Discoveries in the latest 'Philips DCC News' worth investigating?

Technology
1

In the latest ‘Philips DCC News’ nr 14, released to the patreons, I found 2 items that piqued my interest:

  1. pg. 4: ‘Philips introduces new antipiracy device for DCC.’
    'the Source ldentification (SlD) code will immediately appear on the PC’s monitor. ’ Apparently it identifies the duplicator and also shows the Standard Recording Code, catalogue number, and the table of contents.
    Interesting, not?

  2. pg. 8: ‘New DCC System Description available. The System Description consists of two volumes: Volume 1 is the basic DCC System Description, and Volume ll contains the relevant drawings.’
    Maybe this is the holy grail that we (@Jac, @Max etc) are looking for as the holy grail?

-Philip.

2 Likes
2
  1. We know it is supposed to be stored there. I find it amusing that Philips thought anyone would pirate DCC.
  2. We have copies of two variants of the System Description, one in English, that was donated to the musuem (Philips DCC System Description Draft : Philips Consumer Electronics B.V. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive) and I was able to purchase one in German last year. The holy grail we are looking for is a mastering workstation, knowledge isn’t the bottleneck.
2 Likes
3

Mid 90ies there were illegal cd’s you could buy from the Braun MTV series. Every month the hits from the top 40.

There was also, a rare, DCC version. We have one at the Museum.

3 Likes
4

@max

  1. I think everywhere there is a duplication or production facility ‘illegal’ things happen
  2. I saw I already had that document, yes. Haven’t come around to reading it though hahaha hmmmm…

-Philip.

2 Likes
5

The AUXINFO format allows storing of the 12-character ISRC code (which is also used for CD’s), a 13-character UPC/EAN code (basically the bar code that is also used on the packaging), and the date and time of recording.

I think the recorder identification is stored in the SYSINFO data. I haven’t confirmed it yet but probably every DCC cassette contains data about the recorder that was used to create it. The first thing that happens in the DCC730/951 when it powers up is that the front panel sends a string to the digital board controller containing “PHIL-0001-NL-951/730DDU2113U032”. This is probably stored as the recorder string on every cassette that you record with it.

We don’t have the drawings that belong to the English system description but the drawings are not necessary to understand the format. As Max already mentioned, the German system description has some of the drawings that are missing (notably the one with the location and numbering of the holes in the DCC cassette) and there’s also the 3rd generation circuit description.

We currently only have datasheets for the 3rd generation chip set (and some of the earlier chips but not all). I understand that @DRDCC is in contact with someone who will provide datasheets for the earlier chipsets, so we’re working on that.

My website digitalcompactcassette.github.io has a lot more information but I admit, it could be better organized. If only I had some more time…

===Jac

4 Likes