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…
Probably because they couldn’t purchase the other ones at reasonable prices anywhere.
Here is one for $44. https://www.ebay.com/itm/256220081101
Surely a museum can afford that? Right?
Most museums rely on donations. While they likely could afford it there’s 0 reason to buy one if a patreon is willing to gift one
But that one doesn’t have an anti-skip system
Right and it also can’t rip the whole ass CD to a SD Card like a modern CD player.
But it’s a museum. It isn’t about having the newest shit
My guess is that this is just one of a number of CD players they have, and they want to show how the technology progressed.
Ah yes, the Panasonic Discman, the prime successor to the Phillips Walkman.
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:examples
https://www.alza.sk/discmany/18886534.htm
https://aukro.sk/discmany
https://www.mall.sk/discmany
https://discmany.heureka.sk/
https://www.okay.sk/collections/discmanyThe only exception seems to be Nay, referring to this category as “Portable CD players”.
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…Yepp, we all called them Discman back in the day regardless of the brand.
Yeah we called them all discman too. A Kleenex/tissue situation imo.
Edit: though I do concede an official label in some sort of display probably should use the generic form “portable CD player” or something similar.
I believe other brands have the same problem.
Velcro is a good example.
Glad I’m not the only one who got a twitchy eye reading that.
I thought to myself for the briefest of moments: Am I being Mandela Effect’d?
At least it’s not a sony ipod
Wasn’t the actual “Discman” a Sony product? In the same line as their Walkman cassette players, but for CDs?
I had a Walkman back in the day; but never an official Discman player. All my CD players were pieces of shit 😩
This is an interesting phenomenon called a proprietary eponym, where a brand name becomes synonymous with a product.
Just like walkman and disc man, in my language we call a car satnav a “TomTom” after the brand that popularised it here.
Here is the scene from the Clerks cartoon about adhesive strips.
Yeap, Discman was the name used by Sony up until around the year 2000, when they changed it to “CD Walkman”.
Is this your kid nephew’s “museum”?
“Old” is not 20 years and that is not a goddamn discman. Sorry, Ralphie. You can do better.
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.
Sorry to be the one breaking the bad news, but you might be old yourself if you think like that. Don’t sweat it, happens to all of us.
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!!!”
Museum ≠ old.
I’m sure there are mp3 players in museums as well.
The Colorado Railroad Museum has railroad crossing signals donated by BNSF that are only a few years old. Museums will gladly accept both old and new.
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.
Wasn’t Discman a Sony brand?
Correct. This isn’t labeled correctly.
I’m pretty sure that’s walkman.
Both Walkman and Discman were Sony brands.
You are correct
Yes. Just like Walkman is.
Man that one can play mp3 discs. That has to be newer than 2002. Burning CDs wasn’t super common yet.
I had a aftermarket head unit that played mp3 cds in 2002.
I had a mp3 player in 1999.
We were definitely burning cds back then, this woulda come at a premium but the tech was there.
I remember downloading mp3s from usenet in 1999 on my Windows 95 computer. I’d start the download, go to work, then retrieve the file when I got home.
I felt so fancy buying a CD burner at Best Buy so I could burn them onto CDs. It was the first PC component I ever installed by myself.
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.
I could fit roughly 1 hour of music on mine, longer if I dropped the bitrate to 96kbps instead of 128.
The biggest benefit of the mp3 player was that the anti-skip protection didn’t drain the battery twice as fast, no moving parts so it never skipped. This seemed super cool to me because I skateboarded and stuff and generally liked the idea of no skips.
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.
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.
My car around 03 had a shit cassette deck that ate tapes. The mp3 discman with a cassette adapter was a game changer.
I had the entire Atari Teenage Riot and Mindless self Influence discography on one disk.
I’m sure the bit rate was abysmal, but with that kind of music it is kind of a feature.
I like your taste in music hahaha
I had that very device right about 2002. Put my whole CD collection on a few mp3 disks. Replaced it a few years later with a 6GB mp3 player.
Kinda off-topic, but I honestly miss the in-line remotes high-end Discman & portable Minidisc players used to have…
Really wish they would make a come-back in some way, maybe as a supplemental Bluetooth device?
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.
It doesn’t have to be that way? Just because they’re built-in doesn’t mean they can’t be easily replaced. Cars’ headlights are built-in. They’re not soldered to the chasis.
It doesn’t have to be but it is. Other than some laptops I don’t think I’ve ever been able to get a replacement battery for something after it stopped holding a charge. Things aren’t made to be repairable anymore.
True. Sucks.
Does anyone make batteries that aren’t shitty NiCd or NiMh? Basically Lion rechargeables?
I’ve never seen it where I am
Just did a quick search and found some on Amazon but I can’t speak to the quality. I’ve never seen them in a store.
You want NiMH for such a device.
Or LiPo if you know what you’re doing :-)
Whoa…they have a USB-C rechargeable one.
You know, if they sold an audiophile one, with clean electronics, a good built in amp, and the ability to play FLAC files (microSD port), I’d buy one.
Check carefully. That might exist.
I had the exact same model !
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 had that exact model. And I was cool, wearing my over the ear headphones.
2002? Didn’t they rename the Discman line to the CD Walkman around this time?
I remember seeing a Patreon exclusive video of a CD Walkman from 2003. I’m not sure if this is the first one to bear that name or not.
Laughs/Cries in cassette based Walkman.
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.
And the worst part is that I had the exact same model.
Maybe you belong to a museum too…
