Don't Believe the Hype: The 21 Biggest Technology Flops

[phongn]

How about Super-VHS? Anyone remember this bizarro little format that could record and play back movies at higher resolution than standard VHS? To this day, DVD players and TV sets still have the S-Video connectors that were once called S-VHS and were invented for the Super-VHS set-top units.

Yep - I used SVHS quite often in high school before we switched to DV.

Of course, the problem was that these players cost far more than standard VHS players, nobody was selling movies in the format, and there were no high-def sources at the time for you to record off the air, so in practice, the increased resolution of S-VHS was purely academic and would never be used.

Cable was higher resolution than VHS, so SVHS would've been better there. It just wasn't worth the cost for consumers, though.

[Mange]

How about Super-VHS? Anyone remember this bizarro little format that could record and play back movies at higher resolution than standard VHS? To this day, DVD players and TV sets still have the S-Video connectors that were once called S-VHS and were invented for the Super-VHS set-top units.

Of course, the problem was that these players cost far more than standard VHS players, nobody was selling movies in the format, and there were no high-def sources at the time for you to record off the air, so in practice, the increased resolution of S-VHS was purely academic and would never be used.

And don't forget the D-VHS format which was the last ditch effort to save VHS (and which, to my knowledge, never was introduced here on the European market).

[Jade Falcon]

Anyone remember the V2000 video player format? I believe they were the first to introduce front loading VCR's, plus they were the first that had a 'proper' freeze frame that didn't jump all over the place. In the UK there were a few places that sold and rented them, but V2000 did even worse than Betamax.

[Phantasee]

To this day, DVD players and TV sets still have the S-Video connectors that were once called S-VHS and were invented for the Super-VHS set-top units.

Is that what it's for? For some reason this blows my mind.

I use it for my Gamecube, I lost the original RCA connector and I bought a replacement with the S-Video and the Yellow RCA on it. I figured, might as well, but I haven't seen a massive difference between the two. I should have shelled out for the component cables...

[Dennis Toy]

BTW Dennis Toy, I edited your post to change the in-line images to links. What the fuck were you thinking when you decided to in-line a goddamned 1368 pixel wide picture?

ain't my fault dude, I got these from wiki, they don't indicate the size of the GIF.

I believe that S-VHS was like HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, it was a niche item for people who had money. I think they still sold it into the 21rh century.

[Darth Wong]

BTW Dennis Toy, I edited your post to change the in-line images to links. What the fuck were you thinking when you decided to in-line a goddamned 1368 pixel wide picture?

ain't my fault dude, I got these from wiki, they don't indicate the size of the GIF.

Why is it that every single goddamned time you break a rule, you pretend it was not your fault? You never heard of "Preview"? Would it kill you to say "Oops, my bad" and carry on? But nooooo, you have to always squirm around and weasel and say that you can't be blamed for your own mistakes, even for something as simple as this.

[andrewgpaul]

Wikipedia does actually tell you the size of its image files (just click a thumbnail in an article, and look under the pic; you could even just view the image onscreen before you link to it (although, you might just have an enormous monitor, I suppose).

Anyway, Minidisc was a flop? I have 2 players , my sister has one and a friend of mine also has one. Granted, no-one else I know does, and the three of us have all moved on to MP3 players, so I suppose you could have a point.

Does anyone know if Sony tried to market minidiscs as a data format, or simply as an audio format?

Changing focus slightly, anyone remember the Sinclair C5

Fugly thing

(I take it an 900px wide image is OK?)

[The Dark]

Where's the damn VirtualBoy? That thing flopped harder than a sumo wrestler off the highdive platform.

I would not call the Virtual Boy a technological flop comparable at all to the majority of the items on that list. It was merely the only Nintendo console that failed in the market, and Nintendo quickly recovered soon afterwards.

It's not even comparable to the Dreamcast, who's lack of success served as the final blow for Sega to exist the hardware industry.

It's not quite bad enough to make the worst list, but it should have been a runner-up (after all, what became MacOS X after Apple tweaked it is on the list). Not only was it a flop, but the tech wasn't that well-done. From what I remember from playing it, the 3D was horribly unbelievable (as in you couldn't tell the wall 10 seconds away from the wall you just smashed into), and it caused migraines after about 10 seconds (slight exaggeration).

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I only used a Virtual Boy briefly, but I thought the 3D effect was pretty convincing. Didn't have any headaches from it, either. I can see why it wasn't successful, but I don't really agree with the sentiment that it was a piece of crap.

[DaveJB]

Anyway, Minidisc was a flop? I have 2 players , my sister has one and a friend of mine also has one. Granted, no-one else I know does, and the three of us have all moved on to MP3 players, so I suppose you could have a point.

MiniDisc wasn't a total failure; it became quite popular in the radio industry, largely due to the fact that it offers most of the advantages that CD-R has over tape, while being more compact. However, Sony didn't actually intend for that to happen, they wanted it to replace both CD and tape, and in that regard it failed totally.

[Siege]

The MiniDisc was a significant success outside the US.

Indeed. Every self-respecting radio station in the country has one over here- or at least, used to. Flash drives replaced much of the need for MiniDiscs, but before those became available there really wasn't anything insofar as I know that could match MiniDisc in terms of on-the-spot mobile recording in a handy package with good audio quality. It was never a particularly huge success on the private everyday market, but I'd hardly call it a flop.

[Darth Wong]

The MiniDisc was a significant success outside the US.

Indeed. Every self-respecting radio station in the country has one over here- or at least, used to. Flash drives replaced much of the need for MiniDiscs, but before those became available there really wasn't anything insofar as I know that could match MiniDisc in terms of on-the-spot mobile recording in a handy package with audio good quality. It was never a particularly huge success on the private everyday market, but I'd hardly call it a flop.

No sale. If DAT was a flop, then minidisc was certainly a flop. DAT did, after all, make significant headway in studios and also in the computer industry as a backup medium. The fact that something can carve out a minor niche after staking grandiose goals for itself is not a sign of success.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Betamax was still in use in the 1990s by news stations since they recorded a higher image quality, but does that mean they weren't a failure?

[Starglider]

Betamax was still in use in the 1990s by news stations since they recorded a higher image quality, but does that mean they weren't a failure?

Kinda. Betamax was a horribly cut down version of U-matic (the main professional system at the time) for home use. Professional users laughed at it. It took the release of the Betacam format seven years later to deliver something TV companies considered worth using. Betacam used the same basic mechanics (tapes, transports) as Betamax but had SVHS style component recording and around six times the tape speed. The quality was much higher but the recording time was only about 30 minutes per tape.

[Dennis Toy]

i have actually read that TV stations are switching from Betamax to a hard disk based digital system. They are starting to buy digital newscameras and digital recording equipment. You can edit and send images that are just recorded to the stations qucikly without going through video tape.

[phongn]

There are some hard drive-based systems but tape remains king.

[LadyTevar]

I have a flop for you... LASERDISC.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Laserdisc was a massive success in Japan, mostly because the launch of the format there wasn't botched like it was in the West (affordable pricing compared to VHS and VCRs which were expensive there, as well as becoming the format of choice by the anime industry).

Laserdisc was actually so successful that many Japanese consumers were initially reluctant to make the switch over to DVD in 1997 before finally giving up the ghost and fully embracing the new format.

[Dennis Toy]

LASERDISC was far from being a flop, it actually had success in the US. It was one of those niche items that only people with a lot of money and into video devices bought.

Laserdisc in the 1990's could actually compete with the emerging technology of DVD, in fact some of the DVD that came out in the late 90's was simply laserdisc transfers.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Laserdisc in the 1990's could actually compete with the emerging technology of DVD, in fact some of the DVD that came out in the late 90's was simply laserdisc transfers.

Um, that wasn't a good thing. If anything it was a sign that the distributor and authoring house were being cheap and not investing in a new transfer being performed, because not only were all but a handful of final-hour laserdiscs non-anamorphic, their video and audio quality were nothing compared to DVDs, even the early ones around 1997/98.

Believe me, in the DVD consumer and critical community, a DVD using a laserdisc transfer was always regarded as a bad thing.

[Dennis Toy]

Dennis Toy wrote:
Laserdisc in the 1990's could actually compete with the emerging technology of DVD, in fact some of the DVD that came out in the late 90's was simply laserdisc transfers.

Um, that wasn't a good thing. If anything it was a sign that the distributor and authoring house were being cheap and not investing in a new transfer being performed, because not only were all but a handful of final-hour laserdiscs non-anamorphic, their video and audio quality were nothing compared to DVDs, even the early ones around 1997/98.

Believe me, in the DVD consumer and critical community, a DVD using a laserdisc transfer was always regarded as a bad thing.

Yeah but it wasn't a bad or good thing. Back in 1997, DVD's were simply Laserdsic transfers. What i mean is the audio/video of the Laserdisc was transfered to the DVD without any frills only a menu ( now considered primitive) and spanish or french titles.

[Glocksman]

Betamax was still in use in the 1990s by news stations since they recorded a higher image quality, but does that mean they weren't a failure?

Wasn't the format used by TV stations a different implementation (Betacam SP or something like that) than the consumer VCR standard?

Laserdisc in the 1990's could actually compete with the emerging technology of DVD, in fact some of the DVD that came out in the late 90's was simply laserdisc transfers.

I owned several LD players and I can testify that the picture quality on a 50" Mitsubishi rear projection TV back in the mid 90's was pretty spectacular to the point where it even beat out my DirectTV dish in that it didn't have pixellation artifacts because it wasn't digital video and yet was still 400+ lines of resolution compared with the 240 or so of VHS or Beta.

It's not suitable for today's HDTV by any means, but at the time it was damn good and it certainly beat out VHS or Beta in the picture quality department.

[weemadando]

Where the fuck is the Segway on that list. It should be number fucking one.

[Phantasee]

Where the fuck is the Segway on that list. It should be number fucking one.

Someone at school mentioned that he would love a Segway. I just had to hit him for saying something so stupid.

[Darth Wong]

Where the fuck is the Segway on that list. It should be number fucking one.

Someone at school mentioned that he would love a Segway. I just had to hit him for saying something so stupid.

Exactly what is "stupid" about seeing some neat toy on TV and saying that you'd love to have one? It's not as if he's seriously saving up his money to buy the overpriced thing. I'd love to have plenty of things which are totally impractical and which I would never actually buy. Does that make me stupid?