Hitachi DA-800
(1983 - 1985)

Foreseeing the future rather clearly, Hitachi very quickly presented an alternate model to its ubiquitous DA-1000 original. Not as fast as Sony, though.

Built around the same aluminium diecast base and the same d/a technology as the vertical elder (16bit + 2x oversampling), the DA-800 wasn't nearly as good-looking as the DA-1000 but did hold the result of 140 patents Hitachi applied for its digital devices just the same. Even if most of the crucial patents for CD came from Philips who was in on laser audio since... 1964. Yep.

Digital discs were indeed thundering over the market in '84/85 so the understated looks might have been a fair warning toward all the rest which CD would erase in less than ten years.
However, the inital DA-1000 sold much better :-)

Shortly after this formal introduction of its newly-found horizontal future, Hitachi would unveil the Japan-only HDA-001 / DAP-001 drive/dac combo (aka DAD-001) but wouldn't ride nearly as high nor as long as Sony with CD combos (CDP-553ESD / DAS-703ES and CDP-R1 / DAS-R1) - if one can be a major OEM supplier, one doesn't necessarily win.