Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1487 MD Player

If there is no Hu Zhengming, Duan Yun will not be able to touch the threshold of investing in Germany in the short term, and if he wants to enter Germany, he can only rely on local third-party companies, which also has huge risks, so from this point of view, Hu Zhengming gave Duan Yun The cloud helps a lot.

After more than 20 hours of long-distance flight, Duan Yun was very tired, but that night, he still chatted with Hu Zhengming about many things, including international new technologies and the establishment of R&D centers in the United States and Europe.

Hu Zhengming provided Duan Yun with a lot of valuable advice. Another point is that Hu Zhengming also has a very wide network of contacts in European academic circles. After all, he is a professor at the University of Berkeley and has a great influence in the microelectronics industry in the United States and the world. Fame, so no matter which country in Europe, he is a guest of local universities and educational institutions.

After the conversation that night, Duan Yun decided not to set up a research and development center in Germany for the time being, but to establish a laboratory in cooperation with the local university first, and then open an independent research and development center when the time is right.

Duan Yun did this not only because of Hu Zhengming's advice to him, but more importantly because the Cold War has not yet completely ended, East Germany and West Germany have not completely merged, and before the local political situation is completely stable, Duan Yun is Don't dare to invest lightly.

On the second day, Duan Yun took a day off at the hotel, and on the third day, Duan Yun and his party visited the IFA Berlin International Consumer Electronics Show held in the suburbs of Berlin together with Hu Zhengming.

This is the second time for Duan Yun to participate in the exhibition, and this time the exhibition made him feel refreshed.

Compared with the CES exhibition in the United States, IFA is much smaller in scale and less influential than CES. It is precisely because of this that this exhibition is set to be held every two years. Logically speaking, the last exhibition was held in 1989 Yes, the next one should be in 1991, but the organizer made an exception and held the exhibition in advance this year, and invited many media reporters to visit and report, and the scene was very lively.

At this exhibition, Duan Yun saw many products that appeared at the CES exhibition at the beginning of the year. Many large multinational manufacturers most likely moved their exhibits from the CES exhibition in the United States to the IFA exhibition, so Duan Yun felt a sense of importance. The feeling of returning to the CES exhibition.

However, as the largest consumer electronics technology exhibition in Europe, the organizing committee of IFA did give European companies a chance to play a leading role. After Duan Yun and Ho Chi Minh entered the European exhibition area, they suddenly felt bright. Top technology companies, including many small and medium-sized start-ups, exhibited high-tech products, which also reflected the prosperity of European technology development.

However, in Duan Yun’s view, these products displayed by European manufacturers are not technically better than those of the United States and Japan, but their products have carried out a certain localization design, which is more suitable for the European market. Such electronic components also left a very deep impression on Duan Yun, especially some old European companies that have been established for more than a century. Their technical resistance is indeed very strong, and the products they produce still have certain technical advantages over the United States and Japan.

However, in this exhibition, what impressed Duan Yun the most was not these products of European companies, but an electronic product from Sony Corporation of Japan that left a deep impression on him, and this product was an MD player.

MD player is definitely an epoch-making electronic product in this era. The Chinese name is called mini disc player. When memory is very expensive and MP3 has not officially appeared, MD player can be said to be the best audio player in the world , it has a large capacity and better sound quality.

In the mid-80s, CD players had already appeared in Japan, but the CD players were relatively large, larger than the Walkman, and a CD disc could only play 80 minutes of audio files, so even if the CD player The player has more advanced technology and better sound quality, but it has never replaced the tape player, and it has been technologically updated.

But the MD player is a high-tech product that combines opto-electromagnetic technology. It claims to have the sound quality of a CD and is much smaller than a CD player.The audio code used is atrac 3 format, which removes the frequencies that are not sensitive to the human ear just like MP3, so as to minimize the audio file.

In addition, compared with the CD player, the volume of the MD player is almost half smaller than that of the ordinary tape player on the market. It can be easily put into the pocket and is very convenient to carry.

It's just that the MD player was a bit out of date, and it was destined to be a tragic product. When it was just popular, it encountered a fledgling MP3 player. Although MD has good sound quality and its capacity can be infinitely large by changing discs, but MP3 It is more convenient and does not require recording. MD recording was a nightmare at the time. How long you play music means how long you have to record. For mp3, you only need to copy the mp3 file into the player, which is a blow to dimensionality reduction.Although mp3 had many shortcomings at that time, this one alone conquered many people.

In later generations, CD players had domestic models, but MDs did not have domestic models. On the one hand, the audio format was patented, and on the other hand, the manufacturing threshold was relatively high. In such a small volume, the added mechanical parts were very sophisticated. , This is not something that domestic companies can do, and the price is very expensive, so most Chinese people are very unfamiliar with MD players, or have never even seen it.

At this time, the MD player has just been developed, and there are only a few samples. Otherwise, Duan Yun will definitely buy one and take it back for research.

In fact, the sales of such expensive electronic products will not be very good in China. Even in foreign countries, more people prefer high-quality and low-cost tape players. Therefore, sometimes it is not that the more advanced the product technology, the easier it is. In order to achieve commercial success, many high-tech products eventually become niche playthings, so when technology is transformed into commodities, cost-effectiveness is the biggest consideration.

In contrast, the domestic computer market is the same. Some computers with backward performance can still sell well in the country. The main reason for this is the low price. On the other hand, ordinary consumers do not need such high-performance products at all. The same, so the localization design of the product is also very important.

It took only one day for Duan Yun and Hu Zhengming to visit the entire exhibition area. According to their next plan, they will go to Bavaria, Germany, and meet with the leaders of the University of Munich to discuss the establishment of a laboratory together. matter.

(End of this chapter)