SPECTACULAR TECH FAILURES

13 of the biggest audio-visual technical innovations that blazed a trail and died a death

Since the very first issue of What Hifi? was published in 1976, we have covered numerous technological advances in the world of hi-fi and home entertainment. Many have stood the test of time – some, like vinyl, have come back from what looked certain to be the grave – but a combination of flawed concepts, poor timing or costly format wars (or all three) have seen others rendered obsolete.

For the briefest, shining moment, these innovations turned heads – but you won’t find any of them in the running for a gong at our upcoming 39th What Hi-fi? Awards.

Video 2000 1979-1988

Also known as Video Compact Cassette, this was the result of a collaboration between Philips and Grundig. The V2000 was innovative compared with the VHS and Betamax rivals it sought to challenge, notably in the recording times of its two-sided cassettes. But it arrived after both VHS and Betamax, entering a market already wary of competing formats, and it wasn’t marketed in North America at all. There was no camcorder and, crucially, no suggestion that the pornography industry was interested in the V2000.

Amazon Fire Phone 2014-2015

Hot on the heels of the hit Kindle Fire HDX 7, this was Amazon’s first and only foray into 3D-enabled Fire smartphones. Too rich for most ($299 for the 64GB model with two-year contract or $749 without), drab design and gimmicky features like Dynamic Perspective (labelled distracting at best and worthless at worst) didn’t help. The ecosystem was also a let down. After poor initial sales, Amazon extinguished the Fire a year later with a loss reportedly in the region of $170m. Still, if Jeff Bezos merrily launching himself into space is anything to go on, the firm soaked it up.

3D TV 2010-2017

It was all going so well. CES 2010 saw the exciting launch of 3D home TV propositions from Sony and Panasonic, and we’d all just come home from watching Avatar in glorious 3D at the cinema. Now you could have that at home? Winning.

Only, 3D TV didn’t win viewers over long-term and, despite a reported 41.5m units sold in 2012, sales declined significantly from 2013 onwards. 4K resolution, which could have made the quality of 3D much better while still using passive agnostic glasses, was still in its infancy and as yet nowhere near affordable enough, while the active specs available were expensive, not universally compatible with competing technologies, needed constant charging and often felt uncomfortable (or got chewed by the dog).

8-track cartridge 1965-1982

The first magnetic tape recorders became available as long ago as 1940, but they were bulky, complicated and expensive. Attempts to finesse the open-reel format into cartridges (to reduce complexity and vulnerability) began almost as soon as the reel-to-reel standard was perfected, and by 1965 a giddily high-powered consortium that included Ampex, RCA, Ford and Lear had perfected 8-track tape. It was the simplest and most durable magnetic tape configuration to date, and with the longest playback time to boot.

The motor industry loved 8-track – Bentley and Rolls Royce fitted them as standard for years – and for a while it looked like it might have the fidelity to become a home standard as well as a convenience for the car. But Philips had been refining its compact cassette format since its introduction in 1962, and by the early ’70s, improvements in sound quality and durability saw the more portable alternative overhaul 8-track.

Betamax 1975-2002

Sony’s Betamax videotape recording standard was widely recognised as the best-performing home recording format – but consumers didn’t want ‘better’ anything like as much as they wanted ‘cheaper’. As the more affordable VHS format, which also had a significant advantage over Betamax in recording times, gained ground in North America, economies of scale meant VHS equipment was more affordable in Europe than Betamax. Sony read the

”Sony’s Betamax was widely recognised as the best home recording format, but consumers didn’t want better anything like as much as they wanted cheaper”

runes as early as 1988, when it began producing its own VHS hardware, but – in what was a demonstration of either admirable customer service or weaponsgrade stubbornness – continued production of Betamax machines until 2002 and Betamax cassettes until 2015.

Laserdisc 1978-1996

Laserdisc may not have lasted the distance, but it paved the way for the global success of Compact Disc, DVD and Blu-ray – its concepts and technologies informed all later optical disc formats. Developed in the early ’70s by Philips and MCA (the latter marketed it in North America as Discovision), the format first hit the shelves in 1978, just a couple of years after VHS. By 1980 new owners Pioneer had badged it as both Laserdisc and Laservision.

There was no disputing the superior quality of Laserdisc’s audio and video over VHS – it featured 440 horizontal lines compared with the 240 of VHS.

But, crucially, it was a read-only format with no facility to record, while the 12in-diameter discs looked anachronistic next to a tidy little VHS or Betamax cassette.

DAT 1987-2005

Technologically, Sony’s first stab at overhauling the ubiquitous compact cassette as the default recording medium was a brilliant success. By all other important metrics, though, digital audio tape died on its arse. Roughly half the size of a compact cassette, DAT used 4mm magnetic tape to record, digitally and losslessly, at a better-than-cd resolution of 16bit/48khz. This caused paroxysms throughout the music industry – the Recording Industry Association of America threatened legal action.

The vagaries of the global money markets meant DAT was more expensive than Sony had intended (close to $1000 for a player/recorder, double what had been envisaged) and consumers were, at best, unconvinced. Thanks to its high quality performance, DAT found favour as a professional medium in recording and TV studios. But as a consumer technology, it’s a footnote.

CDI 1991-1998

Compact Disc Interactive was an attempt by the ever-intrepid Philips to produce a disc-based system with greater flexibility and functionality than audio CD players or games consoles. More ambitious than a games console, CDI could play audio-, photo- and video-cds as well as games, and came with a slew of educational and reference titles at a time internet access was far from common. It struggled to shake off its public perception as a games console, though, and despite support from Bang & Olufsen, Grundig and LG, grumbles about graphics quality, controls and stability finished CDI in short order.

DCC 1992-1996

A joint venture between Philips and Matsushita, digital compact cassette was, visually at least, very similar to the analogue cassette it sought to supersede. Analogue cassettes could be played on DCC recorders and this backward compatibility meant a way into digital recording without sacrificing existing cassette collections. But with DCC vying with Minidisc (and even DAT) for market share, customers were cautious. Philips quietly buried the format in 1996.

Minidisc 1992-2013

Having seen its plans for DAT to be an affordable hi-tech replacement for compact cassette scuppered, Sony regrouped and served up Minidisc in 1992. At the time, the MD seemed futuristically small (68 x 72 x 5mm) and its 80-minute storage capacity the same as the bigger, less portable CD-R. For a while it seemed like the natural successor to Sony’s Walkman portable cassette players. There was scant enthusiasm from record companies, though, who were suspicious of Minidisc’s purportedly high-quality recording capabilities. Pre-recorded albums were scarce, there were a slew of copyright protection initiatives, and by 1998 the first MP3 players had reached the market. Not even offering a trade-off between sound quality and longer recording times (320 minutes at sea-bed compression levels) could save Minidisc.

SACD 1999-2007

Sony and Philips put their heads together again to introduce high-res audio to the masses. Super Audio CD was physically identical to CD, but software support was slow to materialise (inexplicable when you consider Sony owns the huge CBS Records catalogue). And while hybrid SACDS could have their PCM layer read by conventional CD players, the top-of-theshop dual-layer SACDS (with 8.5GB of storage, space for up to six discrete audio channels and DSD audio encoding) required a dedicated player.

A number of high-end Blu-ray players continue to offer SACD playback, but once the PS3 had its SACD compatibility deleted in 2007, the writing was almost as big as the wall on which it was written.

Dvd-audio 2000-2007

Like SACD, Dvd-audio sought to bring high-resolution audio to market in a format that was happily familiar and comfortable. And like SACD, to an extent it delivered the goods. Using DVD’S (relative to CD) colossal storage capacity meant music could be stored in any configuration from 1.0 mono to 5.1 surround-sound. Mono or stereo information could be stored at 24-bit/192khz, and even 5.1 stuff could enjoy 24-bit/96khz resolution.

But despite backing from the likes of EMI, Universal and Warner Bros (or perhaps, in part, because of the restricted and rarefied DVD-A catalogues those record companies released), consumers were ambivalent towards Dvd-audio. Maybe the public were underwhelmed by the software or were unwilling to buy huge swathes of their music collections again, but despite the clear sonic benefits of the format, no brand has produced a dedicated DVD-A player since 2007.

HD DVD 2006-2008

The consumer electronics industry appears to relish a format war – and HD DVD is the most recent example of its appetite for making the consumer the last stage of R&D. After the runaway success of DVD, High Definition Digital Versatile Disc was an obvious next step. Developed jointly by Toshiba and NEC, it utilised existing DVD infrastructure and could store more than three times as much information as DVD (15GB compared with 4.7GB). Its audio support – 24-bit/192khz audio (for two channels) or 24-bit/96khz (for up to eight) – was impressive too. But it was developed at the same time as Sony’s Blu-ray format – and Blu-ray could hold up to 50GB of information per disc.

Sony’s decision to equip 2007’s PS3 with a Blu-ray drive, and the erosion of support from major film studios, meant this particular brawl was mercifully brief.