e-book readers - 1990 edition
I'd expect that quite a few people here will remember these Sony e-readers, but I've noticed that they rarely get a mention online. As a result it's likely there's a generation out there who won't be aware that seventeen years before the Kindle, there was an earlier attempt to sell e-book readers to the general public. The Kindle might have got it right - but Sony got their first, and showed them how not to do it.
I assembled everything for this video a couple of years back. A few of the items you'll see were the fruits of my first attempt at buying things from a Japanese auction site. However this video kept getting pushed to the back of my to-do list as there's quite a lot to cover in it, so I knew it would take longer than a week to put together. During a recent tidy-up I kept falling over the box containing all this stuff, and decided it was finally time to tackle it.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying the extra floor space.
Comments (61)
The PRS-505 is the one I have, the special red edition. My wife actually suggested it to make more space in our suitcases when we travelled! Worked fine, albeit a bit slow.
Sony did make e-ink readers pre-Kindle, think I still have mine somewhere.
Yes they definitely did - the PRS-505 is one that I once considered buying. However I’d struggle to say that they made a success of them in the way the Kindle did. That’s the only reason why I referred to the Kindle, it’s the first really successsful e-reader that most members of the general public have heard of, the PRS-505, not so much.
Nice one Sir! That chap with the beard looks oddly familiiar...
I liked the way the puppets went a little meta on themselves.
Excellent video! Thanks!
This reminds me a bit of how Microsoft was convinced tablets were the future... around 2000. They kept releasing them, without much success. When Apple was successful in 2010 with the iPad, I bet some people were not very happy. (And with 'not very happy', I expect some colourful language to have gone along with it.)
I wish Apple would hurry up and release a new giant iPad Pro. That's my couch computer and gets far more use than anything else I own, including my phone and laptop. Unfortunately the right side of the screen has become unresponsive (after three years or so) - so I'm desperate to get a new one, but I refuse to spend a penny on last years model. I know it's off topic, but I had to vent.
"Actually"... the readers look a bit like the Zipit Web Messenger (or probably the other way around). Which reminds me I have two Zipit Z2 in original packaging, one hacked (but restorable) and one still sealed. Let me know if you're interested, Mat.
I really like the look of that - I'm not sure I remember it. Unfortunately I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it.
That's something I had never heard of at all. I have no idea how you go about finding these things. Amazing. (And I laughed out loud at the end of the Muppets.)
I'm glad you liked it. You're always such a positive chap, thanks for that, it's much appreciated.
This was excellent. I have always been curious. What’s interesting is that the typesetting might have been more appropriate for Japanese (where each character occupies the same space), but it feels much more “computer-y” for English. Will this video eventually make it to the main channel? I want to share it with two friends, but I gather I shouldn’t be doing that with an unlisted patron-only video.
Yes it will go live on youtube sometime around mid next week. It's Patrons only at the moment - I wanted to give you something a bit more interesting than that MQA video this week. I keep making small changes to this one and re-uploading it. I noticed an overlapping bit of audio in the latest version, so it's got to be replaced again.
i didn't expect it having support for the phonetic alphabet.
How and where can I purchase that Extremely Handsome Beard? Is it an exclusive "Techmoan Nerd Merch" product? If not, it bloody well should be! Great stuff Mat, very entertaining!
I have no idea what you're talking about ;-) - that was definitely a real 1980s programme I found on a tape. However co-incidentally they do sell something that looks very similar here <a href="https://amzn.to/2IBiFfK" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://amzn.to/2IBiFfK</a>
I don’t know what happened but the video will not play. Hopefully I can watch it soon. (11:23pm Central time).
Hopefully it's OK again. I think this happens sometimes when the 1080p stream gets replaced by the 4K/UHD one when it's finally finished processing. It'll happen again in a while because I've just replaced the video again.
It's possible to burn your own custom DD discs, these days: <a href="http://www.robotsandcomputers.com/computers/dd8h.htm" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.robotsandcomputers.com/computers/dd8h.htm</a>
I may add a bit into the video about this. I knew that it was possible to use a program to read and author them - but the links I found for it were dead.
My first impression: ZZ Top is trying to sell me 90s tech...? Made me smile.
Excellent again Mat. I don’t remember this device at all - Sony were’nt shy in developing and trying new products. The only thing more impressive than the engineers is the price actually! I look forward to more floor space freeing nuggets of tech goodness.
Great video as always - these early devices are so impractical and expensive, but somehow people were able to put this behind them and buy them. Reminds me of the early MP3 player days, which were stifled until there was an easy method of obtaining content, until iTunes and the iPod. But you could rip a CD - ripping a book is an entirely different matter.. Great to see the puppets again.
Looking forward to watching! I have a Sony FDF-W77 DataMD reader I've been planning to cover for a while, seems quite similar except being Minidisc-focused
"Actually" ... The screen is a bit reminiscent of a 2005-era flip phone.
PUPPETS!!!!! YAH!!!!
Idiotic, childish, unfunny - that's me all over! Great puppet sketch to follow a thoroughly interesting video. Another good example of technology in search of a mission, a bit like the earliest PCs and maybe a bit like the Amazon Echo we have today - something I feel is bursting with potential, but just asking it to turn the Hi-Fi on or what the weather's going to be tomorrow is only scratching the surface, in the same way programming your Sinclair Spectrum to log the contents of your freezer was back in the day. Really enjoyable video, Mat and as always in awe of all the research you do. PS Any interest in an Epson P2000 Multimedia Storage Viewer? It was pretty useless even when it was brand new due to unbelievably slow read/write times. If I can find it, you can have it FoC?
Thanks for the offer, but something like that isn't old enough to be weird and isn't new enough to be useful. I'm still not 100% sure what the point of them was...I suppose you'd copy your expensive SD card across so you could then wipe it and use it again in your camera. Falling SD card prices killed that idea pretty quickly.
Two videos in one week, and puppets besides?? You spoil us, Matt!!
Still have my first ebook reader a 'franklin ebookman EBM-901' served me well for many years until i upgraded to a Kindle.
Great episode. I was actually totally unfamiliar with these products, so it was quite interesting to see!
If you weren't aware of them, it seems perhaps they're much less widely known than I had thought.
Happy to see the return of the childish and unfunny puppets!
What? No comment on the arse grabbing image on the Japanese game show.
I don't know if it's pro or anti, so I'm staying out of it.
Great video I had no idea these even existed. Would have been interesting to see what happened if you tried to print from the video out of any other device, like a NES or a VCR.
I remember I did try this with similar results.
Great video as always! I'm glad to see the wife muppet back for an episode.
YEAY!!!! PUPPETS!!!!! (Great vid)
The choose your own adventure style book seems to be the best fit for that device.
What a struggle.! Well done you 👍
Now I've seen this - I feel that the retro 80s TV bit at the beginning is missing something. I'm going to try playing that part back over a CRT and shooting the screen with my camera. If it works out - I'll re-upload the video with the new worse quality version.
If this doesn't work out, as an alternative, you could try recording it to a VHS tape and capturing that.
Hahahaha within the first 30 seconds easily one of your best video's :D!! You lovely awesome crazy funny man :D (going to watch the rest of the vid now).
It goes downhill from there.
Another great video that makes me nostalgic for a device I didn’t know existed. Well done. I swear you could be talking about fruit or names in the phone book and they would be great.
Would it be possible for you to upload a dump of one of those CDs somewhere?
I'm pretty sure I'd be running afoul (edited word) of some copyright somewhere. I'd hate to lose everything over a silly mistake like that.
I wonder if your printer is expecting the opposite format of what you selected. Maybe it's wanting NTSC?
Hmmm - now you mention it I might have tried that a year or so ago...but can't be sure. Unfortunately during the course of making the video it completely died - never to print again. At least it got its moment of fame.
Reminds me of the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, all it needs it “don’t panic” in large friendly letters on the outside
Saw these back in the 90s and was intrigued by the tech but never got one because you couldn't make your own content on them.
I wonder if the longevity of the device in Japan was due to the popularity of portable electronic dictionaries over here. Electronic dictionaries are still produced new and sold here in Japan (google Casio EX-Word) for people to look up difficult Kanji, archaric words, doing Japanese<>English translation etc even though they have gone down in popularity after smartphones have taken off. So if it's 1997 and you're getting an electronic dictionary for your highschool kid, why not get one that instead of having just one built-in dictionary, can then also take disc-based reference tomes?
I suspect that's it. I know very little about Japanese culture - so I didn't want to speculate in the video, but I could see that language discs seemed to make up a good proportion of the catalog.
Tom Hanks invented these in the movie BIG. He even thought about using SD cards with separate stories on each card, abit like what's used by VTech systems. 😁
Oh oh, watch out viewers (laughs to camera) here comes, er, 'YouTube Reviewer Beadle'...
Not too many people will get that reference...but I appreciate it.
Ooh... 3 videos in just a week! Great video as usual! (And, yes, I also mean your play & Muppet too. Actually. )
Yes - it might mean a longer gap than normal before the next one.
I had one of these back in the day and still use some of the data from the Japanese dictionaries that were available for it (but I ripped them to my hard disk years ago and use a third party program to view them). You can even view them on a smartphone