One of the best features of the original Roku streaming devices was a headphone jack on the wireless remotes that allowed for private listening sessions. That had to be the aspiration of Sony’s SRS-LSR100 Wireless Speaker TV Remote, but minus the privacy. Instead of streaming a TV’s audio through a pair of headphones, the $165 device pumped it through a portable speaker, so instead of cranking a TV’s volume to hear it from across the room, you could position the SRS-LSR100 next to you for a semi-private listening experience.

The generously-sized volume dial on top was a nice addition—much better than using rocker buttons to quickly turn down a TV—but it required the use of a dongle attached to the set (not ideal given how many devices want to connect to a TV, even back in 2015), and, like with many of Sony’s most peculiar gadgets, was only available in Japan.

OLED TVs are plentiful and relatively affordable today, but back in 2008, when Sony released the first OLED TV to consumers, that wasn’t the case. The XEL-1 scored Sony lots of publicity for ushering in the era of OLED TVs, but at $2,500 it was incredibly expensive for a TV with an 11-inch screen, and one that wasn’t especially great.

The 3mm thick screen showed off the incredible potential of OLED display technology, but it left no room for electronics and ports, requiring the XEL-1 to be permanently tethered by an offset arm to a base where you’d find HDMI ports and other TV necessities like speakers and buttons. And while the screen featured an excellent contrast ratio with deep blacks, its color reproduction wasn’t as stellar, and it was limited to a resolution of just 960 x 540 pixels, a quarter of the resolution of 1080p.

If there’s one failing of incredibly tiny but capable action cams like the GoPro, it’s their awful microphones capturing equally disappointing audio that can often let down a stellar moment caught on video. The Sony HDR-MV1 was never a GoPro competitor, but it fixed the problem of bad audio on tiny camcorders with a pair of stereo external microphones mounted right below the camera lens in an X-Y formation.

The HDR-MV1 was as capable as the high-quality portable recorders from companies like Roland and Zoom, but came with the added bonus of capturing video at 1080p or 720p, depending on your storage needs or what you planned to do with the footage. It filled an interesting niche as musicians started to rise to fame using social media and platforms like YouTube, but the orientation of the HDR-MV1's screen, which couldn’t flip out, remains a bizarre choice. Not being able to see the screen while pointing the camera at one’s self meant that shooting selfie videos was problematic unless you got creative with mirrors.

Every major consumer electronics company has a division churning out easy-picking gadgets like mice and keyboards. But Sony even felt the need to innovate your basic desktop accessories. The Sony VAIO Mouse Talk VOIP Phone looked like a well-designed mouse (with questionable ergonomics) that would match a Sony Vaio desktop computer or laptop, but it was hiding a functional surprise.

It could be opened like an old clamshell cell phone revealing an old-school telephone form factor, complete with a speaker on one end and microphone on the other. As you’ve probably guessed, the mouse could be used to make VoIP calls through services like Skype, but with one tragic flaw. Unless you had a trackpad to fall back on, plugged in a second mouse, or were a Jedi when it came to keyboard shortcuts, during your phone call you couldn’t navigate Windows at all, making Mouse Talk problematic for business calls.

The film General Magic documents the rise and fall of a ‘90s-era Silicon Valley startup of the same name that many credit as having invented an iPhone-like device long before Apple started developing its game-changing smartphone. The company was made up of talented ex-Apple engineers (many of whom had worked on the original Macintosh computer) and other well-known names in the consumer electronics industry today. It also prominently features Sony, one of only a couple of companies ever to release a device running General Magic’s Magic Cap operating system: the Sony Magic Link PIC-1000 PDA.

Some believe Magic Cap and the devices that ran it were simply ahead of their time, forced to limp along on limited hardware and electronics that made the OS feel clunky and outdated. But in reality the development of Magic Cap suffered from countless delays, and issues like feature creep, where a never-ending list of ‘neat’ features and ideas resulted in missed deadlines and shipping delays.

Finally released in 1994, the Sony Magic Link PIC-1000 was a disappointment at best, and while it did offer innovative functionality like a built-in modem for sending and receiving email on the go, it wasn’t enough for the device to change the world. The upgraded Sony Magic Link PIC-2000 was released two years later, but it was saddled with a $900 price tag, and faced an even bigger hurdle: the arrival of the $300 Palm Computing Pilot 1000 PDA.

The Pilot 1000 worked within the limits of the technology at the time, providing a snappy user interface, reliable handwriting detection using ‘Graffiti,’ which was easy to learn, and a clever use of a sync cradle to periodically receive and send emails through a desktop computer. It wasn’t as powerful as PDAs running Magic Cap, but it was powerful enough for most users and easily pocketable. As a result, it truly ushered in the era of the personal digital assistant. Sorry, Sony.