NEC HES-CDR-01 TurboGrafx CD Player (1991)
A CD player that only makes sense when you bolt it to a video game console — and that's exactly what makes it fascinating.
Overview
The HES-CDR-01 is the strangest thing in a room full of portable CD players. Where the Sony and Denon units in the same 1991 shootout bristled with buttons, this NEC is almost barren: a headphone volume control and jack, forward and reverse track-skip, play/pause, stop, repeat, and the necessary line-level, d.c. input, and system-interface connections. That's the whole surface. The tiny circular display on the top shows nothing but the current track number. On its own, it reads like a stripped-down afterthought.
It isn't. The CDR-01 was built as an add-on to NEC's TurboGrafx-16 entertainment system, and the moment it's docked to that interface unit, the player becomes something else entirely. A special card goes in the game-card slot, and the CD controls and displays migrate to whatever TV or monitor is hooked up to the system — operated by the TurboPad or TurboStick controllers. On screen you get a track calendar, track and index numbers, elapsed or remaining time for the disc or the current track, audio level, operating mode, and a full set of simulated pushbuttons. You drive them by moving a disembodied hand with an outstretched finger onto the function you want, then pressing a real button on the controller. It is, by any reasonable measure, a bizarre way to play a CD. It's also the only way to get the full feature set.
That feature set is genuinely deep once the console is in the loop. The on-screen menu unlocks a 10-key pad for direct track selection and programming, a fade-out that slowly lowers volume and pauses at the start of the next track, an intro scan of the first minute of each track, repeat of the disc, a program, or any user-defined section, automatic random play, and a "Space" function that inserts a 4-second pause between tracks. Audio (February 1991, p.39) put the player through its paces alongside the Sony D-555 Discman and Denon DCP-100 in a piece titled "Digital Duel," and the reviewer's conclusion was that the NEC gives up nothing in control flexibility to those two — provided you hook it up to the rest of the TurboGrafx-16 system.
The reason to bother is the games. NEC's system ran a 16-bit graphics processor, and the CD drive gave it high-quality stereo sound and room for the kind of games a credit-card-sized game card couldn't hold. Audio (February 1991, p.42) noted that a CD holds up to 550 megabytes — roughly 2,000 standard game cards — enough for characters with real voices instead of cartoon speech balloons, and explosions that sound like explosions. The player also handled standard music CDs and CD+G discs with encoded graphics, the kind Warner Bros. and other labels were pressing with photos, multilingual lyrics, and the like. As the magazine observed, it was the only video game peripheral of its kind.
The measurements tell a more mixed story, and this is where the CDR-01 shows its compromises. Audio (February 1991, p.41) measured frequency response that held flat in the bass — no roll-off at 20 Hz, unlike the Denon — but sagged by between 0.5 and 1.0 dB from 6 kHz upward. Distortion at 1 kHz came in at 0.06% to 0.07%, third behind the Sony and Denon, and the A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio was 85 dB against nearly 94 dB for the Sony and 96 dB for the Denon. The culprit for the noise, per the same test, appeared to be substantial peaks at the 60 Hz power-line frequency. Measured as a stand-alone unit, the NEC simply didn't match the dedicated portables — which is unsurprising for a device whose real home was a game console.
Pricing put it at $399.99 for the HES-CDR-01, against $159.99 for the TurboGrafx-16 console itself, $44.99 for a TurboStick, $19.99 for a TurboPad, $19.99 for the TurboTap multiplayer adaptor, $34.99 for the TurboBooster accessory, $20.99 to $81.99 for game cards, and $61.99 to $81.99 for CD games. Add it up and the CD drive cost more than twice the console it plugged into — a serious commitment for a system whose library was still finding its footing.
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