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Music Media

Tiny, Secure Music/Data CDs Due in the Fall 283

Posted by CmdrTaco from the isn't-that-cute dept.
An anonymous reader submitted a story about a new recordable disc the size of a quarter, that holds about the same amount of data as a CD. Of course its an intermediate step before we simply stream all audio from the net, but the RIAA sure is making that obvious last step a royal pain.
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Tiny, Secure Music/Data CDs Due in the Fall More

Tiny, Secure Music/Data CDs Due in the Fall

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  • I used to think this was all audiophile whinging - until I heard a 128Kbit MP3 of a song that I'd been listening to quite a lot in my car CD and I could tell it was worse than the CD version. Not by a huge amount, but it was still noticeable.

  • This could work against the RIAA (Score:3)

    by b0z ( 191086 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @01:51AM (#369488) Homepage Journal
    Imagine a world where you have these small disks. Your old CD players are no longer compatible with the new music coming out. You now have this thing that is nearly impossible to copy. Even if you could copy it, the blanks would cost between $5 and $12 (according to the article.) Also, they could decide to lock the CD's completely until you register them via the phone or web much like software (according to the article, they have this capability.)

    Now, imagine lots of fed up people like you and I that might have cd burners and high speed internet connections. We will always find a way to trade music even if they bring down napster, so then we make our own CD's. We simply record the audio from MTV or however we want in order to get the mp3's we need. Of course, I can see the quality increasing in digital audio as well so that we get CD quality files on our hard drives, and simply write the cd's ourselves.

    Also, this could become a big pirate business. Because noone will be able to play music with these handicapped disks, people will look for alternatives. We could start burning CD's for our friends and family for $1 a piece, bypassing the record labels and (unfortunately) the artists. The RIAA is shooting themselves in the foot with this technology I think. We've gotten too used to CD's and there is too much money already in the CD players, and the future is the mp3 player, not this minidisk that has it's crippleware.

  • Confusion is imminent... (Score:5)

    by tewwetruggur ( 253319 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:13AM (#369495) Homepage
    ...damn, I think I just put Aerosmith in the Coke machine...

  • I've heard this from people before. Maybe it's just me, but I don't beleive them when they say this. Could Slashdot readers reply to this and tell me if they can tell the difference between MP3s and CDs?

    Yes, there is a difference between Coke (tm) and Pepsi (tm). Just like there's a difference between S-video and Composite, as between DVD and VHS. Similarly, any serious audiophile (and probably anyone else who listens for music quality) will be able to tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD. I can certainly tell the difference, even on my not-so-great PC speakers.

    Others have commented on the difference between MP3, OGG, and CD. I don't know yet, because until Icecast [icecast.org] streams Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com] format, I won't bother re-ripping my CDs.

  • Re:Is there any demand for this? (Score:3)

    by hexx ( 108181 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @01:00AM (#369501)
    Are CD's at 4.75 inches in diameter and negligable thickness really that inconvenient?

    Yes, I think so. I don't know who else agrees with me, but:
    1. CD's don't fit into pockets.
    2. CD's scratch easily as they are not protected by any casing like floppies and these new DataPlay discs.
    3. Portable CD players are terribly bulky as they must house fair sized motors to spin heavy and unweildy CD's and must house the CD entierly.
    4. CD's are still primarily a music meduim. Aside from the breach into the software installers, backups and games market, they are not too successful at photo storage, video storage and are silly for e-books.
    That's just off the top of my head anyway. It's a format that is targeted at data storage in general.
    The dataplay marketing machine at least is doing it's job well. Prop-a-ganda worked for me! (read as hooked-on-phonics)

  • I'm so confused (Score:3)

    by UltraBot2K1 ( 320256 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:16AM (#369502) Homepage Journal
    From the article: "The new format uses CD-like discs about the size of a quarter that hold up to five hours of CD-quality music plus extras, up to 500 megabytes of data."

    How exactly is the music going to be CD quality if you can store 5 hours on 500 megs. What type of compression is being used on the discs. I can't stand MP3's simply because of their lossy compression and will not support any other format that uses similar compression.

    Doesn't matter anyway, because I'd end up losing the discs between the cushions on my couch. I think I'll stick with CD's until DVD-audio becomes a reality.

  • "We are in need of a new format," says BMG's Sami Valkonen

    looks like we know where they stand. sales slump, so they try to get people to go out and re-buy all their old cds.

  • Even now my CD's are sometimes hard to find. Now they're making them even smaller.

    Second, AOL en Compuserve CD's made such nice coasters for my all my cups of coffee. Does smaller CD's also mean smaller cups of coffee?

  • The Compact Cassette format actually predated 8-Track by a number of years.

    8-Tracks were invented and sold to Detroit for a couple reasons:

    1) It was American technology, where cassettes were invented in the netherlands or something.
    2) It was initially a playback-only medium which limited copying, which the RIAA approved of.

    There was actually a pretty huge reason to switch from 8-Track to Cassette: 8-Tracks were inherently unreliable.
  • You can't take data from one medium and transfer it to another at HIGHER quality, you can at best make them equal. You CANNOT add data to the second and have it be what the first one lost, reliably. And tell me what encoder will do 384/96.

    -----------------------

  • Hey, my headphones happen to be Sennheiser HD570s, they'll damn well show more of the artifacts than a LOT of speaker systems. Don't assume all headphones are those little behind the neck models with "MEGA-BASS" all over the packaging.

    -----------------------

  • The next wave in media will most likely be based not on size but on durability. This is the one area where all current forms of storage are severly lacking.

    Coincidence? No.

    Don't hold your breath waiting for truly durable media -- just think of all the lost resales the music industry would 'suffer' if Joe/Jane Average never scratched a CD without having a backup...I know I've myself rebought at least 5 CDs in my lifetime due to lost or badly handled media. The cynic in me is screaming that the size reduction here is largely for the purpose of boosting incidence of lost mini-CDs...but alas.

  • ...but for those of us who listen for music content, mp3 is usually ok.

    Absolutely. A friend was playing devil's advocate against me today and he said, "if MP3s 'suck' why are you so hot to convert all your CDs to MP3s?" The simple answer is that I want the flexibility that music streaming provides. I'm willing to give up a little bit of quality to have the flexibility to listen to my music wherever I want, whenever I want.

    That goes right along with another post in this article's comments. That comment went something like, "Recording companies still don't get it. We don't want another format. We want the flexibility to do whatever we want, whenever we want."

  • Re:We need to know what fair use is (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They already have defined most of what constitutes "Fair Use". What's left has to be judged on a case by case basis, which is why people like the RIAA and the MPAA wanted (and got, ouch.) the right to make the process of utilizing "Fair Use" technically illegal. (see DMCA).

    Here's something to get you started:

    US CODE Title 17 - copyrights
    "Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

    Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a
    copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords
    or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
    comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use),
    scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining
    whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be
    considered shall include -

    (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether
    such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
    educational purposes;

    (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

    (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
    relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
    (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
    value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not
    itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all
    the above factors. "

    (from http://www4.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/htm_hl?DB=usco de17&STEMMER=en&WORDS=fair+us+&COLOUR=Red&STYLE=s& URL=/uscode/17/107.html#muscat_highlighter_first_m atch)

    Of course that section doesn't include such things as time-shifting, space-(aka format)shifting, reverse engineering, or making backups of things you legally own. I don't have those laws/rulings at my finger tips but "Sony vs. Betamax" & "Concentrix vs. Sony" come to mind.

    Then there is that pesky little thing known as the "First Sale Doctrine" (look for the media companies wanting to 'license' not sell audio/video/ebooks)

    That's enough for now though.

    Do a seach on google for "Fair Use" copyright

    I hope that helps.

    someone247356_AT_yahoo.com
  • "Music" is the emotion expressed and conveyed in song. Sound quality only enters into that equation as far as enabling the expression.

    Don't get me wrong, I love to hear my music in decent quality, but I don't hold it against the music when the quality isn't there.

  • either puchase these mini cd's or think that average public would be stupid enough to buy them.

    Unfortunately, I think the average public would buy them. It will take a while to catch on, like the CD did, but if they get shelf space in the music stores and there are cheap players everywhere for them, they will catch on.

    There will have to be lots of cheap players. $200 portables won't sell the format. A $59.99 boombox at wal-mart will, and a car player for $200, and a component stereo player for $150, and a computer-drive player that comes with your computer. There have to be players everywhere, with base models affordable by everyone.

    And they'll get away with it because the average comsumer doesn't make backup copies of his music. The average consumer is actually pretty computer illiterate, and just loans out his CDs or makes a tape. The average consumer doesn't think FM Radio sounds any worse than CDs. The average consumer puts one speaker in the living room and the other in the kitchen and never notices that his music sounds different depending on what room he's in. The average consumer will think the little discs are "cool" and want to be the first to have them.

    sad, but true.

    wishus
    ---

  • The old 10p, derived from the 2 shilling coins of the early 1800s, or the newer 10p introduced within the past 10 years?
  • Many of us remember the LP-CD transition. There was serious concern about the size of a CD: simply putting in a jewel case into the slots that used to hold an LP in music stores wasn't an option. Forcing every music store to change all their shelving was expensive.

    Thus was born the wasteful cardboard box, designed to make the CD the same height as an LP. But how long did that really last?

    I seem to recall they were gone fast (1-2 years), especially in the "hip" music stores that wanted to show they were with it. Expect the same here: it will take a few months before stores start changing over, assuming the new format takes off.

    Eric

  • Those are nothing compared to the fact that the RIAA wants me to spend $12-$20 on a tiny piece of plastic that I can lose between the seat cushions of my car. Even in that little plastic frame, it's too small. No thanks.

    Small is just not ergonomic. It's why wristwatch calculators are still just an ultrageek niche, and Dick Tracy radios never caught on.

    Anything smaller than a floppy is just too hard to handle, organize, and keep track of. Imagine storing 500 of those little discs, and then finding the one you need? What a pain in the butt.

  • How exactly is the music going to be CD quality if you can store 5 hours on 500 megs.

    500 megabytes / 5 hours * 8,000,000 bits/megabyte / * hr/3600 s = about 224 kilobit/s. And 224 kbit is just about enough for sounds-just-as-good-as-a-CD quality; see also r3mix [r3mix.net].


    All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
  • Similarly, any serious audiophile (and probably anyone else who listens for music quality) will be able to tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD.

    ...but for those of us who listen for music content, mp3 is usually ok. Disregarding occasional very distinct artifacts, it's certainly far better than the cassette tapes that used to comprise most of my music collection back in the 80s, and is certainly adequate for listening in a noisy environment.

    MP3 is a lossy format. The question is, are you listening for what gets lost? Generally, you're not, so you don't miss it. Sometimes the algorithm mis-guesses what you're listening for, sometimes people decide to listen for different things, and then the loss is apparent.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • Re:Is there any demand for this? (Score:4)

    by Enoch Root ( 57473 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @01:13AM (#369536)
    That was wonderful. You managed to troll the MD users while remaining Informative. Kudos.

    -- ER, listening to his new, kick-ass MD player as he posts this

  • 1. Those who listen to the sound.
    2. Those who listen to the music.

    Group 1 can tell the difference, and are bothered by it. Group 2 can probably tell the difference as well (I haven't tried), but don't really care that much as long as the musical ideas come through fine.
  • Dunno. I thought the surest way to identify a tosspot was when they used the word 'tosspot'.

    Guess that now makes two of us...

  • Any new medium must offer something substantial for it to be adopted. In the case of CD's it was quality of music.

    The music industry could decide to artificially sell this (or another) new format for a lower cost than CDs. They could make some bogus argument about the 'high cost' of CD pirating to justify the high price of CDs. Lower prices could give people the (short term) incentive to change format full of 'content protection.'

  • I know. I felt compelled to reply, having bought a MD player over MP3 player only two days ago. When I saw the number of replies, I felt a big YHBT sign light up. :)
  • Everyone who matters is on the net.
  • [whack]ghoti gets a tap in the back of the head with a clue stick[/whack]
    Geez, you don't get it do you? The Internet is NOT a place to store stuff - it is a public communications network

    Quote:

    Now I don't think networks will ever replace storage media. Of course, everything has to be stored somewhere, but that's not what I mean.

    Umm, one does NOT store data on a network, one stores data on storage media. The storage media is accessed from the net.

    If I have enough bandwidth (isn't 44 KBits/second enough for CD quaility?) I could access my personal MP3 server behind my firewall connected to my @Home pipe with my VPN client. All of that gear is in my home, even though I access it from any Internet access point. Yup, I can get to my legally purchased and ripped CD collection from wherever I have sufficient access - be it wireless or whatever. That is the crux of the argument here - I paid to listen to the content, so I should be able to get at it from wherever I am.

    'Nother quote:

    Another point is access speed. No network can ever be as fast as locally existing media. I can easily and very quickly browse the stuff on my harddrive and find everything at once. That is not the same with the net, which takes much, much longer. And the network is certainly not as reliable as my harddrive. Yes, it gets better, and there are few problems now. But still, there are many more things that can go wrong, so it's much more likely to be a problem.

    AOL giving you fits? :-D

    As long as the RIAA and other organizations that oppose consumer freedom allow that. Actually, I can do that too to my personal stuff on my personal servers behind my personal firewall - "ls -l \mp3z\rush\*.mp3" don't take a whole lot of time across a reasonable PPP connection. And I do everything I can to make sure my connection is reliable and secure. (I paid to use all the content on my hard disk, and feel others should do the same, so I secure my access to it to the best of my ability. Wish I could just give the money to the artists instead of the corporate elite, but that's a different story.)

    With this tiny media, the industry is trying to kill one of the reasons for MP3s - solid state storage, a la RIO et. al. Anyone can make MP3s for thier RIO, but not these disks.

    If the RIAA had thier way, any internet router would drop packets from any MP3 stream, or inform them so they can a$k you where the $ong came from. And I've lost a little more of my freedom.

    Hope I've given you a clue - don't ever trade freedom for convenience.

  • Sure there is. you can have a 2" disc that also has videos and such on it, and crap.
    besides, Taco is a tool, he keeps forgetting that 99% of the population can't get broadband yet, and 80% won't be able to for 5 years at least.
    ---
  • Yeah I'm having some re-direct problems... udel.edu/~jgephart/ works

  • > i can definetly hear the difference. it's most noticable in the higher freqs, in my experience. i've only heard one encoder, so others may do a better job.

    Correct. In my experience, there's no "best encoder" for all types of music.

    There may be "best encoders" for some types of music, but no one encoder produces "best" results on all types of music.

    I'll take Blade at 128 or 160 as an example - I've heard it's reasonably good on classical, but I know from experience it's abysmal on electric guitars and certain synthesized drum beats. (For sheer torture, try Ozzy or Def Leppard - lots of cymbals and guitar, or the thump-thump-thump of New Order's "Blue Monday" on Blade/128. I can even hear the difference at 192.)

    On the same pieces of music encoded with Fraun or LAME, I have a hard time telling the difference from CD at 160, and can't tell the difference at all at 192.

    I suspect if you're into acoustic guitar or jazz, your mileage would vary considerably - for all I know, you'd be writing exactly the same post as I am, but wondering why you hear all kinds of artifacts with LAME, but Blade sounds fine.

    (Yeah, I know you're "not supposed to" use Blade at 128 - I'm using it as an example because I can hear the same artifacts at 160, just not as bad, as 128. Again, what matters is that there's no "best encoder" for all types of music. But there probably are "best encoders" any given type of music.)

  • Re:Well duh? (Score:4)

    by n3rd ( 111397 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:19AM (#369569)
    Surely something so simple could be easily cracked.

    To me, if it's encrypted, cracking it is far from "simple". If you're a crypto expert, then yeah, you can reverse engineer it perhaps, but Joe Linux (me) won't be cracking this anytime soon.

    I mean, SDMI was a huge failure, how can they expect these not to be?

    I think you have it backwards. If I put out a product that was a "huge failure", I would improve upon that product and re-release it, which is what seems to be happening in this instance.

    RIAA is pissed, and they probably made a helluva scheme this time.
  • But it is very closely the same size as the new 10p piece.

    Remember that the next time you come over and fancy some cheap gum.

    Rich

  • Re:new format? (Score:4)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @07:51AM (#369576)
    > "We are in need of a new format," says BMG's Sami Valkonen

    Well, Sami, enjoy your new format.

    I'm not in need of a new format.

    Actually, I kinda like the idea of 500M of rewritable storage in the palm of my hand, but not at the cost of the DRM garbage you wanna cripple it with.

  • Re:Confusion is imminent... (Score:3)

    by Mtgman ( 195502 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @01:32AM (#369579)
    Funny, I always thought Aerosmith was a coke machine.

    Steven

  • Speak for yourself (Score:5)

    by BillyGoatThree ( 324006 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:20AM (#369580)
    Ummm...I don't want to "simply stream all audio data off the net". I want my audio data here in my hands (or in my drawer, or on my harddisk). That's the whole point of this whole Napster thing (which I'm pretty sure you've heard about, since it's all we talk about anymore). It isn't about "We want to be able to download"--it's about "We want to be able to do what we want with the stuff we own (which includes downloading)".

    I mean, what if www.riaa.com started offering downloadable SDMI (or similarly encrypted) music files tomorrow provided that you could only listen to the stream, not save it or time-shift it or anything. Thanks but no thanks. I don't want a specific medium, I want a choice of mediums.
    --
  • Of course technology always moves forward and new mediums will replace older ones occasionally. But look at the changes in the last 40 years. There has always been a compelling reason for the consumer to switch. 8 tracks were more durable than vinyl and could play in your car*. Casettes weren't a huge improvement over 8 tracks, but they were quite a bit smaller. Someone older than me jump in: were 8 track players all that popular? Did everyone have one? Then you have the casette to CD transition that I was alive for. CDs are FAR superior to casettes in so many way. Sound quality and random access are the two biggies. Now we have this new dataplay disk. What is the compelling CONSUMER reason to switch? Nothing much. It's smaller. I keep a couple hundred CDs in my car now without any problem. So this latest attempt at a media change is being done almost entirely for the record companies interest. Yes, the public is stupid, but they're also cheap. Until there is a real reason to throw away their investment in the current system, they're not going to adopt a new one.

    -B

    *There were car LP players, but not many
  • In their minds, copying music means less money, (that has proved otherwise as napster's growth has meant an increase in CD sales) whereas smoking marijuana is a personal freedom, which, if decriminalized, would give profits to no major corporations until it was socially accepted.
    Actually, the makers of pharmaceutical (like anti-depressant, mild tranquilizer, and anti-nausea drugs) and recreational drugs (like cigarettes and beer) are well aware that legal cannabis could compete with their products and lead to lower profits. In its heyday the "Partnership for a Drug-Free America's sponsors included alcohol and tobacco companies [fair.org]; it still takes money from pharmaceutical makers.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • And now, finally, we have the RIAA's latest weapon in the fight against "music thieves". Change the media. Put out another media format, spend your millions hyping it and telling everyone how great it is, watch the CD die a slow, painful death.

    I'm not saying this new thing won't be cool or useful, but don't be fooled. The one reason above all others this format is going to be pushed is so record companies can gain back some control they've lost.
  • Yeah. I have actually bought several older albums on vinyl, even after having bought the CD, just to be able to really see the cover art.

    Roger Dean, Mouse and Kelly, the whole Hipgnosis team... its really kinda sad to see an artform pushed aside like that.

  • "I keep a couple hundred CDs in my car now without any problem."

    And where did you say you're parked? ;)

    Asikaa

  • Its on the website in a really hard to find place. It is not CD-Quality audio, although they are marketing it as such. It is near-cd quality audio. Load the dataplay disc Capacity Calculator [dataplay.com]. Place your mouse over the headphones, and you will notice the image up the top state:
    • CD-Quality at 192kbps Encoding Rate
    • MP3 at 96kbps Encoding Rate
    I would say at this point it is safe to say they are just putting 192kbps MP3 into it and saying "CD-Quality Audio".

    For those who are proponents of "It makes no difference!", I would suggest that you go out and buy yourself an expensive sound card, and an expensive professional sound system to go with it, and come back and tell me you still dont think it makes a difference.

    ---
  • ACtually the opposite could be true. The companies like the tobacco and booze companies already have the infrastructure and in some cases the equipment that would be needed to sell Marijuana as a consumer product. If the government threw on a couple hidden taxes and licensed some "dealers" everybody's happy. Even the quality of the marijuana would go up and you'd never have to be afraid of buying weed laced with heroin or speed.......

  • Mini-discs died a pretty miserable death, and the continued failure of people to adopt any of the other recordable mediums suggest that we're pretty content with CD's for the time being. I think that there is a sort of law of diminishing returns with size, and anything smaller than a CD doesn't appeal to many people.

    Any new medium must offer something substantial for it to be adopted. In the case of CD's it was quality of music. For MP3's it was transferability and effective HD storage. What new quality is offered by these disks that doesn't already exist in another form? Are CD's at 4.75 inches in diameter and negligable thickness really that inconvenient?

    The next wave in media will most likely be based not on size but on durability. This is the one area where all current forms of storage are severly lacking.

  • As near as I can tell, it isn't an RIAA or SDMI initiative. These guys have a good product, but it has nothing to do with any format; they just make a small WORM drive. Of course, if the RIAA has any interest in the device, they wouldn't make it obvious.

    They do have the minimum amount of market-speak hoopla to show that using the WORM characteristics, a number of copyright control schemes can be implemented, however, most of these will be at the controller level, not at the device hardware.

    Take their unlockable data; basically this means that software is stored in an encrypted state -- the consumer is able to purchase a key which will be stored on a special part of the disc. Other schemes that are possible would be media with a limited lifetime -- just store a timestamp on first listen, and have the controller refuse to play after a certain time.

    All of these schemes (and others I haven't discussed) are based on restrictions in the controller. These guys just sell the mechanism, and as near as I can tell, it has no secure policies hardwired into it.

    Mind you, that doesn't make it obvious that there will ever be a device sold that without draconian controllers attached. Witness the Minidisc. It would have been a kickass removable media a few years back for computers, but no computer drives were ever produced, as this would have undermined the security of the SCMS that sony was betting on.
  • People moved from tapes to CD because of the sound quality and ease of use (no rewinding etc) and vinyl 'phased out' since it was just too large and unwieldy to use. There is nothing in this DataPlay system that offers anything new to joe.random massmarket user. Their first question will be: Why should I buy yet ANOTHER CD-player?

    So while music media moguls would love to replace all the CD players in the world with their protected proprietary system, it's simply not going to happen. This is just another MiniDisc in the making. Now this MIGHT work as a media for PDA applications and data, but for music, we have our CD's and we have our MP3s. DataPlay offers no benefits for the end user compared to these.

  • Um. None of that sound doctoring stops at the concert, unless you mean an orchestra concert. Have you ever seen the huge mixing panels in use at a concert? Have you noticed that they use amplifiers? Guitar pedals? Microphones? Those all change sounds.

    Or for an even better example, the one time I did spend money on a Metallica ticket, the sound quality at the live show was terrible. All of the speakers were facing somewhere else, so all I really got to hear was echos-- which in a stadium is a severe distortion because of the size of the room.

    But I can't really tell when I've converted a song into mp3 then burned it back as AIFF/WAV on CD in a mix. I've found some mp3-players (especially the free ones for Mac OS), though, that really blow-- washed out sound, etc etc.
  • I can't stand MP3's simply because of their lossy compression and will not support any other format that uses similar compression.

    I've heard this from people before. Maybe it's just me, but I don't beleive them when they say this. Could Slashdot readers reply to this and tell me if they can tell the difference between MP3s and CDs?
  • Do they deliver magnifying glasses with a music CD, because otherwise it's a bit hard to read the lyrics :)
  • This is the same disc mentioned on slashdot earlier.

    Here Dataplay [slashdot.org]

  • We need to know what fair use is (Score:4)

    by ReconRich ( 64368 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:24AM (#369613) Homepage
    (Donning asbestos long johns...)
    This is another example of technological measures to enforce copy right, which will inevitably lead to somebody cracking the technological means, lawsuits, destitute geeks, and wealthy lawyers.

    We need to know (in the US at least) What is fair use.

    OK, this thing is definitely going to keep me from extracting small portions of a cd for purposes of review, etc. which has always been upheld as fair use. The RIAA is almost cetainly not afraid of me doing this, they're afraid of me Napstering albums. But they feel they have to do something.

    OK, its time for Orrin Hatch to carry out his threat and ask the Congress to define "Fair Use".

    What would this do for Us ?

    1. Buisiness owners who depend on production of copyrighted material would KNOW what can and can't be done. Technological measures which prevent legal fair use would *NOT* be protected.

    2. Buisinesses would LIKE this. All buisinessmen LOVE determinism, all they really want is to know what they can and can't do... and then beat up competitors for the can't.

    3. We would love this. We would know what we CAN do, and would have a legal leg to stand on, as opposed to having some ignorant judge use an undefined concept like fair use is now to uphold what he sees as "pirates" against a "legitimate" buisiness.

    Technological means of copy control are going to be upheld by the courts until such time as the courts have SOMETHING codified to look at (that's what they like). An incontrovertible definition of fair use would provide this.

    -- Rich

  • Why turn on the surround sound? Pro Logic will highlight the loss of channel separation in MP3, sure, but that's hardly a normal listening situation. Unless you listen to music with the surround on normally. Which just screws it up, IMHO.

  • Re:A quarter of what? (Score:4)

    by whydna ( 9312 ) <whydna AT hotmail DOT com> on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:24AM (#369618)
    A quarter is a denomination of US money. It is valued at US$0.25. It is a round metallic coin of measurements: 24.26mm (diameter) x 1.75mm (thickness) and weighs 5.670 g. It has a reeded (ridged) edge with 119 reeds. The front has a embossed picture of the first US president, George Washington. The back has a embossed picture of an eagle (the US symbol for freedom).

    Info on other US coins can be found here: http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/index.cfm?act ion=coin_specifications [usmint.gov].

  • Re:Extra albums? (Score:3)

    by jovlinger ( 55075 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @08:29AM (#369624) Homepage
    No, it's free money for the record companies. If they can put three or four albums on there "if you liked this album, perhaps you'll like these" they can hypothetically sell you 3 additional albums without spending a single cent on marketing them. It's the perfect place to put lesser known or niche acts that don't have enough momentum or mainstream appeal to be marketed on their own. If you use a scalable encoder format, they could offer you teasers at a crap bit rate, and then just sell you the additional bits. (does OGG do this?)

    They'd be kinda like a B-side album. Can you imagine the stigma of being a bonus album act, tho? Destined never to sell an album by yourself, never headlining your own album...

    There are a few negatives:
    1) risk; lose the disc (easy, given the size) and you're down three albums.
    2) duplication; if the same bonus album is on several discs, do I get to unlock all of them with one purchase? What if I then give one away?
    3) quality; there's only 500 MB, so that works out to 125 MB per album, which isn't going to make the sound quality people happy. Perhaps this can be ameliorated if they use a VBR encoder with manual hinting -- this would be a new trade, the compression engineer, whose job it is to decide the bit-budgets for various parts of the album ("let's give the intro skit 96 kbs, which should allow us to push up this dynamic bit into the 300 odd kbs"). I'd expect some albums to be sold with "gold" compression, and cost more, but take up all 500 MB for one recording. Classical music especially, which will be longer than a typical album, and also appeals the quality conscious and price-insensitive listener.
  • I notice that most of the other posters here claim "MD isn't dead" but every time I'm at BestBuy or the like I see an increasingly smaller MD display and more emphasis on CD-R(W). MD prerecordeds are nonexistant (Sony had a few titles from their own in-house labels, I never saw others).

    That being said, I believe MD is a superior technology. I just wish that Sony would get off their arses and give us MP3 capabilities. Somebody did a great mockup [minidisc.org] of a Palm/MD/MP3 combo player which would be HUGE if someone would actually build it.

    The one thing missing from flash-based MP3 players is their cost per unit of storage. MD is the ideal storage media for MP3.

  • For those who are proponents of "It makes no difference!", I would suggest that you go out and buy yourself an expensive sound card, and an expensive professional sound system to go with it, and come back and tell me you still dont think it makes a difference.

    Heh. But if someone needs "an expensive professional sound system" to tell the difference, then to the consumer, there really is no difference. And guess what? The target market is consumers.


    ---
  • about 10p

  • And exactly why would this interest the masses?

    Price and availability.

    Remember that both formats of any given piece of music will be sold by the same vendor, and the vendor sets the price. So they just have to sell Britney Spears' or Limp Bizkit's new "music" for $10 in the new format and $15 in the old format (or don't sell it in the old format at all). The glass-eyed zombies will stagger into the retail stores and make a decision between spending $10 and spending $15.


    ---
  • Death in the states, perhaps. I live just down the street from Sony's Shinagawa, Tokyo headquarters. Why can't the "US scene" get its head out of its rear and learn a lesson from the Japanese?

    NAMELY . . .

    MDs are huge here (as I'm sure it's been said in the past here). My personal observation as to why they are huge in Japan is that they are the the media of choice for copying rental CDs. Yes, that's right - there are tons of CD rental stores in just Tokyo alone. A small rental fee legally entitles you to do anything with that music, as long as it is for your personal enjoyment. (ie, copying, etc. is OK but you cannot give or sell it to friends, etc.). My wife seems to be hooked on the MD format, but I choose mp3s on a hard disk. We're both covered by the (really) nominal rental fee.

    Just be sure, I confirmed these facts with a Japanese coworker who is very versed in ?nix. As technically adept as he is, he has only somewhat heard of Napster. Which leads me to the broadly sweeping conclusion that Napster vs. the RIAA with some of the IP issues which seem to have been raised is an entirely US-centric phenomenon.

    In Japan anyway, the RIAJ is not so bent on charging every customer the same $16 for a CD. Using a really basic economic principle, they get a smaller amount of money through the CD rental system from those who don't feel they need to keep the official media. New Japanese releases are available in retail and rental stores almost simultaneously, and even a lot of US/foreign music is available here, and since it is a lot of what I listened to in high school, I'm as happy as can be.

    Sure there are logistical differences between the US and Japan (like a densely populated country's CD rental stores are just a short walk vs. a 20-minute drive away), but I can't help thinking that if the music were available much more easily in the US that there wouldn't be so much animosity on both sides of the Nap/RIAA fence.

    One more call for the US (from an American) to take a lesson from the Japanese!

  • VBR is only common with self-ripped mp3's (I myself use lame -V6 -B112 , but I don't really notice a difference on my VIA 82C686 sound chip with el cheapo speakers) because Napster' (and OpenNap) really don't support it that well. Until that's fixed, VBR will not be distributed through Napster on any major basis.

  • I imagine compression could well be optional, or at least that many people will hack it to make it so.

    I don't think this technology will get anywhere though - as you say, DVD-Audio is on the horizon, and is being pushed by the major labels.

    Also, it seems to me that the future of music recording lies in straightforward RAM - probably Flash rams. We can see this now with mp3's, but in 5-10 years we will have much much greater capacities, and so it seems logical that memory should be used, what with all of its inherent advantages over DVD's and CD's - easy to record and rerecord, good portable solution, much more robust, universally compatible, etc etc.

    Technologies such as those outlined in the article are interesting solutions for the shortterm, but I don't think that they will have any staying power.
    --

  • Ignore all replies that don't mention the bitrate of the MP3s.

    Take all replies that don't mention the encoder, or who didn't try a "blind taste test", with a grain of salt.

    Keep in mind that listening to any MP3 though most computer speakers is not going to sound as good as listening to CD audio through most stereo systems, and that 99% of the MP3s on Napster were apparantly ripped and encoded by poorly trained monkeys.

    Check out this site [r3mix.net] for the best discussion of MP3 quality I've ever seen, including the link to a German computer magazine's test [heise.de] of 300 audiophiles. 90% of the 128kbps MP3s were rated as worse than CD Audio; the 256kbps (constant bitrate) MP3s were not.

    I personally can hear the difference between (constant bitrate) 128 and 192 kbps, but not between 192 kbps and CD Audio. My roommate is happy with 160. My one audiophile friend reencoded all his music at 384kbps after discovering how lousy 128 sounded through $2000 speakers.
  • So the discs are the size of a 25-cent piece, but the package will be the size of a jewel case?
    Talks continue with retailers, who may be amenable to stocking a new format that fits in current racks --
    DataPlay discs can be bundled in CD-size packages -- and that offers them a cut of future electronic sales.
    If they choose to "bundle" one in a package, that sounds even more wasteful than the old double-high music CD packages.
    --
  • Okay, this is somewhat off-topic, but I want to take issue with this statement in the write-up: "Of course its an intermediate step before we simply stream all audio from the net" - no, I don't think it is.

    Storing all your data "on the net", getting all your music "from the net" - that has been promised for quite some time. Oh, and there was "the network is the computer", too.

    Now I don't think networks will ever replace storage media. Of course, everything has to be stored somewhere, but that's not what I mean. When I copy a CD to MiniDisc, for example, it is available to me, and I can take it with me. I don't depend on the infrastructure I would need to download the music. Yes, I know, eventually, every place on earth will have wireless access at 5 bazillion terabytes per nanosecond, but we are far from that now. And then, why should I pay for streaming the music? And even if I paid a flat fee, why should I waste resources (frequencies) to do that, if I can have the data in my pocket, easily?

    Another point is access speed. No network can ever be as fast as locally existing media. I can easily and very quickly browse the stuff on my harddrive and find everything at once. That is not the same with the net, which takes much, much longer. And the network is certainly not as reliable as my harddrive. Yes, it gets better, and there are few problems now. But still, there are many more things that can go wrong, so it's much more likely to be a problem.

    And last, but not least: Despite all the talk about leasing music and selling services, there is something very deep inside us that simply wants to own things. I own my CDs, I can take them in my hands and be sure I got something real for my money. Yes, it's stupid, but I think it's something very basic. And it doesn't matter what the media look like that we buy, but we will want to buy things in the future, too, not just some abstract data streams.

    Phew, that's a bit more than I thought I would write ;-) Any opinions?

  • Re:We need to know what fair use is (Score:3)

    by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @08:57AM (#369649) Homepage
    First, the courts themselves define most Fair Uses, and created the doctrine ~150 years ago. It derives from the Constitutional guarantee of free speech, common law property rights, and the Constitutional mandate that any copyright law promote the progress of the arts, and last for a limited time.

    Congress has recognized and codified some Fair Uses into law. However, that does not mean much - while Judges must recognize those Fair Uses, they can still recognize more. And if Congress declares that a judicial Fair Use is not one, it has no impact on the Courts, as Fair Use derives from higher authorities than Congress.

    Additionally, the one of the points of having a judicial system is to handle new cases. If there were something incontravertable and codified, you wouldn't need a judge. However, what is piracy for one person may be Fair Use for another, despite being the same action. I don't know about you, but I prefer judges that can respond to the specifics of a case.

    And, let me point out, that should copyright law somehow mandate a system that absolutely prohibits copying, it would potentially be unconstitutional. Congress cannot actually remove people's powers to copy works - it would be unconstitutional. What they do in fact, is grant to authors the right to bring suits against people who copy without authorization. Further, that right must be granted only to the author of the work in question. (though it can then be sold, given up, etc.)

    A system like this, if legally mandated, would strip authors of their rights to copy works to which they themselves hold copyright - because it doesn't matter if it's a copy instead of a master, they simply DO have the uninfringable right to copy it. Copyrights cannot exclude authors legally. And sooner or later, the work must lose the copyright, and anyone has to be able to copy it at will.

    Why you think that anyone who carefully studies copyright issues would prefer such an encumbered system as this that presumes to grant authors or worse still, the company that makes the media, or Congress such broad powers as you describe is beyond me.

    No one is allowed to prevent you from making excerpts of a CD for review purposes, or space shift the materials to another medium. (e.g. mp3 players - this is regardless of the AHRA, which didn't cover them but are still legal! This also means that we gained nothing significant from the AHRA....) If you can't for technical reasons, you have the right to make it so that you can. The RIAA can go to hell, for all I care - they simply don't have the powers that they want to have, and there is no basis for the government to ever be able to grant them to them.

    The Congress really needs to return to the idea that they must not establish prior restraints against copyright infringement, but simply make it easy for copyright holders to sue and get damages from honest-to-God pirates, without chilling Fair Use.

  • Napster does support VBR, but in a horribly broken way. What it does is it looks at the first frame, which is normally near-silent, so it's at a very low bitrate. This is the bitrate that's reported by Napster for the file. So a VBR encoded file will generally show up as around half of its maximum bitrate, which is not an indication of actual quality.

    The end result is that users don't grab VBR mp3's because they appear to be of low quality.

    Of course if Napster implements a bitrate filter, then VBR could become the ultimate chink in their armor...

  • You've got to be kidding me? Another format? Of course, I know the RIAA doesn't "get it", and they probably never will. This new format is ridiculous. So you've got these little discs now. Great. What ever happened to the mini-disc, what was wrong with that? It was small, it was recordable...oh, wait, the record cartels [dictionary.com] did not control the distribution media of the mini-disc.

    My advice to all of you who own stock in any of the big five cartels...sell it. You're revenue streams will evaporate. Face it, if you make money from a record company and you are not a recording artist, than you are a parasite. Don't try and justify it, just accept it and move on, because the new methods of music distribution are like a flea & tick collar and you are going to lose. Get out while you can.

  • This is not new! (Score:4)

    by macsforever2001 ( 32278 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:28AM (#369656) Homepage

    This is hardly new news. The company is DataPlay [dataplay.com]. There was an article [slashdot.org] in Slashdot about them and their technology a few weeks back.

  • We already saw this...

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/08/0623 21 6&mode=nested

    Editorial jokes aside... It hasn't even been a month for petes sake.
  • I think we can pretty much say that DataPlay disks will replace cassettes, with lower-quality sound than CDs but higher capacity.

    Consider this analogy, if you will: 35-mm cameras and APS cameras. APS cameras have demonstrably lower quality, objectively speaking. Yet, people love APS cameras. Why would someone put up with low-quality crap? Because it's good enough. APS film is 35% smaller than 35mm film, yet because of the convenience of its intelligent processing and the cool-factor of panorama shots, it has gained a nice toehold in the market. But, the 35mm cameras aren't going anywhere, because people who care about the absolute best images, and the best control of the photography, spit on automated point-and-shoot gimickry, and use 35mm or large-format cameras.

    I see the same situation possibly coming into play with the DataPlay disks. The amazing convenience of putting a handful of albums in your pocket will outweigh the (relatively minor for most purposes) difference in audio quality.
  • Whoa there, cowboy! Jeezus, did I hit a nerve or what? The guy asked if anyone can really tell the difference - I can, and I bet you can too. Let me make myself crystal clear - 256k .mp3 is just fine for everyday use.

    The question asked about .mp3 as compared to the original, and I responded with my own opinion about that comparison. Don't take it personally - it's just my opinion, and it's neither whining nor complaining about the quality.
  • well, the thing is that if you have 500MB, you can afford alot more than 256 kbs.

    Oh, yeah, no doubt about it (hey, way to yank things back on topic ;)

    Anyway, if you've got 500MB to play with, you don't really necessarily need lossy compression at all - if you can manage 2:1 lossless compression, you can quite easily fit an entire CD on there, with a lot left over...
  • And I dare anyone to say that the DVD format has been a failure!!

    Maybe it's just where I'm sitting, but it doesn't seem like it's exactly saturated society. I have never even seen a DVD (I've seen the cases at electronics stores but I've never seen one open). I have never seen a DVD playing, unless I happened to walk by one at Circuit City or something and not noticed it. I do not know anyone who has a DVD player (other than one pre-installed in a computer - my own included - in which case the DVD function has to my knowledge never been used).

    I have seen a fair number of VCDs, but only in Asia, where it seems like they're being played at every restaurant, bar and hotel. As far as I know VCD players are not commonly available in North America.

    I'm sure someone is using and buying DVDs, but nowhere near me. In these parts we use VCRs, and as long as that's the appliance that gives us a recordable medium, it's likely to stay that way.

  • If push came to shove, could you simply not connect all the audio-out ports on your stereo to your soundcard and hit "Record?"

    How exactly do these new DataPlay discs thwart music thieves?

    I mean: a decent sound system can be wired to a decent sound card to produce a re-digitised product "as good as" the original and then compressed back into MP3, no?

    What I find so interesting about Napster and it's recent downhill battle with the RIAA is that it has started forcing people to *think* about the level of corporate control in our lives...

    I mean, Napster & it's distributed filesharing equivalents are _insanely popular._ If the laws are, supposedly, by the People and for the People -- shouldn't these People decide whether or not the copyright laws are valid?

    I wonder though if Good Old American Apathy will set in, again... I mean, how many Napster users will stand up and say, "I believe this activity is moral and should be legalised." Or, just as everything else from speeding to marijuana, will we simply keep breaking the rules rather than reforming them?

    Hm... how does that quote go? To live legally is to live immorally, to live morally is to live illegally?

    BRx.
  • At last I've find someone else who despises lossy compression.

    The adoption of MP3 has convinced me that a lot of people don't really listen to music.

  • Why the new media??? (Score:3)

    by Dman33 ( 110217 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @11:27AM (#369678)
    Prerecorded cassettes fell to 76 million shipped last year vs. 123 million in 1999, the industry says. "We are in need of a new format," says BMG's Sami Valkonen.

    So, really old technology (cassettes) starts falling off so they need a new format??? They make it looks like the industry is not doing well or they are losing sales! My question is how the CD sales are going?!

    Answer: Up only ~$400 Million USD for US sales only.
  • Just slip the CD into your pocket, and... Does anyone see another "longbox problem" on the horizon? How the hell can these be packaged in any kind of environmentally sane way?

    Very good question. It'll be especially interesting to see what happens on BMG's home turf (Germany), where rules on excess packaging are extremely stringent.

    I suppose they could use those big plastic exoskeletons that have to be removed by the cashier with a special tool. But they certainly haven't been terribly popular to date.

  • "Labels may see DataPlay as a way to get ahead of the trend in ultrasmall MP3 portables -- and a new way to sell music in a format fully protected from copying."

    Let them sell the little buggers to their black little hearts content. *shrug* Nothing can make me or anyone else buy them.

    I and all users would have a choice. Either:
    • Stick with larger CD's and current hardware technology, and continue to have the freedom to compile our own mixes if we want.

    OR
    • Purchase new and quite likely over priced technology which would restrict the use of said smaller media.


    Now... I'm not going to any MENSA [mensa.org] meetings, but you really have to be rucking fetarded to either puchase these mini cd's or think that average public would be stupid enough to buy them.

    hmmm... on second thought... Full House [tvtome.com] was on the air for 8 years.
  • Sorry I was so agressive there, I'm in college, where good speaker systems are rather impractical, and good headphones are eminently useful.

    -----------------------

  • Sony will not provide any player that can make a flawless copy of a copy. They have a music division. The SONY data MD can not be used in a music player because SONY has the rights to the format and a music division. There will not be any licenses given for a MD Data MP3 player from SONY. Another MegnaOptical manufacture will have to do it. Don't expect it from DataPlay. They have RIAA blessing. This means a music recording is converted from the MP3 format! It's converted to a protected format and then recorded. MP3's recorded as DATA can not be played on the player (it's not in the right format). Don't expect to put your MP3's on these and lend them out to be copied!
  • What ever happened to the mini-disc, what was wrong with that? It was small, it was recordable...

    ...it was proprietary.....
  • And now, finally, we have the RIAA's latest weapon in the fight against "music thieves". Change the media.

    I'd say more the RIAA's latest way of generating revenue. RIAA members made HUGE bank with the transition over to CD. Repackaging content they already own generates a hell of a lot of money for them. In the 80s / 90s many people replaced their old vinyl/tape collection with CDs.

    I suspect that's part of their beef with downloadable music (or at least downloadable music that isn't "protected"). If you just purchase the "content" you pay once and can stick it on whatever format you chose (Burn a CD, MP3 player, MiniDisc, new format of choice). Even if everyone paid for their content this way and didn't trade (a'la Napster) this would be a pretty big hit in revenue for them.

    The Bastard

  • Of course its an intermediate step before we simply stream all audio from the net

    OK, I realize that this is news to the /. crew but.....

    NOT EVERYONE IS ON THE NET. Online music sales, even if you counted every single napster download as a sale, don't begin to touch the amount of music that is sold through normal channels.
  • SONY in all the wisdom they have decided to make two kinds of MD's. One is a DATA MD. It can be used for comupter programs and other binary uses. It can not be used to cut a MD mix to play at your party. This is because it can be copied. The other format is the Music MD. It has serial copy protection built in. Their is no getting the original binary recording back off the disk. A copy does have a generation loss and the number of generations are set in the software. Unlimited copies of copies do not happen. The copy is not the same as the original. Because the original demand was for music, the data discs got no shelf space. Computer interfaces were even more scarce. Now they are a hard to find specialty item at 5 to 10 X the price of a music blank. CDRW took SONY's market on that one as a blank could be used for either purporse and didn't have serial copy protection. Free market forces went around the roadblock. I see a competitor to DataPlay entering the MD market with a portable MD MP3/Data walkman/external computer drive that will fill the void in the market!
  • What Mr. Volk should have said was:

    Music hasn't had a successful new format in 20 years.

    Don't forget DATs and minidiscs came and died. Maybe you could call compactflash a format as well (for MP3s) and say that that's a success??
  • or D> Listen professionally. MP3 is almost bearable listening on my little PC speakers, but on any system capable of producing 20/20k they sound AWFUL! Furthermore, I take issue with the term "CD quality." CD quality audio (red book) is 16bit 44.1k. Period. That's it. I can accept this sort of crap from the local news desk jockeys reporting on Napster, but I'd like to think that most of the folks here don't buy into the hype...

  • Vending machine. Slip in 100 quarters. Get 1 back.

  • Not flaimbait, but a question..

    I know SONY has two kinds of MD's, a music and a data MD. Are the data MD's rare in Japan just like they are in the USA? That's why CDRW is so popular here. It can be copied, re-recorded, and the same disk can be used for music and computer data. It's almost impossible to find MD data recorders and media here. It's almost as if they never existed. Renting CD's is not permitted in the USA, however they can be checked out of a library.

  • I've heard this from people before. Maybe it's just me, but I don't beleive them when they say this. Could Slashdot readers reply to this and tell me if they can tell the difference between MP3s and CDs?

    Actually, I was just doing a blind taste test myself not that long ago, comparing 256k .mp3 (encoded wih the latest version of LAME) vs. high-bitrate .ogg vs. straight CD-audio.

    My conclusion? I can definitely tell the difference between 256k .mp3 and the others using a pair of not-particularly-expensive Sony headphones. And this is after a misspent youth, blowing out my eardrums at far too many rock concerts. To my ears, .mp3 sounds thin and vaguely tinny compared to the original. Vorbis files are much closer to the original, sounding richer and fuller than the .mp3. In fact, it was damn hard to tell the difference between the original CD-audio and the .ogg files.

    Just my personal opinion/experience - YMMV.
  • Music "hasn't had a new format in 20 years," says DataPlay CEO Steve Volk. "It's time to do something new, something smaller, better and more versatile."

    Wow. This guy obviously doesn't use any of this stuff himself.

    1) Time to do something new? I don't think so. CDs are more popular than ever, and CD-R drives are just recently entering the price range that Joe Average wants to pay for them.

    2) Something smaller? Definitely no, not for me anyway. I lose CDs often enough, and they're 5 inches across. I don't need to be trying to keep track of 3/4" discs.

    3) More versatile? I fail to see how this applies. These discs supposedly hold 5 hours of music or 500mb of data. 80 minutes is hard enough for me to fill up, same for the 700mb in terms of data. If these discs do both at once, that's an improvement, but the article wasn't clear on that.

    However, it's not going to be more versatile at all until it become ubiquitous. That's why I bought a CD burner instead of a SuperDisk drive. The LS-120 disks would suit my needs just fine...until I need to share data with a friend, or bring things between work and home.

    Yeah, CDs suffered the same issues early in their life, I'm sure. And how long did they take to catch on? If they're 20 years old like the guy says, it took about 10 years or more, didn't it? I wouldn't expect these discs to catch on much sooner. People are just now getting comfortable with CDs.

    --

  • Does smaller CD's also mean smaller cups of coffee?

    I'm thinking espresso...

  • Interesting, seeing as how I use my MD pretty much everyday and spend quite a bit of money on the increasingly wider array of media and other accessories for it.

    The MD is far from dead.

  • No new format in 20 years??? (Score:5)

    by Asikaa ( 207070 ) on Monday March 12, 2001 @12:41AM (#369742) Homepage
    'Music "hasn't had a new format in 20 years," says DataPlay CEO Steve Volk.'

    Uh, MiniDisc?

    '"It's time to do something new, something smaller, better and more versatile."'

    Uh, MiniDisc again?

    Nothing quite like conveniently forgetting something for marketing purposes.

    Asikaa

  • What license? CDs don't come with a license. They are covered by ordinary copyright law.

    The reason why you can listen to your CDs all you want without permission of the recording company isn't because you're licensed to do so. It's because private listening to a CD isn't one of the "exclusive rights" granted to copyright holders in Title 17 Section 106:

    Sec. 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

    Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

    (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

    (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

    (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

    (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

    (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

    (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

  • There was nothing inherently "record-only" about the medium

    Except that recording an 8-track was a royal pain in the ass. An 8-track would typically consist of four channels, each of which held 12 minutes of music. So, in order to record onto an 8-track, you had to break your music into 12 minute segments, or you would get a track change (ker-chunk) in the middle of a song. You then had to get the recording started just right, because 8-tracks are not rewindable. It was just a royal pain in the butt to copy 8-tracks, although a few recording decks were made. I have one. Useless.
  • Maybe you misunderstand the MO technology? You need the laser beam in order to change the magnetic properties of the medium.

    I have never had magnetic flux problems with MDs.

    Actually I abuse my MDs (compared to CDs) and I've had fewer problems with them. My MD player is easily more resilient to shock than an equivalent CD player, it's fallen on concrete several times and still works.
  • I know! That is why I have a CDRW drive and do not have a SONY minidisk. I can buy a CD/MP3 portable player for less than $100 US. It has no serial copy protection and will play MP3's.

    They forgot the consumer is always right!

    All consumers have a vote. Be sure to vote wisely.

  • Audio Discs (if you'll recall, single speed cd drives) are recorded at 128 Kb/sec

    Beware of confusing Kbits per second with Kbytes per second - a CD is 44100 * 2 * 16 kBits/sec = 1.4 MBits/sec.

  • ...you know that Aerosmith isn't worth a quarter. ;)
  • well, the thing is that if you have 500MB, you can afford alot more than 256 kbs. That is what sony's ATRAC system uses (and it sounds pretty good, too BTW) to fit 75 mins on a ~ 100MB minidisc. So if you have 4000Gb (500MBx8), you can afford 4000Gb/4000s (~ 66 minutes)=1 Mbs.

    So that should sound ok. Perhaps the mp3 codec isn't to your taste? I'm sure ATRAC@ 1Mbs will suffice.

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