Some ideas never quite caught on, other, existing ones, were needlessly dropped in favor of flashier new ones and others were never even properly tried. Which ideas do you think could and should have done better?
I like the idea. I always though the CD was too big for a walkman.I think the MiniDisc was an excellent idea that appeared at the wrong time. It didn't have enough time to unseat CDs before MP3 players started to appear.
Sony started pushing them in Japan in the early 90s but there doesn't ever seem to have been a concerted effort to market them elsewhere (I remember a friend of mine in Singapore somewhere in the 1999-2001 period having an MD player but he was the only one).
So then that would have been superior?Colour TV. Okay, not caught on better, but earlier is quite possible, since it was actually demonstrated in 1944 by John Logie Baird. it was a 600-line system too compared with the 405 lines then in use in most of the country.
For much of the Western world and definitely the UK, I think DAB Radio will be seen to fall into this category.
I've had a digital radio for about ten years, and absolutely love the thing, but the real tipping point with radio technology is getting them into cars. Even now, many new cars don't have digital radios. With all smart phones having the ability to hold Gigs of your own music, most people now see little need for anything else in their car. At home, the digital television switch-over should have helped, but many never bother to use the radio channels on their television set. As it is, internet radio is overtaking DAB, so I think its missed the boat.
This may not be the case in other parts of the world, but it seems to be the case here.
To everything else in Europe for a decade afterwards, sure.So then that would have been superior?
To everything else in Europe for a decade afterwards, sure.
On another front, Steam turbine trains. Now sure, most were fairly limited and unreliable, but LMS Turbomotive seemed to have cracked at least some of the issues with the technology.
Airliners too, although like colour TV, it's more a case of 'later than it could have been'. The Russians started a service just before WW1, using aircraft designed by Igor Sikorsky, and for the time they were the height of luxury.
I like it a lot. I'm not well-versed in the physics, but I assume there's little if any difference between it and digital television transmission. Much like the digital television before they turned the analogue signal off in the UK, there's a much greater variety of choice.I've always wondered why there isn't digital radio and now I find out there is... in other countries. I think there could still be room for that technology. So what exactly is DAB like?