The costly tech flops flaunted at Berlin's IFA then quietly forgotten

Once upon a time, families crowded together on the sofa gazing at flickering screens through their clunky plastic glasses.

Everybody thought 3D TV would be the next big thing after it starred at Berlin's IFA in 2009 and 2010.

But some trends come and go before you even know they are there.

Other famous flops at the Innovation for All (IFA) show span from curved screens to music cassettes with digital sound and interactive CDs to store your analogue holiday snaps.

Such flash in the pan trends were flaunted at the IFA - boosted by sky-high budgets - as the next era of consumer electronics.

Some may have been brilliant feats of engineering. Some were just superfluous. And some were simply the right invention at precisely the wrong time.

The IFA has repeatedly showcased genuine innovations, such as the world's first electronic television (1931), FM radio (1950), the compact cassette (1963), PAL colour television (1967) and the CD (1981).

But inevitably, it has also hosted technologies that hardly anyone needed.

Video 2000: Better tech but consigned to history

Video 2000 was among the IFA's most painful flops. When Philips and Grundig unveiled the system in Berlin in 1979, Europeans were satisfied they had won the race against Sony's Betamax and JVC/Matsushita's VHS.

After all, here were cassettes that could be flipped over like audio drama cassettes, boasting an 8 hour run time plus crystal-clear still images.

Yet the battle was not decided by superior technical specifications, but in the video rental shops.

JVC had long since been aggressively licensing its VHS system. By the time Video 2000 was finally flawless, rental store shelves were packed with VHS.

By the mid-1980s, the system was history. It may have been technically superior, but it had no chance on the market.

MP3 kills digital cassettes

The fate of the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) was just as tragic. Philips unveiled the format in 1991 and it sounded clever: Digital sound on tape and compatible with the analogue cassette in your glove compartment.

But while Philips was still fine-tuning the mechanics, Sony's MiniDisc was ready to go. And a few years later, the MP3 format swept away the entire concept of physical audio media.

By the time Apple's first iPod hit shelves in 2001, the MiniDisc was a thing of the past.

The D2-MAC television standard was also a technical dead end. Shown at the 1985 IFA, the European TV standard aimed to make analogue widescreen in the 16:9 cinema format widely available.

It was a prestige project worth billions but as Brussels debated interim standards, digital compression overtook the system and even the Olympics and European Football Championship could not save D2-MAC.

The 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona and the 1992 European Football Championship in Sweden were to be an international showcase for MAC technology.

But D2-MAC industry giants such as Philips, Thomson and Grundig could not halt the triumphant advance of digital TV via satellite, cable and terrestrial transmission.

Ahead of its time on four channels

While D2-MAC lost out to superior technology, some IFA concepts were simply ahead of their time - such as quadraphonic sound.

The 1973 IFA saw almost the whole hi-fi industry try to convince the public that the stereo era was to be replaced by an era of surround sound.

Four separate channels promised true surround sound. The idea was sound, and surround sound is standard today. But in the early 1970s, that meant four gigantic speakers crowded into a modest sized living room, formats that proved confusing plus immense costs. Viewers rebelled and stuck with two speakers.

Nowadays, surround sound reaches music lovers' ears via headphones as "spatial audio."

3D cinema hit leads industry astray

Four decades on, a sense of déjà vu accompanied 3D television. Buoyed by cinema hit "Avatar," the 2010 IFA saw the dawn of the stereoscopic age. Every stand offered shutter glasses promising a special sense of depth.

But that proved clunky on the couch. Wearers complained about the flickering plastic glasses, headaches plus a chronic lack of shows. A few years on, producers quietly dropped 3D monitors from their ranges.

Curved TVs had even less time in the spotlight. In 2013 and 2014, the companies curved their screens into a semicircle to simulate an immersive cinema experience.

But the effect only worked at a single point, right in the centre, facing the set. If you sat on the side, say, you saw a distorted picture. Plus, the massive curving screens did not look right on the wall. Here was a spectacular solution to a problem that never existed.

Silver disc flops

The odd curved screen may still grace the occasional living room but barely anyone remembers Philips' CD-i (Compact Disc Interactive) multimedia system (1991).

As an interactive interface for games, films and encyclopaedias on telly, the system foreshadowed the modern multimedia age.

But the hardware was too weak, the software too cumbersome and the PC and the first true 3D consoles nudged it aside.

Then Kodak came up with the Photo-CD (IFA 1991). You could burn analogue photos onto CD at a photo lab. Sounded logical. Then came the digital camera which wholly eliminated chemical film. Instead, people stored images as files on hard drives.

Even fridges can fail

The tech fair started showing "white goods" in 2008, meaning household appliances such as washing machines, ovens and coffee machines.

This area was not immune to spectacular misjudgements, technical gimmicks that few needed plus a slew of true market flops.

In the world of traditional consumer electronics, standards wars have often decided which innovations prevail. When it comes to white goods, there were two main reasons why certain concepts failed in practice.

Some cleverly designed white goods flopped due to the discrepancy between product lifespan and digitalization. Nobody wants to replace a $1,000 washing machine five years on just because the server for the control app has been shut down.

And many consumers found the idea of letting an appliance order its own supplies unsettling, whether it was fridges reordering milk or a washing machine ordering washing powder straight from Amazon.

Fiddly solutions with no added value

Some IFA innovations also proved cumbersome, revealing themselves as fiddly solutions for fans of tech.

Take kettles and toasters that could be controlled remotely by smartphone. Users still had to manually fill the kettle with water or place slices of bread in a toaster - the app didn't save any time at all. It just required an additional step on your smartphone.

Other solutions that were designed to make homes more convenient just cost too much - such as steam wardrobes and automated ironing machines shown regularly at the IFA from 2017 onwards.

They promise the end of ironing. All you need to do is hang up your creased shirts and suits in the wardrobe, press a button, and everything would be steamed and smooth, practically by itself, makers say.

But these power-hungry appliances were as big as fridges. With a price tag of some $2,500, they proved to be an expensive niche product at best.