Any Movie, Any TV Program, Anytime!

How quickly consumer electronics technologies and devices change and become obsolete. Look at Compact Discs (CD audio discs.) When introduced, they were heralded as the perfect way to store and play music. They were small, easy to manufacture, and the players inexpensive. CD sales ballooned and they quickly made vinyl records a curiosity found now mostly in museums and attics around the world. That was the in 1980s. Over the past few years the sale of music on CD’s has plummeted. The new “kid on the block” of course is the ability to get music online in the form of streaming or the downloading of actual computer files containing the music. Why have a library of CDs gathering dust on a shelf when you can have your entire library in your pocket in your iPod or any one of a myriad other digital devices?

In the video arena the same is happening, perhaps at a somewhat slower pace, but nevertheless it is moving in the same direction as the Compact Disc. Going back to the dark ages of VHS and Beta VCRs, the digital replacement was the DVD. Just like its cousin, the Compact Disc, these small discs were cheap and the players soon became as available as calculators at the check out counter. More recently they were improved to embrace the High Definition TV landscape. How long will DVDs be around? Perhaps they will have a shorter life than Compact Discs.

As more and more of us get better connections to the Internet and the Internet “pipes” get more robust, the concept of actually having a movie or TV program on a tape or disc will seem quaint. A look at what is available on line now gives us a good idea of what is to come.

NetFlix (http://www.netflix.com/) is a great example. The company built a multi-billion dollar industry by offering DVDs of movies without the hassle of going to a video store. You go on line and set up a list of movie titles that you would like to have. Those titles are sent to you via US Mail. You keep them for as long as you wish and when you return a movie another from your list is sent. No late fees. Of course there is a monthly charge depending on how many movies or programs you receive during that month. It is a simple, successful strategy that millions of people use every day.

Netflix is not sitting back and counting their money; they understand that this DVD based system may have a very short life span and they are quickly changing their business to offer movies and programs on line. While the list of titles available on line to be downloaded is much smaller than the DVD based library, it is expanding quickly. In most cases the negotiation for digital rights is the stumbling block.

For sure, just like most technologies, this ability to watch anything at any time will not totally make obsolete preceding technologies or services. The shared experience of watching a movie in a movie theater will continue to be viable. Collectors will still want to have a CD or DVD that they can touch and put on a shelf. Increasingly so, most of our viewing will be on line via the Internet.

Any Movie, Any TV Program, Anytime!

How quickly consumer electronics technologies and devices change and become obsolete. Look at Compact Discs (CD audio discs.) When introduced, they were heralded as the perfect way to store and play music. They were small, easy to manufacture, and the players inexpensive. CD sales ballooned and they quickly made vinyl records a curiosity found now mostly in museums and attics around the world. That was the in 1980s. Over the past few years the sale of music on CD’s has plummeted. The new “kid on the block” of course is the ability to get music online in the form of streaming or the downloading of actual computer files containing the music. Why have a library of CDs gathering dust on a shelf when you can have your entire library in your pocket in your iPod or any one of a myriad other digital devices?

In the video arena the same is happening, perhaps at a somewhat slower pace, but nevertheless it is moving in the same direction as the Compact Disc. Going back to the dark ages of VHS and Beta VCRs, the digital replacement was the DVD. Just like its cousin, the Compact Disc, these small discs were cheap and the players soon became as available as calculators at the check out counter. More recently they were improved to embrace the High Definition TV landscape. How long will DVDs be around? Perhaps they will have a shorter life than Compact Discs.

As more and more of us get better connections to the Internet and the Internet “pipes” get more robust, the concept of actually having a movie or TV program on a tape or disc will seem quaint. A look at what is available on line now gives us a good idea of what is to come.

NetFlix (http://www.netflix.com/) is a great example. The company built a multi-billion dollar industry by offering DVDs of movies without the hassle of going to a video store. You go on line and set up a list of movie titles that you would like to have. Those titles are sent to you via US Mail. You keep them for as long as you wish and when you return a movie another from your list is sent. No late fees. Of course there is a monthly charge depending on how many movies or programs you receive during that month. It is a simple, successful strategy that millions of people use every day.

Netflix is not sitting back and counting their money; they understand that this DVD based system may have a very short life span and they are quickly changing their business to offer movies and programs on line. While the list of titles available on line to be downloaded is much smaller than the DVD based library, it is expanding quickly. In most cases the negotiation for digital rights is the stumbling block.

For sure, just like most technologies, this ability to watch anything at any time will not totally make obsolete preceding technologies or services. The shared experience of watching a movie in a movie theater will continue to be viable. Collectors will still want to have a CD or DVD that they can touch and put on a shelf. Increasingly so, most of our viewing will be on line via the Internet.

Keeping Important Stuff For Future Generations

You may have seen on the local news recently that the Cincinnati Museum Center is installing a new Time Capsule. Celebrating their anniversary recently, the Time Capsules that were installed when the iconic Union Terminal was built in 1931, were opened and contents displayed to the public. I found it fascinating what items the new capsule would contain. The local newspaper reported that it would contain “newspapers, letters from local dignitaries, local sports memorabilia and pieces of popular culture, such as boxes for the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPod and the packaging for the DVD of the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Note, the packaging for the DVD was included not the DVD itself.

This got me to think about the challenges that we face as we try to keep up with the exploding volume of information and preserve it for generations to come. In 320 BC scholars at the Library of Alexandria were collecting written information and preserving it. It is interesting to note that if you were to find a papyrus sheet, the media of choice from that era, the information contained on that sheet could still be read. Jumping ahead 2000 plus years…you most likely have media in your home today acquired less than 20 years ago that you can no longer access. Do you still have a “record” player or an 8 Track Tape Deck? I bet you have some MS-Dos computer programs or games.

The problems facing regular folks like you and me pale in comparison to the professional archivists at the Library of Congress or National Archives. It is one thing to want to preserve a picture of little Suzie’s first grade class stage production of the “Velveteen Rabbit.” It is another thing to be charged with keeping records and information of science, medicine and geopolitical commerce.

An unintended consequence of the digital age is the lack of permanence of our “products” and information. Today methods of storage, retrieval and presentation change in a matter months rather than in the centuries or even millennia which has been the case for most of mankind’s existence on earth. A good example that I mentioned last year in this column is the disappearance of the VHS machine. Many of us still have a library of home movies recorded on VHS. A trip to the electronics store will demonstrate that players for VHS machines are as hard to find as dial telephones. Even today’s CD and DVD formats are changing. The DVD of yesterday is the Blu-Ray™ of today. There is great debate over the physical longevity of the CD and DVD discs. Will they suffer from degradation like audio and videotape? With this happen in a decade, 50 years, a century?

A long term solution has not yet been developed. An interim approach is to continuously move the content from one media to the newer one. The good news is that once a document, picture or video is digitized, unlike in the analog world, the copy is indeed a clone with no degradation.

For sure the problem is not going away soon. Stay tuned and don’t throw away that shoe box full of family photographs even if they are stored on your computer.

Keeping Important Stuff For Future Generations

You may have seen on the local news recently that the Cincinnati Museum Center is installing a new Time Capsule. Celebrating their anniversary recently, the Time Capsules that were installed when the iconic Union Terminal was built in 1931, were opened and contents displayed to the public. I found it fascinating what items the new capsule would contain. The local newspaper reported that it would contain “newspapers, letters from local dignitaries, local sports memorabilia and pieces of popular culture, such as boxes for the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPod and the packaging for the DVD of the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Note, the packaging for the DVD was included not the DVD itself.

This got me to think about the challenges that we face as we try to keep up with the exploding volume of information and preserve it for generations to come. In 320 BC scholars at the Library of Alexandria were collecting written information and preserving it. It is interesting to note that if you were to find a papyrus sheet, the media of choice from that era, the information contained on that sheet could still be read. Jumping ahead 2000 plus years…you most likely have media in your home today acquired less than 20 years ago that you can no longer access. Do you still have a “record” player or an 8 Track Tape Deck? I bet you have some MS-Dos computer programs or games.

The problems facing regular folks like you and me pale in comparison to the professional archivists at the Library of Congress or National Archives. It is one thing to want to preserve a picture of little Suzie’s first grade class stage production of the “Velveteen Rabbit.” It is another thing to be charged with keeping records and information of science, medicine and geopolitical commerce.

An unintended consequence of the digital age is the lack of permanence of our “products” and information. Today methods of storage, retrieval and presentation change in a matter months rather than in the centuries or even millennia which has been the case for most of mankind’s existence on earth. A good example that I mentioned last year in this column is the disappearance of the VHS machine. Many of us still have a library of home movies recorded on VHS. A trip to the electronics store will demonstrate that players for VHS machines are as hard to find as dial telephones. Even today’s CD and DVD formats are changing. The DVD of yesterday is the Blu-Ray™ of today. There is great debate over the physical longevity of the CD and DVD discs. Will they suffer from degradation like audio and videotape? With this happen in a decade, 50 years, a century?

A long term solution has not yet been developed. An interim approach is to continuously move the content from one media to the newer one. The good news is that once a document, picture or video is digitized, unlike in the analog world, the copy is indeed a clone with no degradation.

For sure the problem is not going away soon. Stay tuned and don’t throw away that shoe box full of family photographs even if they are stored on your computer.

Choosing the Right Storage Medium

Last week I reviewed the various portable hard drives that are now widely available. These drives can store the entire contents of your home or office computer. As discussed, these new USB drives are essentially the same as the hard drives you have had in your computer for decades. The big difference is that they have higher capacity and are designed to be portable. They can handle rough treatment and plug easily into the USB port of most any modern PC or Mac computer.

That column prompted some questions about the other types of storage media. How do they differ from hard drives? What applications are suited for the various types?

There are three basic types of data storage devices that you might use at the office, at school or at home. There are those that store data on a disc or platter using magnetism. Another type stores data on a disc using an optical system. Finally there are those that use Flash Memory.

Perhaps the most basic type of storage is the floppy disc, a magnetic media. Once the most ubiquitous of all media, it has almost disappeared from the market. In fact, you must special order a floppy drive in any new computer and most likely in the very near future this will no longer be possible. The floppy uses a plastic disc that is coated with iron oxide (i.e., rust.) Data are stored on the disc using a magnetic read / write head. The 3.5 inch floppy only holds about 1.4 mb. of data. This was plenty of room if you were storing your school book report. If you want to save copies of digital pictures, the floppy doesn’t cut it. You can hardly fit one high quality digital picture on a single floppy.

My suggestion is that if you have a box of floppies sitting on your desk, you may wish to see what is stored on them and save any valuable content to another type of media. For those of you who might still have data stored on a 5.25 inch floppy, you may need to go on eBay to find a drive.

Most of us are familiar with optical discs. First there were CDs, and now DVDs. These media use a laser to read and write to the surface of the disc. There are two types of CD discs. One type, a CD-R, allows you to write the data only once and read many times. This is an excellent choice for archiving files. There are others, dubbed CD-R/W. These can be used like a hard drive allowing you to erase unwanted files.

Most of us are familiar with DVD video discs. There are also DVD data discs that work much like a CD. The big difference is the capacity. A standard CD data disc can store about 700 mb., while a DVD data disc can hold more than 8 gig. Before running out and buying DVD discs for data storage be sure that your computer can handle them. Many will play a DVD video disc, but cannot read or write to a DVD data disc.

Finally, there are Flash Memory based storage options. The most popular is the SD Card. These small cards are commonly found in cameras and some audio players. They can hold a tremendous about of data. Once very expensive, these postage stamp sized cards can hold several gigabytes of information and are very reasonably priced . One negative is that they are so small they are easily misplaced. Akin to these SD cards are the Memory Sticks that seem to be everywhere. They operate much the same as the SD cards but do not require a SD slot or “drive” in your computer. Rather they plug into the USB port of your computer or device. They are great for sharing files between machines. Many in business use them to store meeting presentations. They can fit in your pocket and hold very large files. Since most computers have a USB port, data is easily retrieved.

The good news is that prices for file storage media continue to fall. The bad news is that the media keep changing and just like it is hard to find a player for your Betamax tape, a few years from now we will be searching for a drive that will play a CD.

Choosing the Right Storage Medium

Last week I reviewed the various portable hard drives that are now widely available. These drives can store the entire contents of your home or office computer. As discussed, these new USB drives are essentially the same as the hard drives you have had in your computer for decades. The big difference is that they have higher capacity and are designed to be portable. They can handle rough treatment and plug easily into the USB port of most any modern PC or Mac computer.

That column prompted some questions about the other types of storage media. How do they differ from hard drives? What applications are suited for the various types?

There are three basic types of data storage devices that you might use at the office, at school or at home. There are those that store data on a disc or platter using magnetism. Another type stores data on a disc using an optical system. Finally there are those that use Flash Memory.

Perhaps the most basic type of storage is the floppy disc, a magnetic media. Once the most ubiquitous of all media, it has almost disappeared from the market. In fact, you must special order a floppy drive in any new computer and most likely in the very near future this will no longer be possible. The floppy uses a plastic disc that is coated with iron oxide (i.e., rust.) Data are stored on the disc using a magnetic read / write head. The 3.5 inch floppy only holds about 1.4 mb. of data. This was plenty of room if you were storing your school book report. If you want to save copies of digital pictures, the floppy doesn’t cut it. You can hardly fit one high quality digital picture on a single floppy.

My suggestion is that if you have a box of floppies sitting on your desk, you may wish to see what is stored on them and save any valuable content to another type of media. For those of you who might still have data stored on a 5.25 inch floppy, you may need to go on eBay to find a drive.

Most of us are familiar with optical discs. First there were CDs, and now DVDs. These media use a laser to read and write to the surface of the disc. There are two types of CD discs. One type, a CD-R, allows you to write the data only once and read many times. This is an excellent choice for archiving files. There are others, dubbed CD-R/W. These can be used like a hard drive allowing you to erase unwanted files.

Most of us are familiar with DVD video discs. There are also DVD data discs that work much like a CD. The big difference is the capacity. A standard CD data disc can store about 700 mb., while a DVD data disc can hold more than 8 gig. Before running out and buying DVD discs for data storage be sure that your computer can handle them. Many will play a DVD video disc, but cannot read or write to a DVD data disc.

Finally, there are Flash Memory based storage options. The most popular is the SD Card. These small cards are commonly found in cameras and some audio players. They can hold a tremendous about of data. Once very expensive, these postage stamp sized cards can hold several gigabytes of information and are very reasonably priced . One negative is that they are so small they are easily misplaced. Akin to these SD cards are the Memory Sticks that seem to be everywhere. They operate much the same as the SD cards but do not require a SD slot or “drive” in your computer. Rather they plug into the USB port of your computer or device. They are great for sharing files between machines. Many in business use them to store meeting presentations. They can fit in your pocket and hold very large files. Since most computers have a USB port, data is easily retrieved.

The good news is that prices for file storage media continue to fall. The bad news is that the media keep changing and just like it is hard to find a player for your Betamax tape, a few years from now we will be searching for a drive that will play a CD.

It’s the DVD Code not the Da Vinci Code

The swiftness that DVDs have taken over the home video marketplace is nothing short of unprecedented. Not only has this format changed the way movies and TV programs are delivered, it has changed the economics of an entire industry. Prices for DVD movies and TV programs continue to drop. The prices of DVD players also continue to plummet. You can find full featured DVD players in discount stores for as little as $19.00. It looks like the prices for these machines are following in the footsteps of hand held calculators. They are commodities.

A few weeks ago someone asked me why they could not get a DVD that they received from a friend to play on his machine. After some discussion I found that the DVD in question was sent to him by a friend who lived in Japan. My friend was aware that there are different TV standards in some parts of the world, but was confused since Japan and the United States share the same VIDEO standard called NTSC.

Well, my friend was half right. It is true that the United States and Japan share the NTSC Video standard unlike the UK and some other parts of Europe that use a format called PAL. There are others video formats used in other parts of the world. That is too much info right now.

What my friend did not know is that DVDs carry with them a Regional Code or LOCK. There are six geographical codes and two specialized codes now in use. What this means is that you must have a DVD player that is set up to play the right code. For example, Region #1 DVDs can only be played in the United States and Canada. If you have a DVD manufactured for use in Mexico, it is Region # 4, and it will not play on your DVD player purchased in the United States.

While there are Region # 0 coded discs that can be played on any player in any part of the world, most distributors of movies and TV programs use the regional code to restrict the free trading of content. The idea was to make it possible to release a movie on DVD in the United States before releasing it in another part of the world or visa versa. As you might have guessed, there is a cottage industry of hackers who can remove the code or alter the software in the DVD machine to accept any code. Most of us mere mortals have to live with the restrictions.

If you look on the DVD package you will find the regional code marked so you will know if it will play on your machine. Likewise the box containing your new DVD player should have its Regional Code marked. In most case this is not a problem since only Region #1 players and DVDs are sold in the US. It is interesting to note that if you have an older model DVD player built into your computer, it may play all DVDs without a problem. The older DVD drives have older software that does not recognize these codes. This may be one of the few times when older technology is actually a good thing.

It’s the DVD Code not the Da Vinci Code

The swiftness that DVDs have taken over the home video marketplace is nothing short of unprecedented. Not only has this format changed the way movies and TV programs are delivered, it has changed the economics of an entire industry. Prices for DVD movies and TV programs continue to drop. The prices of DVD players also continue to plummet. You can find full featured DVD players in discount stores for as little as $19.00. It looks like the prices for these machines are following in the footsteps of hand held calculators. They are commodities.

A few weeks ago someone asked me why they could not get a DVD that they received from a friend to play on his machine. After some discussion I found that the DVD in question was sent to him by a friend who lived in Japan. My friend was aware that there are different TV standards in some parts of the world, but was confused since Japan and the United States share the same VIDEO standard called NTSC.

Well, my friend was half right. It is true that the United States and Japan share the NTSC Video standard unlike the UK and some other parts of Europe that use a format called PAL. There are others video formats used in other parts of the world. That is too much info right now.

What my friend did not know is that DVDs carry with them a Regional Code or LOCK. There are six geographical codes and two specialized codes now in use. What this means is that you must have a DVD player that is set up to play the right code. For example, Region #1 DVDs can only be played in the United States and Canada. If you have a DVD manufactured for use in Mexico, it is Region # 4, and it will not play on your DVD player purchased in the United States.

While there are Region # 0 coded discs that can be played on any player in any part of the world, most distributors of movies and TV programs use the regional code to restrict the free trading of content. The idea was to make it possible to release a movie on DVD in the United States before releasing it in another part of the world or visa versa. As you might have guessed, there is a cottage industry of hackers who can remove the code or alter the software in the DVD machine to accept any code. Most of us mere mortals have to live with the restrictions.

If you look on the DVD package you will find the regional code marked so you will know if it will play on your machine. Likewise the box containing your new DVD player should have its Regional Code marked. In most case this is not a problem since only Region #1 players and DVDs are sold in the US. It is interesting to note that if you have an older model DVD player built into your computer, it may play all DVDs without a problem. The older DVD drives have older software that does not recognize these codes. This may be one of the few times when older technology is actually a good thing.

Saving old tapes and films

Earlier this month in his My World of Dreams column in the Harrison Press, Bill Baird posed some questions to me. Most of them center on assuring that his old films and tapes will be usable in this digital environment and for many years to come. These questions may seem simple but Bill actually has touched on one of the biggest conundrums resulting from this new digital age of “continuous technology improvement.”

Simply put, Bill asked about transferring his library of films and tapes to media that will be “playable” in the future. This same question has been the topic of great concern on a national and even international level for years. Here in the United States at the Library of Congress and the National Archives, archivists and librarians are huddling with technicians to decide how to preserve the collection of thousands of hours of films, tapes, discs and other media for the future. Unlike paper, which can be saved and read as long as it exists, the myriad formats of film, tape and digital media do degrade over time and all require the existence of a player.

Audio and Video tapes, which are basically long ribbons of plastic covered with rust, are prone to degrade as the glue breaks down and the “rust” falls off. This can happen over as few as ten years. Film, even when it is kept in a cool dry environment, also degrades. We don’t yet know how long CDs and DVDs will last.

It is not practical to keep a “player” for all the various formats that have been and will be created in the future. For example, if you have been to the store recently, you may have noticed that VHS machines are as scarce as buggy whips. They are no longer manufactured. If you have a collection of VHS tapes, what do you do when your machine dies? This is precisely the crux of Bill’s question and our friends in Washington, DC.

Bill noted that he has a library of films and tapes in a variety of formats, i.e. 8mm, super 8mm film, VHS, 8mm and Hi 8 mm tape. The first thing he should do is get them copied into some sort of digital form. Right now the best and most inexpensive option is to get a DVD recorder. While we don’t know the lifespan of the DVD media, at least it is a digital medium allowing for copying to another digital medium in the future without any quality loss. There are DVD recorders on the market with a VHS deck built in making the VHS to DVD copying easy.

The films pose a different and more complex problem. You can’t just project them on a screen and use a video camera to record them. The quality of the images will be unacceptable since the camera can’t capture the film image well and the 8mm “frame rate”, i.e. the number of frames that are projected on the screen each second, is non-compatible with the frame rate of the DVD or tape. So making copies at home could be a challenge without the investment of some pricy technology. An option is to have the films made into digital files by a professional. This costs an average of 10 cents per foot, so this can get expensive. There are several companies that offer this. Two examples are: www.mymovietransfer.com and www.homemoviedepot.com . I have NOT used either of these services, so I can not recommend them.

Once the files are created, they can be stored on DVD or even kept on a hard drive. The latter requires regular back up however.

Bill also asked about getting parts for his old 8mm and Super 8 mm projectors. This is actually not too hard. There are several companies on the Internet that have stocked up on parts. EBay is also a great place to find used VHS and High 8 video players. If you have a working player for the various tape formats, they can be easily copied on to DVD.

Gone are the days when technology was backward compatible. When color TV came out it did not render your black and white model unusable. In ancient times when vinyl records morphed from mono to stereo, you could still play them on the old machine. Unfortunately, too often our new technology changes faster and faster and does not concern itself with the impact of obsolescence and the archiving of media. This may be a steep price to pay for progress.

Saving old tapes and films

Earlier this month in his My World of Dreams column in the Harrison Press, Bill Baird posed some questions to me. Most of them center on assuring that his old films and tapes will be usable in this digital environment and for many years to come. These questions may seem simple but Bill actually has touched on one of the biggest conundrums resulting from this new digital age of “continuous technology improvement.”

Simply put, Bill asked about transferring his library of films and tapes to media that will be “playable” in the future. This same question has been the topic of great concern on a national and even international level for years. Here in the United States at the Library of Congress and the National Archives, archivists and librarians are huddling with technicians to decide how to preserve the collection of thousands of hours of films, tapes, discs and other media for the future. Unlike paper, which can be saved and read as long as it exists, the myriad formats of film, tape and digital media do degrade over time and all require the existence of a player.

Audio and Video tapes, which are basically long ribbons of plastic covered with rust, are prone to degrade as the glue breaks down and the “rust” falls off. This can happen over as few as ten years. Film, even when it is kept in a cool dry environment, also degrades. We don’t yet know how long CDs and DVDs will last.

It is not practical to keep a “player” for all the various formats that have been and will be created in the future. For example, if you have been to the store recently, you may have noticed that VHS machines are as scarce as buggy whips. They are no longer manufactured. If you have a collection of VHS tapes, what do you do when your machine dies? This is precisely the crux of Bill’s question and our friends in Washington, DC.

Bill noted that he has a library of films and tapes in a variety of formats, i.e. 8mm, super 8mm film, VHS, 8mm and Hi 8 mm tape. The first thing he should do is get them copied into some sort of digital form. Right now the best and most inexpensive option is to get a DVD recorder. While we don’t know the lifespan of the DVD media, at least it is a digital medium allowing for copying to another digital medium in the future without any quality loss. There are DVD recorders on the market with a VHS deck built in making the VHS to DVD copying easy.

The films pose a different and more complex problem. You can’t just project them on a screen and use a video camera to record them. The quality of the images will be unacceptable since the camera can’t capture the film image well and the 8mm “frame rate”, i.e. the number of frames that are projected on the screen each second, is non-compatible with the frame rate of the DVD or tape. So making copies at home could be a challenge without the investment of some pricy technology. An option is to have the films made into digital files by a professional. This costs an average of 10 cents per foot, so this can get expensive. There are several companies that offer this. Two examples are: www.mymovietransfer.com and www.homemoviedepot.com . I have NOT used either of these services, so I can not recommend them.

Once the files are created, they can be stored on DVD or even kept on a hard drive. The latter requires regular back up however.

Bill also asked about getting parts for his old 8mm and Super 8 mm projectors. This is actually not too hard. There are several companies on the Internet that have stocked up on parts. EBay is also a great place to find used VHS and High 8 video players. If you have a working player for the various tape formats, they can be easily copied on to DVD.

Gone are the days when technology was backward compatible. When color TV came out it did not render your black and white model unusable. In ancient times when vinyl records morphed from mono to stereo, you could still play them on the old machine. Unfortunately, too often our new technology changes faster and faster and does not concern itself with the impact of obsolescence and the archiving of media. This may be a steep price to pay for progress.