They didn’t catch on with the public, but we still use DAT almost daily in radio. Classical music concerts are recorded on them by the venue’s engineer, and the tapes are shipped to us for editing and broadcast. We also use them to time-shift, and record long-form (usually classical) programs for later broadcast.
I thought of a few other pieces of equipment: The Elcaset. This machine went into production in the mid-'70s. It was an audio cassette deck that took a big cartridge, using 1/4" tape and 3 3/4 IPS speed. It sounded wonderful, but never caught on.
Some regular cassette decks were built with a high-speed option, which ran at 3 3/4 IPS, too, and it sounded much better than recordings on the same deck at 1 7/8 IPS, but the public didn’t want the recording time of their C90 tapes cut in half. C120 cassettes had tape that was too thin, and it was prone to stretch and fold over on itself even at slow speed, so that wasn’t an option.
Later, there was the Digital Compact Cassette. I don’t even know how it worked, as I’ve never seen a machine or the tape for it. But some of those were made as well. I think they were sold at Radio Shack. For maybe a few months.
The Minidisc failed with the public, but it’s popular with concert bootleggers, and has replaced the cartridge deck in radio stations worldwide. They were used widely by news reporters, but now they have been replaced by flash memory recorders.
This is the one I came in to mention, along with the tangentially related attempts by RJR to niche market to African-Americans (the failed Uptown) and women (can’t remember the new attempted brand, it got scuttled like Uptown did).
Orbitz the soda. They were pretty major sponsors of my frosh rush but I haven’t heard about them in a long time. It was basically an attempt to make a greasy boba soda in something that tasted like Clearly Canadian. Quite disgusting actually, but I got fond of them.
Can you stand another one? The linear-tracking turntable was a great idea in principle. It would play back records exactly the way they were cut. The tonearm had motion sensors, and was driven from the back, from the resting position to the label, in a straight line across the center of the record. This way, there would be no groove distortion from wear on one side or the other.
The problem was, when you played your records that had only ever known a pivoting tonearm, there would be distortion in one channel at the beginning, gradually reducing to none in the middle, then distortion in the other channel, building in intensity to the end. It would have been fine if you only played your records on the LTT, but otherwise, your used records were guaranteed to sound like crap on them, due to the wear you never noticed.
I can try to find a link if needed, but the Iomega Zip drive had a major problem with tape-read failure. Not that is was overly common, but if the read-head failed, the entire tape was shot. Loss of all data.
I’m not sure this would be the best example since it currently exists as the pretty successful Big N Tasty. They aren’t exactly identical, but I imagine one could make the case that the original marketing campaign was just poorly designed and the second push as the “Big N Tasty” came at a better time.
Additionally the sister products, Grilled and Crispy Chicken Deluxe were successful and stayed on the menu under different names until they rolled out their Premium Chicken Sandwich line recently.
Certainly the money they spent on that original campaign was largely wasted, but the concept might not qualify as a total flop since it succeeded under a different name.
I think the Betamax is a great example since you can draw parallels to the current Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD battle.
Emphasis mine. I wonder if there’s any malt liquors that aren’t marketed to African-Americans, and why PowerMaster got the brunt of complaints while St. Ides, Phat Boy, Black Belt, Camo 900, Laser, Johnny Three Legs, and the like got a pass.
Thre are lots of auto company failures, how far back do you want to go.
Willys, Hudson, Packard, Studebaker, Kaiser-Fraser, Crosley, Hupmobile, Stanley Steamer and many more.
This is not the one I was looking for. Anyone remember the 12" disc that played movies. I know Sears had them in their catalogs about the time the VCR came out. I think they failed because you could get the same movie, but could also tape your favorite TV shows.
I remember RCA SelectaVision! The discs were cut exactly like a phonograph record, stored in a sealed jacket, and played with a stylus. It was a kind of miracle that it actually worked! One of the first premiums they offered was The Beatles’ “Let It Be” movie in their videodisc format, so peoiple would buy the machine. You couldn’t get that movie anywhere at the time.
I have a VHS copy of a SelectaVision playback, and during it, the stylus skipped across the disc several times, obliterating about 10 minutes of the movie. This was apparently a problem that couldn’t be fixed easily, if at all. The picture looked passable but not “nice”, and the sound was mediocre.
I’ve seen a couple of the machines, left to die at the Goodwill store.