Dataplay Ready to Launch 345
geophile writes "Let's see. This is a CD-like, CD-incompatible storage medium with
lower storage capacity than a CD; copying, which is supported by CDs
and permitted by fair-use laws is not possible; and it's more
expensive than a CD. Read about this great idea here." We've done a couple of stories on the Dataplay discs; this one discusses the heavy content controls built-in. MSNBC had an article on Dataplay a few weeks ago that mentions an "education process" needed to get people to re-buy all their old music in a new format.
This will be a good test... (Score:3, Interesting)
PS- Are there any plus sides??
Bah (Score:4, Interesting)
These people live in their own little world - with only the MPAA and some other like-minded morons as neighbors. Small wonder they can get laws like the DMCA passed - Congress lives in the same world.
I just do not foresee people buying these things. Yes, the "public" can be incredibly stupid at times, but they do catch on, eventually, and I think the RIAA's game is up.
clueless article (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of focusing on being funny when submitting the article, how about focusing on being clued in?
"Education Process" (Score:3, Interesting)
The music industry's arrogance towards their own customers is incredible. Imagine if Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, etc. all said that their programs will only install on new computers in MetaData format media and if you had legacy media you'd just have to buy it new. Or they told you they wouldn't honor upgrades unless you bought new licenses by a certain date (oops, beat me to that idea).
ick, compression (Score:3, Interesting)
A mere speedbump (Score:2, Interesting)
Even more limited than MD... and that failed. (Score:1, Interesting)
DataPlay is essentially a small CDR then, but you can already buy small 8cm CDR's [cdfreaks.com] for under $1, burn your own MP3's onto them (i.e. pick your own bitrate and selection) and play them on things like the eXpanium [philips.com], all less money, more control and higher quality than DataPlay.
Record companies should concentrate on delivering good music (that's why record sales are 5% up in the UK) on CD and then leave it upto the consumer whether they want to transfer it to a handheld player, car etc, on whatever format they desire.
What ever happened to all the engineers in terms of quality, everything released is "near CD Quality" why not go further? It's ridiculous today's technology has to claim to be "near" a technology that was released 20 years ago, if only SACD takes of, even then your fair-use rights have been taken away from your, DVD-Audio offers multichannel capability but they use AC3 compression
Re:This will be a good test... (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting Math (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see 80 minutes of CD-quality music now uses 700 MB of space. How exactly does 300 minutes of CD-quality music fit on 500 MB?
Blank discs, which can store up to 500 megabytes of data, will retail for between $10 and $12
Wow, much better than the $15 I'm paying for 50 700 MB CD's. A single 500 MB disk for the price of over 20 GB of blank CD's. Where do I get in line?
"I just know by being in the business, there's definitely a need for a portable format," Bob Higgins said. "Portable CD players are too big and too bulky."
Gee, if there were only widely available, simple to use, portable digital music storage and listening devices on the market right now.
As time goes by... (Score:4, Interesting)
Pros:
* Cheap disks - $2 each as opposed to $45 a compact flash card
* Quality player devices - can survive a trek into the off road bike trails with no skip
* Good sound reproduction - as good as 256bit MP3 (in my opinion)
* Holds 74 minutes - more if you downsample the music (built into most new recorders)
* using analog input - prevents any copy protection as it can record from the headphone-out jack
* Can erase and re-use disks, or delete an unwanted track
* Player costs the same as a MP3 player (32-64mb devices)
Cons:
* Did not catch on as well in the US as other standards (MP3, CD/CD-R)
* Can only record in real time (not too much of a problem as I will listen to a CD all the way the first time...takes no effort to record at the same time)
So the record companies can do whatever they want. We will find a way around whatever the @#$% they try to throw at us. They never seem to learn that there is ALWAYS a way to get around whatever they want to do to us. I found a way that works well for me, others will find thier own way.
Nero often is described as playing the violin as Rome burned. When the RIAA burns, I'll be playing the bagpipes
Phoenix
Fair Use (Score:3, Interesting)
However there is no right guaranteeing that you can use this, that is a copywrite holder has the right to try and prevent the fair use of his work, however the copywrite holder has no legal was to prevent fair use. Even the DMCA and the whateverthehellthehollingsbilliscalledtoday do not try and prevent fair use, but they make it harder to be able to use it 'fairly', while trying to prevent it being used unfairly.
This is very much like free speech, you have the right to say whatever you want, but no right to be heard (ie published).
Obviously fair use is in everyones best intrest, it can only help publicize work and it gives people the ability to use portions of it, but it is a casualty of trying to prevent non-fair use.
Re:This will be a good test... (Score:2, Interesting)
$ bzip2 -9 -v cdda.wav
cdda.wav: 1.096:1, 7.298 bits/byte, 8.78% saved, 51720524 in, 47181723 out.
Only 8.78% saved; not going to get you 5 CDs on a disc there. However, from the site: So it is lossy compression, unsurprisingly.
Re:Interesting Math (Score:1, Interesting)
This way they can attempt to justify the high prices of CDs. The media costs us $12, we're only making $5 from each album sold.
Re:Bah (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. I'm a bit of a minidisc nut, but I never saw the media as a CD killer, but as a Tape killer. As a replacement for making mixed tapes / portability I think the Minidisc is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I use it in conjunction with my CD collection, not as a replacement for.
Re:As time goes by... (Score:3, Interesting)
It *seems* like they understand fair use... (Score:2, Interesting)
But will we be able to record music from DataPlay to the next format?
Re:Here we go again.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why can't you just buy music in the new format for $1 a disc, if you already own the music?
See, you have to stop using logic and common sense. Just use this simple test:
In fact, I would not be surprised if the record companies would charge you MORE if you already owned the CD, since now you've doubled the chances for piracy by owning two copies in two formats. I know that seems irrational and unenforcable, but if you believe charging $18 for a disc of information that can be copied for free is a great idea for a business model, a lot of other stuff suddenly seems plausible too...
Re:Idiot (Score:2, Interesting)
I bought a MiniDisc player for $160 not too long ago. I fail to see any significant advantages of Dataplay.
MiniDisc:
- Players cost half what DataPlay players will.
- Blank discs cost less. ($2-$3 vs. $5-$10)
- Discs and individual tracks can be erased. (Think CD-RW vs CD-R -- you don't need to buy a new disc whenever the old one fills up.)
- No significant copy protection.
- Mature technology.
- Incredible battery life. (DataPlay was estimated at only 10 hours for the "engine" alone.)
DataPlay:
- slightly smaller discs (but the players don't look to be any smaller)
- can probably record faster (note: my MD player is one of the older models that only records in real-time, so I can't speak for the newer NetMD models.)
- sets a bad precedent
So the only real disadvantage is that I can currently only record in real-time. (Again, I can't speak for NetMD.) But since MD discs are so cheap, I don't spend much time recording, anyway. I just made 3 or 4 mix discs (each with 5 hours of music), delete tracks as I get tired of them, and add new tracks in their place.
Re:This will be a good test... (Score:2, Interesting)
From the Free Lossless Audio Codec [sourceforge.net] features page:
# FLAC is asymmetric in favor of decode speed. Decoding requires only integer arithmetic, and is much less compute-intensive than for most perceptual codecs. Real-time decode performance is easily achievable on even modest hardare.
There are portables all over the place using perceptual codecs namely mp3. FLAC claims to be faster than "most perceptual codecs"; so unless you know something I don't, I'd imagine it's faster than mp3 to decode. Eh?
CD sales are flat ... (Score:3, Interesting)
If CD sales are flat ... for whatever reason you think that might be ... how is a new format going to bring in new sales? Are people holding off on buying new content so they can end up spending money buying the same content on a new format? Suppose it is the case ... as the industry claims ... that internet piracy is the cause of reduced CD sales. How is a new format going to make people uninterested in the internet piracy? Do they think that people will abandon sharing and trading online to buy this new format? Maybe if the format completely replaces CDs and perfectly prevents ripping it could make it hard to have source material for trading. But that won't happen since if you can hear it, you can rip it, and even though that won't be perfect digital quality, it won't ever degrade any further over the net, and people are already happy to download poor quality rips.
Dataplay is heaven's sent for PDA software (Score:1, Interesting)
a) can have some decently sized content (ie. more than a meg)
b) will not be pirated like there's no tomorrow (1. size of app - 1MB apps spread by email pretty darn well, 2. DRM)
the dataplay disk is totally from heaven. PDA games will be the killer app for those, if they survive so far.