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.

Comments

Multiplay - consumer, not technical standard.

[kyz]

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?