Quarter-sized CD's?

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Posted by michael on Sunday October 21, 2001 @05:49AM from the little-disc-big-restrictions dept.

Anonymous Coward writes: "The Denver Post is running an interesting story about Dataplay, Inc. This Boulder, Colorado based company aims to supplant the 20-year-old CD with a quarter-sized (1.5" x 1.25") optical disc that can hold 500 Mb of data. Players and media (already supported by 4 major record labels) are scheduled to launched 'the latter part of first quarter 2002'." They're cute, but considering that Sony's minidiscs never took off and this format is heavily restricted, my guess is that this will fail.

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Also take a look at... by Neutron+Zenith · 2001-10-21 05:58 · Score: 2, Informative

DataPlay - Flash Killer or Copy-Control Nightmare? [slashdot.org] (From Feb 21/01)

NZ
Re:sell licenses by Kaneda · 2001-10-21 06:00 · Score: 2, Informative

Huh? what do you mean not sell licenses?
Sony learnt their lesson from the Betamax debacle - I can buy a MD player from any number of audio equipment manufacturers including Kenwood, Pioneer, JVC, Denon, Sony, Sharp and a bunch of others, and MD recordable disks from TDK, Victor, Maxell or a bunch of others.
How would they do this if the tech was not licensed?
Sony is NOT the only company making MD machines and recordables...
Re:sell licenses by maggard · 2001-10-21 06:02 · Score: 5, Informative
The reason minidisks never tookoff is because Sony refused to sell licenses. Same reason Beta lost to VHS.

Beta lost to VHS for a number of reasons, over-simplifying it to licensing is so innacurate as to be incorrect.
- Beta VCRs cost more to produce
- Beta tapes cost more to produce
- VHS was able to record longer programs
- VHS was able to record longer programs (this was really important)
- Actual quality wasn't all that different for most folks
Licensing and single-sourcing was just one more problem.
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about Son'y minidiscs by unformed · 2001-10-21 06:03 · Score: 5, Informative

Sony's minidiscs never took off

Wrong. Sony's minidiscs never took off for the intended audience.

Minidiscs are the defacto standard medium for amateur bootleggers (for concerts, etc), since they're cheap, small, and have good quality. The best are DAT recorders, but they're expensive and big.

Just some FYI.
Re:Not true about MD not taking off... by JanneM · 2001-10-21 06:06 · Score: 2, Informative

Hmm.. I've never seen anybody use them in Sweden, and most consumer electronics stores seem to carry only one or two token models. I think their success is somewhat spotty in Europe as well.

/Janne

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Re:Minidiscs popular in UK by harakh · 2001-10-21 06:44 · Score: 3, Informative

They are popular enough in Finland aswell. I've had one for oh.. 2-3 years and I like it alot. Everyone that carries somekinda player usually carries an MD over here. Not that its supercommon but I dont see it as a total flop atleast. Its easy enough to record on with digital connectors to CD-player. I listen to my CD's at home and on them with my MD. I'll buy a MP3 player when its as easy to carry around as the MD and holds as much music as I carry in MDiscs when travelling (5-10).