New Philips eXpanium Will Use 3" CDs

SpunOne writes: "Phillips is gearing up to release their new eXpanium mp3 player. Unlike most players in the past that use proprietary storage technology, Phillips is turning to the use of those cute little 3 inch CDs that have been around forever, but never really used for much. Apparently most existing CD burners can already write to them, and the rest can do so with an adapter. Phillips even has a beta test available if you're interested in giving it a try." If you should get into the beta group (50 people), why not write up a report for us on this little device? If it only played .ogg files, I would try to pre-order from somewhere.

Comments

29 Percent of a full CD...

[Futurepower(tm)]

3 inch CDs = 185 Megabytes.

So let me get this straight...

[plastik55]

These CDs are 3 inches wide, hold around 180 megabytes, cost $2 each for non-rewritable blanks, and the player will be very sensitive to skipping from external forces like any CD player.

Whereas a MiniDisc is 2.5" wide, holds 256 MB, costs $2 each for a rewritable blank disk, the player is much less sesceptible to skipping, and uses ATRAC2, which at 256Kbps is generally regarded to be superior to mp3 at the same bit rate,

So why bother with this mutant mp3-cd player? It won't even play my CDs.

Re:what about DVD tech?

[technos]

Full size DVD-R: 4,700 megs
Full size CD-R: 650 megs
3 inch CD-R: 180 megs

A quick ratio gives the result that a 3 inch DVD would hold about 1300 megs, twice the capacity of a full size CD..

irony?

[bokmann]

Great! SO now I can rip all my CDs and burn them to... smaller cds... seems kinda underwhelming.

Most Portible CD Players these days play MP3s now

[ryanw]

I bought a cheap $60.00 cd player from Fry's Electronics the other day that plays regular AudioCD's and also can read DATA cd's with MP3's in the root directory. Works great.

Ryan

Ogg support

[norculf]

This is the trouble with Ogg Vorbis. It isn't supported by these things. If they had rewriteable firmware, it would be possible to hack support into them, but as far as I know, not many of them do this.

I would rather use my CD player anyway. A real CD sounds better anyway. It is also a simple matter to make an expendable copy of a CD so the original isn't in danger of theft or damage.

Why?

[DeadMeat (TM)]

I'm not sure exactly what advantage this has over other MP3 players, or even over non-MP3 players. Sure, it's small, but so are traditional MP3 players with flash media; plus they don't have the problems that CD players have (tons of moving parts, skipping, delicate laser, media easy to break, etc.), and they're getting close to the 180-something MB a 8 cm disk can store. The media may be a hell of a lot cheaper than flash, but at a 256 kbps encoding rate (IMHO the lowest you can go to get decent sound quality without losing bass or getting artifacts) we're only talking about 100 minutes of music . . . in which case if you're willing to put up with a traditional media-based player you might as well go with a MiniDisc and not worry about compression artifacts at all.

To me the advantage of CD-based MP3 players has always been that they can store massive amounts of music they can store -- 700 megs (or more if you get more expensive CDs and/or overburn) on a CD that costs pennies. Being able to pop a CD containing 5 to 10 CDs' worth of music into my Rio Volt is the main reason I bought it -- no lugging around more than a couple of CDs, and I can use it in the car without endangering other people on the road by flipping through CDs when I should be driving. By cutting the storage capacity to just over a quarter of that, it's sort of eliminating the point of using CDs. Iomega had the same problems with the HipZip -- no matter how cheap the media is, nobody's willing to put up with the problems brought on by optical or magnetic media unless they get some big storage payoff. (Admittedly, at 40MB the PocketZip disks are significantly smaller, but so are the disks' physical size, and you didn't have to invest in a CD burner if you didn't already own one.)

That isn't to say I don't wish Philips well with this -- my last (pre-MP3) CD player was a Philips, and it's taken quite a beating and still works as well as the day I bought it. I'm just afraid the market for this sort of thing isn't going to be very warm.

advantages of a smaller disk

[xeno]

A lot of folks have asked "why?"

The advantages of a smaller disk include a smaller player (fits in your pocket, unlike the current raft of full-size CD/MP3 players), lower power consumption (it actually does take a lot less energy to spin up a ~40% smaller diameter disk), low-cost media (3" disks usually cost about US$0.55 in lots of 50 and US$1 in lots of 10 or less), requires no new software (!!), and low production cost of the player (since none of this is new technology). Out of about a dozen cd burner I've used, every one supports 3" CDRs, as well as all tray and most slot-loading players.

This player and two disks will almost get me thru most of the workday without hearing a repeat, I can play the disk in my computer without any hardware-specific software or drivers, and the trivial cost of the media make it quite nice for sneakernet music swapping. Are you going to swap or give away your CF card or MiniDisc? I didn't think so. Who knows, maybe this will bring the cost of 3" CDRWs down.

Low tech? Yes. But a very nice application of low-tech.

Jon

Picky, Picky ...

[overshoot]

That's Philips with one L -- the two-L version sells petroleum products. The Company is quite touchy on the subject.

I have some

[DNS-and-BIND]

I saw some 3" CD-R's at the electronics store, and I just had to have them, they were so cool-looking. They hold 180Mb, and five of them cost about the same as ten 5-1/4" CD-R's. A year later, they're still sitting there...I haven't found a use for them yet. They sure are neat, though.