a topend phone, a bigass tv, a good sound system, and a drone that will fly a mile up and take videos in 4k
I just love the design of media players from around the 2000s, they looked so pretty and felt surprisingly premium. Had an aluminium cassette player from Panasonic with soft-touch buttons that just will always be timelessly classy to me.
When I saw the title I thought of using DVDs as a MP3 storage medium in 2001 sounded really sensible. A relatively low cost drive compared to a hard drive like an iPod with a very similar capacity. Of course I should have realised
I do not like watching something on a screen while I'm walking. I will wait until I'm standing still, sitting, or lying down. But I do find that interesting. I would have loved to have that "walkman". Great video!
I'll gladly accept the drawbacks of a touchscreen over a hundred portable gadgets which only do one or two things which epitomised the Japanese electronics business model. Then again, I hate clutter.
@@hoilst265If touchscreens never took off, you’d probably be awed by how touchscreens provide dynamically changing control layouts depending on context. The alternative is to use the same button layout to do everything. It’s only boring because it’s the norm.
now you don't need to stick to any consistent button layout, but also there's even odds that you'll touch the wrong thing so there's no real way to be sure how to control something well
I love old Sony's evolutionary approach to design: Develop everything you can think of and make reasonably high quality products out of insane ideas - regardless of if they are needed by consumers (yet). I would visit a museum dedicated to this playful take on design that showcases Sony stuff like this that never took off but are very very intricate proofs of niche-concepts. These products seem to mock efficiency, relevancy and even sustainability but yet they have a distinct quality of human dreams mixed with rationality.❤ Stunning video as always, thank you very much.
What a trip down memory lane! Sony truly dared with this unique design. Thanks for showcasing a piece of tech history that, despite its quirks, remains fascinating. Great job on the video, super detailed!
I have never seen such item just like this one, imagine if tech companies still made out of the box designs instead of the soulless slabs we carry nowadays.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy but I always loved gadgets that worked on removable media like tapes and discs. The whole physicality of having to operate them on a mechanical level, to wit, changing the media by opening, removing and then replacing physical media made the whole thing seem more inclusive and involved than that which superseded it, where you got nothing physical and just a stream of data stored on a chip inside of the gadget itself. More convenient, of course, but not at all physically interactive.
If the player fails you don't lose your media. Nowadays the hardware doesn't even have to fail. There have been cases of people inheriting Apple devices to find that without the PIN it, and all the media on it is just a doorstop.
@@MrDuncl We know all about Apple and their shenanigans around, 'you can buy it, but it's not yours. And, we can deny you it whenever we decide we don't want you to have it anymore.' Part of the reason why I always buy physical media whenever possible. When they started selling music in the form of poor quality mp3's, that was my lot with them.
I've always hated physical media. Vinyl and tape were unreliable, messy and fragile, optical discs slow and prone to damage. This direct involvement you're talking about, that you seem to enjoy was, in my opinion, a shortcoming, something that got between me and the content. It's a distracting, limiting barrier. I got into computers around the millennium, at just the right time when it became economically feasible to just copy all types of media to hard drives, which I did with everything as soon as I figured out how to. Flash storage was the next revelation, making random access much quicker while at the same time being more physically robust. If I could afford it, my home server storing hundreds of movies, TV shows, albums, books, etc. would be using SSDs instead of HDDs, but it's still very neat the way it is, even if I have to wait a few seconds for the right HDD to spin up. By the way, if you're thinking big server rack, this couldn't be further from the truth - I built a tiny thing smaller than most PCs, barely audible and consuming very little power. Didn't cost much either. The important thing is that I have full control over everything, am not shackled down by some big corporation telling me how and on which devices and even in what kind of quality I am allowed to enjoy my media. I don't need a running Internet connection, I don't have to worry about individual drives or discs failing, about being locked out by servers going offline, content being removed or altered due to expired licenses or DRM not being supported anymore on newer or older hardware.
I know you dont make videos as regular as you used to but seeing a new techmoan as im finishing my work on friday night is a great feeling! Tha ks for your videos Mat!
That 2000s Walkman logo brings me back. I had a Walkman mp4 player that teenager me lived out of for 5 years until it died in 2012. I think it was the battery becoming a spicy pillow. I do wanna replace the battery one day so I can look at what was on it. Sure will be a time capsule for me.
this kind of devices are what made me fall in love with technology, it's just plain cool! this would have been amazing at car meets in the early 2000s, imagine filming some skids, some drifts, on your dvd handycam and then watch it on this thing with all your mates. i wish technology was still at this level, nowadays everything is boring
If I would’ve been a really rich toddler then I would’ve been strolling along watching DVDs of Leapfrog on that sleek player over at Disney World! But instead in 2006 I was using a Daewoo portable player in my hotel room. I think it was Pop Century.
@@alexsuniverse384 heck I would have had a Blu-ray Discman that isn't a one-trip pony. Sadly, Sony didn't sell boatloads because otherwise we could have had a personal movie theater where the TV set was a pair of Ray-Bans connected to The Discman.
Turns out, Sony had a Watchman series of products and they were smaller than this because they didnt use a disc but were actual portable TV devices going back to 1982 😅
I think it was because they discontinued the Watchman and they were trying to unify the Walkman brand. But then again it would probably use an analog tuner which is probably dead nowadays
I used to love Sony Walkmans in the 90s literally the size of a tape always bought the premium for the smaller size ...its amazing how far technology has moved forward
Daaamn, this is one sexy device. I like those old Sony high end stuff. We really miss a lot today, with everything "bundled" in one black boring rectangle....
I had one of these in late 2005 all the way until early 2008. It died due to Australian bull dust sadly. But latest me the remainder of my highschool sentence, graduated 2007. Edit: to those curious, I got mine second hand, well likely 20th hand lol, for $40 AUD. Mostly watched burnt anime.
That was an odd period for electronics, wasn’t it, that time between the death of VHS and the rise of the smart phone? We were still married to physical/rewritable media, but pretty much everyone had a computer and internet access by that point, so there were a lot of options out there. You had portables like this, the PSP (which had both its own UMD format for movies and allowed people to watch video stored on the memory card), and all sorts of oddities. The one I thought was the absolute coolest was this officially-licensed media player cartridge for the GBA. I forget what it was called, because it never left Japan. It was like those GBA Video cartridges that we got, but better. You could buy movies and TV episodes to insert into it (IIRC, from vending machines), and I think it also let you run MP3s. Edit: Found it, it was the Play-Yan. Europe and China apparently got versions of it as well.
I had an iRiver IMP-1000. It didn't have a screen (unlike the IMP-1100), but you could plug it into a TV to watch movies that you'd burned to a CD yourself (it was a CD player, not a DVD player). What made it really great though, was that it played mp3 files too, so at a time when mp3 players only had storage of maybe 256MB, this gave you 700MB per disc - meaning that if you had a large music collection, this was the ONLY portable device that allowed you to carry it all with you.
For it's time and task, the machine delivers! Never staying in one place for too long, Sony's world-famous techs moved on and advanced from this. Thanks for demonstrating this.
In cases the battery doesn’t work doesn’t hurt to try the casing with what we use for cell phone repair, a Jimmy tool or thicker isesamo tool will work well and likely just a basic lipo cell inside.
Sadly there wasn't a Laserdisc Walkman. To be worn as a hat.
Make it as a bicycle, then you won't even have to get up to watch Side 3 and 4 because it's on the back wheel!
And get there quicker if the discs are CLV not CAV.
Man these potholes are making me my laserdisc skip..
You get neck muscles like a wrestler for free!
Like a sombrero?
Have been watching you for about 10 years now. Just wanted to say thank you for remaining such a breathe of fresh air on this platform
0:48 - if you're getting bugged by people asking you to bring back the puppets, there is always the clever life hack of becoming the puppet!
many of our politicians achieved it ;0))
@@annother3350 dumb
Loved that lil live action bit so much
He's done this before a few times.
Sony seems to be an endless pit of odd forgotten consumer and professional products
Truly. Japan pissed away billions looking for the next big thing. No one bought this shit.
I know, right? I'm from 1965, and I've never even heard of any of the weird Sony things he's had on here.
They reached for the moon. Now they are only known for the Playstation
@@johnnychang4233Sony still produces incredible products. There are many more innovative Sony devices AFTER that marvelous PS3 which you so unjustly mock. If you're following this channel, then you know that it didn't all 'end' with the PS3.
"Oddware." - LGR
Back in my day, if you owned a portable DVD player with 12V car adapter for watching movies on road trips, you were the coolest kid in school.
Same
we made beyblades out of anything we could and used to make a bowl by lining our fists around a square of concrete. the winner was the guy that bled the least.
Back in that day I never actually watched or played anything portable if the sun was out and I usually forgot the charging cable.
Back in my day, if you had 8 track in your car, you we're the colesterol kid in school.
@@billmcmahon2211 When I was at school there was a kid with a digital watch. I don't recall his name but referred to him as "the kid with the digital watch" and everyone in the electronics club knew who I meant.
That made me miss the early 2000s as that was when the DVD format was at its height of popularity. Felt like anything was possible.
And when it was realised. Everyone wanted to go back to the 60s.
Every generation of tech feels like that. "Until somebody builds a bigger bomb."
I was around back then. While the available tech was interesting and sometimes impressive, I was also extremely aware of its shortcomings. Screens other than big Trintron CRTs were all awful (no exceptions), especially on portable devices. Pixel density, viewing angles, colors, and reaction times were just horrible on any LCD. The devices weren't much better: Everything was slow and clunky, usability dubious, things crashed or malfunctioned all the time. Materials, including of high-end stuff, were either creaky hard plastic or awful rubberized surfaces that even back then started to disintegrate rapidly. Even more annoyingly, tech was often already outdated the moment you bought it, which was the flip side of the rapid progress we experienced back then.
As for DVDs, they looked great on CRTs (well-mastered ones at least did - the quality varied a lot), but even back then I was so annoyed by having to switch between them, wait for them to move to the desired section, etc. that I was turning them into .iso files instead of using them directly.
@@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep Not anymore. We've pretty much hit the limit in regards to media playback. There's nothing beyond streaming.
alright calm down
That screen is clearly one from a Handycam but without the camcorder, cool product
Remember the Handycams that took 3" DVD-RWs ? The latest thing for a couple of years.
@@MrDunclYeah, they were replaced by next gen cameras with a small hard drive, MUCH better idea 👍
@@MrDuncl I initially read this as "3 DVD-RWs" and thought: "Of course Sony made a camera that recorded on three discs."
Trueeeee, wow.
I imagine his home is basically an A/V history museum! I love this channel so much. I find out about the most random and obscure A/V formats.
USA viewer here.
Decades ago, I found, in a local Target store on its 'bargain table', a rather large pile of devices very similar to what you are displaying here. I had cash in pocket, so I bought a large amount of them because I was young and reckless. In a relatively short period of time I re-sold them on ebay for amounts of money that, at the time, were amazing to me. It paid my "COBRA" health insurance premiums for over EIGHTEEN MONTHS. In the USA, that was a big deal.
Damn right it is 😂
18 months of COBRA. Wow. That was a small fortune!
The fact they named a healthcare company after a venomous snake never seemed right to me.
@@AB-wf8ekcobra is a program, not a company. It allows you to continue purchasing health insurance at the rate your employer was purchasing it for. Usually employers pay 2/3 the cost and you pay the other 1/3, so after you lose your job, you get to pay the full amount.
Which, especially before Obamacare, is still much cheaper than getting the same type of coverage straight from an insurance company.
@@AB-wf8ek Very honest naming.
People successfully ignoring each other in a city is as old as newspapers.
Before the newspapers it was the pamphlets. And before pamphlets people didn't travel. People pretty much lived in the same couple of villages or maybe towns for their entire lives.
@@Crusader1089or knit or whittle
People like to dream of a world where we all talked to each other, but the reality is, I dont want to talk to anyone,
Precisely. I remember a newspaper column (ironic, isn't it?) from the 1920s. The author complained about people reading books, magazines and papers on the tram and elsewhere instead of talking to one another. People were obsessed with their papers in particular. Before WW2, larger city newspapers had several editions throughout the day that would get rapidly updated with the very latest news, with some news addicts buying each and every one of them (so morning, mid-day, afternoon, evening and even late night editions) to keep up to date. Similarly, letters and packages would be delivered several times per day. There were riots in the streets any time the steady supply of newspapers was interrupted, e.g. because printers or delivery boys were on strike.
@@no1DdC
It's almost like people want to relax after a long day, by just sitting in their own thoughts and thinking about nothing, instead of having to keep up with an conversation
I'm about to get my first LaserDisc player this week, I've wanted one since I was in the 6th Grade and now since I'm in first year university and I get monthly allowance I finally saved up for one 7 years later, I watched your LaserDiscs videos a million times growing up. My model is the Pioneer CLD D925 with the remote in beautiful condition plus 53 LD discs. I'm so excited. Funny enough it's the same player you have.
Would love for you to revisit laserdiscs in the future Techmoan!
Love from South Africa 🇿🇦
I'd be interested in knowing if there are still any films/'content' that has been released on LaserDisc but that has still never been released on Blu-ray. There must surely be a handful.
@@MrPoiuytre91 Paul Simon's Concert in the Park was never released on Blu-Ray. It was released on VHS and LaserDisc back in the day. The reason is that a contract with Pioneer was made that meant that this could not be released on any other digital physical media in the future (probably done in order to get more people to buy Laserdisc). And so it has only recently been released on DVD after a big campaign on Facebook. But never on Blu-Ray.
Wow, just getting one of those players at all and then in South Africa of all places must have been quite a trip.
@@MrPoiuytre91 I don’t know if it’s the same anymore, but I know for the longest time it was the only way to watch pre-CGI 1977 Star Wars
@@bergfruehling it really, really was. They're quite rare
You and @vwestlife seem to make the most perfect videos to watch at Work while on a Lunch Break.
Straight to the point old tech videos.
Phenomenal
I realize that you won't be interested in doing this as it's too risky for such a rare product, but depending upon the battery unit's construction it might be possible to replace the actual cell inside. This is outside the scope of this channel, but worth mentioning in case someone else has one that they're willing to risk.
Before the smartphone, the magic of going to the electronics shop with your salary; CDs, cassette walkmans, boomboxes, midis, hi-fi separates, DVDs, camcorders, cameras, VCRs etc. It made work feel worthwhile coming home with something nice. I miss those days 😢
RIP Tottenham Court Road’s electronics shops.
In an early noughties Argos catalogue, the most expensive mobile is cheaper than the cheapest MP3 player or the cheapest digital camera ! Of course all the mobile did was make calls, texts and play snake.
Ah-men to that @gwheregwhizz
@@MrDuncl- ‘The laminated book of dreams’
@@AtheistOrphan We used to always have the latest issue in our coffee area at work. Now people just sit there doomscrolling their phones.
p.s Google Retomash Argos for some nostalgia.
The Six Million Dollar Man was one of my favorite shows as a kid in the '70s. I remember drawing up charts of the whole week's prime time schedule so that I knew which nights I needed to be ready to watch something. No VCRs, so if you missed it, you missed it. If you were lucky, you might catch it as rerun a few months later. (They hadn't figured out interleaved reruns yet, so it was the whole season in fall and winter, then the whole season again in spring and summer.)
‘We can rebuild him’
I imagine most of 6 Million and Bionic Woman's plots went right over a 4 year olds head, they were only watching for the slo mo action scenes.
Was not prepared for the battery reveal 🤣
That battery is so damn cool!
I wonder if it would be possible to 3D print something similar with a modern battery in, and a compatible connector?
Unfortunately nothing will ever look so futuristic again in the future.
yup.. everything just looks like another smartphone..
At least we are no longer bound by the physical size of the media like a 120mm disc. Now we could store all data on a (micro) SD card with the size of your thumbnail and use it on our smart phone or tablet for example.
Less "one trick ponys" to carry around😅
Watch a movie - smart phone
Make a phone call/send a text - smart phone
Listen to music - smart phone
Write an Email or browse the internet - smart phone
Read ebooks or documents - smart phone...
I don't miss carrying a feature phone, mp3 player, ebook reader and laptop to do all of the above.
There is no future. Only an endless nightmare if cheap "retro" knock-offs of times last. 😢
@@PaulTaylor1 Moan . Tech! Wait, I have an idea for a TH-cam channel!
@@kuebbisch The issue is that if everything you do is through an anonymous little box your body gains no physical pleasure from changing from one thing to another. Our brains are a mass of different things; our bodies like doing different stuff. you list 6 things that needed at least 6 different skills; or involve hours of planning. That's what this channel is tapping tons. In 30 years what will you be nostalgic about?
Sony was the GOAT back in the day. Their portable devices were never matched, from Mini Disc, CD players, Video cameras.
Ah, a fresh Techmoan video - it makes my Saturday breakfast a special treat!
This is just the kind of thing I'd have been fascinated by as a kid
Thanks for taking the time to make all these videos documenting all these forgotten products and formats. Its funny how quickly technology changes and how something that was once cutting edge has no be relegated obsolete by the advent of smartphones that do everything including act as tvs and video systems. I remember when those tv wristwatches were new and people were amazed at them.
Love the mention of the DVE 7000S where some newer viewers will think Matt doesn't have that unit too and BOOM there it is! Such a Boss!
Yeah, although I was confused by its very brief mention and no additional description and review. Perhaps, a separate video on it incoming? @Techmoan
I was impressed with LG's portable DVD player with Q-Sound. The sound fx in RoboCop sounded phenomenal on that player.
I didn't know such DVD Walkman existed even I'm Japanese, and it shows that I was not a Sony enthusiast any more at that time after cassette (and "reel to reel") tape era.
I think it's amazing it took almost a quarter of a century for me to know this existed. Sony just kept shoveling consumer electronic ideas into the abyss around this era. What an octopus of a solution for portable video. My goodness.
You stumped me. Never heard of this back in the day and I was at the Sony style shop weekly
Reason number #4 It's been featured on Techmoan, so good luck finding one, let the bidding wars begin.
We have evolved a bit since then. When I was traveling for work regularly a couple years ago, I ripped Blu-ray discs (from Netflix) to the memory card in my phone and watched movies on it during flights. It's just a little less clunky.
Worked in a electronics store to fund my studies for years around the 2000's, and I sold all this stuff (and loaned everything to try it out)
That would have been perfect for my commute into Manchester on the train, and with the usual delays on that journey, I could have watched most of a DVD! Thanks again for the video. 👍🏻
In the mid 2000’s I purchased 3 Axiom 3.6 inch Personal DVD players. These were great units. They could play video, broadcast TV if you had the antenna plug in, and CDs. Got them for $60 each that year. Ran them into the dirt.
But why did you need three of them? In the summer of 2007, some of my classmates were working in a repair shop as an apprentice and there were *mountains* of these portable DVD players from warranty returns, waiting to be sent out to an e-waste facility. They were branded Lazer, Coby, Orion, and who remembers what else, most of them were the same with minor changes and different branding. Most of them were bricked, in some of them only the DVD portion failed. They brought dozens of mp4 players back to school from the scrap heap, but unfortunately only a few of these DVD players.
I hoped to get one with a working TV section, and I wanted to use it with my camcorder to watch the footage on the go on a bigger screen (they had AV input). Who thought at that time that less than 10 years later we will be able to record broadcast quality 4K videos on our phones... Of course on occasions I would still prefer a camcorder, you can't beat a proper lens with 20-30x optical zoom, but for everyday stuff, a good smartphone camera is well enough.
Products like these are always insane in hindsight because we have miniaturized them to the point that even thought they’re just screens in our pockets, we _still_ don’t spur-of-the-moment go “hey, I think I’d like to start a feature length film on my phone,” and yet you were expected to pay $1,600 to use the most cumbersome equivalent.
tech used to be soo much cooler than these days.
Yeah, there were bigger CD formats that existed but never really took off, I think it was a 6 or 7 inch disc format. Casio had their pocket TV's.
Now we just have rectangles
Okay grandpa Ned Ludd, let’s get you to bed.
Seriously though, this would have been the equivalent of $3200 today. for that money, you could buy a topend phone, a bigass tv, a good sound system, and a drone that will fly a mile up and take videos in 4k
3:52 A potable walkman! Amazing times.. :)
I just love the design of media players from around the 2000s, they looked so pretty and felt surprisingly premium.
Had an aluminium cassette player from Panasonic with soft-touch buttons that just will always be timelessly classy to me.
this is one reason i've always loved Sony. unique designs like this. it's a shame this era of electronics is over and won't ever come back
A truly unique product, thank you for remembering it!
5 a.m. and I'm watching Tech Moan.. life is good.
Same!
4 where I am. 😊
When I saw the title I thought of using DVDs as a MP3 storage medium in 2001 sounded really sensible. A relatively low cost drive compared to a hard drive like an iPod with a very similar capacity.
Of course I should have realised
I do not like watching something on a screen while I'm walking. I will wait until I'm standing still, sitting, or lying down. But I do find that interesting. I would have loved to have that "walkman". Great video!
Yeah, even my phone recognises when I am walking and warns me to look where I am going and not use the phone while walking.
I was just in the passenger seat yesterday looking at my phone, and the motion sickness got me. Always been sensitive to that.
@@kuebbisch Tell your phone to piss off
I love this era of Sony Design. What sucks about modern design is the touchscreen.
I'll gladly accept the drawbacks of a touchscreen over a hundred portable gadgets which only do one or two things which epitomised the Japanese electronics business model. Then again, I hate clutter.
@@DD-ld1xq It's boring.
@@hoilst265If touchscreens never took off, you’d probably be awed by how touchscreens provide dynamically changing control layouts depending on context. The alternative is to use the same button layout to do everything. It’s only boring because it’s the norm.
now you don't need to stick to any consistent button layout, but also there's even odds that you'll touch the wrong thing so there's no real way to be sure how to control something well
Another gadget that I've never seen before ! Directly from Techmoan pandora box of extraordinary gadgets ! Thanks ....
Very cool! In 2002 my mate had a CD 'walkman' that he used to connect to the TV via component cables and would play VCDs.
Thank you universe and Techmoan for this upload. I'll never not click on a walkman/discman video
Mat, I love the fact that you have The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman on DVD 🙂
And Star Trek Insurrection some say the second best or the second worst of the TNG films
The Six Million Dollar Man was probably the target market for this player. Great video.
They're quite expensive but I dont think you had to be THAT rich!! ;0))
‘We can rebuild him’
@@AtheistOrphan We have the technology.
Very cool. Love you playing the intro to the 6 million dollar man in that.
I love old Sony's evolutionary approach to design: Develop everything you can think of and make reasonably high quality products out of insane ideas - regardless of if they are needed by consumers (yet). I would visit a museum dedicated to this playful take on design that showcases Sony stuff like this that never took off but are very very intricate proofs of niche-concepts. These products seem to mock efficiency, relevancy and even sustainability but yet they have a distinct quality of human dreams mixed with rationality.❤
Stunning video as always, thank you very much.
What a trip down memory lane! Sony truly dared with this unique design. Thanks for showcasing a piece of tech history that, despite its quirks, remains fascinating. Great job on the video, super detailed!
I have never seen such item just like this one, imagine if tech companies still made out of the box designs instead of the soulless slabs we carry nowadays.
The Bigfoot episodes were the best! I was 9 when they originally aired and he scared the crap out of me. Lol.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy but I always loved gadgets that worked on removable media like tapes and discs. The whole physicality of having to operate them on a mechanical level, to wit, changing the media by opening, removing and then replacing physical media made the whole thing seem more inclusive and involved than that which superseded it, where you got nothing physical and just a stream of data stored on a chip inside of the gadget itself. More convenient, of course, but not at all physically interactive.
I couldn't agree more!!!
If the player fails you don't lose your media. Nowadays the hardware doesn't even have to fail. There have been cases of people inheriting Apple devices to find that without the PIN it, and all the media on it is just a doorstop.
@@MrDuncl We know all about Apple and their shenanigans around, 'you can buy it, but it's not yours. And, we can deny you it whenever we decide we don't want you to have it anymore.'
Part of the reason why I always buy physical media whenever possible. When they started selling music in the form of poor quality mp3's, that was my lot with them.
I've always hated physical media. Vinyl and tape were unreliable, messy and fragile, optical discs slow and prone to damage. This direct involvement you're talking about, that you seem to enjoy was, in my opinion, a shortcoming, something that got between me and the content. It's a distracting, limiting barrier.
I got into computers around the millennium, at just the right time when it became economically feasible to just copy all types of media to hard drives, which I did with everything as soon as I figured out how to. Flash storage was the next revelation, making random access much quicker while at the same time being more physically robust. If I could afford it, my home server storing hundreds of movies, TV shows, albums, books, etc. would be using SSDs instead of HDDs, but it's still very neat the way it is, even if I have to wait a few seconds for the right HDD to spin up. By the way, if you're thinking big server rack, this couldn't be further from the truth - I built a tiny thing smaller than most PCs, barely audible and consuming very little power. Didn't cost much either.
The important thing is that I have full control over everything, am not shackled down by some big corporation telling me how and on which devices and even in what kind of quality I am allowed to enjoy my media. I don't need a running Internet connection, I don't have to worry about individual drives or discs failing, about being locked out by servers going offline, content being removed or altered due to expired licenses or DRM not being supported anymore on newer or older hardware.
@@no1DdC Different strokes for different folks.
6 million dollars man AND Bionic Woman openings in screen are chef's kiss :D
Awwww Sony's futuristic designs... I miss that aesthetic.
We have the technology. We can rebuild him. We can make him better than he was. Better. Stronger. Faster.
It will be nice to see something about another Sony unique Walkman: MPD-AP20U - maybe the one and only DVD mp3 player/CD Burner/Memory Stick player
Great video! Snappy and interesting, showing something I've never seen before. I appreciate all the longer stuff too, but this is vintage youtube.
I always enjoyed watching DVDs on my Panasonic DVD player back in the day.
That's an insane price to ask, no wonder it didn't sell well.
Many thanks as always Techmoan ✌️🤘
Pure Techmoan enjoyment. Cheers Mat!
I hate it when somebody bumps into you in the city centre and TH-cam skips
The amount of vintage Sony products with batteries that still function somewhat is honestly impressive
9:05 I've been waiting for Andre the Giant to finally show up on your channel!
It was only a matter of time.
Love these videos , you channel has been a massive inspiration to me as a smaller creator
The Bionic Man intro was just amazing as a kid in the 70's 😁👍
I know you dont make videos as regular as you used to but seeing a new techmoan as im finishing my work on friday night is a great feeling! Tha ks for your videos Mat!
That 2000s Walkman logo brings me back. I had a Walkman mp4 player that teenager me lived out of for 5 years until it died in 2012. I think it was the battery becoming a spicy pillow. I do wanna replace the battery one day so I can look at what was on it. Sure will be a time capsule for me.
this kind of devices are what made me fall in love with technology, it's just plain cool! this would have been amazing at car meets in the early 2000s, imagine filming some skids, some drifts, on your dvd handycam and then watch it on this thing with all your mates. i wish technology was still at this level, nowadays everything is boring
Matt another great video to start my Saturday
Your first statement about a "proper job" was quite interesting in these times. There are less and less of these.
If I would’ve been a really rich toddler then I would’ve been strolling along watching DVDs of Leapfrog on that sleek player over at Disney World! But instead in 2006 I was using a Daewoo portable player in my hotel room. I think it was Pop Century.
@@alexsuniverse384 heck I would have had a Blu-ray Discman that isn't a one-trip pony. Sadly, Sony didn't sell boatloads because otherwise we could have had a personal movie theater where the TV set was a pair of Ray-Bans connected to The Discman.
Missed opportunity to call it the Sony Watchman. It's a Walkman that you can watch DVDs on!
Turns out, Sony had a Watchman series of products and they were smaller than this because they didnt use a disc but were actual portable TV devices going back to 1982 😅
It’s time for the Bang&Olufsen cassette deck.
This 'voice over' style is excellent.
I remember these. Never understood why Sony never called them the DVD Watchman since it was essentially a TV.
I think it was because they discontinued the Watchman and they were trying to unify the Walkman brand. But then again it would probably use an analog tuner which is probably dead nowadays
I used to love Sony Walkmans in the 90s literally the size of a tape always bought the premium for the smaller size ...its amazing how far technology has moved forward
Daaamn, this is one sexy device. I like those old Sony high end stuff. We really miss a lot today, with everything "bundled" in one black boring rectangle....
Love seeing videos about obscure gear Sony made, instant like.
nothing like waking up late in the morning to a new techmoan video
Nothing like waking up at 5AM in the U.S. to a new techmoan video to watch while eating oatmeal.
Or very early
the aesthetics is perfect for a motor-head , I would bring that to a car meeting back in the 2000 ...
I had one of these in late 2005 all the way until early 2008. It died due to Australian bull dust sadly. But latest me the remainder of my highschool sentence, graduated 2007.
Edit: to those curious, I got mine second hand, well likely 20th hand lol, for $40 AUD. Mostly watched burnt anime.
They don't make them like they used to
Another brilliant vid about (now obscure) tech that defined an era. Thanks.
I would never use this but the way it looks makes me want it.
I like how this player and my HDMI Sony DVD player from 5 years later use an identical menu.
I'd love a review of the "Holly Hop Drive".
My favourite content portable media players😊
I had forgotten all about this device. We had it in the Sony center I worked in. Don't recall selling many.
That was an odd period for electronics, wasn’t it, that time between the death of VHS and the rise of the smart phone?
We were still married to physical/rewritable media, but pretty much everyone had a computer and internet access by that point, so there were a lot of options out there. You had portables like this, the PSP (which had both its own UMD format for movies and allowed people to watch video stored on the memory card), and all sorts of oddities.
The one I thought was the absolute coolest was this officially-licensed media player cartridge for the GBA. I forget what it was called, because it never left Japan. It was like those GBA Video cartridges that we got, but better. You could buy movies and TV episodes to insert into it (IIRC, from vending machines), and I think it also let you run MP3s.
Edit: Found it, it was the Play-Yan. Europe and China apparently got versions of it as well.
First I've heard of it, thank you for sharing this with us.
I had an iRiver IMP-1000. It didn't have a screen (unlike the IMP-1100), but you could plug it into a TV to watch movies that you'd burned to a CD yourself (it was a CD player, not a DVD player). What made it really great though, was that it played mp3 files too, so at a time when mp3 players only had storage of maybe 256MB, this gave you 700MB per disc - meaning that if you had a large music collection, this was the ONLY portable device that allowed you to carry it all with you.
For it's time and task, the machine delivers! Never staying in one place for too long, Sony's world-famous techs moved on and advanced from this. Thanks for demonstrating this.
Bionic woman. Lindsay Wagner was beautiful. Even in her 70's today, she's a stunner.
Thanks for the recommendation; sending a DM now.
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 She would ruin you
This would pair up nicely with my Sony Glasstron PLM-A35
@@MG124c41 actually that would be a Sony PBD-V30 from 1998 that would pair well with those glasses and that's how you look like a late 90s cyberpunk.
Thanks for the excellent video, will share it elsewhere and community tab
In cases the battery doesn’t work doesn’t hurt to try the casing with what we use for cell phone repair, a Jimmy tool or thicker isesamo tool will work well and likely just a basic lipo cell inside.
Still looks amazing. Sony's design was matchless back in the day. They age beautifully.
When you're big in Japan, tonight. Big in Japan, be tight. Big in Japan, alright.
Alphaville
@@EntraVenuS I prefer the Guano Apes cover
You're an amazing actor Mr. Moan.
The D-VE7000S display still looks great playing DVD movies. More than enough resolution.
the CD and MD era had some of the coolest mechanically engineered products.
what a charming little product