Gallery: From reel-to-reel to Blu-ray

LONDON–Audio visual technology stalwart TDK showed off its history with its TDK Life on Record trailer, which rolled in to London’s Covent Garden last week. Silicon.com captures the company’s technology along with other famous pieces of hardware from each of the last four decades.\r\n

\r\nHere’s a record player and reel-to-reel tape recorder that uses TDK tape. A retro table lamp also makes an appearance.\r\n

\r\nPhoto credits: Tim Ferguson/silicon.com

This is one of the earliest home video recorders from the 1970s. It was made by JVC and uses TDK tapes.

Moving on a bit we have an Apple Macintosh Classic II computer along with an early cordless phone. \r\n\r\n

A TDK VHS videocassette–first launched in 1978–also adds to the theme.

An Atari 2600 games console also makes an appearance in the 1980s section of the TDK trailer. The console contains a copy of the classic Space Invaders game.

Now we’re in the 1990s when Britpop ruled the world and the Nintendo Gameboy (right) ruled the playground following its UK introduction in 1990.\r\n

\r\nAn early Motorola flip phone joins a Gameboy on an inflatable chair – another classic 1990s design.

The 1990s also saw the advent of rewritable CDs, while the trusty recordable tape continued to soldier on.\r\n

\r\nCompiling a mix tape remained one of the most popular past times during the era, especially with the popularization of the Sony Walkman–an example of which is also pictured–which meant, for the first time, you could take your music wherever you went.

The 2000s saw the rewritable DVD become another popular way of sharing films and music. TDK introduced its first recordable DVD (pictured) in 1998–complete with a 3.95GB capacity.

Sony introduced the MiniDisc in 1992 with an advert that featured rock band Reef, giving them their big break.\r\n

\r\nTDK manufactured MiniDiscs as well as digital tapes for mini video cameras like the Hitachi model pictured on the right.

Bringing us bang up to date, TDK also showed off its Blu-ray technology in this small cinema area in the Life on Record trailer.

This demo in the cinema area compares the picture quality of a standard DVD (on the left of the white line) with Blu-ray technology.