The Minitel system. It was a french teleterminal system that became obsolete once the Internet got going. I think just about everyone in France had one of these… they tried to start the system in Sweden as well, but since the web was lurking round the corner, the project went up in flames.
No-o-o-o-o-o!! I refuse to believe it! I will never relent! NEVER!!! You can have my Minidisc when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!!
::huddles in a corner sobbing::
WooHoo! Free minidisc!!
: rubs hands, waits for spoofe to die :
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
(Begins sobbing uncontrolably)
Since we seem to be making some predictions here:
How about film photography? The way digital cameras are becoming popular, I can see where in the span of about 10 years or so digital photography becoming the standard for everyday photography. Film photography will still be around, but just for hobbyists.
Only if the get printers that will produce a photo quality printout for less than the cost of film developing.
Seriously, I don’t think VHS is going anywhere any time soon. I think it will follow the same path that cassettes have (or similar path) Sure, CD’s have pretty much taken over music stories, but I can still get most of the CD’s on cassette if I so choose. Until DVD recorders get as inexpensive as VCRs, people are still going to need VCRs.
More hits from the Museum of Archaic Formats:
Gallery of the Captured Still Image
“Disc” film:
That round Kodak film in cartridges from the late seventies that was intended to be easier to use than roll film, but had such a small image area that prints of any reasonable size were incredibly grainy.
I’m tempted to nominate “Advanced Photo System” film as a future entrant to this category if it does not do well, but I’m not sure how rapidly it’s being sideswiped by digital imaging.
Mr Blue Sky, by “instant cameras” do you mean disposable (er, I mean, “single use”) cameras. or something like Polaroid self-developing prints?
Gallery of the Captured Moving Image
“Pixelvision”:
A camcorder format that recorded low-resolution monochrome video images on audio tape moving at about four times normal speed. Intended for kids’ toys I think.
I thought the problem with Beta was that, for that critical stage at the beginning of its lifetime, it had a maximum tape length of 1 hour… and it was being aimed at the timeshifting market, where most movies are two hours long. Yes, I know the recording time of Beta was eventually extended, but VHS started with two-hour tapes from the start.
Re: super8 film: when I was in animation school, we were using 16mm (silent) film, at least at the beginning.
Gallery of the Captured Sound
Debate: MiniDisc is not dead–depending on which market you are in. Only in North America did it fail to become very popular.
Gallery of Transport
psychogumby, the Prius and Insight are offered here in Canada as well.
Gallery of Communications
AM stereo has its supporters.
A couple of nominations:
The American IS-136 “TDMA” digital mobile phone, and its predecessor IS-54.
The IS-54 was marketed as “digital cellular” in the late eighties, and didn’t do very well, so the IS-54 networks upgraded to a newer version of the standard with (among other things) a higher data rate, IS-136.
IS-136 has advantages, in that it can hand off calls to and from the AMPS analogue networks that still have the greatest coverage in the Americas. And IS-136 works in both the 1900-MHz and 850-MHz bands where most countries in the Americas have their cellular service.
However, there is no defined mechanism for high-speed data in IS-136, similar to GPRS and third-generation standards for the worldwide standard GSM and the other American standard CDMA. And infrastructure providers such as Nokia have announced development of GSM on the 850-MHz band, to take advantage of that band’s greater ease of coverage as compared to 1900 MHz.
The major carriers in the Americas who use the IS-136 standard are shifting to GSM to take adventage of GSM’s higher-speed data capabilities and migration to the promised land of third-generation wideband wireless.
The US In-Band-On-Channel digital terrestrial radio broadcast standard.
In contrast to almost every other country in the world (including Canada and Mexico, but with the possible exception of Japan), the US is not using the “Eureka-147” standard for digital audio broadcasting (DAB), and allocating new frequencies for DAB services.
Rather, it is trying to develop ways of transmitting digital and analogue audio simultaneiously using the existing AM and FM frequencies and bandwidths. I am not certain whether a standard has been approved–apparently there has been difficulty–but the US has been reluctant to assign each analogue radio station a new spot in a new digital band, as happened in Canada and elsewhere. This is in stark contrast to the US’ achievments in the field of digital television.
Ironically, US satellite DAB is operating now, using a unique-to-USA standard in a separate frequency band. And yes, you need a new radio for it too.
I keep wondering whether any form of DAB will be sideswiped by streaming audio over some form of wireless high-speed Internet connectivity though.
Alex
This was a unique-to-Canada clone of Minitel, operated by Bell Canada. You rented monochrome terminals from Bell and subscribed to services. Like Minitel, it was blown away by ISPs, cheap PCs, and the Internet in the very early nineties.
NAPLPS
Another before-its-time innovation from Canada, North American Presentation-Level P<something> Syntax (can almost remember the acronym) was a standard for describing the drawing of graphics on a screen. It was used in info-kiosks in public places around Toronto in the early eighties, but never made its way into the home (except possibly riding on Alex). I think its creators were hoping for a teletext boom in Canada, as occurred in Britain.
Dare I mention the dialup BBS here? 
Hmmm, my point wasn’t that you wouldn’t see it, but that it wouldn’t enormously widespread. Because it’s a pain in the behind to digitize all that content and get it out to the car. Ripping a bunch of CDs is like watching paint dry. If some more convenient and almost-as-cheap way to do this were offered from the content providers, the CD->MP3->car stuff will become obviated. Too early to tell, though.
What you’re saying is arguably true. I’d personally love to see widespread adoption of hybrids and electrics. However, hybrids and electrics are currently less convenient and more expensive than your basic car. If this remains the case, I don’t see wide penetration any time soon. It will be interesting to see how/if this changes in coming years.
Gallery of the Captured Moving Image
What about the 3/4" video format. I used to love mine, till it died about 3 years ago, they made excellent recordings. They may still be in use in studios or something. Most peopel respond with a “huh?” when I bring it up.
-Vectrex
-Dedicated Tabletop arcade games. (Pacman, Donkey Kong Jr., etc…)
-That other one…you know…the system with carts as big as paperback novels and priced in the hundreds per game?
On another note:
I’m pretty sure GameBoy will live. It’s the only survivor from the “Handheld” wars. The GameBoy Advances is pretty sweet, even if it is the handheld equivalent of a SNES.
And high-power transmission. I’ve seen tubes so big that they had doors in them, where maintenance people could actually go inside to replace elements.
Nah. Just not in cars. You’ll still see them in low-power/low-cost garden equipment, and the like, for a good long time.
psychogumby, the hybrid cars have been available for purchase here in the states for a good year or more. They’re just not terribly well adapted to the US. The trouble with them is that they handle and ride like compacts, when most Americans drive pretty long-haul, and use their vehicles almost as second homes. If someone could come up with a hybrid or other ULEV that behaved like a luxury sedan, and cost less than a fortune, they’d have a best-seller. I’ve seen about a dozen examples of the hybrids on the roads here, and that, while far better than any previous ULEV, isn’t much of an endorsement.
Oooh! We still have a bottle of this! Lemon flavor - clear with bright yellow “glucose orbs”. Tho it must be something in addition to glucose to stay undissolved this long (about 4-5 years?)
I can post pictures if anyone is interested…
The Dead Media Project: http://www.deadmedia.org/
Microsoft won’t go down without a fight – probably by sabotaging their competitors’ offices and by “enhancing” Windows so it won’t let you install software that hasn’t been blessed by Pope Bill himself. But their reputation is definitely taking a beating, and they aren’t as invincible as they once seemed.
On the other hand, I’m still not convinced Linux will do it. Linux has the geek-appeal, but it’s still far from a point where you can toss it at a grandmother and have her use it without being spooked.
The odds are a bit better with Apple’s Mac OS X – the power of Unix, Apple’s legendary ease-of-use, and a vertically-integrated company that has more control over the “user experience” than either Microsoft or the Linux crowd. The biggest obstacle is overcoming all the negative misconceptions people have about Apple computers…
Sunspace, do you know if this grew out of the old Telidon system that was being developed by the government of Ontario (at TVO actually) in the early 1980s? I remember seeing a demo of Telidon at that time, and a few months later on a trip to the UK, seeing what was being done with teletext there. The UK’s system had it all over Telidon in ease of use and speed.
Another of the Ontario government’s expensive and fruitless forays into the world of high technology was the ICON computer, which had its own proprietary operating system and software. It was supposed to be used in schools, but as things turned out, it bore little if any resemblance to any computer or operating system that students would encounter at post-secondary education or at work, and had great difficulty running any commonly-used application. It ended up being quietly removed from schools, and replaced with more worldly machines.
But there are two more defunct technologies for the OP, if we can include provincial-government-developed ones: Telidon and the ICON.
True, but look these.
:eek:
And my baby, the TI-99. Oh how I used to love TOmbstone City. You got to love a game where the hardest difficulty level was ‘insane’.
YES! I’m not the only person who still has an unopened bottle of this hanging around, only I have the “Citrus Raspberry” flavor. And those little floating orbs are not much more than glucose…the ingredients are (as written on the bottle):
Water
Glucose/Fructose
Citric Acid
Sodium Citrate
Sugar
Gellan Gum
Natural Flavor
Xanthan Gum
Color
I can’t believe those little balls o’ fun [sub]shut up you pervs…not those types of balls[/sub] haven’t sunk to the bottom after all these years. I wish the bottle had a date on it. The webpage address stamped IN the glass doesn’t even exist anymore…it’s now an airline ticket type deal.
And oh yeah…n64 is not going anywhere…NES is still popular. And the best system ever, but other than that, yeah.
This just isn’t gonna happen for a long, long time.
One of the key factors that you’re missing here is that land-lines have infinitly greater bandwith. It’s so great that wireless might never catch up - or at least not for a long, long time.
THREE CHEERS FOR FIBER AND FDDI!!!
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by squeegee *
**
Hmmm, my point wasn’t that you wouldn’t see it, but that it wouldn’t enormously widespread. Because it’s a pain in the behind to digitize all that content and get it out to the car. Ripping a bunch of CDs is like watching paint dry. If some more convenient and almost-as-cheap way to do this were offered from the content providers, the CD->MP3->car stuff will become obviated. Too early to tell, though.
I actually agree with Psychogumby here - kinda. It’s not that car stackers will die, they’re evolving.
Sony already sells a MP3-CD car stacker, which is easily connectable to their MP3-CD Head Unit, all in all a very nice system.
And Squeeqe, it dosen’t take that long to burn a new disk - I can do it from start to finish in 20 mins.
(that’s copying the old disks to computer - translating to MP3 - copying to new disk)