A History Of The Compact Disc
- July 5th, 2007
- Read 1709 times
- 4 Comments
SiliconUser has a great piece on the history of the Compact Disc. The most popular music medium to date, the CD actually has quite a complex history that makes for a great read. Turns out the idea for the Compact Disc was born in the 1960s and eventually evolved into a combination of emerging technologies. By 1979, a working prototype was shown off in both Europe and Japan with Sony and Philips backing the new format.
Although CDs didn’t become commonplace until the 1990s, the first CD player in 1982 wasn’t as expensive as I thought it would be. At $900 with discs costing about $30 a pop, even with inflation it’s still a somewhat affordable stereo component that started making its way into homes everywhere. Hit the link below and give it a ready. I think it’ll force you to appreciate the Compact Disc a lot more.
History of the Compact Disc [Silicon User]
yoshi (Who am I?)
1 year ago
My parents bought our first CD player in 1984 for $750. Its still works and it still plays CDs bought yesterday or 20 years ago. Compare this to buying a DVD disc today and putting it in a DVD player that is 5 or more years old. Good luck playing it.
dc (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Are you kidding?
“even with inflation it’s still a somewhat affordable stereo component”
$30 in 1982 would be $64 in today.
$900 in 1982 would be $1923 today.
Would you pay $64 dollars for a music cd today?
The worst part about it is that the cost of CDs never really droped below 20 bucks until the end of the 90’s. The record industry GOUGED consumers for a decade. Even as their manufacturing costs dropped to sub dollar per disk. Even now most single CDs are list priced at about 18 to 20 bucks. This is why they are in so much trouble.
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dc (Who am I?)
1 year ago
for reference:
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
daelin (Who am I?)
6 months ago
There’s no mention of the LaserDisc which was the first real optical disc format that most people heard of.
They even brought LD back into the mainstream with combination LD/CD players in the mid 80’s.
When I started buying CDs in the 80’s, they were high-tech at the time. Still, LP’s had a longer run although playing an LP in the car wasn’t really feasable for most. ;)
LPs cost $10 in the 80’s and CD’s cost $17. They never went down mainly because most people would still pay it. I used to shop at a local CD store that sold them for $12. Once LPs went away, you thought the CD would go down in price but it never really did. The only thing that went away were “CD Exclusive tracks” to get you to buy the new format.