Ok, I gotcha. user-proof.

Truthfully, I don't have a lot of experience with abusing DVDs. A couple years ago (before I discovered bittorrent) I had a Netflix subscription, and of course a lot of those discs are scratched all the hell. I was sometimes amazed when I'd put one in and have it work, but then other would lock up pretty frequently.

When I'm at my sister's place, I'm always aghast at the state of things. My niece is 4 years old, and she is allowed access to the DVD player and disc collection. Typically, you'll find dozens of DVD scattered all over the place, caseless, surface-up, surface-down, etc. And the funny part is that none of 'em are the Dora / Disney / etc discs- they're all my sister and brother-in-law's. My neice knows that when you're done with a movie you put it back into the holder (they have a couple of those CD wallets, with the lined plastic sleeves that you can put 20 or 30 discs into) and she's very fastidious about it. Her parents, OTOH, aren't. Just amazing.



Wow, you're giving me flashbacks here. Believe it or not, we actually had something pretty much like that in the early 80s. It was a format pioneered by RCA called SelectaVision (aka VideoDisc), which was intended to compete with DiscoVision (aka Laserdisc.) The media itself looked similar to a laserdisc (ie: a shiny platter about the size of an LP) however it was enclosed in a rigid plastic case like a 3.5" floppy. To play the disc, you slid the whole case into the front of the machine, the pushed a button, and pulled the case back out, with the disc remaining inside the player. It wasn't a pure optical format like Laserdisc (it was CED), the quality wasn't as good, and RCA made the Betamax mistake.

Here's what the case looked like:



Capacitance Electronic Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

We had one of those!

I vividly remember watching some old Star Trek episodes, Star Trek II, Race for Your Life Charlie Brown, and Charlotte's Web on those things.

Ours skipped like a record player hitting a bad spot, and you had to whack it on the side to make it get past that point.

 

I remember when floppy disks were actually FLOPPY. Man I feel old.

 

I was at a customer's site a few weeks back, and it was decided that a particular problem we were having with a Dell PowerEdge server was going to be alleviated by updating the BIOS. I downloaded the application, but it extracts the file to a floppy, to be inserted at bootup. Problem is, this model didn't have a floppy drive on it. I didn't feel like popping the server open, so I figured I'd go to Best Buy and pick up a USB external floppy drive.

A best buy employee walks up to me as soon as I walk into the computer section and asks me what I need.

"An external USB floppy drive."

He points to the wall of items behind me and says "take your pick". This wall was filled with USB thumb drives.

"No, I need a floppy drive, for floppy disks. I need to be a USB external one though."

<Blank stare>

"Umm........is there someone older than you here?"

I did finally find the drive on my own, but had to go to Radio Shack to find some floppies. No one else carries them. When I brought the lone box of floppies up to checkout, the clerk at RS looked at me like I was some lost time traveler, new to this century, but trying to blend in.

 

 

Hahahaha. I know exactly that feeling. Went through the same ordeal about 8 years doing an installation at WKCR (Columbia U). This is when Macs without floppy drives were just starting to be mainstream. I was installing an audio editing system, and while the software itself was on CD-ROM, they had implemented copy protection via a key disk- remember those?

Now God help us, but even in NYC, finding an external 3.5" floppy drive to plug into this Mac was a chore even back then. Can't imagine trying to find one today.


Now, how many of y'all got to watch educational films on 16mm in high school? Or those little 35mm filmstrip projectors where when the audiotape beeped, you turned the **** to advance to the next image?

 

lulz @ title modding.

 

Raises hand.

You were cool if you were allowed to rewind the 16mm.

On another note, remember when video stores would charge you an extra $2.00 if you didn't rewind the VHS? What a racket that was.

 

lol yeah i remember all that **** and the larger floppys to lol

 

thwap thwap thwap thwap!

and that's why we had a car shaped rewinder.

 

Black '57 Chevy with headlights that lit up...my favorite job as a kid.