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Quarter-sized CD's?
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.
I disagree. Minidiscs took off. It took a long time, but nowadays, many people own a minidisc. Pre-recorded MD never took off. Ok. Probably because they were as expensive as CDs, and because record dealers didn't want to have every record on a new support. But blank MDs are nice. Excellent quality, all features of a CD (direct access to tracks), plus song and disk titles. Plus they are small. The only bad thing about MD is that recorders are still a bit expensive. But I only use MDs to record music I want to hear while traveling. I don't want of CDs and MP3/OGG gadgets that need a computer to be recorded.
{{.sig}}
Damn. If they remove the restrictions,...
Never happen. Beware of this quote from the article suggesting where they got their funding: "The company has raised $119 million in funding from a number of powerhouses, such as music giant Universal Music Group..."
They have whored themselves and now have satan's baby.
I still have 100+ LPs and a few 45s, and a rather nice turntable, because some stuff didn't move well to CD, some stuff didn't come out on CD and some stuff lost tracks when it was re-thought and moved to CD (i.e. ELO Out of the Blue)
I'm probably getting a DVD player in the next month, but deciding factor isn't so much that it's better or more convenient, it's actually that my NEC VCR is dying (after 16 years. Hey, it was and still is a great model, I hope I can get it fixed.), but I'll still need a VCR to play the prerecorded tapes I have (many, too many...)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, I saw prerecorded Minidiscs here in the States (Over in the local Best Buy in fact). The selection was about 1/20th of the CD selection in the same store, but it was most certainly there. You could also find blank media pretty easily, and about every store I went into had at least one or two minidisc models on display.
Any new format, to succeed needs to add value to the user to overcome the cost of changing over. With CDs, there was a marked increase of quality over vinyl. Some might argue it was a decrease, but Joe Sixpack is still glad his CDs dont pop and scratch. Further, the CD allowed instant track access at the push of a button. It was these two features which pushed the changeover to CDs, along with the gradually decreasing price of players and concurrent larger selection of CDs in stores.
That said, where are the additional values of this medium over CDs? It's small. neat. But if I have to give up my CD burner, small dont mean much.
The next medium is most likely to be some flavor of mp3 or ogg device, be it solid state or magnetic disc based. Give me the ability to carry all the music I've bought over the last 15 years in my pocket, and the ability to navigate easily among all the songs, and I'll be all over it.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Don't forget that Porn makers decided to produce VHS exlusivly. Don't laugh, this was a major reson. Imagin that in 85 there were 2 internets of comparable quality and qunaity and price. One had porn, the other didn't. Which one would the early adapters (the same people who would buy VCRs when they came out) use?
Sleep is for the weak!
As I can see you missed my point. First of all, I'm not for, and I'm not against RIAA, I just think that they are acting in a way I don't agree is good for them.
Other point you missed, I have never said that the new technology should be smaller and higher quality, could be one of them, or maybe another technology that would allow smaller discs and higher quality, whatever combination you want.
About the frequency range. Vinyl is still prefered for many enthusiasts due to its unlimited frequency range. In high quality recordings and with high quality equipament the range of infrasounds are very easy to feel and enjoy.
And about few people needing more quality, don't forget what our friend Bill Gates said about more then 640KB. Who said that we need HDTV, but after watching HDTV for a while you feel that convencional TV has a lower quality.
Please, try to keep the last paragraph in mind
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I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Agreed. As you pointed out, there is no driving reason for consumers to move to this new format (we've already got random access, etc.). What if the RIAA members "pushed" this format change because it helped them instead?
Consumers already have CDs and are happy with them (and the fact that they are easy to rip helps too). But, the RIAA is probably kicking themselves now for ever supporting such a "loose" format. Don't you think the RIAA would love to be able to take back all CDs ever sold and promote this format (or another with limited copying for Joe Sixpaxk)?
What if the RIAA offered a deal where they will exchange your "old" CDs and vinyl for "new" DataPlay discs? In this way they have dropped the cost of switching to the new format for consumers and they (the RIAA) gets what they want, no more CDs. This might sound expensive (and thus counter RIAA), but consider that the production cost is the lowest chunk of $ in the cost of a CD. A dollar hit on all CDs ever sold might be worth ridding themselves of CDs forever, and thus staving off their (the RIAA) obsolecence in light of digital file swapping.
There has to be a reason why the RIAA members would pour money into YAMF (yet another music format)...
GRH
I'd say this is doomed to failure, primarily because they've wrapped it up in a silly plastic 'caddy'.
There are certain instances where caddies are a necessity (i.e. tape applications - reel to reel doesn't count!!) but for optical media, what is the point of the caddy? It does nothing except increase the media cost significantly.
I daresay part of the wonderful things about CD is the fact that it doesn't have caddies. Remember in the early 90s when many CD-ROM drives required you to put your CDs in expensive caddies? Where are those caddies now? In the trash. We learned how to handle discs directly.
A far better idea would be for them to make some double sided mini CDs that aren't in caddies.. that way they'd still play in regular CD players and CDROM drives.. and they could make a mint from patenting the idea for double-sided mini CDs.
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