Ah yes, the Panasonic Discman, the prime successor to the Phillips Walkman.
Glad I’m not the only one who got a twitchy eye reading that.
I thought to myself for the briefest of moments: Am I being Mandela Effect’d?
I am really confused now. I know Discman is Sony’s name, but generally people refer to any such portable CD player as “discman”. At least where I live.
And it’s not just regular people, even shops refer to them as dicmans.
Here are some examples to back my claims:examples
https://www.alza.sk/discmany/18886534.htm
https://aukro.sk/discmany
https://www.mall.sk/discmany
https://discmany.heureka.sk/
https://www.okay.sk/collections/discmanyThe only exception seems to be Nay, referring to this category as “Portable CD players”.
That’s very interesting! Around me, we called them CD Players, it must be a regional thing. Many people called the portable cassette player a Walkman, even though that was a lineup of products from Sony.
Looking on US Amazon, there are several players that have Discman, Walkman, or both in the titles. Sony must not be enforcing their trademarks (wrong term?) for the first non-sponsored listing being called:
2000mAh Rechargeable Discman CD Player:Walkman CD Player…Yepp, we all called them Discman back in the day regardless of the brand.
I believe other brands have the same problem.
Velcro is a good example.
Yeah we called them all discman too. A Kleenex/tissue situation imo.
Edit: though I do concede an official label in some sort of display probably should use the generic form “portable CD player” or something similar.
generally people refer to any such portable CD player as “discman”. At least where I live.
Yeah, and there’s people that call them Kleenex, Velcro, and iPads. That doesn’t make them right.
There’s no confusion - Discman is the model of Sony’s portable CD players. People using the term incorrectly is simply that.
At least it’s not a sony ipod
Wasn’t the actual “Discman” a Sony product? In the same line as their Walkman cassette players, but for CDs?
I had a Walkman back in the day; but never an official Discman player. All my CD players were pieces of shit 😩
Yes. The pictured item is a portable cd player, not a Discman.
Apparently SL-SK420 or whatever that says didn’t have the same ring to it.
This is an interesting phenomenon called a proprietary eponym, where a brand name becomes synonymous with a product.
Just like walkman and disc man, in my language we call a car satnav a “TomTom” after the brand that popularised it here.
Here is the scene from the Clerks cartoon about adhesive strips.
Yeap, Discman was the name used by Sony up until around the year 2000, when they changed it to “CD Walkman”.
This thing is so recent it could play MP3s… The first Discman was released in 1984. I’m actually really confused why they picked such a recent version, the technology was almost phased out when this thing was released. FFS the original iPod came out a year before this thing…
Probably because they couldn’t purchase the other ones at reasonable prices anywhere.
My guess is that this is just one of a number of CD players they have, and they want to show how the technology progressed.
Is this your kid nephew’s “museum”?
“Old” is not 20 years and that is not a goddamn discman. Sorry, Ralphie. You can do better.
I think you’re missing the point. Museums collect this stuff not because it’s old, but because it was significant to people at the time and they want to collect it for prosperity. Imagine if they waited until 2050 and then said “Shit! Wasn’t there a cd player we all liked at some point? Does anyone have one?” They should have one, they’re a museum! Many museums will be maintaining an iPhone collection for example.
Regardless, most people under 30 likely do not have access to a cd player, and I’d guess many never owned one. It’s not strange for that to be in a museum even without what I’ve said above.
I disagree with you. In the tech industry, 20 years is ancient. If you were born in 1985, 20 years prior that was 1965, and the tech of that decade was very different from the 80s tech.
Imagine someone living in a year where calculator watches were already a thing, and when in a museum displaying one of those radios in wooden cabinets and knobs with the style of the time they said “that’s not old!!!”
Sorry to be the one breaking the bad news, but you might be old yourself if you think like that. Don’t sweat it, happens to all of us.
Museum ≠ old.
I’m sure there are mp3 players in museums as well.
The Colorado Railroad Museum has railroad crossing signals donated by BNSF that are only a few years old. Museums will gladly accept both old and new.
Yup. I’m pretty sure the Computer Museum out in Mountain View has stuff on display that’s less than 5 years old in some of their “progress of technology” type displays. I think when I last went there a couple years ago, for gaming history they had all the latest (at the time) consoles as well. It was pretty funny seeing something like a PS4 in a history museum though.
Laughs/Cries in cassette based Walkman.
Hold onto that. The cassette mechanisms that are produced now are absolute trash. There’s literally no manufacturer on earth who makes a good one anymore.
Wasn’t Discman a Sony brand?
Correct. This isn’t labeled correctly.
I’m pretty sure that’s walkman.
Both Walkman and Discman were Sony brands.
You are correct
Yes. Just like Walkman is.
I had that exact model. Only CD player I ever bought new, portable or otherwise.
I had the exact same model !
I still have working cassette player!
That was legit the best MP3 CD player. It never skips no matter how much you shake it and it builds a different, but consistent shuffle playlist depending on what song was playing when you hit shuffle.
Couldn’t they have picked one from the 90s at least
I had that exact model. And I was cool, wearing my over the ear headphones.
I’ve seen consoles like the Sega Genesis and the Master System in a temporary exposition and end up taking photos since I haven’t seen one for so long lmao
I like the design, I got a Sony CD Walkman last month, and I love it.
