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The Denver Post

Obsolete technology at home in the corners of U.S. culture

December 23, 2001
Section: A
Page: A-25
   Michael Booth Denver Post Staff Writer
Caption: PHOTOS: Portable phones have come a long way since secret agent Maxwell Smart's shoe phone in the 1960s television series "Get Smart.' Over the years, record players have given way to eight-track tape players, compact disc players, MP3 and, more recently, the digital Discman, at right. Edmund Berkeley published plans to build Simon, the first portable computer, in a series in Radio Electronics magazine in 1950-51. Thomas Edison, right, holds the first light bulb he made and touches a more modern version in 1931. His "Edison effect' bulb paved the way for modern electronics. One of history's greatest inventors, he also developed the phonograph and the motion picture. Laserdisc Eight-track This image is from the first television. The TV screen was about half the size of a business card. GRAPHIC: The Denver Post We love gadgets, but many soon end up obsolete, surpassed by changing technology and tastes. GRAPHIC: Some technology has foot in grave

Kathy Gibson has a CD player in her Jeep. Her husband, Dan, has a cassette tape player in his old Impala. They've each got a portable CD player and a portable tape player. In their living room stereo cabinet in Arlington, Texas, they've got a phonograph, a cassette, a videotape machine and a CD player. They'll be buying a DVD player soon.

But their favorite piece of machinery, the one they can't do without, the one for which they possess roughly 20,000 recordings, is an eight-track player. Next to Kathy Gibson's fully modern computer is a stack of her favorite Eagles and Carpenters eight-track cassettes, which haven't been produced by major record labels since 1983.

"I don't think it will ever truly die out," said Gibson, 40, a stay-at-home mom who trades in eight-tracks on the Internet. "I've seen a lot of technology changes. We've tried to adapt and go with the flow. Yet we haven't given up on the old technology, either."

The Gibsons and their ceiling-high stacks of media are steering through a busy crossroads of American culture and economics.

They like what they own, yet as the world goes digital in a period of some of the most rapid changes in consumer technology, they still buy more. They know where to find a diamond needle for their vinyl-record player. But they know the foreseeable future belongs to digital discs.

As the holiday shopping push nears an end, many buyers are searching through the digital acronyms dominating electronics bazaars, trying to reach their own conclusions.

"How many devices does somebody who is not a geek need?" said Steve Jacobs, a self-described gadget boy who is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "There is a saturation at some point."

With the saturation, though, comes a sense of urgency. Your favorite music tapes are rotting as you read this. Blockbuster is throwing out some of your favorite videos and replacing them with DVDs.

Buying music, you now must choose between CD, mini-disc, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, MP3, DVD-RW, DVD-A and Super DVD. Beyond the most basic hookup, there are at least four fancier ways to connect your video player to your TV, depending on whether you've got HDTV, Super VHS, satellite signal or cable.

Meanwhile, the boxes of vacation slides and negatives that you still haven't labeled by year are now passe as cameras go digital.

Whether consumers feel enlightened by opportunity or overwhelmed by choice remains an open question, according to electronics experts and students of technology history. Buyers are snapping up DVD players faster than any previous technology. But those same buyers ask plaintive questions of ListenUp marketing manager Phil Murray.

"On the sales floor, people are so intimidated," Murray said. "I sold a DVD to a woman buying for her husband for Christmas, and she said, "Is this going to be obsolete in a few years?'"

For consumers and companies who worry about keeping them happy, the answer is probably "Yes."

In the early days of audio, said Jacobs, people understood replacing a vinyl record because it was scratched by overuse. "Now, it's that you have to go and replace everything because there's new technology."

"You might create a Christmas card list on one computer, and then two years later when you replace the computer, you can't use it anymore," said David Allison, a curator of technology for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "People will put their pictures on CDs, and five years from now their computer doesn't read them anymore."

Institutions face the same problem as consumers, he added.

His division wanted to archive documents created on an old Wang word processor, but their computers balked at the relatively ancient data. "We had to find a place in New York that could convert it. We got it done, but it cost us."

To ease those consumer fears, industry leaders are trying to convince buyers that the movement to converge all entertainment and information onto a compact disc is a lasting one.

The 5-inch optical disc that started out as a music CD can now also hold computer data, pictures, video clips and movies. With the right components and cords, old, deteriorating formats like magnetic audio tape or Super 8 home movies can be converted into long-lasting digital discs.

"The 5-inch disc is the closest thing we have to a universal format," said Steve Weiner, co-founder of ListenUp, which tries to help customers narrow their choices and hook up their new components.

Discs can be scratched and are less indestructible than the industry first claimed. But they have proven more permanent than any other storage format for consumers, experts say.

"My advice to customers is, if you want to save music or photos, put it on CD," said Leigh Headley, who roves Denver helping confused consumers as the "PC Medic." He's transferring his Neil Young and other favorite vinyls onto CD.

Reassuring buyers in the next few years will require a good dose of what the industry calls "backward compatibility." New generations of disc drives for the computer or stereo cabinet must be able to recognize and play all versions of the 5-inch disc, from music CDs circa 1982 on up through re-writable Super DVD, circa 2001.

"The computer industry is smart enough now to know they need to do that," Headley said.

At the same time, manufacturers need to remember that people recording their favorite things is a highly personal act, and they may never want to switch, said Sony spokesman Rick Clancy.

"We still produce and sell turntables. We still produce and sell cassette-tape players," Clancy said. "When you look at it, there aren't that many devices that are obsolete."

That's more than just industry spin, agreed the Smithsonian's Allison. "It's a myth that new technologies wipe out the old ones," he said. "It's more like they stand beside them."

The average homeowner has a VCR library of 35 cassettes, says the Consumer Electronics Association. As fast as DVD players are selling, 95 percent of American homes have a VCR, and nearly a million more are sold every month. The market to build and repair VCRs, and release movies on videotapes, won't go away soon.

Consumers can also count on the fact that one person's obsolescence is another person's opportunity.

Markets spring up for converting old formats to new ones, for example. Headley helps customers get their disintegrating college mix tapes onto CD. One-hour photo stores are picking up some of the business they lost to digital cameras by offering to convert customers' boxes of 35 millimeter pictures and negatives into CD form.

David Morton, a Rutgers University professor who has written histories of sound-recording technology, is part of a cottage industry converting World War II-era "wire recordings." Popular for a couple of years, the format put sound onto steel wire as fine as a human hair.

"Creating a conversion industry has happened at every transition," Morton said.

Then there are people like the Gibsons, helping people who don't ever want to convert. The Gibsons have a website clearinghouse for finding eight-tracks and usually have an inside line on vinyl albums as well. "Sometimes you just can't find a lot of these songs," said Kathy Gibson. "We even have people who want to transfer their CDs back to eight-track."

Since obsolescence never sleeps, the Sonys of the world are working on ideas that will eventually put CDs and DVDs out of date as well.

Consumer electronics conventions already feature prototypes of basement boxes, digital units with huge storage capacity that will hold everything from your family photos to favorite movies to music downloaded from the Internet.

Personal TV recorders

marketed by TiVo and other companies are the early versions of this, putting broadcast, cable or satellite TV programs onto a 30-hour hard drive. New game systems like the X-Box have also moved in that direction, combining a powerful miniature computer with a DVD drive, a large memory and a jack to plug in a cable TV signal.

At least one area remains out of the control of manufacturers, however. This being that there is no accounting for taste.

There will still be countless moments in coming years when a consumer has the chance to convert an old favorite, and instead of asking "How?" will ask "What for?"

"My wife wants to transfer all of her disco-era stuff," said Headley. "And I say, why waste the CDs?"

Michael Booth can be reached at mbooth@denverpost.com or 303-820-1686.



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