Discontinued media formats

discontinued optical disc format

LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. It was developed by Philips, Pioneer, and the movie studio MCA. The format was initially marketed in the United States in 1978 under the name DiscoVision, a brand used by MCA. As Pioneer took a greater role in its development and promotion, the format was rebranded LaserVision. While the LaserDisc brand originally referred specifically to Pioneer's line of players, the term gradually came to be used generically to refer to the format as a whole, making it a genericized trademark. The discs typically hav

Betamax (also known as Beta, and stylized as the Greek letter β in its logo) is a discontinued consumer analog videocassette recording format developed by Sony. It was one of the main competitors in the videotape format war against its primary rival, VHS. Betamax was introduced in Japan on May 10, 1975, and launched in the United States later that year.

thumb|The Sony MZ1, the first MiniDisc player, released in 1992.

optical disc medium for PlayStation Portable

flash memory card format, used in digital cameras made by Olympus and Fujifilm; “xD” stands for “extreme digital”

video cassette format

thumb|Diafilm strip thumb|Dukane Record Automatic Filmstrip Projector thumb|upright|Dukane Silent filmstrip projector thumb|upright|Music captioned filmstrip set, titled "Composers of many lands and many times by Eye Gate House Inc 1954"

SmartMedia is an obsolete flash memory card standard owned by Toshiba, with capacities ranging from 0.5 MB to 128 MB. The format mostly saw application in the early 2000s in digital cameras and audio production. SmartMedia memory cards are no longer manufactured.

-inch Type E Helical Scan or SMPTE E is an analog recording videocassette format marketed by Sony Electronics Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) and Victor Co. of Japan (JVC). It was initially developed by Sony and shown as a prototype in October 1969, refined and standardized among the three manufacturers in March 1970, and introduced commercially in September 1971 by Sony. The format was branded U-matic by Sony, U-Vision by Panasonic and U-VCR by JVC, referring to the U-shaped tape path as it threads around the video drum.

magnetic recording technology using steel wire as the medium

magnetic tape sound recording technology

magnetic tape cassette for digital audio, backward-compatible with the analogue Compact Cassette

The Microdrive was a miniature, one-inch hard disk drive released in 1998 by IBM. The idea was originally created in 1992 by Timothy J. Riley and Thomas R. Albrecht at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose. A team of engineers and designers at IBM's Fujisawa, Japan facility helped make the creation of the drive possible.

magnetic tape-based videocassette format

format of optical media disc introduced in 1987, combining the technologies of standard compact disc and LaserDisc

first practical and commercially successful analog recording video tape format

Elcaset is an analog audio cassette format jointly developed by Sony, Panasonic, and Teac in 1976, building on an idea introduced 20 years earlier in the RCA tape cartridge.

analog video disc playback system developed by RCA

thumb|Tefifon portable radio with cartridge player (the Tefi "Holiday Super II")The Tefifon is an audio playback format, developed and manufactured in Germany, that utilizes cartridges loaded with an endlessly looped reel of plastic tape. It is somewhat similar to the later 4-track and 8-track magnetic audio tape cartridges, but with grooves engraved into the tape, like a phonograph record. The grooves were engraved in a helical fashion across the width of the tape, in a manner similar to Dictaphone's Dictabelt format. The grooves are read with a stylus and amplified pickup in the player's tra

thumb|Rear side of MicroMV cassette

Cartrivision is an analog video tape cartridge format introduced in 1972, and the first format to offer feature films for consumer rental.

right|thumb|Stereo-Pak player close up thumb|Stereo-Pak player with cartridge The Muntz Stereo-Pak, commonly known as the 4-track cartridge, is a magnetic tape sound recording cartridge technology.

compact video cassette format for camcorders

The Fidelipac, commonly known as a "NAB cartridge" or simply "cart", is a magnetic tape sound recording format, used for radio broadcasting for playback of material over the air such as radio commercials, jingles, station identifications, and music, and for indoor background music. Fidelipac is the official name of this industry standard audio tape cartridge. It was developed in 1954 by inventor George Eash (although the invention of the Fidelipac cartridge has also been credited to Vern Nolte of the Automatic Tape Company), and commercially introduced in 1959 by Collins Radio Co. at the 1959

removable floppy disk storage system

thumb|Model 1604

short-lived and unsuccessful consumer analog recording videocassette format

digital audio medium

DIVX (Digital Video Express) is a discontinued digital video format. Created in part by Circuit City, it was an unsuccessful attempt to create an alternative to video rental in the United States by the mid–late 1990s. The format's poor reception from consumers resulted in major financial losses for Circuit City and is credited with being part of the company's downfall.

HiPac (stylized as HIPAC) (pronounced as high-pack), is an audio tape cartridge format, introduced in August 1971 on the Japanese consumer market by Pioneer and discontinued in 1973 due to lack of demand. In 1972 it only achieved a market share of 3% in equipping new cars. In the mid 1970s, the format was repurposed as a children's educational toy called and was used in the analog tape delay "Melos Echo Chamber".

format for video

Magnetic tape audio format introduced in 1958

removable storage disk drive

V-Cord is an analog recording videocassette format developed and released by Sanyo. V-Cord (later referred to as V-Cord I) was released in 1974, and could record 60 minutes on a cassette. V-Cord II, released in 1976, could record 120 minutes on a V-Cord II cassette.