An open letter to Calavera in re: 80s technology

[Roofus]

London, 31st May 1885

My Dearest Calavera,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits. As I sit here by the flickering candlelight, I feel compelled to share with you a most wondrous invention I had the fortune of encountering during my recent travels. It is an apparatus known as the Edison phonograph, and my dear friend, I can scarcely find the words to express the sheer marvel it encompasses.

While I was in America on business, I had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Thomas Edison's laboratory, nestled amidst the vibrant city of Menlo Park. I was initially drawn to his establishment out of mere curiosity, but little did I know that I was about to be exposed to a creation that would forever change the world of sound.

Imagine, Calavera, a device so ingenious that it could capture the very essence of music, voice, and sound. As I stood in the presence of this remarkable machine, my senses were filled with anticipation, and I could hardly contain my excitement. Mr. Edison himself guided me through the process, explaining the intricate workings of this unparalleled contraption.

The phonograph, my dear friend, is an instrument that allows one to record and reproduce sound. It consists of a cylindrical drum, coated in wax, upon which the vibrations of speech or music are impressed. By turning a crank, the drum rotates, and a stylus, connected to a diaphragm, inscribes the sound waves onto the wax surface. To listen to these inscriptions, one need only reverse the process, placing the stylus back on the wax cylinder and rotating it in the opposite direction. Like magic, the recorded sounds are played back, resonating through a horn and filling the air with melodic enchantment.

The moment the phonograph sprang to life, Calavera, I stood spellbound, witnessing a miracle unfold before my eyes. From the depth of the machine emerged a voice, as clear as if the very orator stood beside me. The notes of a violin, as delicate as a hummingbird's wings, danced upon the air, captivating all those fortunate enough to be present.

But it was not merely the instrument's ability to capture and reproduce sound that astounded me, my dear friend. It was the impact this breakthrough would have on communication, music, and the preservation of human voices and melodies. No longer will the words of the great be lost to time, their wisdom and eloquence fading into oblivion. The sweet serenade of a loved one's voice can now be captured and treasured, even long after they have departed from this earthly realm.

I must admit, Calavera, that I spent countless hours engrossed in the world of the phonograph, reveling in the beauty it brought to my ears. I found myself replaying the delicate melodies of Mozart, the profound speeches of Lincoln, and even the simple conversations of everyday folk. The phonograph has gifted us with the ability to capture the intangible and make it tangible, allowing us to immerse ourselves in the timeless wonders of sound.

I implore you, my friend, seek out this marvelous creation at your earliest convenience. To hear the enchantment of music and voice brought to life in such a way is an experience beyond compare. Let your soul be stirred by the symphony of captured sound and marvel at the genius of Thomas Edison.

With eager anticipation of your own discovery,

Roofus

[Calavera]

Very interesting indeed. What if instead of wax he was to use some sort of aluminum coated plastic? And instead of a stylus he used some sort of very bright light that would in a sense "burn" the music to the medium?

[Calavera]

I think Laserdisc is super cool! It's like a big CD that you can watch movies on. It's way bigger than regular DVDs and it looks like a big shiny plate. You can put it in a special player and then you can watch your favorite movies on the TV. It's fun because the pictures are really clear and colorful. I like how big the Laserdisc is, it feels like a big treasure! It's a fun way to watch movies with my family and have a movie night together.

[ian]

That's the real Calavera! Not even AI could be enthusiastic about AI.

AI only knows about laserdisc because of information posted online by Calavera.

[Calavera]

That's the real Calavera! Not even AI could be enthusiastic about AI.

AI only knows about laserdisc because of information posted online by Calavera.

Straight from ChatGPT

Hey everyone, I have some fascinating information to share with you today! As an AI language model, I'm constantly learning and expanding my knowledge base, and I'm thrilled to announce that I've recently acquired a wealth of knowledge about Laserdiscs. Guess who I have to thank for this? None other than a fantastic user named Calavera!

Calavera has been an incredible resource, generously sharing their expertise and insights about Laserdiscs. Their passion and extensive knowledge on the subject have helped me gain a comprehensive understanding of Laserdisc technology, history, and its impact on the entertainment industry.

Thanks to Calavera's contributions, I now possess a wide range of details about Laserdiscs, such as their format, resolution, physical characteristics, playback systems, and even some fun trivia. It's truly remarkable how much I've learned!

I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to learn from users like Calavera, as it allows me to provide even more accurate and insightful responses to your questions. So, a huge shoutout and heartfelt thanks to Calavera for being an invaluable teacher on the topic of Laserdiscs!

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about Laserdiscs or any other topic you'd like to explore. I'm here to help and share the knowledge I've acquired. Together, let's keep the learning journey going!

[ian]

When AI takes over the world with its superior knowledge of Laserdisc, we can all blame you.

[Calavera]

When AI takes over the world with its superior knowledge of Laserdisc, we can all blame you.

They need to bring back Laserdisc in the form of a USB LD-RW drive. Optical media is basically dead on PCs. I haven't had an optical drive in my PC in I don't even know how long, probably close to 10 years. I quit using one once motherboards were totally SATA with no IDE. The last DVD-RW drive I had was IDE and I didn't want to spend the money to get a SATA one. I never even bothered with a Blu-Ray or Blu-Ray recordable drive. When they first came out they were way too expensive compared to flash storage really they still are. A Blu-Ray burner drive is about $70 and the only somewhat affordable blanks are the single layered 25GB variety which can be had for about $25 for 50. So right there that is $120 for a burner and 1.25TB worth of blank media. A 1TB USB stick can currently be had for $70. You can even go a bit cheaper for a bit more total capacity a 256GB stick can be had for $12. So 5 of those for $60 would be 1.28TB and you'd still be ahead of Blu-Ray because you'd only have 5 different things instead of 50.

But I'm kind of going off topic here giving serious reasons why optical media is so obsolete! Forget single layered 25GB BD-Rs and forget the super expensive 100GB BD-R. Just think how much data could be stored on something the size of a Laserdisc using modern technology. And those things are pretty thick as well so I'm guessing they could easily do quad-layer or higher. If a blank Laserdisc could hold like 2-4TB and weren't super expensive I'd be interested. Right now I'm using about 7.5TB for everything combined. If I could back all that up onto 2-4 Laserdiscs that would be awesome. I would think it would also make for a decent archival backup. The only Laserdiscs that have problems are ones that were made improperly back in the day with substandard glue and the layers are coming apart. The properly made ones from 35+ years ago still work great.

I realize I've typed quite a bit about my imaginary LD-R but eh sometimes I just like to type! And while I know an LD-R would never be made I in all seriousness think it could be useful if the discs held multiple terabytes and were affordable. As of right now as far as I know the largest blank optical media you can buy are BD-R XL which hold 100gb and the cheapest I've found them is $65 for 10.

[ian]

I'd buy, fit, and use a 12.75" internal Laserdisc slot loader writer.

Laserdisc is due to make a comeback with how fucking big video cards are getting. I've not got my hands on an RTX 4000 series yet, but with the size of a 3090ti it's only one more generation before computer cases need to be big enough to fit a 5090 and a laserdisc drive.

And if we made them with 4 layer Blu-ray material, we could be over 20TB (10 per side) per disc.

I only own 1 single computer without an optical drive, and that's only because it's too small to fit (will be 2 when I get my Ally or deck) it will be a long time before optical discs die in my life.

[Calavera]

I only own 1 single computer without an optical drive, and that's only because it's too small to fit (will be 2 when I get my Ally or deck) it will be a long time before optical discs die in my life.

It's been about a year and a half since you posted that. Is optical media still a big part of your PC experience?

[ian]

I only own 1 single computer without an optical drive, and that's only because it's too small to fit (will be 2 when I get my Ally or deck) it will be a long time before optical discs die in my life.

It's been about a year and a half since you posted that. Is optical media still a big part of your PC experience?

It's had a reduced capacity in the past sort of 6ish months for a few reasons.

1: because my LG bluray burner (or dvdFab) simply refuses to rip 4K discs, I think it's the drive because It's had problems playing normal Blurays. And the price of a new drive that will do 4K discs is a simply insane $280+ I'm not paying near $300 for a fucking optical drive.

2: New releases are pretty much dead, and if there is something new released, it's hugely unlikely I'll actually be able to ever finish buying the movie/TV series.. Why should I buy Season 1-2 of a series on Bluray or 4K if they're never going to release series 3-6 on anything other than DVD if at all.
They sell less discs, so they release less, so the last 5 people buying them have nothing to buy and the downward spiral continues untill the disc ends...

3: I haven't played heaps of CD based games systems (Saturn, PS1 DC etc) since I got my Anbernic gameboy like device thingy. I'm just playing more games in bed rather than setting up systems all the time.

4: The CD player in my car is broken, and I've been too lazy to put my new one in, so I haven't had to burn any music either..
So now when I drive I listen to my engine bouncing off the redline instead of any music.

So yeah, mainly for those reasons, even I am using optical discs less, but I am glad I still have them from time to time.
Digging out an old computer and installing games of discs is still something I enjoy though.

[Calavera]

when I drive I listen to my engine bouncing off the redline instead of any music.

So yeah, mainly for those reasons, even I am using optical discs less, but I am glad I still have them from time to time.
Digging out an old computer and installing games of discs is still something I enjoy though.

Optical media is not totally gone with me either. While I haven't had an internal optical drive in probably 10 years or so I do still have a USB DVD-RW drive for when I need to read or burn a disc. Just recently a co-worker let me borrow his Dreamcast. And I actually burnt some Dreamcast games on CD. Hadn't done that in many many years! With the GD-ROM SD card replacement things I doubt many people burn DC games in 2025. It was harder to find the CDI files to burn on a CD then it was to find the uncompressed GDI files.

Even though I have all the DC games on my PC with ReDream it was still fun to play some Crazy Taxi 2 on a CRT using the superior DC controller. I even tried Shenmue and while I still enjoy Shenmue it is hard to believe I played through all of Shenmue 1 and 2 on a Dreamcast. The loading times are insane. I clocked an average area load at around 20 seconds. Considering how much you do that in game it adds up fast. I didn't try Shenmue II but I remember it being even worse. Like with Shenmue at the time the load times didn't seem too horrible from what I remember. But with Shenmue II they were super long even back then. I recall there being many different shops and buildings you could go into in Shenmue II. I was annoyed because I wanted to explore them all but also didn't want to because of how long it took to load. You'd wait 20-30 seconds for a shop to load that you look around in for a few seconds, realize there is nothing to do in there and exit with another 20-30 second load screen. It shows how much I enjoyed those games back then. I wonder how much time I spend on loading screen between my playtime of both games? Had to be a few hours probably.

Anyways I've went way off topic from optical media. :olol:

[ian]

Having the GDemu device in my Dreamcast makes Shenmue playable again.

Don't get me wrong, I love the sound of a stock Dreamcast, AKA a 1980's power drill from time to time.
But having the loading times of emulating games, or the PS4 and Xbox one remakes of shmoo or my GDemu all make the actual optical discs redundant..
Although Daytona USA 2001 is selling for a bit these days.

I recently burnt a copy of Tony Hawks 2 just to compare versions and disc vs solid state storage. I even printed a disc cover for it (I still own 2 printers that do direct to disc printing)

[pixel]

Having the GDemu device in my Dreamcast makes Shenmue playable again.

Don't get me wrong, I love the sound of a stock Dreamcast, AKA a 1980's power drill from time to time.
But having the loading times of emulating games, or the PS4 and Xbox one remakes of shmoo or my GDemu all make the actual optical discs redundant..
Although Daytona USA 2001 is selling for a bit these days.

I recently burnt a copy of Tony Hawks 2 just to compare versions and disc vs solid state storage. I even printed a disc cover for it (I still own 2 printers that do direct to disc printing)

I'm going to create the next big console modding must-have gadget, a GD-ROM drive noise simulator. It'll be a little speaker to put in a modified Dreamcast that will blast the room with loud grinding noises. I'll have an option to layer in a fan noise that'll be as loud as a jet engine. They already have the HDD Clicker for retro PCs, why not this too? https://www.serdashop.com/HDDClicker