8:32 “Scanning…4250%” Wow, that’s… ambitious 😄

My mate's parents owned a slightly fancy chinese restaurant, and lived above it. We used to play Dreamcast up there, beg the cooks to give us spring rolls from the kitchen, and watch customers on the cctv. His parents left him in charge of the bgm playlist (a laptop with itunes... definitely didnt pay for licensing) and he added loads of Aphex Twin to it, which they ended up loving! Good times.

Years ago I worked for a company that installed BGM systems. As early as 1999 they were using satellite systems and we mainly installed them in large retail chain stores. It was just a tower PC running custom windows software with a satellite receiver card connected to a dish and a sound card connected to the PA system. Specific chain stores would have custom announcements about sales, current specials, etc interspersed between the music. It really was plug and play and completely automated and once installed, the store staff never had to touch the system.

If I was stuck on a cruise ship and they had one CD playing over and over, I'd probably jump off the ship. Thanks Mat.

As someone who has worked in a supermarket in late 1990's - early 2000's I confirm that the random order of playing music as well as a larger library of songs to play from are extremely important for the sanity of people working in such jobs. Just imagine that every single day for 10-12 hours straight you'll be hearing the same 3 hours of music on repeat in the same god damn order. I can't stress enough that after a couple of weeks this becomes the soundtrack of your life that haunts you with it's repetiveness and slowly but surely kills your soul in the process. 🤣

“I made that last one up… it was 6%” almost caused a laughing spit take with my morning coffee. Bravo, Mat 🤣

I'm surprised it's not running an ARM system-on-chip. That Vortex86 part is an odd one, basically a very fast 486 workalike. It shows up a lot in weird embedded systems running weird legacy software.

I worked in a diy store part time in the 70s. The background music system always played faster beat ‘hurry-up’ music in the last 15 minutes or so before closing time. Apparently it encouraged shoppers to make their final purchases and make their way to the checkouts.

That little box while sterile on the outside contains contains OCEANS of ingenuity. Over the decades, thousands of man-years have been poured into developing the hardware and the software to the point where you just plug it in and it starts playing.

The bane of all shop workers.

This is an 486 based processor, ideal for retro gaming! Your Background Music Player DOES run DOOM!

I work in a large chain of small clothing stores. Our BGM system is actually CD-based in some way. Every so often, we're sent a CD that we simply throw into a player to update. It doesn't play *from* the CD, but rather seems to download the music and play on its own.

5% death metal - that would shake costumers a bit up indeed! not bad idea I must say!

I know those things! A few months back I had to help transferring the IT gear for a popular kitchenware chain in Australia to another store. While all I needed to do was their computer system, there was another guy there for the sound system and bits and pieces that fell out of our contract. One of them was this sound system. He needed to buy an adapter so it’d play in their store speakers which was installed years before they moved in.. I hung around and helped the kid cause he was young and had no idea, he came from a world where everything is hdmi or Bluetooth

[5:52] Stepping through the video frames I see that the SD card is mounted as an EXT4 filesystem. This is a linux filesystem. You can probably copy the SD card if you block-level copy it; on linux I would use the "dd" command to do that. Anyway, thank you for your videos, they are always worthwhile!

Similar to the Music on Hold systems for phone systems, those used to make you think you were hearing things as they had little speakers in them so if you were working in a server room with one plugged into a phone system you would keep hearing voices faintly in the background, even when the place was empty used to freak a few people out for a while till they got used to them

I worked at Toys "R" Us back around 2001-2005, and their BGM was a cassette tape that ran about 4 hours before repeating. That wasn't too bad. Yes, it got a bit repetitive by the time the next tape arrived; tapes were changed monthly. The Christmas ('04?) tapes arrived at the end of October, to start November 1. Two tapes, swapped weekly, to take us to New Year's. Of course, they lost the second tape immediately.

Retrotech nerd here. DM&P is what's left of ALi/ULi back in the day (i.e., the 90s), and the Vortex86 chip is... interesting. It's basically a 1st Gen Pentium by way of what's called 'architecture' (the way the chip works) -- but, it doesn't implement a particular instruction ("CMOV", Conditional Move), at the binary/"assembly language" (the actual instructions the chip itself knows) that, while _technically_ optional within the 5x86 spec, in practice is the difference between a 486 CPU and a 586 (Pentium 1) CPU. This effectively makes it, functionally, a 486 that implements a bunch of 586 instructions but isn't really a proper 586 -- sort of like how the NEC V20 and V30, a decade or so earlier, implemented the 80186/80188 instruction set on top of the 8086/8088 set and basically acted as much better 8086/8088 CPUs than the original. The Vortex86 design is actually at least the third generation of this particular CPU design, as well -- its predecessor was the SiS 550, back when Silicon Integrated Systems was even vaguely relevant in the PC world. As far as I can tell, while they still exist, they haven't done anything since 2007, and the last half-decade-or-so up to that point they had moved away from CPUs and chipsets entirely, and were focusing on... touch panel controllers for LCD touchscreens. (Pffft.) For what it's worth, the Vortex86 started as a special variant of the SIS55x series (yes, it was a series), integrating Smart Card and MMC/Memory Stick controllers, which ran at 166MHz and was called the M6217D. DM&P at the time was actually Jan Yin Chan Electronics Co LTD, out of Taiwan... eventually they swallowed up other companies to become DM&P Group. However, the SiS55x design did NOT originate with that company... they actually bought it, along with the rest of the company that created it, when they acquired Rise Technology in 1999. Rise had been formed in 1993, and produced the mP6 CPU, which doesn't appear to be well-documented, but from what information I can find, appears to be an independent implementation of the 5x86 design (i.e., not licensed from Intel, but designed in-house to act identically, outwardly, even though the ground-up design internal to the chip is entirely different). It implements the Pentium MMX version of things, but Rise unfortunately took so long to develop the chip that by the time it was _finally_ released in 1998, the market it was designed for was essentially dead and gone -- the second generation of Pentium-class chips (Pentium II and AMD K7 / early Athlon/Duron/etc) were already out. Despite their best efforts, Rise just couldn't compete in the big leagues, and SiS snapped them up not long after. Systems like this EBox PC are actually kind of sought after in the retrotech community by people who want a relatively-simple-to-set-up-and-run "nostalgia box" for later DOS and pre-XP Windows games. Something like this would run most adventure games from the era (back when they really were a thing) quite well... not sure about something like Quake, but since you can run DOOM on a friggin HP printer as long as it has a screen somewhere, _that_ shouldn't be an issue... basically this is the equivalent of a _seriously_ hopped-up, hot-rodded 486 from about the mid-90s, that can play most games from about five years before and through about five years after, give-or-take. It's usually fairly simple, relatively speaking, to get Windows 98 or 2000 running on one of these, with full hardware support, and only the hardcore purists will care that, for example, Sound Blaster audio is emulated, rather than being an actual hardware implementation -- but, this sort of thing isn't for such folks anyways. Now you know.

14:12 I couldn’t help but picturing you and the misses lumbering to move the Seeburg while the cat stares bemusedly.

I worked at one of the original "theme" restaurants and besides music we played video clips and they were all on a huge (big as a old school jukebox ) Laser disc multi disc player for both the music and video if I remember maybe 50 laser discs and every month we would get new ones to replace the film trailers of upcoming films. The DJ booth also had top of the line CD players with pitch control and 2 Technic 1200 turntables and Urei Mixers. It was an amazing set up for the late 90s

We had an Imagesound player back when I worked at DW Sports. Everything was delivered by the network connection. We'd periodically get updates but on the whole it was the same mind numbing royalty free music you can still hear in Poundland/B&M/The Range now.

Not sure which system my old work used to have but you could tell which manager was on shift by the genre of music they'd switch the system to. If more than one was there they'd keep going back and changing between genres. It was kind of funny hearing it suddenly cut to another song throughout the day. A bit of a musical battle of sorts between my managers.

The Vortex86 is a modern 486, so the lack of PAE and x64 extensions is expected. It'll DOS game like a monster, though.

A new techmoan video is always more than just "some fun"

Speaking of "Just get a Raspberry Pi", I was long wanting something like Mat's Sony digital music player, but they are not cheap. We did look at a "Brennan B3" but it doesn't connect to the amplifier without a separate DAC, so you'd end up with loads of extra cables and power supplies So end of 2023, I put together a Raspberry Pi, attached DAC on a board (HAT connector), flashed a distro/player called MoOde Audio and added a stick of music. Great fun, now I can not only play though the speakers, but I can get that background music effect throughout the flat, controlled from a web front end I take Matt's point though. Handy as it is, it does not have the delight of a record player the size of his Bob dishwasher doing its thing

On a side note for a BGM fail: my place of work played BGM music from a PC BUT when installed, only had a limited number of tracks. These went round in a loop and, eventually, started driving staff potty. Took forever (years) to get any movement on changing the music from IT. Why? Person who knew login details had left the company. Eventually, we had a new system installed. Still centrally controlled (frustratingly) but at least it seems someone knows the login details now! 😂

Your videos are ALWAYS fun. Thanks Mat.

I've worked a bit with the video equivalent of these type of devices, often referred to as "digital signage". They can be nothing more than slide shows without audio, or video with audio presentations as were done with VCRs in the past. At the higher end are ones used for electronic menus at fast food restaurants and such. They're basically a more powerful version of the box demonstrated here, and are closer to a "real" or general purpose computer. They tend to be built to avoid noisy fans, although smaller quiet ones are used, too. Thanks for the video, Mat!

Not enough death metal ! Hilarious. Thanks Mat for making these videos so entertaining.

Such a cool little device. I find the background music players to be an interesting niche. Using a tiny little system on a chip with hardly any moving parts seems like the ultimate evolution.

If you can get hand of a "Yehova's Witnesses Phonograph" from around 1940 you should make a review about that: Probably the first vertical record player, fully mechanical (for 78s), but using a paper cone like in a loudspeaker with the needle connected to it, which gives it a very good sound quality. Technically really genius.

That's what your channel taught us: the beauty of 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 music. I agree on what you said at the end.

I was installing the server rack (Refrigerator sized computer) for a brand new store opening up. As part of that was included a background music player. Young people bringing in the merchandise were having a bit of an argument about the existence of a song; The Hokey Pokey. I said that it was an actual song and I'll play it for you. I pulled it up, patched it and a microphone (from the mic port on the device) into the public address system. Announcing throughout the entire store about the argument in the back and by special request, We shall be pleased to hear; The Hokey Pokey.

I think Nobles is possibly the Noble Organisation, formerly a UK operator of amusement/slot machine gambling venues under a varied range of brands. They are now part of Astra Gaming.

Somewhere I used to work they had Lighthouse Family's Ocean Drive album on, for two years straight. That was the best part of twenty years ago and it's only recently I've been able to enjoy their music again.

funnily enough, the eBox is a regular off-the-shelf thin client PC, and a rather neat one at that. those BGM players might be worth grabbing one for the hardware alone.

3:37… ahhhh, background music systems and “All I Wanna Do” go hand in hand. 🤝

That just about sums up most modern tech in general

Nice recap, I loved the added bits from the previous version, it explains quite a lot of its overall funcionality and quirks, unfortunately it's quite limited even for a MicroPC

Nobles is a chain of Amusment Arcades (fruit machines) I believe.

Love that Seeburg machine you have! Good lil video that, Matt. Thanks, Lee

For those who don't get how inexpensive a service like this is for a business... let's just say that the cost of not using a properly licensed service (e.g. your personal playlist in a public store) is a LOT more than most people ever realize.

Just love this channel! 👍👍

I work in a Salon and we have these. It's a service called Retail Radio and has a few commercials from us and I believe downloads current music from online.

I'd be super interested to see an image dump of the SD card, just to see what sorts of player engine it uses and how easy it might be to decrypt that data partition. I'm guessing that the encryption in place isn't all that secure, especially since the device needs to be able to decrypt it in some way. I wouldn't be surprised if the decryption key is just stored in the fstab.

I thought 2 months of Christmas songs on repeat on the radio was bad, but a single CD on repeat? Wow.

Happy New Year to you

Really interesting to see the evolution between this version of the video and the first one. I actually enjoyed the first one, but this is so much better!

Cold as this piece of tech may be, this video was a really nice way to round out the exploration into the different background music systems you've reviewed in the past. Gives some nice context, and additional appreciation of the clever techniques the older systems had to come up with for continuous play.

I worked in a hotel that played Stars by Simply Red and only that. Drove me half daft.

I just love Seeburg. Such a beautiful piece of equipment. That was the video that made me a Techmoan fan.

Short or long videos, doesn’t matter. Seeing you in the morning with breakfast is a great start to the weekend 👍🏼

Awesome video Techmoan; what an incredible little device! I love low-end computers; I bet you could make an awesome photo-frame with one of these!

Thanks for the update, very interesting!

I will never not love the tape that goes "weee!"

The world is changed since I was young, those autochanging cassetteplayers was the best at that moment.

In the 70s Sat morning wake up was for cartoons. Now it’s Techmoan.

Lovely video as usual ❤ Greetings from Copenhagen 🇩🇰

It's always interesting to see how devices have evolved over the years.

Thanks for sharing.

Ha! I have one of those old boxes. I used to work for the company that supplied them and the system before ImageSound acquired it a few years ago. We also provided a version of the system which was essentially just two fairly decent speakers with an SD card mp3 player in the back. We provided a way for people to sync-up their playlists onto the card since the speakers weren't online. Sometimes we even just posted freshly synced SD cards to the premises! Old school!

Remember seeing one of these advertising on KZfaq they said it was the way to go clear work area small foot print etc also the holes are for small bolts so it can be attached to back of monitor's

It is also interesting to see the modern things and solutions!😀

Brilliant. Great video.

Thanks for this! I detect a slight hesitancy to embrace the tech, but do really appreciate seeing your take on something different even if it’s newfandangled and doesn’t break one’s back lifting it… 😊

Liked and left a comment just because... you never waste my time asking me!

We use one of these at work. They send a USB stick with music on it now and then.

Prior to my retirement I listened to the web site you referred to in your Seeburg video. I quite enjoyed it.

We have this system where I work and it changes the genre, tempo and style of music throughout the day.

I did something like that for a jukebox for my desk at work for while. We used a Muzak system for the waiting rooms and hallways that got its playback from FM subcarriers. Anyway, as always thanks for sharing this!

I don't know what it is exactly but i keep enjoying your content quite a lot. Thank you for another interesting Video.

Great video but it's still weird to hear techmoan saying words like ddr3 and 1GHZ Intel something or other. I like words like gears, sprockets and "bits and bobs" more hahaha

Imagine telling someone in the 80s that playing music on a PC is now considered low intensity.

Great video, Mat...👍

I deal with Image sound a lot and have to say from the back office to the installation engineers a great company 👍🏻

Interesting video! It's tech you take for granted when you go to stores and restaurants

My place of work still uses analog based receivers for their BGM, tuned to a publicly available FM signal at all their nearly 104 locations. There's literally nothing stopping anyone from walking in with a fairly decent FM transmitter and overriding the signal. XD

We have a Stingray box at my store and it we get streamed the same hundred or so songs every day. It turns into a form of psychological torture to keep hearing the same songs every day. I guess they subscribe to 'play it until you hate it' mantra. It's honestly baffling that it works like this, because it is a streaming service. Maybe my company is too cheap to pay for more music, which seems likely. It does have a line in that overrides it, and you can plug a phone or an MP3 player into it, and when I worked over nights, that's what I'd do. You can only hear 'Jump' by Chris Cross so many times, before you never want to hear it again.

You are building a great tech history site and gear. Cheers...

There's still one thing I'm dying to know, can it run Doom?

We the same company at work and it's pretty good. I can't remember ever hearing the same song twice in the same day and the repeats I can recall have been days apart. I also like how they play a few songs from one genre then move to another. They even do that during Christmas so with the exception of Christmas Eve (and even then I don't recall hearing a repeat) there was never more than a few songs in a row. (I love Christmas music but I loathe hearing the same 20 songs everywhere I go!)

Nice close-up shots of the PCB!

It was nice to see this. Even if this isn't in itself as interesting as the older stuff where they had to work within more limitations it's still interesting to see something that most people wouldn't have much dealings with, see how much things have moved on and put the older stuff in perspective.

Funny thing is, that device is basically the more service-oriented, industrial-grade version of what I built for my mother to fall asleep to using an old Raspberry Pi I had floating around in a drawer.

Wow, so compact! I frequented a department store in the 1970s-80s that used reel to reel tape for their store music. I was shocked one day to hear the Muzak version of "Hell is For Children" played. Gotta love it!

Thank you for that interessting video.

I think that would be a great device to install in your car. Radio with music and no adverts.

i used to work in the coop.. a big store in scotland ... they had the same bunch of 15 tracks... played all the time.......... grrrrr handy for shift work .. and you knew the times spent doing a certain task

I know this is a departure from the usual age of tech that you feature and not the most interesting to you but well worth featuring to continue the BGM series. It's far more interesting than I thought it would be, I expected some kind of industrial MP3 player but the fact it's a micro PC is kind of cool. My uncle used to service pub jukeboxes in the awkward period where they just ran off 3.5" mechanical harddrives and weren't internet connected. He was a great source of lightly used harddrives and heavily used touchscreen monitors at the time.

Thank you Mat for showing us this mini computer background music system. Yes, some of the older systems has their appeal, but I found a personal computer filled with ripped CD's and MP3 files with a sound player software capable of random song selection, the more ideal background music system. Your DJs for dance or wedding parties use PCs.

Your ski-slope cassette player video is legendary.

I totally had some fun looking at this, thank you. It was a nice bookend to the background music system series. I hope we aren’t done though. There has to be a few left in the middle somewhere? I really would love to see you get one of those airline ones running. I know the connectors wouldn’t look out of place on the Apollo command module but still…it’d be an epic accomplishment!

Love to know what music is on here.Intersting. Thank you.

The store I work at in the US has a player from a company called Mood music. the music tracks are loaded off a CD. we get update discs every so often.

Yeah, I agree. That Seeburg is an absolutely beautiful piece of equipment.

we have one of those in co-op i work in, i believe it also plays the advertising videos on the in store screens too, as well as co op radio

I started with Muzak when all we had was the SCA broadcast. The year after I started they introduced the FM1 program. Then satellite and now internet.

I wondered when you were going to cover these, we use them in work across the stores and have dozens of old ones sat on the shelf. They would be great for 90s retro gaming boxes. The BIOS on the ones I've messed with haven't been locked.

Great Video

That's the thing, nowadays there are a billion options for streaming music in your shop. Just take any semi-obsolete computer and plug it into the internet and you can just have it play one of those KZfaq channels that simply streams light jazz, hiphop, etc., whatever genre you think fits the atmosphere you want for your shop. You'd just have to be careful no-one twigs that you're doing it that way as I'm sure there would be major issues with copyrights and all that.