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What about dataplay, 500MB in the size roughly of a quarter. Very neat, but i think they ended up filing for bankruptcy over competition with flash cards and hard drive based mp3 players. I think even Britney Spears was scheduled to release an album using this technology.

I think this device will only take off if they don't include any content control like floppy discs or CDs. Remember what happened to Dataplay ???

The Phillips format will win out, of course, just like their Digital Compact Cassette (DCC).

DataPlay wants to be the next one in this chain. On CNNfn, the CMO of the company promotes their product as being a great tool for record companies that want to re-sell their old music in a new format. Universal wants to release everything in secure format, for $2 per song. Just one of the many reasons to stay away from that format. It may sound cool in theory, but it's the RIAA's dream. They go out of their way to make trading files impossible. (Remember CPRM?)

A company called DataPlay is building a drive that uses proprietary, matchbox-sized DVD-ish rewritable disks. They come in two sizes: 250MB & 500MB. Don't know if any companies have announced products based on it though. Unfortunately, the disks aren't compatable with regular DVD or CD drives. Still, it seems like a neat technology.

Dataplay is the size of a quarter with 500mb storage since it's based on DVD technology. It's suppose to come out in the fall. Looks better than the Philips one, IMHO.

• CD-Quality at 192kbps Encoding Rate
  
• MP3 at 96kbps Encoding Rate
  

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

This is a write-once media (a fact they avoid making).

Comparing it to flash memory is comparing apples & oranges. While DataPlay certainly has higher capacity, flash is completely reuseable. They solve different problems.

Comparing DataPlay to CDs tends to ignore the 20x difference in price, ubiquitousness of CD-ROM drives & CD players, upcoming CD-MP3 players/standards, and the convenient size of CDs (compact yet not easily lost).

The financial brilliance for DataPlay is that it is a consumable, which will make someone a lot of money if it catches on.

This quarter-sized write-once media certainly will have its place in the gap between flash & CD-R. The content-control aspects are moot, as the control bit WILL be squelched by some creative hacker.

In other words, children, we have yet another customer tracking tool.

In other words, children, we have yet another customer tracking tool.

Their web site.

I can't believe they actually have a picture of that man both holding his thumb up *and* pointing at you whilst holding up the crappy product. I just imagine the cartoon version:

SuperAdvertMan: Prepare to die "dataplay", all purchasers worship me for my advertising powers...
Dataplay: Aha! But we have (flourish) ... (fanfare) THIS! Meet thy nemisis - HideousGeekParodyMan!
SuperAdvertMan: (bursts out laughing) But nobody will buy products associated with *that*
Dataplay: oops...
HideousGeekParodyMan: (grinning inanely) buy this kids! It's got like different coloured stuff on it!

I hate the it all already...

0.02,
Mike.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, I saw the new DataPlay format. A lot of money behind it, tiny, rugged and 250 megs per side for a total of 500 megs in DVD-R format in a protected case the size of a Smart Card. See it at this web page.

It does have optional "content protection" but it shouldn't stop people from using for their own material. The engineers I talked with seemed pretty open to drivers being written for various operating systems (they want to sell hardware). Come September, expect to see these suckers all over the place.

I recently saw a few references to DataPlay's storage product. "Up to" 500MB on a small recordable disk. This could be incredibly handy for any number of devices. They're partnering with a number of companies - I just hope it catches on. http://www.dataplay.com/

>If SDMI comes out like this, people won't buy players for it

... assuming people know/care about that part. Many manufacturers and retailers are advertising SDMI support as a feature that will let you do cool things like "play music from major labels."

It's all about marketing. (and being able to get the mass media to take your side). I read about something called DataPlay today. 500 MB in a $5 recordable disc the size of a Canadian toonie. Support already announced by Eiger and Diamond. I thought this would be the ultimate flash-killer, until I read their corporate overview, detailing their vision of essentially making digital rights management part of the filesystem. (Note "digital rights management" always means "corporate rights management") It's an entirely proprietary system. Any content stored on the disc may require a key to access. Keys can be purchased online and can timeout after a given interval. You can transfer data to your friends, but they will require their own key. If all music was distribured this way, Napster wouldn't exist.

(They go on to claim that they essentially invented the CD-R.)

The thing is, they manage to make the whole system sound like it's the best thing since TCP/IP. Do I not put enough faith in people's ability to spot evil? (I always thought DIVX failed in large part because it required a phone line.)

>If SDMI comes out like this, people won't buy players for it

... assuming people know/care about that part. Many manufacturers and retailers are advertising SDMI support as a feature that will let you do cool things like "play music from major labels."

It's all about marketing. (and being able to get the mass media to take your side). I read about something called DataPlay today. 500 MB in a $5 recordable disc the size of a Canadian toonie. Support already announced by Eiger and Diamond. I thought this would be the ultimate flash-killer, until I read their corporate overview, detailing their vision of essentially making digital rights management part of the filesystem. (Note "digital rights management" always means "corporate rights management") It's an entirely proprietary system. Any content stored on the disc may require a key to access. Keys can be purchased online and can timeout after a given interval. You can transfer data to your friends, but they will require their own key. If all music was distribured this way, Napster wouldn't exist.

(They go on to claim that they essentially invented the CD-R.)

The thing is, they manage to make the whole system sound like it's the best thing since TCP/IP. Do I not put enough faith in people's ability to spot evil? (I always thought DIVX failed in large part because it required a phone line.)