What item did you want but never came to the market?

Maccy

Maccy

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A cheese grater that does the work for me, and doesn't leave the more mature cheese in a crumbled mess or bits of cheese stuck to my hands.

And no, buying pre-grated cheese is not an option!
 

HangTime

HangTime

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Good thread. I'd say:

  • Self-driving cars (fully authorised, safe, no need for driving license etc)
  • Middle-ware layer for computer games that let's you define keys for common functions that a lot of games use (e.g. move foward, move back), to avoid having to redefine keys independently for each game
  • Self-regulating toasters that perfectly toast a variety of bagels, toast etc without burning or undercooking (maybe they already exist but just uncommon/very expensive). In fact you could extend this concept to all forms of cooking, basically click a button and it will cook it perfectly and tell you when it is done.
  • Small affordable high capacity batteries for smartphones etc. I heard about such new battery tech a few years ago but it doesn't seem to have come to fruition. Basically making charging/replacement a periodic inconvenience rather than something you need to do every couple of days.
  • In the vein of SED TVs mentioned above (never heard of before), computer monitors with extremely low latency, high refresh rates but not massively bulky like CRTs
When I was a child, I had this vision of having speakers in every room with a central hub holding all my music, that you could control remotely. Basically I was thinking of smart speakers but there was no internet, mp3s, wifi etc back then so in my head it was more like you had a massive multi-changer cd unit in the basement/loft or something with wiring or radio broadcast to every room and then voice control (the one thing I did get right). Main use case in mind was listening to music in the bath, in those days I used to have to run a cable from outside the room (no plug sockets in bathroom) with an old fashioned ghetto blaster but then you'd have to get out the bath to change the tape etc.
 

BowdonUK

BowdonUK

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Richard - London said:
Even if each episodes was only 30 minutes you would only have to get up every 3 hours? is that really that hard?
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A lot of inventions are made for comfort.

I remember the days were we didn't have remote controls. We'd have to get up and walk to the tv if we wanted to change the channel or turn the volume up or down.
 

dcsarge

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BowdonUK said:
I'll start off the thread by saying a multi-disc dvd/blu-ray player.

I think there has been ones made, though I've only ever seen it with music cd's on a hifi player.

I've always wondered why there was never a premium product on the market with dvd/blu-ray players, especially with so many boxsets containing multiple discs these days.

If I binge watch a tv show boxset they usually only have 6 episodes per disc, so I have to keep getting up and changing the disc.

As anyone else wanted a device that was either never invented or never came on the market available for you to buy? Or if it did was it too expensive?
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Although it was technically one of those all-in-one home theatre systems I did have a Panasonic DVD unit that was essentially that.

It was a (massive) five disc tray loader with each disc having it's own space on the internal turntable. The player could be used on it's own directly to a tv but was part of propriety subwoofer, centre and tower surround speaker setup. The player connected to the powered sub by a rather thick ribbon cable. I don't recall if it had any other outputs to be of use on it's own but it did have optical in and a few other ports. I must have bought it a good seventeen years ago and kept it about five years.
 

BowdonUK

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dcsarge said:
Although it was technically one of those all-in-one home theatre systems I did have a Panasonic DVD unit that was essentially that.

It was a (massive) five disc tray loader with each disc having it's own space on the internal turntable. The player could be used on it's own directly to a tv but was part of propriety subwoofer, centre and tower surround speaker setup. The player connected to the powered sub by a rather thick ribbon cable. I don't recall if it had any other outputs to be of use on it's own but it did have optical in and a few other ports. I must have bought it a good seventeen years ago and kept it about five years.
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I think I remember those. Quite expensive at the time.

I never understood why they didn't become a mass market item. When dvd's become a big thing, especially box sets, and the dvd players were selling so many players they became dirt cheap to make, I'm surprised even today there isn't a £100 - £150 multi disc player on the market. I would have thought it would sell well.
 

dcsarge

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BowdonUK said:
I think I remember those. Quite expensive at the time.

I never understood why they didn't become a mass market item. When dvd's become a big thing, especially box sets, and the dvd players were selling so many players they became dirt cheap to make, I'm surprised even today there isn't a £100 - £150 multi disc player on the market. I would have thought it would sell well.
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I think I paid about £500 and I could have got started on a decent separates setup for that but I liked the idea of a multidisciplinary system, like you, for boxsets.

It worked well, so long as young hands didn't get mucky discs in it or pop one the wrong way up, then it could get rather temperamental about loading anything at all or opening again :D.

I suppose the knowledge that people either stream digitally or rip disks stops anyone bothering with what would become a rather niche item. A multidisciplinary server has probably missed it's day but the idea does remind of the 6 disc CD autochanger I had in my Rover 620 around the same time. I think I had an issue with changing discs :p.
 
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