Rare 1999 MacPower MP-ROM player 💿 "Mozart's Music Box" 

But, did you ever figure out why it wouldn’t play CD-RW discs?

MP2 was also widely used in FM broadcasting, so that was probably a major use case, too.

@@Ice_Karma In Europe DAB Radio came out in 1995 and still uses MP2 (yes I know about DAB+ but all the main U.K. stations are still DAB).

@@MrDuncl Oh, cool! Being in Canada, we don't have digital radio yet, as far as I know. I was thinking about studio operations in the FM broadcasting case, things like a station having all of its music encoded in MP2.

​@@Ice_KarmaCanada does have digital radio, using the American standard of course. 🇺🇸 Known commercially as "HD Radio", or technically as IBOC (In-Band, On-Channel) or NRSC5. It uses the standard FM band (88-108 MHz) and works by adding two digital sidebands on either side of the analog signal. Each individual station broadcasts it's own digital signal. Audio is encoded with a modified version of the HE-AAC codec. A version of it for AM radio (530 - 1700 kHz) was even less common. For example, an analog FM station at 94.7 will use 94.5 and 94.9 for digital. This works because of the large separation requirements of second-adjacent stations in North America. In Europe, DAB is the standard, and uses 174 - 220 MHz. This band is unavailable in the Americas as it is the 1.25m Amateur Radio band. Typically stations are multicast, meaning one tower with all stations sharing the same powerful broadcast signal. Unlike DAB in Europe, HD Radio never became very popular. The early decoding chips used a lot of power and ran hot. They were pricey due to small quantities, and the radio manufacturer had to pay a licensing fee for patents. Car manufacturers were similarly slow to add it to car radios. It's hard to get an accurate count, but there's about 50 Canadian stations who broadcast with it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UjHYNyGyr1g.html

@@derek20la Very interesting! I stand corrected. Thank you very much for the detailed comment and video link! 😻

Yeah ... Especially those nasty membrane buttons 😬😬😬

I agree

​@@JaneFoster-si6gq he literally mentioned that in the video

@@onometre he said something about malls, but not Muzac, so I doubt he has any comprehension of the fact that the company Muzac used these devices. A lot of times this Vwestlife gives wrong information or leaves out facts. I an sick of it, he should be removed. Also you know he is a Gay right?

@@JaneFoster-si6gqI have the impression you don’t like Vwestlife much, do you? 😂

some cd drives had a front panel 'audio play' button, i have several , play button starts play and moves to next track, eject button stops(some pause and can continue play if play is pressed again, some restart from first track), press again and ejects as normal ,, i have one that has faulty IDE interface, wont work in a computer, but perfectly ok as an audio cd player!

It also makes it one of the few USER SERVICABLE "Modern" pieces of audio gear! If the drive goes out, Pop in a new one! The fact that the DVD upgrade was also a pop-in solution makes it even cooler. It's obsolete today, If I had known that this existed when it was new, I'd have bought one!

I spent several years using a Philips CD-I as a CD player. It actually sounded far better than the 1980s CD player it replaced.

Back in the day I had a CD-ROM drive in my bedroom connected to a 12v power supply and computer speakers. I used it to listen music CDs, since I hadn't a microsystem. lol

@@lauratiso Just hearing that someone had a CD-ROM drive in their bedroom "back in the day" males me feel ancient. I had a record player and a 5" reel to reel in my bedroom... When I was in HIGHSCHOOL.😳 But credit for the improvised set up!👍👍

yeah he literally said the same thing.

Techmoan missed this one.

yep the ones who did not it it from sat.

I had a MP3 disk player for the dreamcast in 2000, It was amazing back then.

CD Walkman's existed the year prior, so you honestly did not have to wait even

Mp3 players were getting popular before this device came out anyway, and is one of the reasons this video is far more interesting because the product is obscure. The Rio PMP300 was a big success

@@Space_Reptile That could play MP3 cds?

Heck, smaller than that. The components for playing music can easily fit inside ear buds, so they occupy essentially no space at all.

@@cavauro Those early MP3 players were not even remotely comparable to this device at all, though. With their terrible storage size of 32 MB, they could hardly store even a music album unless it was at a dismal 64 Kbp rate. And cost 370 bucks adjusted for inflation...

Checking the 1999 Argos catalogue there is no mention of MP3. Being the U.K. there are a dozen MiniDisc players though, including a rather neat Sony Car Stereo.

Those early units were built like tanks.

Wow! What about skip protection on that CD player?

​@@bandwidth64 Early CD players from 80s never had skip protection, which appeared in portable players somewhere in first half of 90s.

ok….and?? 😐

@@jessihawkins9116 Go to your room, you've been very naughty, and think about what you've done.

Thank you! I immediately remembered and knew the song, but wouldn't have come up with where I heard it before. CGR was a fun channel!

That is the first thing I thought of when I heard that track. I went and looked up the CGR video for Red Faction Guerrilla video game and it was the same song. That video has lived on both my PSPs for about 14 years so I know the song.

Yes, I used watch Classic Game Room all the time. I once heard that guy on one of the episodes say, "Getting old rocks." And hearing that in my early 30s didn't sound so cool at all. But thinking about that now, he probably meant it as a joke. I could not tell you what game he was playing.

@@jimmymelendez1836 I liked that DVC PRO deck he used to record all the gameplay. It had great video quality. Wish I could get one.

I was looking for this comment. I miss classic game room.

@@GunshipHero OK.

It would have to come with A BGM library and some obscure custom encoding that only that device can play.

That could make sense! I was thinking the 'fast forward', or back, could be a function that only worked via the remote? Perhaps this is also the case for the folders. Perhaps only the 'simple' controls are on the device and anything more is on the remote? Who can say for sure.

Actually that's not "Don't Fall In Love With A Dreamer" it's Willie Nelson's version of "Always On My Mind" :)

12:59 Shalamar - Dancing in the Sheets 13:01 Kool & The Gang - Victory

There was a BGM company doing that with CD-I payers.

@@MrDuncl What company was that? I’m curious

@@dennisthebrony2022 Look up CD-BGM I think it was one of the many CD formats and the CD-I players could do it natively. I just found "Hundreds of CD-BGM titles were made by Philips alone. CD-BGM discs were not offered for sale, they could only be 'rented' by professional users from selected Philips partners." The same article mentions Sanyo.

It won't navigate through the folders even with shuffle mode turned off.

Might have folder file name requirements that you did not know to name them. Cool device just the same

@@bichelaThis could well be the case. I had a cd walkman (not sony but some knock off) that only accepted incremental numbers as folder names and ignored anything else. It also messed up if you left out a number in the sequence by ignoring everything from that point onwards. Very sloppy firmware coding but it was cheap(ish).

I doubt Muzak even knew that the MP-ROM existed. Considering that the other ones I've seen have handwritten serial numbers, and this one doesn't have any serial number on it, the production total was probably very low. It was also available as a kit, in which the user could install their own CD or DVD drive.

@@vwestlife I would guess yours was one of the kits. That would explain the older drive, lack of serial number etc.

It's more of a media incompatibility thing. I still have vintage machines with era-appropriate drives, from a 1x external SCSI drive to the high-end Plextor Premium drive, DVD, BD, etc.. Most of the early drives, before about 8x to 16x, had poor CD-R (and especially CD-RW) compatibility. Early CD-R media that was made for, e.g., 4x CD-R drives works better than later 52x-rated media, even if you burn it in a 12x drive at 1x. The new stuff is just not very reflective, and old drives weren't calibrated for that.

What are you talking about? Everything works right except CD-RWs. And if that's what you mean (rewritables) and speed was a problem, it would have been a problem with regular CD-Rs, too. Also, the incompatibility is the same across all the tested drives, so it's the firmware in the board of that device that is incompatible with rewritables.

It won't navigate through the folders even with shuffle mode turned off.

@@vwestlife Oh, I was certain, bummer. Awesome find anyway.

It can't navigate folders even with the shuffle mode turned off.

Maybe the original factory drive didn’t have an eject button. The promotional pictures show it in an entirely different enclosure, so it’s possible a different drive would have been fitted to production models. I’ve never seen a CD drive without an eject button, but they may exist for embedded applications such as this.