The 1993 Consumer Electronics Show via Computer Chronicles

The 1993 Consumer Electronics Show via Computer Chronicles

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[conventional jazz music] [computer buzzes, beeps] - Greetings, and welcome to an LGR "Computer Chronicles" watchalong commentary type of thing. Yeah, I did one of these for a Christmas episode, looking at their 1985 buyer's guide and that was something that went over surprisingly well and was honestly a lot of fun to do. And yeah, we're gonna do another one. This time, we're gonna be taking a look at the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, which has been happening in some form or another since the late 1960s and typically is every January. We just had CES 2025 as I'm recording this, so that's why I'm recording this now because I was looking at all the coverage of all the new things and I always really enjoy seeing the new stuff. Although here recently, it's just been more and more... sloppy.

You know, everything is like the same sounding kind of product name. Everything is a Max Pro AI, Premium AI Gen 6 Eco Elite AI, 5000 Series Smart AI Plus Max. So let's look at the 1993 "Computer Chronicles" coverage specifically of the Winter CES show cuz back then there was summer in Chicago and then winter in Vegas. Nowadays, it's just winter in Vegas. Anyway, let's enjoy, and with a little bit better quality footage this time thanks to a comment saying that, yeah, you can go on archive.org

and get the original interlaced better quality version and then de-interlace it in 60 FPS now. And it looks really good. Let's dive in! All right, 1993 "Computer Chronicles" coverage of CES, the winter CES, 1993. Let's go. - [Stewart] IBM is here, Apple is here, Compaq is here, Commodore is here, but this is not a computer expo. This is the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but guess what? It's a computer show anyhow, as entertainment electronics look more and more like computers and computers look more and more like multimedia entertainment platforms.

- It's already such a wonderful start. IBM, Apple, Compaq, and it looks like Pionex over there, which that's just interesting that they were even notable at all to have that kind of a booth if that's Pionex. They're the same people that made my woodgrain 486 before it was the woodgrain 486. - Today, we'll show you the neatest new gadgets at the Consumer Electronic Show on this special edition of "The Computer Chronicles." [upbeat theme music] - Yes! So that is their updated theme they started using around '89 or '90 or something.

And I've been getting into this recently because I picked up the original, not the theme, but the sort of intro segue for "Computer Chronicles" from 1983 to '89-ish on vinyl, I did a video over that in LGR Blerbs, and that song is called "Byte by Byte." So [humming along imitating the theme] That one. But I also recently discovered that this one is also on vinyl. It's a track by John K. Manchester for the Omnimusic Company.

So another one of those sort of stock production music things, and the name of the track is "Zenith." - [Announcer] The Software Publishers Association. Don't copy that floppy. - Don't copy it, okay? It's bad. It's Tim Bajarin.

- Welcome to "The Computer Chronicles." I'm Stewart Cheifet. With me this week is Tim Bajarin.

- Yeah, the constantly revolving hosts of "Computer Chronicles" By this point, Gary Kildall was no longer part of the show. - Tim, what I'm playing with here is this new digital book system from Franklin Electronics. It's kind of fun. They say, by the way, this is the world's first real personal digital assistant because it's actually out there and it's a product and you can buy it.

It has a blank book in there, which you can write notes, a kind of notepad, but it also has other books. As you can see, I can go to a book full of word games, which is kind of fun. I have a very powerful 270,000 word dictionary. - At first, I thought this is just one of those basic Franklin personal organizer things, pretty much like a dictionary, a thesaurus.

You can look up some basic stuff, take notes, and have a calendar and stuff, but this seems way more involved. The Franklin Digital Book System. - [Stewart] The way this works, you buy these little ROM cards.

Each one of these things has 45 megabytes in it. So between the two ROM cards, I've got 90 megs of information. And I can read it and access it in a very simple user interface. - Okay, that's extremely cool.

I didn't know that this existed. This is called the Franklin Book? No, The Digital Book System. So it is effectively a glorified organizer it seems, but it's got a 65C816 processor with 32K RAM, 40 by 160 res, just a neat little computer. It's those tiny ROM cards. Those are fascinating. 45 megs of data.

That makes it a little bit closer to something like an Atari Portfolio for instance, but $199 in 1993, roughly $440 adjusted for inflation. - Today, we will look at a variety of computer-based consumer electronics products, including the latest electronic games, the growing use of CD-ROM media, and the merging of notebook computers and palmtop organizers. - I'm excited. - To start our show,

let's go back to Las Vegas and a look at one of the hottest new product categories: the personal digital assistant. [chuckle of 90s portability] - [Narrator] Apple computer coined the term "personal digital assistant," or PDA, last year with the announcement of Newton. It's not on the market yet, and it wasn't even on the exhibit floor here at CES— - Did they coin the term "PDA" for the Newton? I mean, it wasn't necessarily the first thing you would call a PDA, but I guess the term "personal digital assistant." Yeah, probably so, according to the sources I'm finding. In 1992, John Sculley coined it in the keynote speech he made at the Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas.

Huh. - [Narrator] But this type of product, a hybrid of organizer, computer, and communicator was a hot topic here. Casio showed off its PDA by invitation only. - Ooh. - [Narrator] Casio is calling its device a personal information processor. The Casio unit.

- A PIP. That's a PIP boy. - [Narrator] That lets your pop up a representation of a keyboard or you can just write on it with a pen. The Casio personal information processor can save your handwriting as it is or convert it to a text file. - That looks kind of laggy. Oh yeah.

Oh my goodness. [Clint laughing] Did you see how long it took for that to register the word pen? He was writing it in there and it's like several seconds and eventually it'll figure out what you wrote. Oof! - You can look at it a couple of ways. The way we prefer to look at it is that it will appeal to the people that always wanted something to organize them. - Sorry, just looking at the background there.

There's this person going by with like a lamppost and signs. [goofy giggling] I love trade shows so much. - [Narrator] Casio promises to ship the personal information processor this summer. The price will be in the $600 range.

- Woo! I wonder if they ever shipped it. I mean, Casio made all kinds of different organizer type of deals. Yeah, okay.

So the XL-7000 maybe? Oh dang, this is handy. Mobilyazller on Flickr, it looks like the Z-7000, XL-7000, the Tandy ZPDA, and AST Grip Pad 2390 are all the same thing. - [Narrator] AT&T is also entering the PDA market with their personal communicator. - I love the way that booth looks. - [Narrator] While the Casio device was designed more like a personal organizer. - What is that? - [Narrator] The AT&T unit works more like a computer.

The handheld communicator uses the PenPoint operating system from Go Corporation. There's a built-in speaker and microphone for voice annotation. - Go PenPoint. That is the same thing that was used on the IBM, like the original ThinkPad.

The pad tablet version. Yeah, the ThinkPad 700 T-series ran the same kind of thing as that AT&T communicator? - [Narrator] And if you want to send a fax or check your email while on the road, AT&T is offering an optional cellular phone that can be attached through the unit's communications port. Prices will range between $2,000 for the basic model to up to $3,000 with all the bells and whistles. - I knew it was gonna be extremely expensive just hearing these specs and seeing all this bougie crap it could do. Built-in cell phone? Come on now.

Three grand. Yeah, the full bells and whistles version would've been six and a half thousand dollars with inflation. [incoherent sound of disbelief] - [Narrator] Sharp is also getting into the PDA game. If you already own a Wizard, sorry, Sharp's newest model, the OZ 9600, has some nice new features, like pen input on its touchscreen.

- She called it the "OZ." I'm sure that's an O-Z something, but did you see that gigantic display? I love that kind of, yeah, this gigantic organizer PDA thing. Again, trade shows, man. Just makes everything gigantic and huge.

That's how you get attention to your booth. It seems like it's always been that way. It still is. - [Narrator] The Casio OZ 9600 also comes with a QWERTY keyboard. The Sharp unit also has a scrapbook function that lets you retain your notes in your own handwriting as a graphics file. This newest Wizard is due out this summer with a suggested retail price of $649.

- This kind of gave up writing the word right there. They're like, "It's not an E." It's an E, whatever.

- [Narrator] The Panasonic KX-RC100 is not quite a personal digital assistant, but it is a clever palmtop gadget. This check printing accountant, acronym CPA, is an electronic check register that also prints out the checks for you. The retail price on the Panasonic CPA is $350. - That's so cute. Like, it's such a purpose-built little thingy and it just prints your checks. Although, I guess, I mean, it'd still in theory be useful.

Checks haven't exactly changed I guess. - [Narrator] Coming up next, the latest in multimedia and the debut of 3DO. - Oh! - [Stewart] This baby happens to have an alpha numeric keyboard, 2K memory in here.

I have my Christmas shopping list in here. Look at this. - So apparently, this was, yeah, the 10th anniversary season of "Computer Chronicles" starting in '83. This was '93.

Wasn't even that long before this, but it seemed like an eternity at the time, I'm sure. - The greatest boon to consumer electronics has been the computer chip and the optical storage drive. - Okay, there's a lot happening in this frame.

I dunno what that is. I guess, you can rent CDs maybe? That computer is looking brilliant. And then I see this here next to the Compton's Encyclopedia logo over there on the left. Sony MMCD player. Now that, that is a rabbit hole that I have gone down rather deeply and have never done a video about it, even though I have a lot of the hardware. Yeah, it plays these MMCD discs, kind of like, yeah, the Data Discman, which that's something you've probably seen if you've seen Techmoan's stuff.

The thing is, it can run full-on software though, including DOS, or some version of DOS. There's an NEC V20 inside that has these MMCD discs. I just, I need to find more software before I do anything more with it. - Much of the attention at this Consumer Electronics Show is on products using CDs or laserdiscs.

- Ooh, laserdiscs. - [Stewart] One of the hottest new CD applications here at CES was 3DO, the acronym for three dimensional optics. - Wait, what? Three dimensional optics...

I thought it always meant like, like "audio, video, 3DO" as sort of a punny type of thing. Three dimensional optics. It actually seems to be that's what it stood for, at least at some point during the initial announcement launch period. Three dimensional optics. I'm finding it in all kinds of newspapers from back then.

That's wild. - [Stewart] 3DO can process images 50 times faster than a PC or a video game console thanks to custom animation processors, which run in parallel. - I mean, probably. Also, I just love the textured spinning cubes were the thing.

- [Stewart] The system can process up to 64 million pixels per second. In addition to the graphics chips, the 3DO system also includes a custom digital processor for audio, a specialized video processor. - That's an impressive demo honestly for '93. That's awesome. - [Stewart] It also uses a double speed CD-ROM drive for fast access. The net result is a lot of computing power that gives you smoother images, cleaner scaling, and texture mapping.

3DO calls it cinematic software. - Of course they did. - A new kind of interactivity.

For example, there'll be movies that are done as a linear stream just like they are now. The perspective on how you view that particular story can change and it'll be a new form of media. Just like in the beginning of motion picture, all they were doing was filming a stage play.

It wasn't until later they began to understand how to use the medium of film. - I love this hype for like interactive movies. "Oh muh gah, it's gonna be a whole new art form." You know what? It certainly was. It certainly was. From like 1993 to about '96. Just look at these beautiful displays.

Yeah, look at this. Wow. That's so cool. I wanna be here so badly.

Oh, interactive movies. Infotainment. I love the way that the designs were in the nineties for these kind of exhibits and booths and setups and displays.

- [Stewart] 3DO wasn't the only company introducing a new CD-ROM-based interactive technology. Pioneer, in cooperation with Sega. - Hey.

Yeah, the LaserActive. - [Stewart] LaserActive. The system includes a combination video disc and compact disc player. - So it had Sega CD, Sega Genesis, kind of mixture games in there with that little module and then you could swap that out for I think a turbo graphics module and, what was the other one? Maybe they'll say.

- [Stewart] And three optional control packs to manage this multi-platform interactive system. Pioneer LaserActive dumps the video onto the laser disc and thus keeps all 540 megs of storage on the CD-ROM for the... - That's super cool at the time. Really, really cool.

So there were more of those modules or packs than I thought there were. So you had the Sega Genesis Mega Drive one, the NEC one for PC engine and other stuff, it looks like, turbo graphics, Karaoke one, I think that was the other one I was trying to think of, and also a computer interface one with a RS-232 and stuff. That's pretty neat.

- [Stewart] LaserActive is due out this summer. No information yet on price. There were other major high-tech alliances at this. CES. IBM teamed up with The Discovery Channel to develop a new interactive learning program called "Planet Earth: The Force Within," based on documentaries from The Discovery Channel - [Program Narrator] Like the Grand Canyon, with a revealing geological laboratory. [Clint laughing] - Oh wow. This skipping audio, even in their example right there [hums].

What was that little that, little thingy underneath there? I have one of those. I forget what it's called. One of those Roland, what is it called? CS-30. I know Tandy had a MMS-10. No. So it looks like not the CS-30, but the CS-10 from Roland is what they had going on there.

And then Tandy's was the MMS-10. I have a couple of them. They're pretty neat. - [Stewart] Coming up next, the latest in computer games and video games. - Heck yeah, Stewart. All right.

Questions, comments? CompuServe. Yes. I would log in and ask some questions if I could.

- Computer games may not seem the most important part of the high-tech industry. - Speak for yourself. - But because of the never-ending technology demands of game hardware and software, computer games in fact are leading the way in this inevitable merger of consumer electronics.

- All those Sega Genesis' over there. Are those Model 2's? - [Narrator] Video game sales amounted to nearly $5 billion last year. Nintendo alone sold over $3 billion worth of game hardware and software. Sega sold close to one and a half billion dollars worth. - So Nintendo was $3 billion of the $5 billion video game industry and Sega was another one and a half. So that leaves precious little for everyone else.

That is nuts. That kind of makes sense. This is '93. - [Narrator] So the market for video game products is huge and growing.

- TV tuner. - [Narrator] Sega has jumped on this CD bandwagon with a new Sega CD system that plugs into a Genesis console. Sega calls it Virtual VCR. - Virtual VCR with "Night Trap" as the example, of course. Man, this is when I first started like really noticing and getting into gaming consoles as being like the most exciting thing in my world for a bit, like specifically remembering seeing commercials for the game gear and the Sega CD and seeing "Night Trap" and everything else like that just on displays at Toys R Us and a friend of mine got a Sega Genesis Model 2 that year, I believe. - [Narrator] This is "Ecco the Dolphin," the first Sega game to use DPA, or dynamic play adjustment.

[game beeping] - Really? - [Narrator] The software automatically determines the skill level of the player and adjusts the game play level according to novice, intermediate or advanced. - Did it actually do that? I just remember the game being hard as balls. Well, according to TV Tropes, it does use a dynamic difficulty thing in Tides of Time. Manual claims factors adjusted the difficulty include how fast levels are finished, how often they're restarted, and how many teleport rings are passed through. Okay. - [Narrator] A company called US Gold was touting CD-ROM quality without the cost of CD-ROM hardware.

"Flashback: The Quest for Identity." - Nice. - [Narrator] Is a cartridge-based game that includes 2000 frames of animation running at 24 frames per second.

Live actors were shot on film and then the artists hand illustrated the movements onto animation cells, which were then converted into computer graphics. - Such a cool game. - [Narrator] The newest innovation in game input was the Activator.

- Oh no, the Activator. - [Narrator] Sega introduced this full body controller. You stand in a ring which is equipped with infrared sensors that communicate your body movements to the game. - Talk about a thing that never worked as reliably as it should, or at least as you would hope. I mean, in my experience anyway, maybe it just doesn't like my body.

But I just feel like I'm flailing around doing nothing with that thing. - [Narrator] Triax also showed off a new ergonomically designed controller for heavy duty game players. This is the Turbo Touch 360 controller. No need to push down on direction buttons and risk repetitive strain injuries.

With Turbo Touch, you just move your fingers across the touch sensor pad to guide your game characters. - I was wondering when they were gonna show the actual-size controller. But nope! They're just showing the gigantic ridiculous convention version of the Turbo Touch, which is actually kind of interesting when, you know, you just slide your thumb over there instead of having a D-pad.

I don't like it, but it's kind of interesting. But yeah, the fact that they're just like, "here's the controller, it's six feet across!" - [Narrator] The Aladdin Deck Enhancer was an innovative solution for owners of older 8-bit Nintendo game consoles. The Aladdin system dumps game control into one permanent cartridge and then puts only game-specific data on the actual game cartridge. The result is NES game cartridges for under $20. - I never used an Aladdin. I mean, it's an interesting idea, trying to make games cheaper by putting a bunch of the chips that you need in every cartridge just in this main thing here and then just the game data goes in the bottom.

I don't know. Only 24 games for it. - [Narrator] Nintendo also launched its most powerful game technology ever using the new Super FX chip. This is a RISC processor built into each game cartridge. - Again, just imagine how exciting.

1993, go to this like shiny awesome World of Nintendo booth. You got the Super FX chip coming out. Yeah dude, Dave with a Y. Dayv! - Develop that and the game "Star Fox" at the same time.

So they sort of worked off of each other. - Wonder what happened to that giant World of Nintendo star? - [Narrator] There were lots of new computer-based games introduced at CES. Electronic Arts announced the formation of its new division, EA Kids, to develop edutainment programs for children.

- Edutainment?! - [Narrator] One example is "Peter Pan," a story painting adventure is part interactive cartoon, part paint box. - "Paint Box Pals" I think is what that was called. I'm not sure I'd call them edutainment. They're more just like, kids games. There's also like "Eagle Eye Mysteries" and things like that.

But yeah, I always kind of considered these more just adventure-y type of things? As opposed to edutainment. - [Narrator] "Video Jam" is another new title from EA Kids that lets children create and play animations set to music. - What are those? Little animated turds! - [Narrator] Both "Video Jam" and "Peter Pan" are available for the PC. - They even got little nuts or pieces of corn in them. That's terrible. - [Narrator] I•Motion Inc. has pushed

the envelope a step farther in computer game graphics with its new 3D adventure game "Alone in the Dark." - '93, what a year, what a year for games! And then at the end of this year, you just get "Doom." Just rips open the guts of everybody else's games. - [Narrator] American Laser Games showed off its new arcade style shoot-em-up game. - Oh, that's cool.

- [Narrator] "Mad Dog McCree." - I mean, "Mad Dog McCree" isn't that great, but the lightgun for the PC version of it. That is awesome. I've never seen one of those in person, or like even come across one. - [Narrator] American Laser games showed off its new arcade style shoot-em-up game "Mad Dog McCree," which lets you interact with a screen by using a laser-based gun. The software is on CD-ROM.

- If you have one of those or like a source for one of those lightguns for the PC specifically, let me know. - [Narrator] And just like in the movies, sequels is the name of the game in software these days. - What kind of computer is that? What is that? Look at this little thing! After looking around a little bit, it really looks like a Toshiba 5200 or very similar laptop, just with the LCD screen removed and a color CRT placed on top of the case. Interesting choice from LucasArts. - [Narrator] LucasArts has just released "Maniac Mansion 2: The Day of the Tentacle." LucasArts describes it as the world's first completely interactive cartoon.

Up next, video, audio, and virtual— - Oh, this is different. So "Day of the Tentacle" here. Look at this intro. This goes on longer than the one that's at retail, the one that got released. 'Cause the bird normally stops right about here and then it just chokes and dies. But this goes off to the edge and that shows more art than I've seen before.

Lemme just show you a little side by side comparison. This is interesting. [birds chirping] [bright music plays] [bird coughing] [bright music winds down] The pick of the week, "The Star Trek Screensaver."

Oh my goodness. "Saves your screen from deadly Klingon burn-in." Ha. - Despite all the computer goodies at this Consumer Electronics Show, there were lots of... - Ah! I love all of this. [Clint chuckling] Look at how cool everything looks! Augh.

- [Stewart] Noisy stereos for your car or van. - What the heck? What the heck is that? - [Stewart] And television sets for your car. New high-tech camcorders were hot items at CES.

This is the Panasonic IQ VHS camcorder. - The classic like, little bouncing thing for the steady cam. Yeah, dude. - [Stewart] Sharp was guessing that amateur video buffs... - Oh that's sweet. Look how big this screen is.

- [Stewart] Those tiny black and white view finders. Their new height camcorder, the ViewCam features a four-inch color display that you hold in front of you. The ViewCam doubles as a playback monitor and features an anti-glare screen that even works outdoors in the sun. - That, yeah, four-inch LCD, completely rotatable lens and everything.

In '93. Again, really cool. You don't normally see that kinda stuff until the late nineties. I wonder how much this thing cost.

Ohhh my goodness. Yeah. $2,199. So that right there at the end of '93 would've been like $4,800. - [Stewart] In the audio section, the hot item was the new MiniDisc player, miniature sized audio CDs that can play back and record. - MiniDisc? Yeah!

- [Stewart] Sony says they're combining the— - I guess '93, introduction to the MiniDisc right here. CES. Again, what an exciting show. - [Stewart] Convenience of a cassette deck with the quality of a CD. - Why not develop a new music format that has the benefits of both a cassette and the CD? - The heck's going on behind him? There's some chaos back there. Look at this motion rig. - Music on the go, just like the cassette is.

But like the CD, it's an optical disc as in, well, as having instant random access. - Not exactly like a CD. It's magneto-optical, not fully optical.

Whatever. I get what you're saying, dude. It's good. - [Stewart] The new MiniDisc players offer virtual no-skip shock resistance because of an LSI chip that stores up to 10 seconds of read-ahead music. So even if the deck skips, it gets corrected before you actually hear that portion of— - Sorry, Stewart, I didn't hear a thing you said. That's an effective demonstration of uh, your MiniDisc anti-skip.

Just bouncin' along. - [Stewart] The music. The mini optical disc is only... - Those little early players like that. They're all chunky, but they're still so small.

It's just such a cool format. I love MiniDisc. It's even cooler now than it was back then somehow. - MiniDisc will also grow in the future to become what we like to call more multimedia oriented.

There is room already on the MiniDisc for text mode displays. You can see the lyrics and even the titles of certain selections and recordings. And in the future, we even have the capability of using this for computer peripheral use. - And that they did.

MD Data and the subsequent like netMD and all those kind of things later on. But, yeah. I just want MiniDiscs to somehow come back.

- [Stewart] The saga of the video phone continued at CES. AT&T was again showing off the high-tech phone that lets you hear and see the person at the other end. - It feels like there was video phone stuff being shown off at every one of these shows from like 1980 to 2005 and like no one cared, at least in the consumer market. - [Stewart] It's essentially a TV set you wear on your head.

These glasses weigh only five ounces. - You picking your nose? Oh, he's adjusting something. - [Stewart] The unit is called the Virtual Vision Sport. The complete system includes the glasses and a belt pack that contains the TV tuner, battery, and an interface...

- This is just like the Sony Glasstron that I covered. So basically like, a virtual large screen that kind of projects in front of you. It's just little LCDs with fancy lenses. It's just showing composite video on a screen that kind of looks larger than you would think it would looking through. I don't know.

It's a neat effect. Like, I recommend people try it, but yeah, there's kind of a reason this never caught on. It's eyestrain city. - [Stewart] The Virtual Vision company says they're working on new versions of the device that can be used as displays for computers and video games.

- Yeah, okay. I don't think that ever happened. - [Stewart] The keynote speaker at CES was the president of a computer company, IBM.

Jack Keeler said the merger between the computer industry and the consumer electronics industry has already happened. - In the eyes of the consumer, we're not separate industries anymore. Technology has altered our two streams, and in fact, really to form a very, very powerful river. - Definitely the president of IBM.

- And those we serve. [Clint yawms] - Just how well we exploit that opportunity is up to us. - [Clint] Oh goodness. Bro. - [Stewart] In fact, IBM was of the major exhibitors here at the Consumer Electronics Show, proudly demonstrating their successful new LCD color display technology. IBM teamed up with Toshiba to develop this flat screen display. - What is this? - [Stewart] A 16-inch color panel using thin film transfer technology that can display 3D graphics.

- That would've been expensive as balls, man. 16-inch TFT color. - [Stewart] It's the industry's largest color LCD display. - Yeah. - [Stewart] The screen has 100 million transistors.

- Its density and graphics quality are 400% better than anything seen before in a flat panel this size. - '93, that is an insane technology. - It's really not farfetched to imagine an active matrix video wall in our office, in our home, in our child's classroom in the very near future.

- That's wild to say in '93. You look at CES and it's all about the video walls in these gigantic displays just everywhere for no friggin' reason. And, yeah, they're talking about it here in '93 and they're like, "We came out with one 16-inch panel. One day, they might be active matrix." [laughs in 20/20 hindsight] - [Stewart] The merger of computers and television was evident from the joint announcement by IBM, NBC, and New Media Corperation.

- What is this? - [Stewart] Of their new multimedia information service called NBC Desktop News. The service automatically reviews incoming video, text, and database information and presents a customized newscast to the user. - Dude, what is this? "NBC-IBM to offer news by computer," published November, 1992. News on demand system letting personal computers retrieve videotaped news reports from a library and view them on their computer screens.

Yeah, but how? How's this connecting? What is this doing? Like this is way before any kind of broadband in the home or whatever. "IBM developed the system's video server, a jukebox-like device that stores satellite delivered programming and distributes it when commanded by individuals using an IBM PC, equipped with a special circuit board card that allows the machine to show moving images." Dude, I want to find one of these! I obviously couldn't use it anymore, but that's cool as DICK. - [Stewart] The news is delivered in a multimedia format on your desktop computer, but the interface looks more like a typical TV newscast rundown. - Interface looks amazing.

That looks amazing. What is that? - [Stewart] Ecological credentials. This is the so-called Green Machine, a PS/2 computer with a small footprint that's made completely out of recyclable material.

- Isn't this the PS/2 E or whatever? Adrian's Digital Basement, there was a video that he did. - [Stewart] It has no internal fans and it consumes only 55 watts of power. Less than a typical light bulb and one fourth the energy required by a standard PC. - I didn't think I had ever heard of it before, but I guess I have. 'Cause I've definitely seen this at some point in the past, but let me look that up.

Yeah, there it is. Yeah, the first Energy Star desktop. I knew I'd seen that not too long ago. So apparently it came out as the IBM PS/2 E. Definitely check out Adrian's video.

This thing was awesome. In fact, yeah, I definitely commented cuz it's awesome. - [Stewart] Even PC network products were on display at the Consumer Electronics Show. This is Swift LAN, a bundle of two portable network adapters. - Okay, that's cool too.

But no. I just saw this here, "Moses," and they're talking about networking. Is this the Moses computer network people? Okay. This is another one of those weird late night internet computer rabbit holes I went down a while back and ended up buying stuff that I didn't need and haven't done a video on it yet. But yeah, Moses Computers, they made these networking kits that you could get for your LAN setup back in the day. But the naming is what sold me on it because it's hilarious.

So Moses is the name of the company and they put out these products called the Promised LAN and the Chosen LAN, like L-A-N. You get it?! Biblical networking stuff. And it looks like they also released like some sort of laptop solution.

- [Stewart] Consumer Electronics Show. This is Swift LAN, a bundle of two portable network adapters and software that lets you instantly create a two node peer-to-peer network between any pair of PCs. The network can be connected without opening up the computer and there is no need for an external power source. - That looks a lot like Laplink or something is if that's connecting through parallel.

All right, looking it up here. We got this Commodore Magazine archive on these different LAN companies, like Lantastic, just all the puns. But yeah, Promised LAN by Moses Computers and also did the Chosen LAN, the Swift LAN, which connects, yep. Okay.

That is a parallel port thing. That's fascinating. I didn't know that they did that. I just have the Promised LAN and Chosen LAN things for some reason.

- [Stewart] Finally, Telecraft Industries bragged that its new Pocket Faxxer will get into the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the world's smallest fax machine. - Okay. - [Stewart] It is pocket sized and weighs less than six ounces. - Ah, did it actually get into the "Guinness Book of World Records?" All right, so I did find this article from 1991 and it looks like, no, Guinness never acknowledged it. Or the company never paid Guinness to acknowledge the smaller Faxxer thing.

But the Ricoh PF-1 was recognized by Guinness in '91 as the world's smallest fax machine. But that was 11"x7"x2" so that's way larger. - [Stewart] The overriding theme at this Consumer Electronics Show was that the merger of computer companies with consumer...

- I think that's what was bouncing around in that other shot. It's like a Sony van! Yeah, dude. - [Stewart] With the ease of use of consumer appliances. IBM's Jack Keeler called it a unique form of trickle down technology.

- By combining our individual strengths, we have an opportunity together to create a world where entertainment and information is more mobile, more pervasive, more potent, more affordable, and a lot more fun. - [Stewart] For the "Computer Chronicles," I'm Stewart Cheifet. - Oh, I guess that's it. - [Announcer] "Computer Chronicles" was made possible... - Well, we don't get "Random Access" or any news or anything.

It just ended on that boring speech by boring IBM man talking about... trickle down electronics or something. Anyway. Yeah, I've always wanted to see

if I could find one of these, but I've never been able to, the "Computer Chronicles" VHS tapes you could request and like have them, yeah, sent to you, different episodes. And that is it for this "Computer Chronicles" watchalong/reaction kinda thing here on LGR. I hope that you enjoyed this.

Y'all definitely seemed to in the last one. So thank you for the positive responses and not so positive ones! I mean, some of y'all gave me some pointers and things, so hopefully we made it a little bit better this time. I don't know. We tried anyway.

If nothing else, I just think it's really fun actually, to go back and revisit these, you know, just on my own time. But also sharing them with y'all and diving into some of the details of the stuff that released and what it cost and the context of it. And especially when it ties into something happening currently like with CES, and then going back in time and seeing how it was 30-ish years ago or whatever. Yeah, I just think it's enjoyable. So I hope that you did, too! And thank you very much for watching LGR.

2025-01-18 20:40

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