Old technology you DON’T like

[Cobra!]

So I was thinking about how I seem to sometimes like something just because it’s old, which made me think about any old tech I don’t like, and figured it’d make a good topic here. I guess I’ll list what I thought up here.

MiniDV - I hate those things! Cameras that use them from my experience are temperamental, and have all just died on me, and the way they are built makes them next to impossible to repair.
When I try to “digitise” tapes, every program I can find does a bad job deinterlacing the video, so the end result is choppier. DVD extractors can keep the interlacing, why can’t MiniDV?
On top of that, it’s just a digital tape, the quality of which is barely better than DVD. You have the (relative) unreliability that comes with tape, and the (In my opinion) boring nature of digital media. It’s kind if the worst of both worlds.

When an analogue video goes bad, you just see static, and maybe the sound gets quiet and crackly, not great, but at least it doesn’t halt the video. A digital video going bad pauses the video entirely, followed by a very loud crackle sound and the video resuming at a later point. It’s frustrating to see and it makes me wonder why everyone had been so eager to go digital.

I’m kind of glad the attempt to make it the next big pre-recorded format failed.

DVDs - speaking of DVDs, I’m not a fan of this format either. The quality is the same as Laserdisc (a then 20 year old format). Sure, you didn’t need to rewind like a VHS, or flip the disc over like a Laserdisc (though I heard very early DVDs did this before they discovered dual layering, but I digress) but as a trade off, you felt like you had to watch it in one go, as most DVD players don’t keep track of your progress.

Nowadays, there’s no reason to get anything on DVD when Blu-Rays have surpassed them in pretty much every way. It was a stepping stone, sure, but there isn’t anything to keep me using them today because it basically standardised digital home video.

That said, there are some aspects of DVD I do find fascinating, like how it handles widescreen, and how Interactive DVD games tried to make use of the limited capabilities of the format. (Some authoring tools even offer limited 2D spritework and coding!)

People will probably point to DVD menus being way more creative than Blu-Ray menus today, and that’s a very valid point and although I don’t care for them myself, I can see some people feeling nostalgic for them. Other than that, they don’t hold much value, at least to me.

Flash Cards - Speaks for itself, I think. They were so many formats back then fighting to be the standard, and they all did the exact same thing (Which wasn’t much from the operator end. You just slot them in, and copy files. No fanfare or anything!), but all required very different slots and ports. I’m glad these are standardised to (Micro)SD now.

LCD - Not much to say here. I kind of find them boring. They’re crisper than CRTs, but sacrificed colour. It also renders black at all times, whereas CRTs and OLEDs don’t, which feels very inefficient to me.

So that’s my list. I really hope I didn’t piss anyone off with these opinions, and I’m curious to see any counter arguments to the points I made and any old tech you yourselves aren’t fans of.

[kandeez]

i think i might have to agree with you on dvds. i mean do i know the difference between the two? not at all. but what i do know is there was that awful point in time in which everyone upgraded to a blueray player and the only thing it read was blueray and suddenly all the dvds you had were completely useless so you had to rebuy everything on blueray. i don't think we're counting blueray as old tech, but i also don't like it. now that i mainly live off vhs movies and my player happens to have a dvd slot it really sucks when i can't watch something because ooooh its blueray and fancy or something.
honestly i think i just dislike how there will be this change, which to someone who doesn't really understand how it all works, seems miniscule but this change then makes everything else useless. like they're both disks why can't they both run?

[Guest]

I never liked the world before the USB standard became ubiquitous and usable. Putting a new operating system on a computer? Better burn a non-rewriteable disk and hope it works, or use a floppy for good measure. Want to attach this cool new peripheral? Bummer, that slot already has something attached. External card reader? Where the hell is the PCMCIA slot!

I think USB is actually really cool and older technology is cumbersome in that regard.

[TheFrugalGamer]

I have to say I'm kind of fond of the DVD format, sort of in a nostalgic way, but also because now that everyone has been upgrading to BluRay, DVD is now much more affordable. I was looking into getting several seasons of South Park a while back, and between the BluRay and DVD versions was like a $60 difference in price! Of course, when people start doing the same with 4K, BluRay will probably be the more affordable one, and then I can start all over again.

I really hate re-buying everything when new formats come out, and I think it's partially a scam, so I always tend to hold on to my older tech to keep playing the things I have.

[Frost Sheridan]

an interesting thread! usually i spend all my time ranting about how much i hate new technology, so this is something a bit different to think about.

i gotta say that i really don't like vinyl records. they're super unwieldy due to how huge and fragile they are (which also means that they're totally un-portable). if you happen to accidentally touch the disc anywhere but right along the edge or take it out of its sleeve in a place that isn't 100% perfectly clean, it'll immediately collect dust/fingerprints/scratches, and even the tiniest little speck of dust or imperfection on the surface of the record will impact sound quality. unless you're extremely meticulous and constantly clean your records, they'll click and pop and crackle after just a couple of plays. i'd much rather listen to a CD or MD - they're easily portable and can play through some pretty nasty scratches and dust with zero impact to sound quality, due to their robust error correction. they don't need to be babied constantly in order to sound good.

while the recent resurgence of vinyl is cool because it means more people are getting (back) into physical media, it also means that musicians are more likely to release albums on only vinyl instead of CD. whenever i come across an album like that, i'll just download a digital copy and record it to MD myself instead.

MiniDV - I hate those things!

i'm one of those weirdos who actually really loves miniDV! i love how i can perfectly copy the digital video data straight off of the camera over firewire and edit the video right on my computer. it's much more convenient than capturing analog video from VHS or converting whatever weird formats DVD camcorders use into something editable.

LCD - Not much to say here. I kind of find them boring. They’re crisper than CRTs, but sacrificed colour. It also renders black at all times, whereas CRTs and OLEDs don’t, which feels very inefficient to me.

this i completely agree with! i don't like LCDs at all and will always prefer CRTs - i still use a 23-year-old trinitron as my main TV and have never had the desire to swap it out for an LCD or OLED. other than the occasional setting tweak in the service menu, it's been working completely fine and hasn't needed any repairs done on it at all. game consoles - especially early 3D ones like the PS1 and N64 - look so much better on a CRT than on any other kind of TV, so why would i ever want to "upgrade"?

[Cobra!]

i think i might have to agree with you on dvds. i mean do i know the difference between the two? not at all. but what i do know is there was that awful point in time in which everyone upgraded to a blueray player and the only thing it read was blueray and suddenly all the dvds you had were completely useless so you had to rebuy everything on blueray. i don't think we're counting blueray as old tech, but i also don't like it. now that i mainly live off vhs movies and my player happens to have a dvd slot it really sucks when i can't watch something because ooooh its blueray and fancy or something.

Really? Those players exist? At least where I live, literally every Blu-Ray player can also play DVDs, and UHD players can play both.

As for if it sounds as old tech, I think it technically does. The format is 15 years old now. It's almost as old as the PSP or the Xbox 360!

One thing about Blu-Rays I prefer over DVDs is that they're scratch and bend resistant. It's not impossible, but you would need to put much more effort to destroy a Blu-Ray. You can't even snap them by bending them, they just bend in place. xD (If you have a Blu-Ray gone bad, try it!)

I have to say I'm kind of fond of the DVD format, sort of in a nostalgic way, but also because now that everyone has been upgrading to BluRay, DVD is now much more affordable. I was looking into getting several seasons of South Park a while back, and between the BluRay and DVD versions was like a $60 difference in price! Of course, when people start doing the same with 4K, BluRay will probably be the more affordable one, and then I can start all over again.

I really hate re-buying everything when new formats come out, and I think it's partially a scam, so I always tend to hold on to my older tech to keep playing the things I have.

That's a fair point, I never thought about that. I personally have the attitude of "If I'm going to dedicate space in my house for a digital copy of a film or show, it might as well be the best version possible", but for those who don't care for quality, and just want to watch the thing, then DVDs would be good enough.

an interesting thread! usually i spend all my time ranting about how much i hate new technology, so this is something a bit different to think about.

i gotta say that i really don't like vinyl records. they're super unwieldy due to how huge and fragile they are (which also means that they're totally un-portable). if you happen to accidentally touch the disc anywhere but right along the edge or take it out of its sleeve in a place that isn't 100% perfectly clean, it'll immediately collect dust/fingerprints/scratches, and even the tiniest little speck of dust or imperfection on the surface of the record will impact sound quality. unless you're extremely meticulous and constantly clean your records, they'll click and pop and crackle after just a couple of plays. i'd much rather listen to a CD or MD - they're easily portable and can play through some pretty nasty scratches and dust with zero impact to sound quality, due to their robust error correction. they don't need to be babied constantly in order to sound good.

while the recent resurgence of vinyl is cool because it means more people are getting (back) into physical media, it also means that musicians are more likely to release albums on only vinyl instead of CD. whenever i come across an album like that, i'll just download a digital copy and record it to MD myself instead.

I'm neutral on records. If there's an album I really love, I'll get it on vinyl, but otherwise, I don't bother with it. I wouldn't be too upset if they ended up being the last remaining physical format for new music, though it's great it's revival has caused people to go back to other formats like CD, Cassette and Minidisc! All of which have started to trend upward in sales for the first time in over 20 years!

this i completely agree with! i don't like LCDs at all and will always prefer CRTs - i still use a 23-year-old trinitron as my main TV and have never had the desire to swap it out for an LCD or OLED. other than the occasional setting tweak in the service menu, it's been working completely fine and hasn't needed any repairs done on it at all. game consoles - especially early 3D ones like the PS1 and N64 - look so much better on a CRT than on any other kind of TV, so why would i ever want to "upgrade"?

I was thinking about this when I was out today. If your average joe watches a VHS tape, they'll watch it on their widescreen LCD, and don't adjust anything, so the colours will be washed out and the video will be stretched (as the format was made for 4:3), and then conclude VHS quality is terrible.

If you watch a VHS tape on a proper 4:3 CRT, they look fine. Fair enough many tapes are Pan & Scan, which is awful and shouldn't exist outside of serving as an exercise in directing, but talking about the quality itself, no complaints, it serves it's purpose. (Laserdisc did it better, sure, but those were expensive.)

That's a wee rant in of itself. How consumers were adamant that they wanted everything fullscreen back then. They didn't care if they were missing vital information in a film, they just didn't want black bars. Open Matte is fine (Great even!) but give me black borders over P&S any day of the week if it means I can watch the movie properly!

[Wobblegong]

DVD games are very strange honestly, I kind of hate them

There's something about the way the music loops around that just feels unsettling. Scene-It used to freak me out and I don't know why.

DVD menus sometimes have the same vibe to them. You'll have like four thirty second clips going at once and then they suddenly black out and everything is silent for a second... 

[Guest]

DVDs, mainly because they didn't have the same physical protections that floppy disks had. I've had dozens of DVDs and CDs that slowly became unusable over the years because over time the data side would get dirty, scratched, and much more. With floppy disks the data was protected in its plastic shell that you more or less had to go out of your way to bypass if you wanted to damage it intentionally. Still possible to do so accidentally, but not as easily.

[Gans]

Floopies, including their drives, proved to be quite unreliable in my experience. The plastic case didn't help against magic magnetic disorientations happening. I've seen more dead floppies than dead DVDs. The slowness and lack of capacity makes working with them (in a sensible way) quite difficult and my PC would be far inferior if data couldn't be stored quickly over USB, even USB 1.0. So I guess it's all about the nostalgia and the mechanical noises for the floppy disk, but it wasn't practical at all, even 20 years ago.

[shevek]

Microfiche (also known as Microfilm, the format Microform..), and Microfiche readers. You'll still find old documents saved to them in many old organizations and public institutes.

Microfiche is admittedly more durable than some other formats and very small, so it saves space in archives and can be read with a magnifying glass ... but from nowadays' perspective, it's really odd to see Word documents or typewriter documents on film. The deterioration still happens and you have to be careful with your fingers, dirt and light. If you want to extract documents from it or print them out, it can take quite a while to align each image perfectly, and then send it to the attached printer just to print that 1 site. I've had to print out entire big folders from our archive before, and it takes ages and it can be rather loud. Move film to new image, look at the screen that's 2cm in front of your eyes, adjust sharpness, adjust position on screen, print, repeat.

Edit: If you are curious what the readers look like, the Minolta MS6000 Microfiche reader is, iirc, the one I worked with in the past.

[Cobra!]

Microfiche (also known as Microfilm, the format Microform..), and Microfiche readers. You'll still find old documents saved to them in many old organizations and public institutes.

Microfiche is admittedly more durable than some other formats and very small, so it saves space in archives and can be read with a magnifying glass ... but from nowadays' perspective, it's really odd to see Word documents or typewriter documents on film. The deterioration still happens and you have to be careful with your fingers, dirt and light. If you want to extract documents from it or print them out, it can take quite a while to align each image perfectly, and then send it to the attached printer just to print that 1 site. I've had to print out entire big folders from our archive before, and it takes ages and it can be rather loud. Move film to new image, look at the screen that's 2cm in front of your eyes, adjust sharpness, adjust position on screen, print, repeat.

Edit: If you are curious what the readers look like, the Minolta MS6000 Microfiche reader is, iirc, the one I worked with in the past.

Hmm, yeah I imagine Microfiche can be fun to look through, but a royal pain in the backside to archive/digitise!

[PurpleHello98]

I have to say I'm kind of fond of the DVD format, sort of in a nostalgic way, but also because now that everyone has been upgrading to BluRay, DVD is now much more affordable. I was looking into getting several seasons of South Park a while back, and between the BluRay and DVD versions was like a $60 difference in price! Of course, when people start doing the same with 4K, BluRay will probably be the more affordable one, and then I can start all over again.

I really hate re-buying everything when new formats come out, and I think it's partially a scam, so I always tend to hold on to my older tech to keep playing the things I have.

Same. I also have a DVD player for my computer, and a VCR/DVD recorder, neither of which can play Blu-Ray, and DVDs are cheaper. Quite frankly, I don't notice much of a quality increase in most videos somewhere between 480p and 1080p, especially if it's not fullscreen, and I only own one 4K screen (my computer) so it wouldn't be worth it to me. DVDs are cheap and more than good enough.

[dirtnap]

DVDsbut as a trade off, you felt like you had to watch it in one go, as most DVD players don’t keep track of your progress.

Nowadays, there’s no reason to get anything on DVD when Blu-Rays have surpassed them in pretty much every way.

i very much have the opposite opinions/experience here:

my DVD players have always remembered where i was. i could pause a DVD, turn off the player, then turn it back on days later and have it continue where i left off. it only loses your place if you take the disc out, and yeah if you frequently stopped part-way through a DVD, then watched something else, you wouldn't benefit from this.

i also conversely feel there's no reason to get anything on blu-ray when DVD already exists. in fact, i heavily dislike blue-ray because it doesn't work on DVD players. i need to buy a whole new player to get an experience that's absolutely identical to watching the thing on DVD? i'm just going to get the DVD.

yes, i've seen blue-rays many a time at the houses of folk who are very into HD and such (and i've seen HD films in cinema, for that matter) and i literally don't see a difference. it looks exactly the same. in fact, for a long time i believed HD just referred to a larger screen resolution, since everyone who was into HD had a bigger screen...but it still looks exactly the same as the non-HD. it's just bigger.

i don't necessarily think DVDs (as compared to some other shaped thing like downloads or VHS, rather than as compared to blu-ray specifically) are the best way to watch a video, but for me they remain the most convenient. i still buy DVDs (new or old, whatever's convenient). i have whole collections of my various favourite programmes on DVD, and i still watch those sometimes.

so to you i ask: what's better about blue-ray? does it actually look significantly better? or is there some other benefit i'm unaware of?

however, i do agree on the sentiment of DVD menus. because i'm still very much an active user of DVDs, and i watch things that were produced across the whole range of "when DVDs were first invented" to "printed for the first time ever six months ago" and i have some OPINIONS about DVD menus.

i had the collector's edition of The Fifth Element, so i don't know if the original non-collector's edition was like this too: but the menu showed a clip of the freefall in the taxi that happened near the beginning of the film. each menu item appeared in sequence, falling, moving across the screen, then it was out of view and the next one appeared. you could only select what item was on-screen. if you missed it, you had to wait for it to come back around again.

when the DVD was new, i thought this was really cool, and found it a little inconvenient when i had to wait for the item i wanted to appear.

re-watching the film recently on DVD, i had pretty much the exact same sentiment, but with the added notion of "wow this Would Not fly today. no-one would release this menu today. this is not corporate-friendly."

i still think the fifth element DVD menu is cool and creative and interesting. i also think it's annoying to use. the art, in this case, interferes with the function.

there's also the fact that even less creative menus can be badly-designed. some of the common themes from (mostly early in the technology) DVDs are:

• poor contrast between the menu text and the chosen background
• hard-to-read fonts
• poor contrast between the highlighted and not-highlighted options
• for episodic content, no "play all"
• weird naming conventions so it can be hard to find things like "special features" or "scene selection" or "subtitles"

i have watched some DVDs that purported, on the case, to have subtitles. i could not find the subtitles anywhere in the menu. fortunately, my DVD remote has a subtitle button that just toggles through every language (and "off") so it's not a problem in my case, but not everyone has a remote like that, and as far as I'm aware they're a relatively modern invention (as compared with the age of some of these DVDs). did i just somehow miss the subtitles settings? possible, but if so that's also a problem. how was i supposed to find them? where were they hidden?

i am currently re-watching classic who (yes, all of it) and i'm into pertwee's era (with jo grant: currently on curse of peladon) and anyone who has ever watched a classic who DVD knows what i'm about to say.

the sporadic clips that play in incoherent sequence on the main menu at a much louder volume than the main feature were certainly A Choice. i think it's a choice that was made some considerable time ago, before they knew better, and now they're stuck with it because the BBC hates change and greatly prefers for all things in a set to be homogenous.

BBC DVDs are, largely, pretty good, and i would say overall that the menu experience of these is what all DVDs should have. with the sole exception of the choice to put repeating clips behind the menu. that was not a good choice. the menus are all clear and clean, with good contrast. the options are labelled in a simple, coherent manner, and always they go in the same order and the same place.

i may praise the creativity of the fifth element, but the fifth element is a movie. you put the DVD in, you watch it, you may choose to watch the special features, you probably don't have to deal with the menu much.

but watching programmes, as i do, the menus are a constant annoyance. i get used to the nature of the menus of whatever i'm currently watching, its uniquenesses and irritations and conveniences. the menu for a film can be more creative because you're not going to be dealing with it for weeks or months. the menu for a programme should be as bland and utilitarian as possible.

i was not prepared to go on a DVD menu rant but apparently i've had that in me for some time.

seconding floppies. i remember installing games that came in a box of floppies. the transfer speed really is  horrendous. nevermind needing 21 floppies for a single game, you aren't playing that game the same day you bought it. it'll just take that long to install from each one of those discs.

i made an attempt to use floppies for personal storage a while ago (mainly because i discovered i still had a box of blank rewriteable floppies, and decided this would be a fun experiment in nostalgia). i abandoned the idea very quickly after reliving just how terrible transfer speeds are, to say nothing of the storage capacity of a single disc being laughable today. definitely an old technology that looks and sounds cool, but is very much an inferior experience compared to its modern counterparts.

personally, i have learned a dislike for typewriters

typewriters are kind of romanticised now. i have an old typewriter, not a reproduction or a refurbishment, a forgotten-in-the-attic, made-in-94 typewriter. it is an absolute beast. when i discovered it, i was so eager to use it.

i'm a writer, and i enjoy writing on real paper with real ink. i can type on a keyboard at an insane speed, even with chronic pain i can hit 90wpm. that used to be my casual, relaxed typing speed before the pain set in, and i was capable of faster still if i tried. now it's my maximum, and i don't know what my casual speed is any more but i'd guess closer to 60 or 70.

typing is very natural to me. as much as i like writing by hand (for a number of reasons, but a big one is it's an analogue process and allows me to think and write in a way i just don't when i'm at a computer) i prefer typing because it is just so much faster.

surely, a typewriter was the perfect solution to me. the physical act of typing, words flying far faster than i'm capable of with a pen, but in an analogue fashion, without the psychological interferences a computer provides.

hah, no.

i'd forgotten how hard it was to use a typewriter. my shitty keyboard, the one i'm using right now, i've had since windows 7 was brand-spanking-new. it works just as well now as it did then. the mouse that came with it died several years ago and has long since been replaced, and the replacement replaced; but this keyboard keeps on going. most of the characters on the keys have been worn away, but that doesn't matter because i know where they are.

i barely have to touch a key for it to depress. i brush against it a little, it goes down. the hardest keys are the ones with two supports, like [ENTER] and [SPACE]. they require real force, compared to the others, but it's still very little force indeed. typing normally requires barely any effort.

a typewriter requires a lot of force to use. each keypress is a slow, deliberate, heavy act. the keys themselves are also further apart. a pianist's span i have not. even with practice, i could only type on that thing one key at a time. on a digital keyboard, i can touch-type. on a typewriter, i'm hunt-and-peck, not because i don't know where the keys are but because i cannot press keys with my fingers, and have to use my whole arm; and i cannot comfortably rest my fingers across the home row.

also, ribbons are expensive, and finnicky, and fragile, and it's easy to waste a lot of them just by installing them with an inexpert hand.

i like the idea of typewriters, but it turns out i really don't like using them.[/list]