• Optional@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Ah! Yes. Hm. Well then . . . where do distributors get theirs from? Not Sony, presumably?

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            ? Did not know that. I assumed they were essentially WORMs but otherwise identical. Do they not use the same laser or something like that?

            • kalleboo@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Pressed discs (like movies) are physically… pressed. They make a metal mould which is then stamped into melted plastic to make the pits and lands and then coated with a metal film to make the reflected backing, filling in the pits. This makes manufacturing of millions of disks extremely cheap since it takes seconds per disc. Burning commercial disks individually in thousands of burners would be way too slow/expensive.

                • kalleboo@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  Exactly like vinyl!

                  This is why when when CDs originally came out, the industry kept saying “soon CDs will be super cheap since they’re so much cheaper than manufacturing tapes!” (which really DO need to be dubbed linearly, even though they can be done at like 10x speed in digital high-speed dubbers) before they realized people were still perfectly happy paying $15 for a disc.

                  This is also why they kept trying to make laserdisc (and RCA’s CED) be a thing, since they were cheaper to mass manufacture by stamping than prerecorded video tape’s slow dubbing process. It was thought that prerecorded video tapes were always going to be too expensive (originally they were like $100 a tape, hence the rise of video rental stores)

                  • Optional@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    before they realized people were still perfectly happy paying $15 for a disc.

                    Heh, well i dunno about ‘happy’, i mean they did get sued. I think I still have my check for $7 somewhere . . .

                  • Optional@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    I would have loved laserdiscs. The large format for art, all futuristic lookin’ - but all media degrades so maybe M-disc in laserdisc size? We’ll probably have crystal storage before then i guess.