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Standard For MP3 CD Players Planned For March
udif writes: "OSTA, the Optical Storage Teechnology Association, (a standards body whose members include HP, Sony, Ricoh and others, and among other things, has defined the UDF filesytem for DVD's), is proposing a standard format for storing MP3's on CD, called CDA. Here is a quote from their press release: 'Many recently produced DVD players now have the ability to play back MP3 or WMA files. However, these players sometimes lack the ease of use of an audio CD when playing CD-R or CD-RW discs with MP3 or WMA files. Due to lack of standard format, discs containing MP3 or WMA files made in today's PCs with standard CD recording software often exhibit long initialization times and lead to a poor user experience ... CD-Text capable CD/DVD players will be able to display the names of artists and song titles and navigate the hundreds of MP3 or WMA files easily by selecting play lists or other criteria.'" CDA, by the way, stands for Compressed Data Audio. Seems like a good step toward at least good labeling of which players can play your shiny disks, whether they hold MP3s, home video in VCD format, or your digital pictures. Demo units using the spec should be at next month's Comdex.
You can buy a cd player that plays CD-Rs (and CD-RWs, I think) now for $87. It may not be "standard" yet, but whatever... it will read files off of a standard CD-ROM file system which is standard enough for me. Sure, the user experience could use a little work, but $87 for this much storage space can't be beat right now.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
It would have been real great if they had made it so you had to support DVD-RAM or other home-writable DVD technologies to get the seal-of-approval.
That seems to be about the only way you'd get dvd makers to make them...probably RIAA with a gun at their head.
Wow, Philips is not with them.
Philips is the inventor of the Compact Disc and they are selling a very nice portable MP3 player which plays normal CD's, CDr's and CDrw's.
No copyright protection at all.
..is what we need, so that when some new CD/DVD disk standard comes out next week the manufacturer can just put an upgrade on the web so your player can read the latest version of shiny disk...
...course, it would be even better (but unlikely) if it was Open Sourced too....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Hopefully, however, they will have sense enough to not specify file-types, leaving the door open for other formats like ogg, etc.
My hopes exactly. It seems silly to lock technology into certain standards and not make technology as flexible as possible, but, then again, different standards got us into the problem... somehow, preposing new standards to standardize those standards isn't going to give a clean, standard solution to the problem.
God, I need another cup of coffee...
Thanks for the information. :)
George Lee
I bought some MP3 cd's in China once, and they all had an AUTORUN.INI file which started WinAmp (included and extracted on the CD) with the default playlist. Pretty smart for Windows lusers.
No, Compact Disk DIGITAL audio .... CDDA
but, yeah, it's confusing.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Silly me. I thought CDA stood for "CD Audio" which would be our good old-fashioned red? book standard. Just what the industry needs... more overlapping alphabet soup.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Start with grammar. Then work on composition. Then try oration. Then you have reason to expect that somebody might pay attention to what you have to say.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Screw MP3. MP+ sounds much better and with a smaller file size. http://www.mpegplus.net. It's not GPL, but the decoder is open source. Or if you're too paranoid about software patents, use Ogg Vorbis.
good news, it doesn't look like they want to make this a SMDI based spec. Just plain ol' MP3 files(z)...
wait 'till the RIAA get wind of this...
adrien cater
boring.ch
Point and Grunt
A standard for storing files on a CD already exists, it's called an iso9660 filesystem, or maybe even Joliet stuff. In any case, these standards already exist, and my experience with my MPTrip (device which reads mp3's off of a cd and plays them) is just fine -- I can't complain about slow access times or whatever, and I can even jog with it, and even bang it around on my desk for minutes, without any distruptions to the music.
All these corporate types want to do is make it harder for me to stick all my music on a few disks.
The best thing to do would be to just build devices that play stuff in alphabetical order (or random, or in a specific directory) from a regular old iso, so you can use it in your computer transparently, there is no point in introducing a new 'standard'.
Blah, all these people want is money!
-S
I think the compression used by WMA is significantly better than MP3, meaning smaller files that sound the same, or same-size files that sound better.
Methinks, however, that this has less to do with quality of compression and more to do with WMA's support for encrypting the encoded data. I'm not sure how good it is; i've heard people say that its relatively easy to crack. At any rate, I personally view this as Big Money's way of trying to co-opt those open mechanisms. Something tells me that the final standard will likely provide some mechanism for anti-piracy controls (read: anti-consumer, anti-backup, anti-sharing, anti-space-shifting).
Hopefully, however, they will have sense enough to not specify file-types, leaving the door open for other formats like ogg, etc. I don't really see much reason why the final standard couldn't be designed to work as well for video compression, like MP4. Except that there seems to be an inversely proportional relationship between the size of a corporation and the intelligence of its management.
1. The UDF spec are there - check here.
2. The MultiPlay specification is nothing more than a Logo certification program, and is concerned with physical CD/CD-R/CD-RW compatibility at the Media level for consumer devices (so if you buy a CD player with a MultiPlay logo you know it plays your home-made CD-RW Audio disk).
3. Apparently the CDA format was not released yet (it's a draft). I assume it would be released just like the UDF spec.
The Raite series of DVD/MP3 players use the "Special CD-R" technique for Firmware update.
i have a md and it works great for running/biking.
the battery lasts forever. i just plug the output of my soundcard into it and hit record. the discs are about 1.50-2.00 each and they can be rewritten several times-they hold about 74 min, and they use the same technology as cd-rw's.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
it was a md sony deck for a home stereo system and a portable player for about 250$. you would need the deck to record and listen at home. the player to drag around with you. you can also get a portable player/recorder for about 200$
this may be out of your price range, but consider this: another benifit to the md stuff is that it is pretty standardized. i think the cd mp3 players are going to flipflop around with different standards for a while.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
this is about an mp3 cd standard. not about whether such devices exist.
I'd like to think that out of all the companies on earth that will produce these, at least one will have the common sense not to use some asinine copy-protection scheme. And that will be the company that gets my business.
---
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
Pretty good idea -- so long as the original version of the firmware comes on a CD, so that any strange upgrades that you didn't really want don't end up turning your brand new piece of equipment into a large hunk of metal.
---
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
Check out CD MP3 player
I have a diffrent one. Of course there are some issues with play lists and artist titles.. but I don't really care I put the disk in and press play. Then sit around for 10 or 12 hours. The one I have works pretty well even when I'm mountain biking (it is pretty resiliant to shock) but it chewes through AA batteries. It doesn't even play a single 12 hour disk on a new pair of batteries.
But this is a double-edged sword. Along with some enticing new feature, there could be a Trojan horse--SDMI compliance or some other evil copy protection scheme. Once the firmware's flashed, it's too late.
I don't think the music industry will be allowing that kind of flash setup. If it fails in the middle, oh, well.
As far as copy protection, the ones who don't implement it don't get the license, and can't play the standard formats yet to come--or MP3, for that matter--this could be accomplished by the RIAA climbing into bed with Frauenhofer.
And VCD as lots of legitmate uses? I think not... but that is a supported standard, hmmm it looks very like DVD in file structure. The companies know people will not use the standard if its not available to the home burn market, if you look at the companies involved I doubt they want to shoot themselves again. The hardware companies never wanted CSS.
hell the layout of a DVD disk is open, just some of the files within the file system and noddy encrypted.
James
... vorbis ogg?
Will the manufacturers have to pay royalties for replaying mp3? I for one would rather they used ogg and didnt' charge me the extra. If we're going to have a new standard (and hence new cd writing software to make it a smooth experiEnce) we might as well push for a patent free format also IMO.
In reality of course, mp3 is too popular to support only ogg, but including it as an option can't be that much more effort can it?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Creative, RCA and Philips won't be happy if noone buys their new mp3 CD-R discmans.
Wah!
Perhaps some flash-upgradable hardware is the way to go. Throw a USB or serial connection on it and provide firmware updates for it; that's definately something that would convince *me* to buy any product.
Why would you need a USB or serial connection to do firmware updates? Surely there would be a way of making a "special" CD-ROM with some sort of volume label or data pattern that would trigger a firmware update right from the CD.
- Mike
Pretty good idea -- so long as the original version of the firmware comes on a CD, so that any strange upgrades that you didn't really want don't end up turning your brand new piece of equipment into a large hunk of metal.
Unfortunately, if the firmware update gets botched, the player may not be able to read the original firmware CD, hence it would retain it hunk-of-metal-like nature. The player would probably need some sort of "hard coded firmware backup" feature, like many of the computer BIOS's do, in which a shadow ROM is activated via some sort of special jumper option. Or maybe doing the CD/DVD player equivalent of "Press F1 for setup", i.e. holding down the play, pause & stop buttons during power up.
- Mike
I use a random wire antenna for SWL, but I wouldn't dare use it for serious broadcasting work. It's much harder to radiate a signal well with a random wire antenna.
Much more importantly, you can attempt to use the headphone cord for reception but NOT FOR TRANSMISSION! That's an easy way to fry out the earpiece! You would have to add a lowpass filter before the earpiece, and filtering on signals amplified to antenna level, it's just well... icky.
-bugg
I'm affraid this will remain an industry secret..."oops we forgot to implement a version that the PC can use." In other words, you will be allowed to purchase CD's with whatever MP3's you want on them, except, only an RIAA accepted recording company can write and issue the CD's. So any MP3's that you dump onto a CD will not be readable in the new players.
CDA stands for Compact Disk Audio........no?
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Yup. You've been reading /. too long. Sad thing is I think you're probably right.
The text of the announcement was kind of interesting. The fact that it explicitly FAILED to mention security or watermarks probably speaks volumes. It also spoke of giving users the ability to create compilations out of their own audio CD's. Probably a reference to some sort of control with watermarks. Most likely, you can make a first generation copy but second generation copies will be crippled in some way.
I tend to burn CDs with artist directories in the top level, and then album directories as subdirectories of the artist directories. I then have a script create playlist files for every directory, so as you get closer to the root directory the playlist files contain more songs. Since relative pathnames can be used in playlist files, these playlists can be the same as they are on CD-ROM as they are stored on my hard drive.
This is just another way that these companies can get everyone to buy another CD burner.
Why can't they use existing CD filesystems?
Because if they come up with a new filesystem, they can make everyone buy a new CD burner.
It's all about how to make more money, not how to do it the best way...
FoonDog
"[...]just like a computer would."
Someone give this guy a clue. =)
How is this copy protection? Or are you just an ignorant fuckhead who doesn't know what s/he's talking about?
In the specs, it specifically states that audio quality will not be measured it just says that the audio must be understandable. What is to stop the RIAA from strong arming manufacturers of these devices into limiting MP3 playback rates to say 64 or 128 bits, regardless of the rate in which they were recorded?
In asia VCD is as popular as VHS is in most other parts of the world. Something to do with the high heat and humidity wreaking havok on VHS tapes that makes them somewhat less than desirable.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
The Pine D'Music is a much better player than the Philips, and it costs roughly the same price. The major thing is that it supports reading ID3 tags whereas the Philips Expanium does not. Also it supposedly has better sound quality.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Not too hard to decide; pretty paranoid.
How close are these companies tied to record companies? I can see just yet another breed of copy-protection that will cripple cool new tech.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Prone to skipping? Not for several years now, in my case. I've got an off-the-shelf CD Walkman, that has NEVER skipped, even as I jog, run up & down stairs, stand on subways, etc. Buy something new, you should be pleasantly surprised.
I recently purchased one of the Philips 40-second skip-resistant players, and I was pleasantly surprised. However, as someone who jogs very frequently, the CD walkman got plenty of use, and after only a couple of months it began to give me some occasional skips, hence my argument for a very stationary method of preventing skips ... something stationary and stable enough to prevent itself from taking damage so early in its life... Thanks, though. I probably should have mentioned this in the first place.
Also, while I'm thinking about it, why are CD's so prone to skipping? It would take a simple roller utility (rubber wheel on both sides in three places, 120 apart) to spin the disc and hold it on place, only touching the disc on the outer edges? Such wheels would not only keep the disc spinning, but they would hold the disc in place (for the most part) on those bumpy rides. Hmm, just a thought.
It not really that bad, you'd be suprised how stable Windows can be as long as you aren't installing all kinds of crap on it. Pretty much the only things installed are the ATI drivers and software, which includes TV Tuner and DvD player, Santa Cruz Drivers, The keyboard/Mouse Drivers, WinAmp and RealJukeBox. That pretty much does every thing an entertainment center does and in some aspects better. Most Computer DvD players are superior to all but the highest priced standalone DvD players, and not even a 5 CD Changer can give you the amount of nonstop music a 20 GB Hard drive, nearly full of MP3's can. With ATI's new Tuner software, I have all the capabilities of Tivo. There really is no downside to doing this way, except maybe the computer won't go with the furniture, which my wife objected to at first.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
This has already been done, any DvD drive you would put into a computer will play DvD, Audio CD's, VCD's and CDR/CDRW. When my wife's stereo went bad, I built a 600 Mhz Duron system to replace it as the entertainment center. It has a DvD drive, a 21" monitor, I plugged the speakers and subwoofer from the old stereo into the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card, a 20 GB 2nd Hard drive for MP3 storage, wireless mouse and keyboard and an ATI All-In-Wonder Video card for TV support. Works very well.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
The following paragraph is an offtopic rant! UDF is a major pain in the ass, designed primarily by an overly-pedantic european standards committee. It's unreliable for read/write applications because it contains no inherent consistency support, and it's too complex to implement properly for read-only applications in a short amount of time.
This sounds like a neat scheme and all... but what about the BeOS mp3 players planned, utilizing the BeOS BFS system for organizing and searching mp3s, based on critera such as length, author, title, compression, etc etc... All of the features mentioned with this new CDA format can be done with BFS...
I think the problem with the filesystem is that it contains information not used by the CDA (by the way, does this confuse anyone else?). You have Created date/time, file size, file name, extension, a directory naming which sectors are used... all of this is unnecessary for MP3 players which just need a song title and playlist. The current cd players have to load in the directory structures, and then access the disc according to the structure to play the file. Obviously by changing the filesystem to something that is more MP3-Friendly, you could have more efficient, smooth playback.
witty sig goes here
Minidisc
Minidisc
Minidisc
Yes, I know many people equate Sony with the great satan, but the tech is pretty damn good. Perfect for such activities as jogging. The newer models have 40+ seconds of skip protection. My older model only has 10 but I have rarely made it skip. The media is also more compact and can take quite a bit of abuse (they're jacketed). The only downside (IMHO) to CD-R: length. You can get the equiv. of one CD on each disc. Now, Sony's updated the MD to (if memory serves me correctly) quadruple the capacity, but AFAIK it's only used in some of their new digital cameras.
Nathan
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
Well, how about the Photo CD format? It sounds like it's just some graphics on a CD, but only certain CD drives can read or write photo CD's. Couldn't ths be similar?
"I am a cipher, a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce" -Jimmy James
Uh MP3's are better than cassette-quality. The bitrate is higher. Its just a matter of lost frequencies.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Use a solid state player. There are plenty on the market. I personally have a Diamond Rio PMP300SE. It works wonderfully to do the mowing or stick in the car with a Cassette Adapter. I find the Software to have better features in Linux than Windows. While I have made MP3 CD's for specific purposes, like taking in to work for several hours of listening pleasure, for many activities that involve shock and long battery life nothing beats solid state. I get 6-8 hours of battery life from my Rio on a rechargable battery. My portable CD player is lucky to get 2 hours with twice as many batteries. My Portable CD player is only good for sitting in the car or a walk, or just sitting beside me on a desk. CD's should be used for stationary devices and solid state MP3 players should be used for situations that require shock tolerance.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
It's refreshing, really.
sulli
RTFJ.
Isn't it more like CD-CDA ? (Compact Disc - Compressed Data Audio)
Thanks for pointing that out. I've just fixed it.
The edit user script kept putting that space in there. Should be ok now.
It makes sense to have clear standards like this to work towards. Once these get incorporated into burning software it should be straightforward to make discs you are confident will be reasonably easy to access across a range of players. Right now you're not sure if a player will read 8.3 format or what.
How would you know?
with humpy love,
with humpy love,
humpmonkey
I started looking in to car mp3 players about two months ago. Awia makes one for $299 that's fits in your dash. This is what I ended up with. With a full cd it takes about 1 minute to read. If you label your mp3s correctly it will play them in order. It supports the same file structure as PC so now I have a backup of all my music on my music drive at home. Cool to fit 10 Pink Floyd albums on one disc. The user exp. is OK for me I couldn't see putting something with a hard drive in my car! I mean what if someone jumps in with a new CD they want to hear? I don't think this standard is going to improve much i guess we will see.... $McK
I would like to listen to music while I run on the treadmill at the Y ( and also stare at the SPandex clad chicks in the aerobics room), however, my CD player with 10 seconds of anti-skip memory doesn't work on the treadmill, way too much vibration at 8 miles per hour for it to work.
So, are these MP3 CD players any better? They should be, tey have a lot less data to pull, 1- seconds of CD data is about 100 seconds of MP3 data, unless the d>a is before the memory?
Otherwise, I would have to shell out big bucks for an MP3 player.
Thanks
That's the price range I'm talking.
>where I can put a DVD, CD audio, CD-R, CD-RW, or a CD full of MP3's in my single component, and let it play
Um, I think I just bought one of those for my parents, I'm not positive if it plays cd-rw's, but I'm relatively sure it knows all the others. it's the Apex AD660, they sell it at Circuit City, among other places, I imagine.
Ok, I checked, it recognizes CD-RW too.
Without the pad, it's not Dance Dance Revolution, it's Listen
I don't see why they couldn't - it sounds like it's just a new filesystem. If I can burn HFS CD's for my roommate on my (Linux/Intel) cd-burner, then why shouldn't I be able to burn CDAs?
I guess, but isn't Photo CD a proprietary Kodak format?
According to the FAQ, "the file format has been finished for some time."
Personaly I'd rather give up a few bytes instead of using a M$ product, but I guess we can't diss all of their stuff.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
That's great, but it's not the kind of thing that's 1. Easy or 2. Good for a living room. I don't want a computer in my living room to have to dick with.
I want the day to come soon where I can put a DVD, CD audio, CD-R, CD-RW, or a CD full of MP3's in my single component, and let it play. The stereo + DVD player + computer is too much of a headache now for a single media type. It's all software, so there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to buy a single player (that looks like a current CD component in a traditional stereo rack system) that play everything. If it's a DVD, the amp should be able to be smart enough to divert the video to my TV. C'mon electronics industry! How hard can this be? Hell, already my computer can regonize all of this. Now, I want to go to Circuit City to buy a simple device that sits in my living room.
Christ with all the emerging standards of CD-R, CD_RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, Etc. when the hell are we gonna settle on a FINAL standard.
There is no spork.
niceFire.com - Humor and Lego's or Lego's and Humor or Some Combination of
you can have a directory sturcture with the kenwood.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
The kenwood z919 pays cd-rs that have mp3s on them, just like a computer would.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
they need a SHN cd player really....
hilltop
I've been waiting for years for someone to take a step in the direction of making a portable mp3 that uses CDs in a similar way to the Apex DVD player etc. This looks like just such a step.
btw - anyone know what teechnology is?
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
don't get me wrong on this, standards are great, and i'm not going to complain about standards themselves. however, a thought occured to me while i was reading the previous posts on this ... there have been so many standards evolving in a relatively short time, yet noone has created a system which adequately handles them.
... i'm pretty damn tired at the moment ;)
... so a device that does everything wouldn't be economical ... right? guess we'll have to wait for someone to make one for themselves then think ... hey ... lets sell these
we have seen many standards, and various formats of audio and video vying to be the next 'standard', come and go in a relatively short time, and it seems that with this someone would have thought, by now, *hey* i'll make a device that can be upgraded, like many new motherboards, videocards, etc. via a flash rom update.
with this i don't see why it would be so difficult to make this device read the data, in binary format from the cd/dvd, then process that binary data according to whatever standards it has available, to determine how to extract the meaningful data from the file system.
this data would then be sent to a subsystem that decoded the data with an appropriate codec from the available codec library (which again could be updated easily via some connection to your pc), and finally send the decoded signal to your tv, amp, etc.
hopefully that idea makes sense
looking back at what i've said, and idea comes to mind why we don't ever see a device like this. any company would be crazy to produce a upgradeable device. why? because at the moment the market structure depends on them being able to sell there newest and best devices, that new standards can bring along with them new products and new sales.
heh
well i'm out
-john
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Thank you ALL for catching my gross grammatical error. I applaud you. I will change it immediately. As for my comment, it was meant light-heartedly though I am having some trouble with ignorant, stupid, boring teachers. Sorry to rant, but I am sick and tired of teachers who are more worried about tests than about students learning! All I want to do is learn!!!!
I am definitely putting this thing on my christmas list for two years from now! Any estimations on price? I might just be willing to bankrupt myself for something like this
I have the $87 dollar MpTrip CD player except when I bought it (2 months ago), it was $100. For all of you out there who want to know about it here goes. I live in Colorado and it has trouble playing the Mp3 discs when it is cold out. If it is really cold it won't play at all and I just use a regular CD which still can skip. It claims 50 sec esp but the little bastard does skip a lot when cold. It should be noted that it says that you can only use CD-Rs that are burned at 2x (incuding .wav CDs), I burned mine at 4x which has a little impact since my friends 2x CDs worked a little better. I have also heard that it can have a problem with over heating but haven't gotten there yet. Another problem is that for regular CD's it cuts off about 2 seconds from the end of each sond. Really anoying when it comes to techno songs. But if you live in a warm climate and are going to be playing mostly mp3s then it would be great. As for me I would probably look into the eXpanium which is probably more stable (since it costs more) and I could afford the extra 100 not to have interupted music, which as we all know, can be very frustrating. Other then the above problems I have thought that the MpTrip is great. 10 hrs of songs on one dics and the ability to switch directories is awasome
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
What I'd expect a CD MP3 player to do when you put in a disk and press play is something along the lines of:
find $CDMOUNTPOINT/ -name '*.mp3' -exec mpg123 {} \;
i.e. play each file in the order you find them.
What the LG does is:
This is hopeless.
Of course, it's not really a standard that's required, it's someone working on the product who's actually prepared to think about what a consumer might want from an MP3 player, rather than just wanting to be able to put a tick on the spec sheet.
--
Damn. THey would have to go and do this *after* I spend the money to buy my wife one of these things. Oh well, I got the cheap model (MPTrip, only $89+tax), I'm glad I didn't go for the more over-the-top models that were like $200-$300. I'll just buy something spiffy in about 6 months, and hopefully the CD-R "records" I burn in that period will work on all machines. I should make sure all the MP3s have ID3 tags, and probably put WinAmp playlists in all the directories too...
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
And VCD as lots of legitmate uses?
Well yes - it's a format for storing video on standard CDs. Since it predates DVD by about 5 years, it had a perfectly legitimate use for 5 years. I use it to be able to present MPEG video without needing a PC.
In these day of "cheap" DVcams, and multiple competing and expensive DVDr standards, I would have said that VCD (and SVCD) is still a useful format for "legitimate" use.
Oh wait - but you can infringe copyright with it too.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Fraunhofer will make damn sure of that.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Well a lot of these products can tell the difference between burned discs and factory created VCDs, so this ain't a problem. Apparently this is the way things are on the new RCA DVD player I just bought my father for Xmas because I opened it up and wanted to see if I could play they as it mentioned on the box. It played my legal Astronauts Wife perfectly, but my South Park and Gladiator VCDs which I burned from the internet wouldn't work...they ran perfectly on one of my friends machine (I think it was the Apex???) but the RCA model simply outputted an error message.
Played burned Audio too, so they are doing some content / media checks...
clif (who shouldn't have mentioned he bought this for his dads xmas present as he might actually log into this place one of these days...doh!)
Due to lack of standard format, discs containing MP3 or WMA files...
Why would anyone other than Microsoft care that there's a standard for playing CDs of WMA files? Is the sound quality of WMA files that much better, or is Microsoft hoping someday to leavage their might to surplant MP3s with their own file format?
Just something I've been wondering since using Media Player on Windows 2000...
George Lee
I think when the _portable_ CD players have a 6 foot antenna coming off of it, then you can be suspicious. Until then, there's no reason to go and think that there is some magical way to send the playlists; unless of course you want to go the whole 9 yards and suspect that winamp is trying to contact and RIAA server with your playlist.
-bugg
I don't see why they can't just make the CDA format itself .. uh .. format-independent. That is, make no assumption about what type of compression is being used: include a space to indicate what format is being used and let the player decide if it can play that format or not, like AVIs.
Include a space in the specification for new codecs (store them in RAM rather than ROM), and this could be expanded much further. Imagine DVD players that can be flash updated on-the-fly to play DivX movies written to CDA discs, CD players that handle discs with songs in 20 different formats, and so on. Jeez. That'd be cool. Is there any way we can submit this kind of stuff to them?
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How much do you want to bet that the standard contains a protocol for sending your playlist and any watermarks to the RIAA? (Am I just cynical or have I gone over the line to paranoia? Hard to decide).
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Sony is a hydra of a company, with each head ready to bite the others off. I recall recent news about an amicus brief filed by various powers in the tech industry on Napster's behalf, of which Sony was a cosigner, meanwhile another head of Sony is involved in SUING Napster [Sony is, I believe, a member of the RIAA].
HP and Ricoh have nothing to gain from underhanded dealing either really, as both make more money if people have more things to burn.
Oh yeah... "Teechnology"? Another sign of the trend to add an 'e' to every word possible?;)
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
So an ISO 9660 filesystem is not a standard? I can see organizing it so that the directories load faster, and maybe a manifest, but the only easy way to navigate 500+ filenames is to have a text display & keyboard.
I understand where they might get into some issues with RealMedia, since it is a proprietary format (as is WMA, come to think of it), but Ogg Vorbis is a perfectly open standard, to which there aren't any licensing drawbacks or problems.
Perhaps some flash-upgradable hardware is the way to go. Throw a USB or serial connection on it and provide firmware updates for it; that's definately something that would convince *me* to buy any product.
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"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
Look for my product announcement next week, ahead of Sony and Pioneer.
Neutorn
I get my kicks above the
Couldn't they have called it something better? I don't want to have to say "No, not CDDA, CDA. Yes, there is a difference." Let the confusion begin.
So it sounds good, but what's the security scheme? If it's anything like the DVD region encoding, macrovision, or any other crap I would say that this standard won't be adopted and the RIAA will go crying saying how they tried to use this mp3 technology but the pirates prevented them or some other crybaby excuse. This could be good, but I won't hold my breath as long as companies like Sony are involved.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I feel alienated from this group of negative FPers who have nothing good to say. What happenned to reading the article?
First of all, there are already plenty of CD-players that support playing burned mp3s, they sell for anything between $79 and $199(US).
Secondly, this is a way to set a standard format for burning the CDs so that the next generation of players can easily supply a user-interface such as Author/Song Title; as well as faster access and search-time for the players. It is not going to be forcing any standards on the mp3s themselves. Quit being foolish naysayers and go do something productive.
"I've seen plays that were more exciting than this.
Honest to god... Plays!" Homer Simpson
CDA, known to old school net rats as the Communications Decency Act, being christened the new title for MP3 CDs?
No, worse:
CDA, better known to me as Compress Da' Audio: The first major MP3 ripping group that publically released tracks and (I believe) albums too.
The mind boggles.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
You're reading the "Playback Compatiblity Specification for CD and DVD Consumer Devices" which merely discusses how a player will be tested before it gains the seal. The format of the disk is not in the scope of that PDF; look for another.
-bugg
Reading the specification is like leafing through a consumer's rights document. All it says is that OSTA will test each player with 5 discs, containing 5 tracks. They will insert the discs, check that all the tracks play in order, and, er, that's it. They then give it a seal of approval.
I always though OSTA was a hardcore technical standards committee. Where's the specification for supported media formats, and how to play them? Where's the filesystem specs (like UDF)? Why are the CD/CD-R/CDRW specs only handwaved?
Does my bum look big in this?