The quiet death of the CD

[Dos_Box]

Watching Techmoan this morning and it appears that support and devices to play CD's are now gettig thin on the ground with Sony no longer making CD players, or supporting them on their consoles!

An interesting vid this one:

 

 

I wonder how long it will be before my CD collection goes the way of my VHS tapes

[3s-gtech]

I’m still buying CDs - though don’t use them in normal listening. Haven’t bought a player in years though - I think that many were so well made/designed that they didn’t need constant replacement and upgrades. Commercially difficult to justify making them!

[Dos_Box]

I have a very (at the time) expensive Sony one my brother gave me. It's sat under the TV and I've never plugged it in.

Weirdly I've played loads of CD's on my Xbox which sits next to it. Probably because that's plugged in

Edited June 17, 2023 by Dos_Box

[3s-gtech]

I don’t have a separate CD player, though I do have an early PS1 which had a very expensive Sony CD decoder and apparently produce great sound, that could slot on top of my amp.

 

Pain to control.

 

Can always go in the PS3.

[elsiegee40]

We don’t own a CD player any more. We had one of the early ones back in 1986. These days, like so many others though, we have gone for the convenience of digital

[Dos_Box]

I don’t have a separate CD player, though I do have an early PS1 which had a very expensive Sony CD decoder and apparently produce great sound, that could slot on top of my amp.

 

Pain to control.

 

Can always go in the PS3.

 

The last Playstation to support CD playback too!

[southhamster]

I bought my first CD player - a Philips CD101 in about 1985 which cost about £300 on special offer. They seemed very space age and futuristic back then and fitted the cool digital computery vibe perfectly. It was also the start of a DIY hifi building journey as it showed up the rest of my system. A bigger problem was finding actual discs to play on it, and they were very expensive; I think there were about 10 boring ones in the whole of Milton Keynes, the least worst of which was ABC The Look of Love for £11.99 - eek! However the sound quality and practicality of the format were a revelation after the space wasting, hassle and scratch/hiss of vinyl and the horrible sound and self-destructiveness of cassettes. If you've ever tried to DJ in an upstairs room with a bouncy wooden floor you'll appreciate CD's.. I still love my old Sony CD player and buy the odd interesting CD off ebay as I've been caught out already by several music services folding, (looking at you google music) although I put most stuff on my phone as MP3's for portability. The best thing - I've not had one CD fail to play so far out of many hundreds, whereas so many records (and their owners) got wrecked at parties....but that's another story.

[PotNoodleTech]

Still spin CDs in the main hifi system. What is dead shall never die!

[Dos_Box]

Perhaps they will have a resurgence in 30 years time with old CD players fertching good money on the used market!

[Davit2005]

Blueray players will be around for some time or are those numbered in favour of streaming? I'm not sold on streaming, I've already had iTunes movies disappear on me.

 

Interesting that my 2016 Skoda only had SD cards but my 2019 Seat has SD cards and a CD player, lol. Was an early CD adopter too, I even had an 8 track in a car at one time.

[2ilent8cho]

I've gone back to physical in the last few years, bought a Denon CD player last year for £259 and a Denon Turntable for £329 to add to my AV Receiver which should hopefully last a few decades.

 

I've lost all trust in streaming/digital unless I own it on my own hardware. I have loads of albums which still are not on Spotify or Apple Music, I've seen tracks disappear from albums due to rights no longer being there. So I've ripped all my CDs back into iTunes and sync'd to my iPhone for music on the go. I've also enjoyed going the cities like Manchester with friends and vinyl hunting, loads of vinyl shops now, makes a great social day out.

 

I've been doing the same with DVD's too, having seen things like Little Britain and Come Fly with me disappear off streaming services because it's somehow offensive now, or Monkey Dust which season 2 and 3 were never released on DVD, but were on iTunes for digital download 10 years ago, not any longer, been removed, luckily been able to acquire them.

[Dos_Box]

I've gone back to physical in the last few years, bought a Denon CD player last year for £259 and a Denon Turntable for £329 to add to my AV Receiver which should hopefully last a few decades.

 

I've lost all trust in streaming/digital unless I own it on my own hardware. I have loads of albums which still are not on Spotify or Apple Music, I've seen tracks disappear from albums due to rights no longer being there. So I've ripped all my CDs back into iTunes and sync'd to my iPhone for music on the go. I've also enjoyed going the cities like Manchester with friends and vinyl hunting, loads of vinyl shops now, makes a great social day out.

 

I've been doing the same with DVD's too, having seen things like Little Britain and Come Fly with me disappear off streaming services because it's somehow offensive now, or Monkey Dust which season 2 and 3 were never released on DVD, but were on iTunes for digital download 10 years ago, not any longer, been removed, luckily been able to acquire them.

 

It's a good point about owning physical media, I have the Monkey Dust S1 DVD and was quite narked about the lack of Seson 2 and 3 released. Perhaps the most clever and dark thing the BBC ever did. With some films now being edited more modern audiences it may will be getting harder to find films in their orginal forms in the future.

The despecialized version of Star Wars is a good idea of what can be done, but this took a lot of time and effort.

I also wonder if the next generation of consoles will be sans-DVD too and rely on download and subscription servies only.

Edited June 19, 2023 by Dos_Box

[localzuk]

Physical media is not a panacea for keeping what you've bought, sadly. CDs and DVDs degrade over time. Some of the original CDs produced are already degraded to the extent they don't work. They have about a 50 year life expectancy. If you have anything stored on CD-RW, they have an even lower life expectancy.

[Sonic007]

I picked up a USB CD Drive just to keep me going for the occasional times when I have to import a new CD audio album to WAV or if I find an old CD somewhere.

[Davit2005]

My CDs and DVDs are on local media server now, Bluerays not yet. The originals are in the boxes.

 

Still have over 100 movies in iTunes which I did download at one point before they disappeared.

[Dos_Box]

I picked up a USB CD Drive just to keep me going for the occasional times when I have to import a new CD audio album to WAV or if I find an old CD somewhere.

 

WAV? How retro

[LeMarchand]

Mme LeMarchand will be disappointed, as she much prefers physical media. I'm not fussed as most of my listening these days is on Spotify (apparently I listened more than 94% of UK listeners last year). As people have said, it's a PITA when they drop tracks or don't have them and you can't rely on stuff being available forever, but I think I've found a way to add in missing ones - just need the time to organise it! I just hope that, if they do fold, there is enough notice to take a list of my library.

 

I'd hate to have to go back to physical media, if only from a storage space pov, or even mp3s, though I have bought downloads from bands I like who don't release to Spotify, as it's more effort and a lot less convenient. Plus there are bands/tracks I'd never have found without Spotify.

[Dos_Box]

Physical media is not a panacea for keeping what you've bought, sadly. CDs and DVDs degrade over time. Some of the original CDs produced are already degraded to the extent they don't work. They have about a 50 year life expectancy. If you have anything stored on CD-RW, they have an even lower life expectancy.

 

Strangely, some of my earliest CD purchases in the late 80's still work fine, apart form the ones that have scratches that is. Yeah, we all fell for that one!

Some of my mid-90's CD's have degraded though and I do wonder if there was some change in the manufacturing process that brought this on.

[Sonic007]

WAV? How retro

 

 

With the size of Hard drives these days I prefer to keep it all in full size WAV's.

 

 

The problem with CD players is the laser will eventually go on them.

[Dos_Box]

With the size of Hard drives these days I prefer to keep it all in full size WAV's.

 

 

The problem with CD players is the laser will eventually go on them.

 

May well be worth picking up some decent old CD players (Hi-Fi sperates) cheap and putting them in the attic, even if it's to flog them off in 20 years time.

 

@localzuk Regarding your post about how fast degredation of CD/RW, it occurs to me I haven't bought any RW discs in 13 years!

[MrEprise]

...Some of my mid-90's CD's have degraded though and I do wonder if there was some change in the manufacturing process that brought this on.

 

This is likely as I found with some ER DVDs of mine. Seasons 2 to 4, most of the discs won't work at all but a couple of the discs in Season 2 do work but intermittently. The common denominator here is that all of the discs from Seasons 2 to 4 are manufactured at the Cinram plant in Olyphant, PA where by all the other Seasons were manufactured in various plants elsewhere in the world and work absolutely fine.

 

There are a number of discussions on the internet relating to this manufacturing plant and disc rot with Warner Bros DVDs where the assumption seems to be that whatever the chemical formulation used in the manufacture of the data layer, was allegedly fine until about 2006.

Edited June 19, 2023 by MrEprise

[robintech]

I'd like one of those DJ type turntables that use a dummy platter to apply position and speed etc to a digital copy , still gives physical interaction without the media problems. Could do movies as well I suppose