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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.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
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.
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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.
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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!)
...IIRC the compression rate is just a wee bit better with WMA than with MP3, while still keeping the same sound quality.
Well, according to a test in the German CT MP3 was still better.
The sound quality isn't near that of MP3.
They tested it with MP3's encoded at 128, 160 and 192 Kbit.
And yes, even with 128 Kbit MP3 sounded better.
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
Aside from your intelligent amp, that day arrived about a year ago.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Well, Ogg Vorbis is great, but still too immature and the format is still in flux, so it wouldn't make sense to include it in a standard format yet.
However, it seems like this CDA spec is really a filesystem and layout standard - substituting the mp3 files for vorbis files if a given player could decode the vorbis files should not pose too much of a problem.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
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"
ok , but at least raalize that if hte decoder is in flux and isn't satisfactorily implemented, then it's in no condition to be put in the firmware of a cd player.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
You won't see that happen for a long, long time, if ever. And you certainly won't find upgrade flashes that are free.
The only way these companies stay in business is making sure that every time there is a new standard you have to go out and buy a new player. If you only had to buy one player (and upgrading was free) that would be the end of them. They don't want that. And we all know that consumers exist for the express purpose of serving the needs of big business.
Oh, and just in case consumers get cocky enough to believe that they are important, there are courts, laws and government bodies. All of which are in place to make sure that we consumers don't get out of line and try to hold back corporations from making money. But, that's just my theory.
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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?