The *secret* product....

They link to this Yahoo article which has all the details.

The new media can hold up to 11 hours worth of MP3s or nearly a dozen prerecorded albums with a 500 MB capacity for each disc, according to reports. Consumers will need to buy new devices, projected to cost between US$199 and $299, to play the audio discs, say sources.

The new discs -- both blank and prerecorded -- are expected to be released this fall, say DataPlay officials. Blank discs should cost between $5 and $10, with prerecorded prices on a par with CDs.

If you go digging around DataPlay.com, you find that they've got a pretty nifty form factor (teeny, tiny magneto-optical discs, similar in size to a CompactFlash card), and you can already (or will soon be able to) buy standard MP3 players that use it, as well as a USB gizmo for your computer. The real competition for these things are flash cards, so you have to compare the prices to flash cards, not blank CD-R's.

My guess is that they plan to put some kind of copy protection bit at the front of every disc and program all their firmware to get funky in the presence of the copy protection bit. Of course, somebody will figure out how to reprogram their firmware and then it's back to the current world.

The only thing I wonder is what would be prerecorded on these? That brings up a whole bunch of questions...

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

I wonder about the prerecorded stuff as well. You don't see that many prerecorded Minidiscs, for example.


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

It actually looks like a very small minidisc format as well. I know smaller is supposed to be better, but I would hate to have to fumble around with one of them in a moving car...

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (96GB Smoke)

if it can't hold my entire music collection it has no advantage over a regular cd to me

if they are planning on selling music on these the larger capacity isn't important enough to justify buying new players how many albums are there that actually fill one regular cd let alone 12




32Gig MK2 In 2001 VW Golf TDI

if they are planning on selling music on these the larger capacity isn't important enough to justify buying new players how many albums are there that actually fill one regular cd let alone 12

Actually, it has smaller capacity than a CD - 500 MB vs 650 MB on a regular data CD-ROM. They are talking compressed audio when they say "a dozen albums on each disc". This is a pity because not being able to publish many current albums onto this new format with the same quality will surely prevent them from obsoleting CDs. Unless they are planning on using a lossless codec...

Borislav

There were once tons of pre-recorded MiniDiscs..... nobody bought them. They cost as much as a CD and were encoded in ATRAC. Also... it was limited to popular artists (and I think they were all on Sony's label if I'm not mistaken.)

I do see a major advantage over CD here... they have a scratch proof case, will be less susceptable to skipping (smaller mass) and will allow the production of smaller, less power consuming portable players.

(I still don't see my self ever buying one...)

32GB (JUST UPGRADED!) Mk. II BLUE
Detroit, MI USA
www.PfeifferBeer.com

Nah I think the secret product was the Rio-branded fleece.

-Tony
MkII #554

It's taken six months to develop, but I think you'll agree that the user interface is totally cuddlesome.

Rob