Comment Re:Not quite... (Score 1) 428
Early digital equipment used by Philips actually used video tape (maybe V2000 as it was the video standard released by Philips around 1979). I remember an interview by Herbert von Karajan about his first experience with digital playback. He hadn't been warned and hadn't found anything suspicious with the VCR they had put in the studio until he went outside and believed that the orchestra was playing. (Of course, Karajan might have embellished the story for PR reasons).
Remember CD is a joint development by Philips and Pioneer. At the beginning, Philips was working alone but they had a big problem, as they hadn't been able to slim down playback equipment. It was still one cube meter large. That's why they got in touch with Sony, to begin with.
Sony, who had a similar but less advanced project, then took hands of the digital recording technology and was in charge of almost all the development. It was a nearly humiliating experience for Philips because, even if they had developed the principles of digital recording, their engineers were completely irrelevant when it came to making a commercial device based on the technology, compared to the Sony teams.
I have read that the 74 minutes/Ninth Symphony story is particularly humiliating. Some sources say that Sony chose this length because a poll had shown that the 9th Symphony was the most popular classical work in Japan. Officiously, they simply asked Akio Morita's wife what her favourite music was, then informed Philips of how they had picked this particular length.
Remember CD is a joint development by Philips and Pioneer. At the beginning, Philips was working alone but they had a big problem, as they hadn't been able to slim down playback equipment. It was still one cube meter large. That's why they got in touch with Sony, to begin with.
Sony, who had a similar but less advanced project, then took hands of the digital recording technology and was in charge of almost all the development. It was a nearly humiliating experience for Philips because, even if they had developed the principles of digital recording, their engineers were completely irrelevant when it came to making a commercial device based on the technology, compared to the Sony teams.
I have read that the 74 minutes/Ninth Symphony story is particularly humiliating. Some sources say that Sony chose this length because a poll had shown that the 9th Symphony was the most popular classical work in Japan. Officiously, they simply asked Akio Morita's wife what her favourite music was, then informed Philips of how they had picked this particular length.
