Blu-ray Won, But At What Cost?

July 16, 2025 by John Elliot V 73 Comments

Over on their substack [ObsoleteSony] has a new article: The Last Disc: How Blu-ray Won the War but Lost the Future.

In this article the author takes us through the history of Blu-ray media and how under Sony’s stewardship it successfully defeated the competing format of the time, HD DVD. Sony started behind the eight ball but through some deft maneuvering managed to come out on top. Perhaps the most significant contributing factor was the inclusion of Blu-ray drives in the PlayStation 3.

The person leading the Blu-ray initiative for Sony was Masanobu Yamamoto, whose legacy was the compact disc. What was needed was a personal media format which could deliver for high-definition 1080p video. As the DVD format did not have the storage capacity required, new formats needed to be developed. The enabling technology for both Blu-ray and HD DVD media was the blue laser as it allowed for more compact encoding.

Sony’s Blu-ray format became the dominating format for high-definition personal media…just as physical media died.

Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for writing in about this one.

Repairing Vintage Sony Luggable Calculators

June 10, 2025 by Al Williams No comments

You might wonder why you’d repair a calculator when you can pick up a new one for a buck. [Tech Tangents] though has some old Sony calculators that used Nixie tubes, including one from the 1960s. Two of his recent finds of Sony SOBAX calculators need repair, and we think you’ll agree that restoring these historical calculators is well worth the effort. Does your calculator have a carrying handle? We didn’t think so. Check out the video below to see what that looks like.

The devices don’t even use modern ICs. Inside, there are modules of discrete parts encapsulated in epoxy. There isn’t even RAM inside, but there is a delay line memory, although it is marked “unrepairable.”

There is some interesting history about this line of calculators, and the video covers that. Apparently, the whole line of early calculators grew out of an engineer’s personal project to use transistors that were scrapped because they didn’t meet the specifications for whatever application that used them.

The handle isn’t just cosmetic. You could get an external battery pack if you really wanted a very heavy — about 14 pounds (6.3 kilograms) — and large portable calculator. We are sure the $1,000 retail price tag didn’t include a battery.

These machines are beautiful, and it is fun to see the construction of these old devices. You might think our favorite calculator is based on Star Trek. As much as we do like that, we still think the HP-41C might be the best calculator ever made, even in emulation.

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Playstacean Evolves The PSOne Into The Crab It Was Always Meant To Be

April 3, 2025 by Navarre Bartz 6 Comments

Odd hardware designs crop up in art and renders far more frequently than in the flesh, but console modder [GingerOfOz] felt the need to bring [Anh Dang]’s image of the inevitable carcinization of our gaming consoles to life.

Starting with the image as inspiration, [GingerOfOz] got to work in CAD, creating an entirely new shell for the battered PSOne he adopted for the project. The final product is slightly less curvy than the picture, but some artistic license was necessary to go from the page to the real world.

The enclosure itself looks straightforward, if a bit tedious, but the articulating crab controller is a work of art itself. He could’ve made the arms static or non-functional, but they’re a fully-functional PlayStation controller that can move around just like on your favorite crustacean at the beach, minus the pinching. We love this whimsical take on the console mod which is a breath of salty air to the continuous race to get increasingly complex consoles into handheld form, although there’s certainly nothing wrong with that!

If you’re looking for some other console mods, how about this Apple M1 inside a Wii or getting your old Ouya up-and-running again?

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The Phantom PSP: Crafting The Handheld Sony Never Sold

November 2, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 7 Comments

In the world of retro gaming, some legends never die – especially the ‘phantom’ PSP, Sony’s mythical handheld that never saw the light of day. While that elusive device remains a dream, hacker and gaming wizard [Kyle Brinkerhoff] built his own – and Macho Nacho made a video about it. His creation, which also goes by the name ‘Playstation Zero’, isn’t just another handheld emulator; it’s a powerful, custom-built system that revives the classics and plays them on a portable device that feels like the future.

Driven by a hunger for the ultimate gaming experience, [Kyle] set out to blend modern tech with retro gaming magic. He started with the Raspberry Pi, loading it up with emulation software for all the iconic systems—from NES and SNES to the Sega Genesis and Game Boy. But [Kyle] didn’t just slap on an off-the-shelf emulator; he dived into the code himself, optimizing and tweaking for lightning-fast responsiveness, so each game plays like it’s running on the original hardware. That’s hacking in true form: pushing the limits of software and hardware until they work exactly the way you want them to. Best of all: he published it all open source for others to use.

In the spirit of the Geneboy—a handheld Sega Genesis built by [Downing] and featured on Hackaday back in 2012—[Kyle]’s device pairs handheld emulation with the consoles all nineties kids wanted for Christmas. To capture the tactile thrill of vintage gaming, [Kyle] went a step further by designing and 3D-printing a custom controller layout that mimics the feel of the original systems. If watching someone neatly soldering a pcb sounds relaxing to you, don’t skip the middle part of his video. Although this little beast is packed with all bells and whistles you’d expect to see on a Raspberry Pi, it does lack one serious thing: battery life. But, [Kyle] is open about that, and hopes to improve on that in a future version.

If you want to see the full build, check out the video below. Or, immediately dive into [Kyle]’s Github, order the cute Takara shell, and get started!

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Meet The Optical Data Format You’ve Never Heard Of Before

October 10, 2024 by Lewin Day 80 Comments

You consider yourself a power user. You’ve got lots of files, and damn it, you like to keep them backed up. Around a decade ago, you gave up on burning optical discs, and switched to storing your files on portable hard drives. One local, one off-site, and a cloud backup just to be sure. You’re diligent for a home gamer, and that gets you done.

The above paragraph could describe any number of Hackaday readers, but what of bigger operations? Universities, businesses, and research institutions all have data budgets far in excess of what the individual could even imagine. What might shock you is that some of them are relying on optical media—just not the kind you’ve ever heard of before. Enter Sony’s Optical Disc Archive.

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How Sony Mastered The Transistor

September 4, 2024 by Al Williams 35 Comments

When you think of Sony, you probably think of a technology company that’s been around forever. However, as [Asianometry] points out, it really formed in the tough years after World War II. The two people behind the company’s formation were an interesting pair. One of them was a visionary engineer and one was a consummate businessman.

While it is hard to imagine today, securing a license to produce transistors was difficult in the early days. What’s worse is, even with the license, it was not feasible to use the crude devices in a radio.

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A USA Feature For A Europe-Market Sony Receiver

August 16, 2024 by Jenny List 23 Comments

A feature of many modern network-connected entertainment devices is that they will play streamed music while on standby mode. This so-called “network standby”is very useful if you fancy some gentle music but don’t want the Christmas lights or the TV. It was a feature [Caramelfur] missed on their Sony AV receiver, something especially annoying because it’s present on the US-market equivalent of their European model. Some gentle hackery ensued, and now the rece3iver follows its American cousin.

A first examination of the firmware found the two downloads to be identical, so whatever differences had to be in some form of configuration. Investigating what it exposed to the network led to a web server with device configuration parameters. Some probing behind the scenes and a bit of lucky guesswork identified the endpoint to turn on network standby, and there it was, the same as the US market model. Should you need it, the tooling is in a GitHub repository.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen identical hardware being shipped with different firmwares in Europe from that in the USA, perhaps our most egregious example was a Motorola phone with a much earlier Android version for Europeans. We don’t understand why manufacturers do it, in particular with such an innocuous feature as network standby. If you have a Sony receiver you can now fix it, but you shouldn’t have to.

RJ45, Devcore, CC0.