Sony Data Discman: The First eBook Reader! 

The idea of storing eBooks on CDs is so retro yet futuristic. I love it!

I remember ebooks in the 2000s. We downloaded them from secret places in IRC, and the p2p networks. Had to - there was no legal source for ebooks back then. We had teams of pirates working on scanning, OCRing and proof-reading books. I was a proofer.

I've noticed over the last few months you've dropped the CTA's at the end to like/subscribe etc. I'm not sure what brought you to make that decision and I hope it's not having a crazy effect on the algorithm - but it's *damn* nice to just hear the outro music. Great video as always!

I'm a big Utada Hikaru fan. Was so pleased to see her single used for the music demo!

I'd never heard of this intermediary format between the CD and the Minidisc. Old Sony was the best Sony.

That second one bears a striking resemblance to the description (and some illustrations) of the titular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

The Sony units may have been listed as the first dedicated hardware for electronic books, but one could get electronic books for devices like the 'Atari Portfolio' numerous years earlier.

I can see a market for long lasting apocalypse technology. I've watched your videos for a while, and like with my own retro hunting, a lot is beyond repair. A device with modern parts designed to last that can be easily exchanged as modules or something, might sell really well to technology buyers and doomsday preppers alike

Sony did changed the tech industry and they were leaders on product design way out of its time. But everyone has to remember that Sony didn’t make money from their products but their patents, like the CD/DVD/BlueRay and more. Would be nice if you make a video about the history of Sony, they became to what they’re today.

Any chance the first unit with 6xAA was unhappy with the lower voltage of NiMH rechargeable batteries instead of alkaline?

Hikaru Utada on the Audio CD! I love her music

I remember some of my classmates at the intensive Japanese course I took before entering to the university having these kinda devices but a little bit more advanced, with USB functionalities and a neat crystal display working as a pad to draw japanese characters with a plastic pen. Because i couldn't stand the unreadability of these screens I just took the easier route: bought a galaxy note one (yes the first one) and installed every japanese learning app i found back then.

Ah old tech, beautiful isn't it. These "in between" solutions are something else. I think one problem is just how small the screen is. Sure this is for the rich and the offices. But, what if they had a bigger screen one, one that was a bit sturdier build, for schools... how long could the format last then?

Really love that low-key outro, repacking the box. Great visual style. Thanks for all the vids through the years.

I have one of these still in the box. it was pretty interesting at the time.

I was hoping to tear down and repair the first broken one. I love the design! I have the discman dvd player. Still works!

Another great video on my favourite era of Sony products love this stuff thanks Colin!

Video out?! Did you try it out with the first machine? Kinda defeats the purpose of an eReader, but it would at least let you know if the first unit had a working drive. I'm also curious if they added any color to the video output, or just left it monochrome.

This could've been awesome product if it was released as ebook/audiobook device. One could have whole book and audio version of it on one CD (sure, using mpeg compression)

Well done! Great product shots!

Love it. I remember seeing these and subsequent models in the same store I went to spend every last penny on MiniDisc stuff.

OK the Utada disc was simply beautiful!

Finally somebody is doing a video on these! They're so cool!

Hi Colin, I've found that some 90's portable equipment are not happy with rechargeable batteries. A Sharp minidisc I have (IM-D400) will only record with standard batteries but will play fine with rechargeables.

6:20 aw hell yeah, hikaru utada. one of my favorite artists lol

Utada Hikaru - Automatic. Nice choice of music for the Sony Data Discman haha

My cat loves your videos. 🐈‍⬛

Great production value. You need your own cable show 👍

Another piece of tech I was completely unaware of.

One interesting thing is that Sony has its own online bookstore today and works with PSN account you can read on smartphone, PC, and even some of books, PS Vita.

Interesting and informative. I do wonder, with the audio CD, why does the case have, those, square holes in it? Just to save weight, while still being rigid?

My first ebook reader was a Toshiba Pocket PC, a nice little device with more functionality than the Sonys you showed.

wow no other words thanks for this video, by from Ardea Italy

I got two clamshell version with larger screen and slot-in CD mechanism... I'll need to dig it up when i get home.

I like the idea of putting a small CD in a floppy disk sleeve

I just adore the aesthetic of 90s/20s tech.

That middle non-clamshell unit reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

love it

I was reading Cory Doctrow books converted to notes on my iPod Nano. People thought it was cray, cray.

Sony was always the pioneer in these strange but cool devices

Do you get video out from the first unit, which would verify the screen is the issue

Curious to see how the composite video out looked.

I really miss those days of weird form factor tech. I wish that the caddie mechanism for containing optical discs had won out and stuck around, too.

The DD-8 clearly is the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Did it come with a cover that says "Don't Panic"?

Can somebody answer a question for me. Why did they release music on full sized cds. I mean full sized cds have 470mb may have been a bit lower back then. But the mini cds would have had at the least 150 mbs. Each song is around 10 to 20 mbs so they should have been able to fit a entire cd onto a mini cd. Having music releases on mini cds instead of full sizes ones would have been far more convient. You could fit more of them in a case, they would take up less room on a shelf or cd case, they could have made the portable cd players a fraction of the size and would be able to fit in your pocket. Also battery life would be improved since they could use less powerful motors to spin the disk since it weighed less. They would save money on materials creating the players so their would have been more profit for the company or cheaper devices for the consumer. Also less material would be used on the cds and the cases they came in. For the average consumer using full sized cds makes no sence.

I miss physical media so much.

As a Sony collector I still want one even though they're way cooler to look at than actually use...

Could the one with the broken screen work over the AV out?

Hikaru Utada's Automatic is a great single.

Utada Hikaru! Nice choice 😊

Sony is number 1

Wasn't there a minidisc version of this, too? I think @techmoan showed it once...

Interesting item

Man, Sony made some really cool quirky stuff back in the day.

This looks less like an e-book reader, and more like an electronic dictionary with a CD reader slapped onto it. The title selection would seem to confirm as much. If you do a Google image search for ‘denshi jisho’ (Japanese for ‘electronic dictionary’), you’ll see a lot of these kinds of devices, just without the CD part.

This is basically the first verison of the Sony UMD for the PSP

idk man i just love when a plastic square goes into a slot

This is one of the best ebook it' is very lightweight

This was cool, ebooks on CDs, but optical media isn’t well suited for ebooks, since people move around a lot with books, and it’s not like the Kindle which are paperweight and don’t have much mechanical parts!

I think the best way to describe them is "The book that fell asleep before you do"

Good thinking. eBooks are a thing as we know it today for the Digital Age…

The LCD failing is apparently a somewhat common problem on that model of Data Discman

My Dad holds a patent for an early eBook reader but the way they wrote up the patent, he got screwed out of royalties from anyone creating one after him.

These older devices can be sensitive to the input voltage, so the the use of rechargeable cells may not be appropriate.

0:17 anyone know what is that 3 button sega stick? a custom stick?

“sometimes technology is ahead of the times” i feel like a lot of what Sony has done could be described like this

Cool

Makes one wonder why, when ebooks did become a thing, Sony didn't attempt to jump back on the bandwagon. Maybe it was just a case of "Been there, done that and lost money." I've discovered over the years of watching videos by Techmoan and the like that Sony seems to have been willing to try their hand at just about any technical gadget just to see if it would sell or not.

Cool.

Ah, the "It's A Sony" branding. Miss those days.

[Flips a digital page] -INTENSE CD DRIVE NOISES-

Loved Sony kit back in the day, but not their love of proprietary formats. If they'd done away with the entirely superfluous caddy and used full-sized CDs, they could have had a whole line of interchangeable audio / data Walkmans and made a fortune in hardware sales, especially as CDs were a (joint) Sony invention to begin with. Same goes for Minidisc tbh - you'd think they'd have learned their lesson with Beta! Still a cool product, but not at those prices (especially in 1990s dollars.)

I've always thought eBooks should've come out in 1890! Would've been really handy on a long voyage across the Atlantic... in 2023 I actually still prefer paper. Maybe I'm just a luddite? I don't really travel all that much, or far, so it's never been an issue for me to take one or two in the suitcase. But hey, that's just me. It's cool we can buy both now, everyone is happy!

No drawn out repairs of the first two? You can't be getting old on us now Colin?

Sony loves to get into the market of everything, except for automotives. 4:29 is usually caused by faulty contacts if I know these dot matrix screens.

I would have tried alkaline batteries in the 2nd one, just in case it needed more voltage to get the drive working.

I owned one of these. I remember that they were very slow. I had an encyclopedia disk if I remember. It was very basic,

Спасибо очень интересный обзор

Someone more talented than me could turn that Gameboy-looking one into a cool deck

retro device is bizzare & cool it's look like you can launch a nuke from that thing

Surprised Sony didn't try this with mind discs. Either was they were ahead of their time

Surprised they didn't use MD

Sony alway make people surprised by theirs products

Sony used to be soo innovative

Early 90s and Sony in the same sentence always leads to one outcome: Leaky caps. Thats likely whats going on with your other two units.

I assume the name "Bookman" was already trademarked.

三省堂辞典＋宇多田ヒカル=90’s❤

Why have a keyboard on an e reader ? Just for search?

Send it to my mate Vince maybe he will try to fix it 😊

I don't remember these at all!

A weird product, yet at the same time still oddly innovative for it's time. Textbook Sony in those days.

I’d be happy to take the ‘Religious-Material’ VGR Disc off your Hands!

that book of sermons wasn't from the year 2000, it was sub-titled '2000'.. religious books in general increased in publishing and sales up to but not through the year 2000.. that really was the end of print publishing.. it took 5 more years after Y2K for newspapers to 'fold' permanently.. no cottage industry, the religious publishing industry is huge.. you couldn't purchase a cd burner that would accomodate 3" discs nor could you acquire the 3" discs until about 2005.. funny enough, they no longer put standalone cd drives or any optical drives that could read 3" discs after 2005.. it really was the industry itself that screwed itself over.. i started getting cd business cards from people just when we could no longer load them in anything new.. the leading edge syndrome.. sony really should've pushed th emini disc format for these, and the memory stick.. instead, we have.. LL Cool J.. and that's it..

Странно, как это я пропустил это видео. Столько информации за 9 минут, если б я так умел... но ничего. я запишу свое видео. как умею, но чуть с большим количеством информации и реквизитом.

23 years ago ffs 😂

I have dv 8. Well it’s not perfect it’s for sale. Let me know. Downey California ❤❤❤

WE have Techmoan at home!

I wonder why they didn't use minidisc later on? 🤔 7:23 "it got weird quick" 😵‍💫 "religious" eww eject that 🙏📿 fun fact, I had a gameboy cartridge that was a pocket Bible around 1994

This was a bad product for the most part. For truly useful stuff this could do, like language discs, there were dedicated machines that cost a lot less even before this came out. There were dictionaries and thesauruses which fit in your pocket. This was a very mediocre solution looking for a problem. Ebooks, even today, are shitty solutions looking for a problem. The people who really want ebooks are generally not book buyers, but publishers who want to turn their profits to near 100%. A screen cannot replace the printed page. But the sweet, sweet cash from near free distribution is just so desirable by publishers that they just won't give up. Ebooks have largely turned into the DVD at the Dollar store with old out of date B movies nobody wants. Amazon has their kindle program loaded with self-published trash. Books worth getting are nearly always as much or close to as much as the printed version.

Sony always shot themselves in the foot by trying to control both the hardware and storage market at the same time (remember Memory Sticks?). Greed was their downfall. They could have licensed the caddies and the cds for ebooks, and they could have sold millions of these units.