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Happy 25th Birthday, Compact Disc!
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| Magnetonium |
Ahhhh, I am a one very happy person today. Its the 25th anniversary since the creation of the first compact disc, better known as CD. As an owner of a serious and ever-growing CD collection and obsessed with getting more, I hold the day in special regards. Here's the beef on the history, birth of compact disc, some stats for all you people who love knowledge and music.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6950933.stm
^ The CD is unveiled.
| quote: |
The first compact disc was produced exactly 25 years ago in a factory in Germany after years of development by Philips and Sony. We take a look at the humble disc's history and how it shaped the music landscape.
The compact disc project was launched following Philips' failure with its video disc technology in 1978.
The video disc was one of the first commercial products to take advantage of laser technology that could read information from a disc without any physical contact.
Research into the video disc began as far back as 1969, and itself was inspired by Italian Antonio Rubbiani, who had demonstrated a rudimentary video disc system 12 years earlier.
In 1970 Philips began work on what was called the ALP (audio long play) - an audio disc system to rival vinyl records, but using laser technology.
Lou Ottens, technical director of the audio division at Philips, was the first to suggest that the ALP be made smaller than the dominant vinyl format and should aim for one hour of music.
The project initially flirted with the idea of quadraphonic sound but a disc with one hour of music had to be 20cm in diameter and so the plan was abandoned.
In 1977 Philips began to take the development of a new audio format much more seriously. A new name for the product was discussed and names considered included Mini Rack, MiniDisc, and Compact Rack.
The team settled on Compact Disc because it was felt it would remind people of the success of the Compact Cassette.
In March 1979 Philips conducted a press conference to show off the audio quality of its CD system in production and also to impress upon rivals how well it was progressing.
Philips' plan for a CD with a 11.5cm diameter had to be changed when Sony insisted that a disc must hold all of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
The longest recording of the symphony in record label Polygram's archive was 74 minutes and so the CD size was increased to 12cm diameter to accommodate the extra data.
In 1980 Philips and Sony produced their Red Book, which laid down all the standards for compact discs. From that time on the companies worked separately on their own CD equipment but in the early days agreed to share components.
In April 1982 Philips showed off a production CD player for the first time. "From now on, the conventional record player is obsolete," said Lou Ottens.
The first commercial CDs pressed were The Visitors by Abba and a recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss.
US record labels were initially very sceptical about the CD. A year after launch there were 1,000 different titles available.
In 1985 Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms became the first CD to sell more than one million copies. It is still the world's most successful CD album.
In 2000 global sales of CDs peaked at 2.455 billion. In 2006 that figure was down to 1.755 billion. :whip:
^ Philips first CD player cost more than 1,000 British pounds in today's money |
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| predictor |
* About 9 hours of high-definition (HD) video can be stored on a 50 GB disc.
* About 23 hours of standard-definition (SD) video can be stored on a 50 GB disc.
* On average, a single-layer disc can hold a High Definition feature of 135 minutes using MPEG-2, with additional room for 2 hours of bonus material in standard definition quality. A dual layer disc will extend this number up to 3 hours in HD quality and 9 hours of SD bonus material. |
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| Ricky Tan |
Pearl Jam - Ten
first cd purchased. |
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| bobba lou |
| yay! and i still purchase cd's weekly. |
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| Oreoh142 |
| HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the CD's I DONT EVER USE!!!!! |
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| richg101 |
| happy birthday champ |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by predictor
* About 9 hours of high-definition (HD) video can be stored on a 50 GB disc.
* About 23 hours of standard-definition (SD) video can be stored on a 50 GB disc.
* On average, a single-layer disc can hold a High Definition feature of 135 minutes using MPEG-2, with additional room for 2 hours of bonus material in standard definition quality. A dual layer disc will extend this number up to 3 hours in HD quality and 9 hours of SD bonus material. |
I'll wait another 10 years before: a) prices for them will drop from being ridiculous; b) blu-ray discs will be commonly used and there's will be drives eberywhere so that it wont be just me who has them ..
and CDs are still pretty good IMO. Along with digital versative discs (DVDs). Although with blu-ray technology, I'd be able to fit my entire music collection on merely 20-30 discs. |
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| ClearVision |
| blu ray is pretty amazing... ahh teh 21st century :D |
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| SuspicionVandit |
bless them.
my first CD was The Cranberries - To the Faithful Departed (i think)
| quote: | ///wedding singer////
I got you something.
It's called a CD player.
It cost me, like, seven hundred bucks,
but the sound quality's outstanding.
You wanna play a record?
No, Jules, it doesn't play records. It
plays CD's. It's a CD player.
I'll be upstairs hooking it up. |
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| Magnetonium |
LOL @ the Wedding Singer quote ;-) |
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| RebeL9 |
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
My first ever CD was ABBA - Gold in 1992. Still one of my best.
I thought I'd add some interesting facts to this thread.
The reason why Sony insisted that the diameter of the CD should be 12 cm instead of 11.5 cm was that Sony's japaneese boss's wife loved Beethoven's 9th Symphony and she requested from her husband to get it to her on a CD (this is true and was relased in a book by Sony a few years ago).
Audiophiles have discovered that the very first version of Sony Playstation with the model number SCPH-1001 have an extreamly good CD player which easily matches any high end CD player that costs loads of money. The reason why it's only this very model is bcause this unit had separate audio and video RCA output jacks. That particular model allows audiophiles to use their own (expensive) audio cables to get “perfect” sound.
dunno how true this is but it's sure worth a try :P |
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| Project-K |
| I think my first CD must've been Genesis - We Can't Dance |
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