The (not so funny) past of DVD Audio

The (not so funny) past of DVD Audio

A long time ago, on a planet far far away, a race of intelligent beings had discovered the Trigital Storage of sounds (using the Logical States of zero, one and two called a trip) most prominently of certain majestic works of Art, called music.

These new Sound carriers (called Compact Square due to their small size when compared to the Large Square previously used as dominant technology to store sounds) where amazing. Unbreakable, they would never wear out and as the Corporate Overlords of Silips and Zony declared, they where soundwise PERFECT. FOREVER.

Some of these Intelligent Beings (who called themselves Namuh's and their Planet Htrae) felt however that this new Trigital storage of Music using small Squares with a Bronze metalisation was not at all capable of capturing the true majesty of art.

They kept insisting that their older Analog Replay systems using groves cut into much larger white Squares (called Large Square - LS) where vastly superior in this regard....

In the meantime the Conzumerdroids of Silips, Zony and other manufacturers of sound reproduction equipment brainwashed almost all Namuh's into believing in the superiority of the Compact Square (CS) over the older Large Square (LS).

On a regular basis large amounts of LS where dumped off for next to nothing and some over-eager Conzumerdroids even began to ridicule those that still adhered to the old, time-honored ways of their ancestors by still owning and playing LS's.

Within a few Htrae raey's (a raey is a long period of time on Htrae - not unlike our year) the LS was declared dead, the trigital sound of the CS ruled and live became bleak and devoid of joy indeed for the Namuh's of Htrae.

Finally, many raey's later some smart Namuh invented a method by which much more information could be stored on something that looked EXACTLY like a compact Square.

Another very smart Namuh theorised that the problem some people had with the CS was due the limited resolution (6 trips) and proposed to use the larger Capacity of the new Trigital Versatile Square (TVS) to store music as it was intended by the Artists.

However, many Companies in Noppin (a small Country on Htrae almost entirely in Control of Consumer Electronics) resented the old Silips and Zony dominance, as well as the royalties they had to pay to them with every CS Player shipped. So many of them, lead by Shushiba, decided to offer their own System of Soundstorage using 12 Trips and many more Samples than the old Silips / Zony standard.

In the meantime Sillips and Zony developed a Square that would play both on older CS Player and on the newer TVS Players, where the Music supposedly sounded better.

More Companies offered their own Formats, like MOM, DAD and TVSA and so on.

The stage was set for another Format war. Only one Format for storing Music could survive.

In order to quickly and decisively gain Victory all participants rushed half-finished Product's to the Market, all backed up by a small catalogs of about 10 Recordings each....

The following Format War was especially bloody and atrocious. Scores of noppinese corporate officials where forced to commit Okupes (a ritual form of Suicide on Htrae - committed by listening to Modern Talking through a HiFi-System).

In the end no Music Format survived. Conzumers stopped buying CS's as the new TVS was supposed to be so much better, companies did not issue TVS's with Music as no-one could make their minds up what Format to make them with.

Within few a raey's the production of Soundreproducing Equipment, of Compact Squares and any other Sound Storage ceased. Young Namuh's started making their own music using Computers and distributing it over the large international Computer Network on Htrae.

But what was this? Hidden from the Conzumerdroids of Sillips, Zony, Shushiba and NVC a small band of intrepid Namuh's had kept alive the craft of making Large Squares.

And machines to play the Music on the Large Squares back. They had kept stores of original Analog Tapes with original Music. They build intricate Replay Devices using evacuated bulbs of transparent Silicon.

The young people where impressed. So where the older ones who still remembered the Large Squares from their youth or from Stories their Grandparents had told them.

And on the ashes of the crumbled Corporate Structures of the dark and evil Conzumer Empires of Sillips, Zony, Shushiba and NVC and others a new Renaissance of the Large Square, the Vacuum Bulb Amplifier and many other amazing things took place.

This time the Namuh's had learned their lesson and never again allowed Corporate interests to dominate the majesty of art. And they lived happily ever after. Analogue.

Some Survivors of the Format war, however left Htrae on a long-range Space Ship looking for fertile new markets, planets ready for the trigital Revolution.

Over long periods their numbers (and Brains) shrunk and trigitalism became digitalism. A few of these Survivors arrived on Earth around the Mid-70's.....

The rest as they say is history.

And it's about to repeat itself.

(ThanX to Werner Ogiers for giving me the inspiration to this little piece of not quite science fiction)