This technology was developed in the 1970s. So, if you want to record 60 minutes of CD-quality digital audio you need about 600 MB of raw data storage. In the

This technology was developed in the 1970s. So, if you want to record 60 minutes of CD-quality digital audio you need about 600 MB of raw data storage. In the 1970s this was an impossible amount of data. 600 MB of hard drive space would cost as much as a house. Without a way to easily store that huge amount of data, the CD could not be developed. And in the 1970s the computer industry had no answer to that problem. The solution was ingenious. They take a stream of digital bits, convert it in to standard broadcast video, and record it with a plain old VCR. Broadcast video refreshes at 60 FPS, 245 scan lines per frame. If you draw 96 black-and-white pixels per scan line, that works out to three 16-bit stereo samples per scan line. 3 samples X 245 lines/frame X 60 frames/second = 44100 samples/second. Hence, the CD audio standard that we still use today. So, to answer your question, they weren't burning CDs in '84. They encoding 600 MB of data on to plain old VHS tapes, and sending those off to be mastered.