Mr. Pop History – It went something like this. CD’s came out in 1982 and by the late 1980’s, were becoming a force to be reckoned with. About that time, digital audiotape and digital cassette tape came out. DAT offered a vast improvement over tape fidelity and survived into the 2000’s, but was never that popular. About the same time, the digital compact cassette from Philips came out, coinciding with the arrival of Sony’s MiniDisc system – a smaller CD that used mp-3 technology. DAT and DCC’s were totally different tape systems. They weren’t even the same size.

Neither one of these technologies took off here in the States, although the mini-disc was pretty popular in Japan.