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A Cartrivision Player TV
- kozak 5y agoIf you find this interesting: https://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan https://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan
- ozzmotik 5y agotechmoan is great for retrotech. also in the same vein, but more focused on retro compute is 8-Bit Guy, and then for just retrotech of all sorts, Technology Connections has to be one of the most well-researched and entertainingly presented channels on YouTube.
- reaperducer 5y agoTechmoan is great for the visuals, but his information is sometimes wildly inaccurate. Still, worth checking out every few months.
- sixothree 5y agoSince we're on the subject, Adrian's Digital Basement is my favorite.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoAdding TechTangents too: https://youtube.com/c/AkBKukU https://youtube.com/c/AkBKukU And CuriousMarc (he’s a legend): https://youtube.com/c/CuriousMarc https://youtube.com/c/CuriousMarc And Cathode Ray Dude: https://youtube.com/c/CathodeRayDude https://youtube.com/c/CathodeRayDude
- look_lookatme 5y agoNon auth-walled version: https://nitter.net/Foone/status/1423369057181454339 https://nitter.net/Foone/status/1423369057181454339
- ozzmotik 5y agonice to see nitter popping up now after having ran into it what seems like just yesterday here
- tyingq 5y agoI liked that the remote controls on these old things (if they had one) would actually have a servo physically turn the dial one notch. Also, ask anyone that had an old tv with a physical dial if they remember using a matchbook, paper, etc, to hold the dial offset just a little so that the picture was clear. A surprisingly common memory for many.
- flyinghamster 5y agoMy grandparents had a Zenith console TV that had a remote control that used ultrasonic tuning forks. [0] The tuner had presets and some sort of stepper or solenoid driving it. Hit the channel up button, and CLACK! thump-thump-thump you'd go to your next preset. You could make the TV do random things by jingling keys or coins. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adler#Contributions_to_the_remote_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adler#Contributions_to_...
- cf100clunk 5y agoSpaceCommander remote control owner here. This brown (gold lettering and highlights) unit sits in my big box of oddball, vintage tech stuff along with a few vacuum tubes, QIC tapes, Sun-4c parts, and other now-useless stuff.
- gorkish 5y agoHeck yeah folded piece of cardboard wedged into the dial to get those "in-between" signals back when I was a stupid kid who knew nothing about calibrating the VFO... I am still quite fond of the early "clicker" style remotes that used no batteries and worked by audio impulse and later used inaudible ultrasonics. I think it would be fun to revive the control scheme for a modern hobby project. Edit: someone did it! https://www.hackster.io/news/control-alexa-with-an-old-school-ultrasonic-remote-ec44f7ec3826 https://www.hackster.io/news/control-alexa-with-an-old-schoo...
- Johnny555 5y agoMy grandparents' dog would change the channels when he scratched himself and his dog tags would ring at the right frequency.
- mzs 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWZHh5oVjB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWZHh5oVjB0
- salamandersauce 5y agoSimilarly the same channel posted the Cartivision manual explaining how the whole system works and what features it has. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1bCZlMExKLU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1bCZlMExKLU
- beervirus 5y agoSince Twitter won’t let you click through to read the whole thing without logging in, here’s a better link. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1423369057181454339.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1423369057181454339.html
- contravariant 5y agoI hope that decision eventually kills twitter threads, but I seem to be able to access it just fine (from the EU) are they rolling it out per region?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ozzmotik 5y agoI think I'm going to have to follow @Foone, this is the second thread I've seen by them and it is of just as high of quality and informative content as the first.
- ggm 5y agohappy foone follower, strongly recommend. would use again. 5 stars.
- kazinator 5y ago> if they just mailed them to the customer they would have invented proto-netflix in 1972, but nooooo, cartrivision had to do absolutely everything wrong. No, they would have invented a still foobared prototype of Blockbuster Video.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y agoBlockbuster did not mail directly to the customer at any point that I can remember. I think OP has it correct.
- kazinator 5y agoWhich is why the inconvenience of the customer waiting for a mailed rental would be a foobared, inconvenient prototype of Blockbuster that never happened, compared to the real one where you just get the item over the counter and take it home to watch.
- oriki 5y agoMailing DVD rentals was literally what Netflix did before the advent of web streaming in the mid to late 2000s. They could offer a wider selection than Blockbuster, and people generally find it more convenient to sit around at home instead of putting on pants and going to their local video rental store. While web streaming becoming popular (and the selection available for streaming becoming much wider) definitely dealt a killing blow to Blockbuster, Netflix was already successful with their mail-in rental service, and had made a name for themselves with it.
- gwbas1c 5y agoFrom what I understand, Netflix always intended to get into streaming. The DVD by mail thing was just a stopgap while the technology improved.
- anonAndOn 5y agohttps://dvd.netflix.com/ https://dvd.netflix.com/ Like this? AKA, the "original" Netflix.
- Arrath 5y agoSingle play tape cassettes. Jeez, the sheer waste of that.
- kraquepype 5y agoI think the idea was to have it be a watch-once rental, so it could only be rewound by the store you rented it from.
- Arrath 5y agoI sure hope so, but I didn't quite get that impression from the thread.
- 1-more 5y agoThere's an older thread linked inside the thread that indicates that the rental stores would rewind the tapes. Unclear if they would then rent them out again. > the stores had special machines that could rewind the red tapes, but those weren't sold to customers. It's amusing in light of the later "be kind, rewind" campaign Blockbuster shoved in our faces for so long. https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1013527565468749824?s=20 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1013527565468749824?s=20
- Arrath 5y agoOh there it is, missed that. Thanks.
- jandrese 5y agoIt makes no sense. Rentals are already time limited so making them unable to be rewound is just plain consumer hostile. It’s not hard to see why the format died so quickly. Even if it had caught on there would no doubt be a grey market for those red tape rewinders.
- 1-more 5y agoYep. But there wasn't a good model for home movies yet! Elsewhere I saw that the rewind machine had a counter and the store would be billed for each movie viewing. So they had the streaming payment structure in the tape era!
- js2 5y agoHave you ever tried to use a laserdisc player? They pretty much only come in two sorts now: 1. Broken 2. Repaired I have one of the third sort, unbroken and unrepaired. But it's a low-end CLD-S250. I don't even remember when and where I got it, and the only LDs I own are the original Star Wars trilogy.
- Animats 5y agoThere were a bunch of early videotape systems. I once came across a device in a surplus store which was a cassette rewinder for a large, strange cassette. It had a key lock and a counter. The idea was that video stores would rent out cassettes you could only watch once, because the player lacked a rewind mechanism. Then you had to return the video. The store would rewind it, an event counted by the counter. The store would be billed accordingly, by the movie distributor. Fortunately this approach did not catch on.
- salamandersauce 5y agoThat's how these Cartrivision systems worked. Rented tapes could not be rewound in the players, just stopped. Only special machines could rewind them. The cassettes designed for home recording could be rewound in the players though. I'm not aware of any other video cassette tape system that had this.