I've spent a lot of time watching a lot of presenters on UA-cam over the years and most have come and gone. I can honestly say I've never grown bored with any of your content. It's just consistently good, informative, and entertaining (with a chance of puppets!). Just wanted to say thanks. What you do is appreciated.
It is true that 13 years of exceptional content have been produced. Based on views, people love his content as much today as they did in the start. Not many are able to pull this off.
I'm glad he's successful. He deserves it. The reason these videos are so informative is he puts the work in. What I love is I've been watching for a couple years now and the videos have not dipped in quality at all. Most get lazy once they get a little success but Techmoan just keeps bringing the very best content. I hope he knows it is noticed and very much appreciated.
It's pretty amazing that there was art hidden on DCC for all these years and nobody saw it because the devices to see them never left the prototype phase
Mr Moan. Nothing to do with this particular video, but in a moment of sentiment, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your work. As well as obviously being interested in the stuff you're showing us, your videos have brought me so much comfort and pleasure over the years. Even on the rare occasions when the item in your video doesn't really grab me, your presentation and overall effect is so pleasant and soothing. :) SO, thank you and long may you continue.
Funny to see the DCC again. I worked at Polygram from 1989-1999 and remember us all looking at each other thinking how on earth are we going to sell these. Despite the marketing managers best efforts and multiple very expensive launch parties of course they sat on shelves nationwide until we were forced to make them “disappear”. 😀
Hahah - yeah, clearly tape is the way of the future. :-) I remember hearing stories of the DCC and MD launch events, where each one was being demonstrated in different areas, and you might have the opportunity to witness both in the same day. I can't help but think the DCC presenters felt like the kid that waited until the last minute to work on their class presentation. PS.. BeBox... as in Be, Inc.? Man, I would fantasize about doing shady things to get one of those in my retro PC collection.
@@nickwallette6201 Well spotted on the Be Inc. I was a big fan back in the day and used it on my mac but unfortunately never owned a Be Box. It's a shame it didn't take off as it was a great system and well ahead of its time for a little while.
I know people can be very critical of the people who bring us content on UA-cam but I want you to know Matt that your show has gotten me through horribly dark times. What you do brings something good to the world. Don't ever forget that
The concept of having multiple tracks on a stationary head is also used on modern LTO backup tapes (up to 32). The engineering that can squeeze several terabytes onto a tape about half the size of a VHS tape is amazing.
LTO (Ultrium) is just an update of DLT from 1984. Keep in mind the areal density of tape is awful: LTO-8 is 8.5 Gbit/square inch whereas modern hard drives are 1.1 Tbit/square inch.
It is fascinating to see just how far the DCC system development got. It almost made it. In some ways it is a charming format. I wonder if a "Lost Formats Museum" could exist With all the hundreds of ideas that didn't hit the big time, It sounds like the kind of place I would love to visit. I once visited a Privately owned Museum of Radiograms and related technology. It was amazing. I was there to shoot a film interview one of the owners for a medical company. Thanks again for keeping these ideas from the past alive.
ITTS gave me a Teletext nostalgia hit that will now have to be further fulfilled with a trawl through all the ITV Jobfinder recordings on UA-cam. Interesting to see that it uses a step up from the Teletext level used for broadcasting with double width and double sized text.
You could say that packaging is divine. I think it's wonderful that this odd format (that was honestly a bit of a misstep) is being so lovingly documented. Human quirks are great like that.
I heard of the DCC, but never knew they crammed in 18 tracks into 1/8 inch magnetic tape. So that's how it worked. Really like your efforts to show us all the consumer technology that has come our way over time and we were not fully aware of all the features.
Still use my trusty Philips DCC to this day, one of the neat tricks is that some models can output a clean digital signal while replaying old analogue cassettes enabling you to extract the most information possible.
Oh, that's cool. Getting to use their DAC for analogue cassettes is nice, especially if you'd otherwise only have like a computer's integrated audio to record them.
That decoder box needs one more connection on the rear. A Video out so you can relay the video to a larger monitor/TV? I don’t think anyone listening to the tape is ever going to sit close enough to the unit to read the tiny screen. Maybe even ditch the touchscreen LCD completely, and supply a remote control instead. I think that would work a lot better, and probably make it cheaper to produce.
Without a doubt, this is the best channel about musical equipment on the internet. I had no idea about the existence of DCC and I certainly wanted to know more about this physical format. Thank you for always bringing us wonderful content.
One of the main attractions I have for this channel is the parallel that Matt has to the technology which I remember in the past. He has a knack of showcasing the old devices that I remembered, from my childhood to the present. But every now and he has a technology that has a sweet spot in his past to which I missed out. DCC is one of those. I remember selling the players when I worked for Radio Shack in the 90s, but I didn't feel the need to invest in it, even with the Radio Shack employee discount. Instead, I was head-over-heels with Minidiscs. But it is intriguing to see how the tech worked. I almost feel like I missed out not getting on the DCC bandwagon.
i did tho but then i sold the deck later (the wider one in the video) and i regret it every day lol. and i feel the same about minidiscs. i never bought one when it was the big thing but i got two sony minidisc players now (haven't tested them tho)
I was intrigued by DCC when it first came out, remember hearing of its existence, but never had first hand experience of using one. I did end up getting into Mini Disc in a big way though, really loved that technology and the quality was great as well.
Amazing. 90s futurism at its best. Why didn’t they have video outputs on DCC decks from the beginning? It wouldn’t have beaten cassettes as a format (not without recording), but it would have impressed people back in the early 90s (at least I would have been impressed). May have even found a market with karaoke lovers.
As a kid sometime around 1990 my father fell down the home theater rabbit hole and came home with an entire Denon 5.1 surround sound system, which included a DAT player. I will never forget the novelty of loading a tape onto a motorized tray and watching it slowly retract into the machine. The audio fidelity was amazing to my ears iirc.
In case no one else mentions it, I'd imagine the Suzanne and the Jewels diamond _is_ a full diamond, in that it is a cut diamond, the likes of which you'd find on a ring.
Not that I'm aware. At 16:02, it's implied that the data wasn't loaded correctly because the big diamond in the middle isn't the same ♦shape as the others. However, I was suggesting it might just be a 💎 shape instead, like you'd find on a ring (💍)
DCC! I remember it well. I worked in radio at the time, and one of the syndicated shows we aired was shipped to us on DAT, so between that, and the trade publications we received, formats beyond the standard CD were already being discussed by 1991 - 1993. But, you are the first that has actually shown how the technology actually works (or "worked"). Thanks for that. It helped me understand.
The DCC was the most evocative format of the early 90s. I remember my dad talking about it whe I was a kid and they sold them in the staff shop when he worked at philips and I so wanted one even though we allready had cd's.
Hi, I saw a demo by Phillips at the release of Dcc at a HIFI show and it looked awesome and the next step . The machines were too expensive at launch for an engineering apprentice like me on my REASONABLE wage and by the time I had had a promotion and a bigger wage the format had lost to out to MD. So even though i glimpsed then lost the format and I never got into MD your video was FASCINATING and a joy to watch and so informative. This is why i find your channel so important , as it throws light onto a moment in world history that happened and then went . Hats off to those heroes who are keeping the DCC format in the pubic forum and YOU for featuring them so brilliantly. Keep on Keeping on this brilliant channel
Thanks for another informative and interesting video, and for taking the time to post it - hope whatever you have going on personally is going as well as can be expected, and that it's not too difficult. We all appreciate you taking the time to bring us new content when you have more important things to concern yourself with. Good luck, and God bless, if that's your thing.
DCC (and MD, and CDR) was more intended for recording use. But then everyone stopped recording things in favour of just ripping, or not even doing that because of internet.
Indeed, it seemed pretty clear it was doomed to fail from day one of its launch, no one wanted to payu premium prices for tapes in the early 90's when CDs were so established and Minidisc serving as better format in many ways to tape based products.
I can guess that a portable DCC would have been far more viable than a portable CD player for quite some time. Up until the late 90’s, portable CD players were still battery hungry and/or super sensitive to vibration.
Philips also had CDR machines alongside DCC, so it wasn't like they bet it all on tape. The CDR machines were of course also limited by the necessity of special CDs. Maybe without that they could at least have done better than MD.
Superb as always Mat, thank you. Damn UA-cam with its over-reaching content matching; restricting and damaging legitimate documentarianism. Using whole tracks of Artists' music is certainly not required, but a 4 second limitation? Absolute dickheads.
Stupid rules imposed some time ago by non-tech people who do not realise that once something is released digitially it is - for all practical, if not moral or legal , purposes - public doimain.
I almost didn't watch this video. I wish the video's description had been something like... DCC in 2023 - unlocking 30 year old information That data viewer was SO cool! Just imagine if they had made decks with a video out to connect to TV. Thanks Matt. You've done an incredible job showing DCC so thoroughly.
It's very sweet that they've made this DCC museum to keep the format alive. Otherwise it would have been lost in the dust of time, like many other media formats. Thank you for looking into this!
Fascinating! I was completely oblivious to DCC when it was released, here in the US. I was always a CD type so I probably would not have paid attention even if I knew about it. It is a shame really as I would have liked it and probably would have adopted it.
It does look similar in as it appears to be 24(ish - might be one or 2 out!) lines by 40 columns, The spacing at the start of some lines seems to match the way Viewdata escape codes operate as well.
ITTS itself is based on ISO/IEC standard 61866 which is HUGE. It allows more colors, more character sets, and even graphics. However the original ITTS box that is shown in this video, literally uses a Teletext chip for the decoding which is quite limited. This is what the record companies had for testing their DCC masters, so that's what we get now. Hopefully one day, we at the DCC Museum will be able to actually format DCC releases as prerecorded cassettes, and we will be able to make use of all the features that ISO 61866 had to offer.
The difference is that i never used viewdata and didn't even know it was a thing. but i used teletext a lot because every tv in the 90s had it build in i am not sure how you would even get viewdata.
back in the 80's I had a standard audio cassette album by Pete Shelley (lead singer of The Buzzcocks) it included a program for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum that you could play at the same time a listening to the music so it would display images and lyrics synced to the music.
The fact that this ITTS data was hidden on these tapes all that time is amazing. I bet Philips showed it off at trade shows around the introduction of DCCc before abandoning the idea.
Love the Teletext graphics on the converter! Imagine if they'd somehow equipped DCC decks with an RCA video output that could be fed into the text decoder of a Teletext TV (again via RCA or SCART) to display all that info on a TV screen? Retro futurism overload!
Frankly I am very glad I bypassed DCC and waited; although I desperately wanted DAT at the time, but CD rather made it all redundant. All my friends, for whom I burnt CDs, agreed. OTOH, watching your DCC videos is absolutely fascinating! It almost makes me wish I had invested in every technology of the day! Fortunately YOU did! Love your work!
Wow! This was a great one Mat! Before I started watching your videos on DCC I have to say it's one of those formats that had just passed me by. Not sure if it's because I'm from Canada, perhaps the format didn't get much love here? I think you and I are about the same age and I just don't remember DCC. Either way, thanks again for another great episode. Hope all is good with you and yours. ♥
I love dcc. Back in the early nineties my local Philips dealer had them on display. It seemed like magic. Still impresses me now! 😂 Thanks for the video
@@tookitogo MiniDisc was more futuristic, but it broke compatibility with regular compact cassettes. But it did last longer than DCC. For me, no matter how good MiniDisc is, I remain more fond of DCC. In that time I was a huge Philips fan.
@@starbase218 But anyone who had cassettes already had cassette equipment. (And given that two of MD’s biggest advantages over analog cassette - CD quality and random access - weren’t possible with analog cassettes even on DCC players, people had to re-copy their music anyway.)
How interesting! It’s so weird knowing all those graphics and things were there this whole time, but nobody could see them until now….30 years later! I feel bad for the people that had to design and code that stuff, with nobody seeing it but themselves. What thankless work that must’ve been.
Extremely interesting topic, and well presented as usual. If I was listening and reading correctly, a DCC player can play regular cassettes, but you don't want to do it because it wears the head.
Yes - that’s right, although it wouldn’t have been an issue when these devices were new, but now they’re scarce with no spares for the heads it’s best to try and extend their life as much as possible.
This is marvelous for me, an oldster that was familiar with the hype about DCC back in the 1990s, but never saw any video about the format. I considered getting a DCC in the early 1990s, but the high cost of the unit would have put me in a cash bind whereupon I could not afford the blank DCC tapes I'd need to record music radio airchecks and mix music tapes. Because of that, I stayed with analogue cassettes.
I’m a Brazilian guy. DCC never made here, but every tech magazine or Philips catalog showed it, and I had wish that piece of technology. Today it’s unthinkable to bring a working DCC player here, or even DCC tapes. It’s too expensive. But I’m curious, and that’s why I’m here. Thanks, Mat, to show this part of history of technology to us. - Ivan
Hi Matt, with everything you've shown us over the last years your house must be a techmuseum. It would surely visit it and enjoy your collection of interesting devices!
I have a fun fact about DCC few people know. Philips had made big expensese to develop and produce sheets of metal with very small clean holes for making DCC work. After discontinuing the production of DCC that tech got a new life in a complete other field of industry. Those steel sheets are now used as renewable and cleanable filtration sheets in Breweries. Before DCC Breweries had to filter like in all thos centuries before in sand and gravel pits who had to be discarded often and could't be reused.
Great to see you back Mat! I was at high school when DCC came out. I remember reading about them in magazines and thinking, hey that's cool! But I don't think I ever saw them anywhere. To think we could have made space age mix tapes with Ceefax style titles, lyrics and picture graphics... the perfect way to put off doing your homework!)) Oh well, if I'm ever in California, I'll definitely check out the museum
Didn't know dcc had that much info embedded, Falkner device is great, makes me think, does MD and CD or even DAT carry similar info(can the Falkner device see it) and does the data get preserved during direct digital transfers to other digital formats. Awesome video as ever.
Something like it did exist for Audio CDs in the form of CD+G, with the first CD+G release being in 1985. Not interactive, but basically a slideshow of very basic graphics, mostly used for lyrics. A handful of early CD game consoles could play them, as well as some Video CD players and special karaoke players, but beyond that karaoke use it wasn't all that popular. There was an upgraded CD+EG, but that saw even less use. Most CDs that had it, didn't advertise it at all. I wouldn't think the Falkner device is set up for it, but maybe it could be.
ooh the inner nerd has been activated. I want the Johnny Guitar Watson guitar box edition. I don't even have a DCC player but I am compelled to order it anyway because it's just so darn cool! $49 ain't a bad price either in my opinion. I have the vinyl and CD of the album but as people remind me regularly I'm a bit nuts so I think I'll order it. Then obviously I'll end up buying a DCC player, then obviously it won't work, then I won't have the time to get it sorted etc etc. Thanks for your awesome videos my friend I always find them entertaining.
Once again you have presented something I knew nothing about. Knew about DAT, worked with those tapes for data backup, but never was aware of DCC. Thanks!
The thing with the Graphics and the Text reminds me of CD +G which gave me a big WOW Moment watching it on a CDTV back in the Days. But one who has just a normal CD Player would have never seen this.
The main difference is that CD+G is graphics-only, whereas DCC seems to be text-only, and more like teletext. I think CD+G won out because it was easier to do karaoke with. Karaoke was already a thing, and Pioneer had already been selling laserdisc-based systems. And I can't imagine that people would spend 30+ seconds listening to a motor whirr while waiting for their song to play. EDIT: Oh, and a text-only format in the 90s wouldn't have support non-Roman languages. A graphics-based format lets you easily put karaoke lyrics in Japanese, where it was very popular.
It's fun the pages of graphics and lyrics shown on the little touch screen device are all in teletext format - it makes sense being Philips derived; I guess just the font and page encoding perhaps? Still, if it works for subtitles, the lyrics are a good fit.
FYI, Bee Gees' "For Whom The Bell Tolls" was also particularly popular in the UK since it went to #4 in the charts in the same week as that worldwide evergreen "Mr Blobby" went to #1...
DCC has indexes within songs too, but the feature was never used in any recorder or on any cassette, except of course for pre-track pause. Just like on CD. I have the first edition of "MCMXC aD" by Enigma, it also used indexes. Later editions just had track markers.
I remember seeing this on the UA-cam channel here a long time ago, and I regularly watch DCC format albums and devices that view detailed album information.
I just want to thank you for not using 60 fps, the UA-cam codec really can't handle watching in higher speeds and 60fps. Now I can watch your videos in the speed I'm comfortable with in glorious 1440p. Thank you so much for the change.
So I was pleasantly surprised today when my buddy sent me a link to a video he was part of. I was watching Miikshi and there was a character named Admiral G. Raffe in it. When I heard them start talking I thought to myself, "Hm, that voice sounds familiar" but I brushed it off and moved on watching the show to see my friend's handiwork. I ended up enjoying the show but at the end I got quite the surprise watching the credits. As it were, Techmoan did the voice, color me surprised! I thought it was so very cool because it was another unexpected surprise considering how much I like retrotech and finding there was another link to this cool video. Oh, my friend designed and built LAMB.
Interesting video, I remember looking at demo DCC in stores in the early 90s, I thought it took too long to load a DCC and too long to skip tracks, ended up with burning audio CD-Rs in the later 90s which could be played in many existing CD players.
Yes I love minidisc for access time great media ! Yes I love it’s versatility and standard play on an excellent machine like the MDS-JB940 can sound amazing even in a top flight system !
Yeah. I remember when DCC and MiniDisc were both brand new, on store shelves next to each other. MiniDisc was obviously superior, and not by a small amount. (DCC’s only “advantage” was backward compatibility with analog cassettes, but everyone who used cassettes already had cassette equipment, so this feature actually added no value.) MiniDisc could have had lyrics, too - IIRC, there are unused subcode data bits in the format that could have been used for lyrics. (And of course, with MD essentially being a data format with a filesystem, it would also have been conceivable to save lyrics as discrete “files” separate from the audio samples.)
I really like that idea of digital content stored in media that was used for analogue content, it is this weird 90's retro futurism that is really surprising, I think before flash media got really cheap, seeing all the imaginative ways companies created alternatives is so interesting, that's what I like a lot magento-optical discs like the Mini Discs so much, is parts solid state, part mechanical.
Things got a little funky before we had storage media and codecs capable of doing all-digital on a consumer budget (uncompressed digital videotape was already a thing by this point, but very expensive and aimed at TV studios). Meanwhile Laserdisc encoded composite video as basically PWM and modulating it up above a digital audio signal very similar to CDs. And then there was the obscure LV-ROM format only ever used for the BBC Domesday 2000 project that stuck data in the digital audio part!
Fascinating video! I wonder if anyone who worked on the up to now mostly unknown graphic art on DCC will see this after all these years. Really cool stuff.
I have a DCC 951 and it still works ( along with 70 DCC tapes ) - kept it for nostalgia , but will probably sell it ( or will I ) - Great video, as always
I remember checking out DCC, DAT & Minidisc back in the day, after several demo's, I decided on Minidisc. Since then I bought both DCC & DAT machines, it seems I made the right choice, as both machines failed, while my Minidisc machine is still working perfectly after all these years😁
Always love your videos, I watch one's even I don't have any connection with as you make it interesting (often witty), you highlight so much that's gone by the wayside over the decades, it's totally addictive and fascinating. I did have on DCC tape up until recently, never had a player for it.
You brought back memories. When that came out it was supposedly the best thing since sliced bread. In truth it fizzled out like batamax and big laser discs. Thanks to you i have started acquiring odd tech items. i just got a Japanese market Emergency Radio with a 1 Seg TV in it and it is the size of a hand held game console.
Very interesting, even though I'd never even heard of DCC until I watched this video. I suspect they might not have ever been released in this country. Thanks, Mat.
I remember being fascinated with DCC when I went to see Dire straits on their calling Elvis tour as there were huge screens advertising DCC. I nearly bought a tower system with a DCC recorder but sadly as a student I couldn't afford it . I've missed the boat on DCC but I'm now enjoying Minidisc and compact cassettes again though so these old formats still have some life in them :-)
I've spent a lot of time watching a lot of presenters on UA-cam over the years and most have come and gone. I can honestly say I've never grown bored with any of your content. It's just consistently good, informative, and entertaining (with a chance of puppets!). Just wanted to say thanks. What you do is appreciated.
I could listen to Mat discuss anything and not get bored.
I missss dem pupppetzzzzz.....
It is true that 13 years of exceptional content have been produced. Based on views, people love his content as much today as they did in the start. Not many are able to pull this off.
I'm glad he's successful. He deserves it. The reason these videos are so informative is he puts the work in. What I love is I've been watching for a couple years now and the videos have not dipped in quality at all. Most get lazy once they get a little success but Techmoan just keeps bringing the very best content. I hope he knows it is noticed and very much appreciated.
Same. I'm constantly unsubbing from channels but haven't even considered unsubbing from Mat.
It's pretty amazing that there was art hidden on DCC for all these years and nobody saw it because the devices to see them never left the prototype phase
Mr Moan. Nothing to do with this particular video, but in a moment of sentiment, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your work. As well as obviously being interested in the stuff you're showing us, your videos have brought me so much comfort and pleasure over the years. Even on the rare occasions when the item in your video doesn't really grab me, your presentation and overall effect is so pleasant and soothing. :) SO, thank you and long may you continue.
Funny to see the DCC again. I worked at Polygram from 1989-1999 and remember us all looking at each other thinking how on earth are we going to sell these. Despite the marketing managers best efforts and multiple very expensive launch parties of course they sat on shelves nationwide until we were forced to make them “disappear”. 😀
Hahah - yeah, clearly tape is the way of the future. :-) I remember hearing stories of the DCC and MD launch events, where each one was being demonstrated in different areas, and you might have the opportunity to witness both in the same day.
I can't help but think the DCC presenters felt like the kid that waited until the last minute to work on their class presentation.
PS.. BeBox... as in Be, Inc.? Man, I would fantasize about doing shady things to get one of those in my retro PC collection.
@@nickwallette6201 Well spotted on the Be Inc. I was a big fan back in the day and used it on my mac but unfortunately never owned a Be Box. It's a shame it didn't take off as it was a great system and well ahead of its time for a little while.
I love that I live in a world where people can geek out hard enough to make a museum about a long gone musical format.
I know people can be very critical of the people who bring us content on UA-cam but I want you to know Matt that your show has gotten me through horribly dark times. What you do brings something good to the world. Don't ever forget that
The concept of having multiple tracks on a stationary head is also used on modern LTO backup tapes (up to 32). The engineering that can squeeze several terabytes onto a tape about half the size of a VHS tape is amazing.
Fun fact: the technology that DCC used for the heads is still used in hard disks, and the audio compression was basically identical to MPEG layer 1.
Actually modern LTO tapes have 8,960 tracks and 32 read/write heads
LTO (Ultrium) is just an update of DLT from 1984. Keep in mind the areal density of tape is awful: LTO-8 is 8.5 Gbit/square inch whereas modern hard drives are 1.1 Tbit/square inch.
@@zockblattshickleblender7758 Arguably its most important development.
While we're dropping fun facts, LTO (or DCC for that matter) tape can be used as an emergency substitute for fuzzy handcuffs.
It's really cool to see that text for probably the first time ever!
That crystal ball design is so garish and loud... it fits the Divine character perfectly.
this is incredible. this is like some alternate-reality retro-futurist tech.
It is fascinating to see just how far the DCC system development got. It almost made it. In some ways it is a charming format.
I wonder if a "Lost Formats Museum" could exist With all the hundreds of ideas that didn't hit the big time, It sounds like the kind of place I would love to visit. I once visited a Privately owned Museum of Radiograms and related technology. It was amazing. I was there to shoot a film interview one of the owners for a medical company. Thanks again for keeping these ideas from the past alive.
obsoletemedia.org/audio/magnetic-tape/
ITTS gave me a Teletext nostalgia hit that will now have to be further fulfilled with a trawl through all the ITV Jobfinder recordings on UA-cam. Interesting to see that it uses a step up from the Teletext level used for broadcasting with double width and double sized text.
It's presumably a different format to level 2.5 teletext, but dang if it doesn't look like they reused the renderer!
For Whom The Bell Tolls - Absolutely superb track. Used to love hearing it on Cruise FM in North-West England in the early 90's.
You could say that packaging is divine. I think it's wonderful that this odd format (that was honestly a bit of a misstep) is being so lovingly documented. Human quirks are great like that.
I heard of the DCC, but never knew they crammed in 18 tracks into 1/8 inch magnetic tape. So that's how it worked. Really like your efforts to show us all the consumer technology that has come our way over time and we were not fully aware of all the features.
Still use my trusty Philips DCC to this day, one of the neat tricks is that some models can output a clean digital signal while replaying old analogue cassettes enabling you to extract the most information possible.
Yes, backwards compatibility was one of DCC’s selling points.
Oh, that's cool. Getting to use their DAC for analogue cassettes is nice, especially if you'd otherwise only have like a computer's integrated audio to record them.
@@kaitlyn__L *ADC 🤣
I want one now. ❤
That decoder box needs one more connection on the rear. A Video out so you can relay the video to a larger monitor/TV?
I don’t think anyone listening to the tape is ever going to sit close enough to the unit to read the tiny screen. Maybe even ditch the touchscreen LCD completely, and supply a remote control instead. I think that would work a lot better, and probably make it cheaper to produce.
Without a doubt, this is the best channel about musical equipment on the internet. I had no idea about the existence of DCC and I certainly wanted to know more about this physical format. Thank you for always bringing us wonderful content.
One of the main attractions I have for this channel is the parallel that Matt has to the technology which I remember in the past. He has a knack of showcasing the old devices that I remembered, from my childhood to the present. But every now and he has a technology that has a sweet spot in his past to which I missed out. DCC is one of those. I remember selling the players when I worked for Radio Shack in the 90s, but I didn't feel the need to invest in it, even with the Radio Shack employee discount. Instead, I was head-over-heels with Minidiscs. But it is intriguing to see how the tech worked. I almost feel like I missed out not getting on the DCC bandwagon.
i did tho but then i sold the deck later (the wider one in the video) and i regret it every day lol. and i feel the same about minidiscs. i never bought one when it was the big thing but i got two sony minidisc players now (haven't tested them tho)
I was intrigued by DCC when it first came out, remember hearing of its existence, but never had first hand experience of using one. I did end up getting into Mini Disc in a big way though, really loved that technology and the quality was great as well.
Amazing. 90s futurism at its best. Why didn’t they have video outputs on DCC decks from the beginning? It wouldn’t have beaten cassettes as a format (not without recording), but it would have impressed people back in the early 90s (at least I would have been impressed). May have even found a market with karaoke lovers.
DCC is capable of recording.
I think it really could have taken over the market as the preferred format for karaoke.
Ever seen a karaoke CD? The technology was there, there just wasn't demand for it.
@@starbase218 yea i got four tapes with hundreds of recorded songs from a pc (mp3's) (ok maybe not hundreds but many, lol)
I presume because CD-i flopped?
As a kid sometime around 1990 my father fell down the home theater rabbit hole and came home with an entire Denon 5.1 surround sound system, which included a DAT player. I will never forget the novelty of loading a tape onto a motorized tray and watching it slowly retract into the machine. The audio fidelity was amazing to my ears iirc.
The 90s ASCII/DOS-looking graphics are very pleasing to look at.
I kept thinking, “Boy, can’t wait for this ZX Spectrum game to finish loading.”
@@RonnieBarzelYes and me on Dragon 32 😂
The white "image" on the "splash page" for "Suzanne and the Jewels" reads to me like a side-on representation of a brilliant-cut diamond.
I've met Ralph. He's quite a cool character to hang out with. 👍 Keeping DCC alive!
Totally was not expecting the Divine DCC tape at the end. Absolutely love that lmao.
In case no one else mentions it, I'd imagine the Suzanne and the Jewels diamond _is_ a full diamond, in that it is a cut diamond, the likes of which you'd find on a ring.
Not that I'm aware.
At 16:02, it's implied that the data wasn't loaded correctly because the big diamond in the middle isn't the same ♦shape as the others.
However, I was suggesting it might just be a 💎 shape instead, like you'd find on a ring (💍)
@@jordy_3d came here to make this comment, good find
I thought it was correct for a diamond, rather than trying to looking like a playing card.
Yep. Like a round brilliant cut
Suzanne ran off with the jewels and jewelry.
Divine figure on top and some of the artwork is from the classic movie Pink Flamingos (1972). John Waters is a great film director.
‘Size isn’t Everything' is a very good album, well worth listening to.
_Blue Island_ is a good track from that record
DCC! I remember it well. I worked in radio at the time, and one of the syndicated shows we aired was shipped to us on DAT, so between that, and the trade publications we received, formats beyond the standard CD were already being discussed by 1991 - 1993. But, you are the first that has actually shown how the technology actually works (or "worked"). Thanks for that. It helped me understand.
Once again my Saturday morning is complete! Thanks for the show Mat!
The DCC was the most evocative format of the early 90s. I remember my dad talking about it whe I was a kid and they sold them in the staff shop when he worked at philips and I so wanted one even though we allready had cd's.
Hi, I saw a demo by Phillips at the release of Dcc at a HIFI show and it looked awesome and the next step . The machines were too expensive at launch for an engineering apprentice like me on my REASONABLE wage and by the time I had had a promotion and a bigger wage the format had lost to out to MD. So even though i glimpsed then lost the format and I never got into MD your video was FASCINATING and a joy to watch and so informative. This is why i find your channel so important , as it throws light onto a moment in world history that happened and then went . Hats off to those heroes who are keeping the DCC format in the pubic forum and YOU for featuring them so brilliantly. Keep on Keeping on this brilliant channel
Thanks for another informative and interesting video, and for taking the time to post it - hope whatever you have going on personally is going as well as can be expected, and that it's not too difficult. We all appreciate you taking the time to bring us new content when you have more important things to concern yourself with. Good luck, and God bless, if that's your thing.
It's weird that they pursued this format after the Compact Disk was already a successful thing.
Competition really. If one could create another wave that would be successful, they could reap all the profit all over again.
DCC (and MD, and CDR) was more intended for recording use. But then everyone stopped recording things in favour of just ripping, or not even doing that because of internet.
Indeed, it seemed pretty clear it was doomed to fail from day one of its launch, no one wanted to payu premium prices for tapes in the early 90's when CDs were so established and Minidisc serving as better format in many ways to tape based products.
I can guess that a portable DCC would have been far more viable than a portable CD player for quite some time. Up until the late 90’s, portable CD players were still battery hungry and/or super sensitive to vibration.
Philips also had CDR machines alongside DCC, so it wasn't like they bet it all on tape.
The CDR machines were of course also limited by the necessity of special CDs. Maybe without that they could at least have done better than MD.
Superb as always Mat, thank you. Damn UA-cam with its over-reaching content matching; restricting and damaging legitimate documentarianism. Using whole tracks of Artists' music is certainly not required, but a 4 second limitation? Absolute dickheads.
indeed! but it's the record companies greed, not really youtubes fault
manual review is impractical so overzealous content ID it is
It’s the record companies fault, not UA-cam. Go to bed, kid.
A 10 second might make someone decide to pay to listen to the track somewhere else. 4 seconds isn't enough for someone new to the song to want more.
Stupid rules imposed some time ago by non-tech people who do not realise that once something is released digitially it is - for all practical, if not moral or legal , purposes - public doimain.
I almost didn't watch this video. I wish the video's description had been something like...
DCC in 2023 - unlocking 30 year old information
That data viewer was SO cool! Just imagine if they had made decks with a video out to connect to TV.
Thanks Matt. You've done an incredible job showing DCC so thoroughly.
It's very sweet that they've made this DCC museum to keep the format alive. Otherwise it would have been lost in the dust of time, like many other media formats. Thank you for looking into this!
Fascinating! I was completely oblivious to DCC when it was released, here in the US. I was always a CD type so I probably would not have paid attention even if I knew about it. It is a shame really as I would have liked it and probably would have adopted it.
YOU FOUND A TAPE WITH LYRICS! The ancient quest is complete
Fascinating stuff! As a big fan of Viewdata and Teletext, this is something totally new to me. I wonder how closely related they are.
It does look similar in as it appears to be 24(ish - might be one or 2 out!) lines by 40 columns, The spacing at the start of some lines seems to match the way Viewdata escape codes operate as well.
@@stevesretroloft just what I was thinking. 🙂
ITTS itself is based on ISO/IEC standard 61866 which is HUGE. It allows more colors, more character sets, and even graphics. However the original ITTS box that is shown in this video, literally uses a Teletext chip for the decoding which is quite limited. This is what the record companies had for testing their DCC masters, so that's what we get now.
Hopefully one day, we at the DCC Museum will be able to actually format DCC releases as prerecorded cassettes, and we will be able to make use of all the features that ISO 61866 had to offer.
@@JacGoudsmit that explains it, thanks!
The difference is that i never used viewdata and didn't even know it was a thing. but i used teletext a lot because every tv in the 90s had it build in i am not sure how you would even get viewdata.
STRONG C64 vibes on the display quality, the text graphics really take me back.
Never heard of DCC. That one passed me by.
back in the 80's I had a standard audio cassette album by Pete Shelley (lead singer of The Buzzcocks) it included a program for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum that you could play at the same time a listening to the music so it would display images and lyrics synced to the music.
The fact that this ITTS data was hidden on these tapes all that time is amazing. I bet Philips showed it off at trade shows around the introduction of DCCc before abandoning the idea.
This is really cool, i love it when people make new gizmos for old or obsolete tech.
Thank you for the reminder, Mat. I need to send off the r/w and digital boards and tape mech from my DCC900 to the museum for repair and testing.
Love the Teletext graphics on the converter! Imagine if they'd somehow equipped DCC decks with an RCA video output that could be fed into the text decoder of a Teletext TV (again via RCA or SCART) to display all that info on a TV screen? Retro futurism overload!
Frankly I am very glad I bypassed DCC and waited; although I desperately wanted DAT at the time, but CD rather made it all redundant. All my friends, for whom I burnt CDs, agreed.
OTOH, watching your DCC videos is absolutely fascinating! It almost makes me wish I had invested in every technology of the day! Fortunately YOU did! Love your work!
Wow! This was a great one Mat! Before I started watching your videos on DCC I have to say it's one of those formats that had just passed me by. Not sure if it's because I'm from Canada, perhaps the format didn't get much love here? I think you and I are about the same age and I just don't remember DCC. Either way, thanks again for another great episode. Hope all is good with you and yours. ♥
I love dcc. Back in the early nineties my local Philips dealer had them on display. It seemed like magic. Still impresses me now! 😂 Thanks for the video
How so? DCC was sold alongside MiniDisc, and MiniDisc was a far more impressive technology.
@@tookitogo well maybe but I didn't see a minidisc until I was at uni in the late 90s. Didn't even know they existed.
@@humfelbert2079 MD came out in _1992!_
@@tookitogo MiniDisc was more futuristic, but it broke compatibility with regular compact cassettes. But it did last longer than DCC.
For me, no matter how good MiniDisc is, I remain more fond of DCC. In that time I was a huge Philips fan.
@@starbase218 But anyone who had cassettes already had cassette equipment. (And given that two of MD’s biggest advantages over analog cassette - CD quality and random access - weren’t possible with analog cassettes even on DCC players, people had to re-copy their music anyway.)
Fascinating! Thank you for another awesome video 😊
Thanks for thinking of us, thats what i love about your channel we your watchers have seen things never new that existed 👍🇬🇧
Ben Liebrand, there's a blast from the past. He also remixed War of the Worlds, worth checking out if you liked Jeff Wayne's original version.
I still listen to his Miami Vice remixes. Good stuff! Lol
@@JasonWW2000 - now that was also a cracking synth based track!, always loved instrumental music, but not the show so much. Thanks for the reminder!
His early end of the yearly Grandmixes are phenomenal. Really great 80s mixes.
Loved the dCC concept, it seemed quite miraculous.
How interesting! It’s so weird knowing all those graphics and things were there this whole time, but nobody could see them until now….30 years later!
I feel bad for the people that had to design and code that stuff, with nobody seeing it but themselves. What thankless work that must’ve been.
Extremely interesting topic, and well presented as usual. If I was listening and reading correctly, a DCC player can play regular cassettes, but you don't want to do it because it wears the head.
Yes - that’s right, although it wouldn’t have been an issue when these devices were new, but now they’re scarce with no spares for the heads it’s best to try and extend their life as much as possible.
The variety of art styles and colors in the menus bring me joy.
This is marvelous for me, an oldster that was familiar with the hype about DCC back in the 1990s, but never saw any video about the format.
I considered getting a DCC in the early 1990s, but the high cost of the unit would have put me in a cash bind whereupon I could not afford the blank DCC tapes I'd need to record music radio airchecks and mix music tapes. Because of that, I stayed with analogue cassettes.
16:08 - that is a full diamond seen from the side. Looks perfectly fine to me, Matt
I’m a Brazilian guy. DCC never made here, but every tech magazine or Philips catalog showed it, and I had wish that piece of technology. Today it’s unthinkable to bring a working DCC player here, or even DCC tapes. It’s too expensive. But I’m curious, and that’s why I’m here. Thanks, Mat, to show this part of history of technology to us.
- Ivan
Hi Matt, with everything you've shown us over the last years your house must be a techmuseum. It would surely visit it and enjoy your collection of interesting devices!
I have a fun fact about DCC few people know.
Philips had made big expensese to develop and produce sheets of metal with very small clean holes for making DCC work.
After discontinuing the production of DCC that tech got a new life in a complete other field of industry.
Those steel sheets are now used as renewable and cleanable filtration sheets in Breweries.
Before DCC Breweries had to filter like in all thos centuries before in sand and gravel pits who had to be discarded often and could't be reused.
very pleased to see you back Matt. And again I am entertained and educated about a format I never knew existed. Thanks
Great to see you back Mat! I was at high school when DCC came out. I remember reading about them in magazines and thinking, hey that's cool!
But I don't think I ever saw them anywhere. To think we could have made space age mix tapes with Ceefax style titles, lyrics and picture graphics... the perfect way to put off doing your homework!))
Oh well, if I'm ever in California, I'll definitely check out the museum
Didn't know dcc had that much info embedded, Falkner device is great, makes me think, does MD and CD or even DAT carry similar info(can the Falkner device see it) and does the data get preserved during direct digital transfers to other digital formats.
Awesome video as ever.
Something like it did exist for Audio CDs in the form of CD+G, with the first CD+G release being in 1985. Not interactive, but basically a slideshow of very basic graphics, mostly used for lyrics. A handful of early CD game consoles could play them, as well as some Video CD players and special karaoke players, but beyond that karaoke use it wasn't all that popular. There was an upgraded CD+EG, but that saw even less use. Most CDs that had it, didn't advertise it at all. I wouldn't think the Falkner device is set up for it, but maybe it could be.
ooh the inner nerd has been activated. I want the Johnny Guitar Watson guitar box edition. I don't even have a DCC player but I am compelled to order it anyway because it's just so darn cool! $49 ain't a bad price either in my opinion. I have the vinyl and CD of the album but as people remind me regularly I'm a bit nuts so I think I'll order it. Then obviously I'll end up buying a DCC player, then obviously it won't work, then I won't have the time to get it sorted etc etc. Thanks for your awesome videos my friend I always find them entertaining.
Thanks for sharing! This sounds like the best hypothetical format for vaporwave artists to ship their hard copies.
Really dig your channel. Learn so much about old and new tech.
Awesome as usual. Thanks for sharing it. Dcc is so awesome.
Once again you have presented something I knew nothing about. Knew about DAT, worked with those tapes for data backup, but never was aware of DCC. Thanks!
The thing with the Graphics and the Text reminds me of CD +G which gave me a big WOW Moment watching it on a CDTV back in the Days. But one who has just a normal CD Player would have never seen this.
The main difference is that CD+G is graphics-only, whereas DCC seems to be text-only, and more like teletext. I think CD+G won out because it was easier to do karaoke with. Karaoke was already a thing, and Pioneer had already been selling laserdisc-based systems. And I can't imagine that people would spend 30+ seconds listening to a motor whirr while waiting for their song to play.
EDIT: Oh, and a text-only format in the 90s wouldn't have support non-Roman languages. A graphics-based format lets you easily put karaoke lyrics in Japanese, where it was very popular.
DCC is a format that went under my radar. If not for your videos about it, I would never know it existed.
It's fun the pages of graphics and lyrics shown on the little touch screen device are all in teletext format - it makes sense being Philips derived; I guess just the font and page encoding perhaps? Still, if it works for subtitles, the lyrics are a good fit.
FYI, Bee Gees' "For Whom The Bell Tolls" was also particularly popular in the UK since it went to #4 in the charts in the same week as that worldwide evergreen "Mr Blobby" went to #1...
LOL !
He was never the same again after he dropped the "Cougar" 😂
What a fascinating format, amazing what tape can do! Thanks for sharing :)
So, a bit like the "index" function on CDs, then. A handful of CDs had it (2112 by Rush, for example), and then the function was deprecated.
I Remember that. The feature was more common on classical discs (where tracks were longer) but it was a feature of my Jean-Michel Jarre albums.
DCC has indexes within songs too, but the feature was never used in any recorder or on any cassette, except of course for pre-track pause. Just like on CD.
I have the first edition of "MCMXC aD" by Enigma, it also used indexes. Later editions just had track markers.
That is crazy cool. You know, you're like Saturday morning cartoons for old guys.
Thank you for the video Mat!
I remember seeing this on the UA-cam channel here a long time ago, and I regularly watch DCC format albums and devices that view detailed album information.
Spot of Trivia here, Divine was the inspiration for the design of Ursula the sea witch from The Little mermaid.
I just want to thank you for not using 60 fps, the UA-cam codec really can't handle watching in higher speeds and 60fps. Now I can watch your videos in the speed I'm comfortable with in glorious 1440p. Thank you so much for the change.
UA-cam should let you switch frame rates
It's crazy how many cool features were made for DCCs that never saw the light of day
DCC even had a "4 track mode" that made it possible to have cassettes with 180 minutes of mono music or speech.
So I was pleasantly surprised today when my buddy sent me a link to a video he was part of. I was watching Miikshi and there was a character named Admiral G. Raffe in it. When I heard them start talking I thought to myself, "Hm, that voice sounds familiar" but I brushed it off and moved on watching the show to see my friend's handiwork. I ended up enjoying the show but at the end I got quite the surprise watching the credits. As it were, Techmoan did the voice, color me surprised! I thought it was so very cool because it was another unexpected surprise considering how much I like retrotech and finding there was another link to this cool video. Oh, my friend designed and built LAMB.
Mellencamp really jumped the shark when he dropped the Cougar. But maybe I’m beating a dead horse. I’ll stop poking that bear.
Perfect artist for the remastering and medium, well done
Still a huge DCC fan here in the Netherlands.
Interesting video, I remember looking at demo DCC in stores in the early 90s, I thought it took too long to load a DCC and too long to skip tracks, ended up with burning audio CD-Rs in the later 90s which could be played in many existing CD players.
Yes I love minidisc for access time great media !
Yes I love it’s versatility and standard play on an excellent machine like the MDS-JB940 can sound amazing even in a top flight system !
Yeah. I remember when DCC and MiniDisc were both brand new, on store shelves next to each other. MiniDisc was obviously superior, and not by a small amount. (DCC’s only “advantage” was backward compatibility with analog cassettes, but everyone who used cassettes already had cassette equipment, so this feature actually added no value.)
MiniDisc could have had lyrics, too - IIRC, there are unused subcode data bits in the format that could have been used for lyrics. (And of course, with MD essentially being a data format with a filesystem, it would also have been conceivable to save lyrics as discrete “files” separate from the audio samples.)
Really interesting and thank you.
Would love to see someone integrate the screen into an existing player as it might have been had it been developed
I really like that idea of digital content stored in media that was used for analogue content, it is this weird 90's retro futurism that is really surprising, I think before flash media got really cheap, seeing all the imaginative ways companies created alternatives is so interesting, that's what I like a lot magento-optical discs like the Mini Discs so much, is parts solid state, part mechanical.
Things got a little funky before we had storage media and codecs capable of doing all-digital on a consumer budget (uncompressed digital videotape was already a thing by this point, but very expensive and aimed at TV studios). Meanwhile Laserdisc encoded composite video as basically PWM and modulating it up above a digital audio signal very similar to CDs. And then there was the obscure LV-ROM format only ever used for the BBC Domesday 2000 project that stuck data in the digital audio part!
A very interesting look back, thank you for this video.
Fascinating video! I wonder if anyone who worked on the up to now mostly unknown graphic art on DCC will see this after all these years. Really cool stuff.
That Johnny Guitar Watson cassette that you showed a picture of is really great.
Great triple header! Loved seeing the Teletext-style screens, takes me back
I have a DCC 951 and it still works ( along with 70 DCC tapes ) - kept it for nostalgia , but will probably sell it ( or will I ) - Great video, as always
Excellent video as always. Please keep doing these. Fascinating. 😊⚡
I remember checking out DCC, DAT & Minidisc back in the day, after several demo's, I decided on Minidisc.
Since then I bought both DCC & DAT machines, it seems I made the right choice, as both machines failed, while my Minidisc machine is still working perfectly after all these years😁
Always love your videos, I watch one's even I don't have any connection with as you make it interesting (often witty), you highlight so much that's gone by the wayside over the decades, it's totally addictive and fascinating. I did have on DCC tape up until recently, never had a player for it.
You brought back memories. When that came out it was supposedly the best thing since sliced bread. In truth it fizzled out like batamax and big laser discs. Thanks to you i have started acquiring odd tech items. i just got a Japanese market Emergency Radio with a 1 Seg TV in it and it is the size of a hand held game console.
Very interesting, even though I'd never even heard of DCC until I watched this video. I suspect they might not have ever been released in this country. Thanks, Mat.
I remember being fascinated with DCC when I went to see Dire straits on their calling Elvis tour as there were huge screens advertising DCC. I nearly bought a tower system with a DCC recorder but sadly as a student I couldn't afford it . I've missed the boat on DCC but I'm now enjoying Minidisc and compact cassettes again though so these old formats still have some life in them :-)