I am really confused now. I know Discman is Sony's name, but generally people refer to any such portable CD player as "discman". At least where I live.
And it's not just regular people, even shops refer to them as dicmans.
Here are some examples to back my claims:
That’s very interesting! Around me, we called them CD Players, it must be a regional thing. Many people called the portable cassette player a Walkman, even though that was a lineup of products from Sony.
Looking on US Amazon, there are several players that have Discman, Walkman, or both in the titles. Sony must not be enforcing their trademarks (wrong term?) for the first non-sponsored listing being called:
2000mAh Rechargeable Discman CD Player:Walkman CD Player…
This thing is so recent it could play MP3s... The first Discman was released in 1984. I'm actually really confused why they picked such a recent version, the technology was almost phased out when this thing was released. FFS the original iPod came out a year before this thing...
I think you're missing the point. Museums collect this stuff not because it's old, but because it was significant to people at the time and they want to collect it for prosperity. Imagine if they waited until 2050 and then said "Shit! Wasn't there a cd player we all liked at some point? Does anyone have one?" They should have one, they're a museum! Many museums will be maintaining an iPhone collection for example.
Regardless, most people under 30 likely do not have access to a cd player, and I'd guess many never owned one. It's not strange for that to be in a museum even without what I've said above.
I disagree with you. In the tech industry, 20 years is ancient. If you were born in 1985, 20 years prior that was 1965, and the tech of that decade was very different from the 80s tech.
Imagine someone living in a year where calculator watches were already a thing, and when in a museum displaying one of those radios in wooden cabinets and knobs with the style of the time they said "that's not old!!!!!!"
My brother had an mp3 player in 1999. I think it had 16MB of storage space. I didn't see the point of it when you could only put like 5 songs on the thing.
BMWs in 2002 used Alpine head units. I knew their aftermarket units could play MP3 CDs so I thought “why not test it out?” Turns out it could play it just fine. It mapped the folder buttons to the seek/scan buttons if you held it and played them just fine. I was floored it did that but wasn’t anywhere in the manual.
Sure it was, in America at least. I think I got my first PC that could burn disks in like 1998 and it was a mass marketed Compaq from Circuit City. Napster showed up the next year and CD burning exploded. Napster was dead by 2001.
I had this exact model in 2002. It was a revelation and possibly one of the best portable CD players ever released. You could sit there and tap it all day and it wouldn't skip.
Does it belong in a museum if the essential same device is still sold? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MDY28Q1/ I mean sure you can get a 200 year old coffee grinder… but that's 200 years not 22.
If I bought one today, I'd spend the extra $10 for a rechargeable unit. The one bad memory I have of these was having to replace the batteries so frequently.
You can use rechargeable batteries in it... Built in rechargeable batteries suck. The entire lifespan of the device is tied to that battery. Give me something that runs on AAs any day.
Yup. I'm pretty sure the Computer Museum out in Mountain View has stuff on display that's less than 5 years old in some of their "progress of technology" type displays. I think when I last went there a couple years ago, for gaming history they had all the latest (at the time) consoles as well. It was pretty funny seeing something like a PS4 in a history museum though.
Hold onto that. The cassette mechanisms that are produced now are absolute trash. There's literally no manufacturer on earth who makes a good one anymore.
That was legit the best MP3 CD player. It never skips no matter how much you shake it and it builds a different, but consistent shuffle playlist depending on what song was playing when you hit shuffle.
I mean it was over twenty one years ago. Technology ages fast. You can also say it had historical significance so it can end up in a museum earlier than you might expect.
I've seen consoles like the Sega Genesis and the Master System in a temporary exposition and end up taking photos since I haven't seen one for so long lmao
mine is in a box in the basement. My dad found a CD with songs from a German kid's TV-Show (Die Sendung mit der Maus) from my childhood a few years back. Playing this one CD is the only job of that player now. Still does it though.
It reminds me when I was visiting my older brother in Spain and we went to a tech museum. There was a Sinclair Spectrum and me and my brother were thilled to see it. My niece was astonished fisrt then she was picking on us for hours non stop" you're a pair of dinosaurs" "you belong to a museum" "any plans for retirement" . When I told my wife she was like "well you're almost forty honey"
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Fuck this brings back great memories. I used to supply my whole school with CDs and tapes of people's favourite music. I always threw in a couple of extra songs with a similar feel and style if there was extra space. I was the only one that had the tech so I was like a queen in my school until mp3 players came around.