Discman was

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

's brand name for

portable CD player A portable CD player is a portable audio player used to play compact discs. The first audio player released was the Discman D-50 by Sony.Lungu, R"History of the Portable Audio Player." 2008-11-27. Features The basic features of a portable CD ...

s. The first Discman, the Sony D-50 or D-5 (depending on region), was launched in 1984. The brand name changed to CD Walkman, initially for Japanese lineups launched between October 1997 and March 1998, and then entirely in 2000. Discman and CD Walkman players are no longer produced.

Background

Prior to the development of the

Compact Disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...

, cassette tapes were the dominant form of audio storage in the then-fledgling portable audio industry. In 1979 Sony introduced the

Walkman Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...

in Japan. When Sony realized the potential of the CD, the Walkman was promoted to mainstream buyers.

Original development

Sony improved the design of the CDP-101 CD player which was launched in 1982, reducing the power consumption and the number of parts needed and making it smaller. The cost was reduced to between 50,000 and 60,000

yen The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar (US$) and the euro. It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the e ...

, in what was called the "CD CD Project", which stood for 'Compact Disc Cost Down' Project. By August 1983 the company was able to produce a CD player which was one-tenth the size of the original, and a portable CD player became a possibility. The aim was to create a player that was the same size as four CD cases stacked on top of each other. A piece of wood 13.4 cm across and about 4 cm thick was shown to the staff to illustrate the dimensions. The final design did not incorporate a power source and had a 9-volt (positive outer) coaxial jack on the rear. This allowed the use of an EBP-9LC wall adapter, a carrying sleeve which held six primary C cells, or rechargeable cells which could be charged in situ. The AC-D50

AC adapter An AC adapter or AC/DC adapter is a type of external power supply, often enclosed in a case similar to an AC plug. Other common names include wall wart, power brick, wall charger, and power adapter. Adapters for battery-powered equipment may ...

was also available, which attached to the rear of the D-50/D-5 and allowed it to be powered from AC input at 110, 120, 220, or 240 V, 50 or 60 Hz, 9 W with a DC output of up to 500 mA. The AC-D50 also offered line level audio out, presented as two RCA jacks.

Release

The D-50/D-5 was launched in November 1984, two years after mass production of CDs began. The unit offered the same functions as the full-size CDP-101 player, but came without a remote control and the repeat function of the full-size unit. The D-50/D-5 retailed for 49,800 yen (US$350 in 1984), approximately half the price of the CDP-101. The D-50/D-5 sparked public interest in CDs, boosting their popularity, and within a year and a half had become profitable. Early production units of the D-50/D-5 did not carry the Discman brand and were instead referred to as "CD Compact Player". The Discman brand was applied later because of the unit's portability and similarity to the cassette

. This brand name was used for

's portable CD players until 2000.

Impact

The release of the D-50/D-5 sparked public interest in CDs as an audio format, and in the audio industry in general. A portable CD market was created and the price of competing CD players from other manufacturers dropped. The CD industry experienced sudden growth, with the number of CD titles available dramatically increasing.

Variants

ATRAC CD Walkman

The ATRAC CD Walkman played ATRAC CDs in addition to audio CDs. The ATRAC CD contained audio encoded in ATRAC3 or ATRAC3plus. Most if not all models also played

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

s. The D-NE1 from 2003 was one of the earliest models.

Video CD Discman

Video CD Discman, later rebranded as VCD Walkman, was a line of portable

Video CD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the ...

players. They were able to output the audio from video CDs as usual, but were also equipped with an additional 3.5mm audio/video-to-

RCA connector The RCA connector is a type of electrical connector commonly used to carry audio and video signals. The name ''RCA'' derives from the company Radio Corporation of America, which introduced the design in the 1930s. The connectors male plug and ...

output.

Others

*Intelligent Discman was a line of Discman players that played

CD-i The Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-I, later CD-i) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, data storage format that was mostly developed and marketed by Dutch company Philips. It was created as an extension of Compact Disc Di ...

format discs. *CD-ROM Discman: Both Sony and Panasonic released portable CD players with a

PCMCIA card In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and develop ...

connector for use as an external CD-ROM drive on a computer, though with a lower speed than dedicated

computer drive In computing, mass storage refers to the storage of large amounts of data in a persisting and machine-readable fashion. In general, the term is used as large in relation to contemporaneous hard disk drives, but it has been used large in relati ...

s. *DVD Discman, later rebranded as DVD Walkman, was a line of portable

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

players.

Gallery

Sony D-50/D-5

File:Sony Discman D 50.jpg, Sony D-50 without the Discman brand. File:Sony D50 Discman PCB.JPG, Sony D-50 with its rear cover removed, revealing the main PCB. File:Sonyd50.JPG, Sony D-50 with the optional rechargeable battery station. File:Sony D50 Discman Inside.JPG, Sony D-50 with its main PCB flipped up.

References

;Notes ;Sources * *

External links

* - Reference site containing details and pictures of various Discman and Walkman models. * {{Sony Corp Sony products Consumer electronics brands Japanese inventions Portable audio players Products introduced in 1984 Walkman