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Dataplay Ready to Launch

Posted by michael on from the impact-crater dept.

geophile writes "Let's see. This is a CD-like, CD-incompatible storage medium with lower storage capacity than a CD; copying, which is supported by CDs and permitted by fair-use laws is not possible; and it's more expensive than a CD. Read about this great idea here." We've done a couple of stories on the Dataplay discs; this one discusses the heavy content controls built-in. MSNBC had an article on Dataplay a few weeks ago that mentions an "education process" needed to get people to re-buy all their old music in a new format.

8 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Idiot by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 3, Informative

    What the submitter fails to mention in all that rhetoric is that these disks are the size of a US quarter, which I find pretty interesting.

    All the other crap he spewed may or may not be true. It's hard to tell when it's obvious that he's biased against the device and fails to mention the positive points.

    In short, once again the Slashdot editors don't bother to do any editing.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:Idiot by gnovos · · Score: 3, Informative

      All the other crap he spewed may or may not be true. It's hard to tell when it's obvious that he's biased against the device and fails to mention the positive points.

      Lets say I have a free energy machine, but in order to use it, I add on a component that forced you to kill a child every time you turn it on. It would be useless, no matter how fantastic teh tech. The copy protection is not INHERANTLY part of the system, it is an add-on that removes functionality and renders completely useless what could otherwise be a very cool technology.

      --
      "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
  2. Re:How long ? by Dunkalis · · Score: 4, Informative

    The RIAA thinks this is going to stop piracy? Nobody is going to go out and buy a Dataplay player and have to buy ALL their music over again. The few people that buy this are going to be geeks that hack them and turn them into really high-capacity floppy drives. The RIAA will then think that nobody is buying this crap since they would think the people who do are putting the music on the net. Its going go be awhile until something replaces the Audio-CD as the most ubiquitous format.

    Of course, they can simply stop producing CDs to make people convert. Their music they already own, that is.

    The RIAA is shooting themselves in the foot (again). Why can't they realize the Internet is THEIR future?

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  3. Too Bulky?! by Erchamion · · Score: 3, Informative

    "I just know by being in the business, there's definitely a need for a portable format," he said. "Portable CD players are too big and too bulky." -- see article


    *Portable CD Players are mostly used for plugging into your car or listening to in a bus.
    *If you really want a cost-effective and small music player, try an MP3 player like the iPod (5GB, rw, $400). Why would a consumer by a read-only, write-protected, $270 dollar, 500Mb device when they could have so much more with an iPod or Rio...much less "bulky" than a CD player too. (provided, you do need a CPU for one, not hard to find someone with one though.)

  4. Mossbergt Article by asv108 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Walt Mossberg has a good review of Dataplay. He sights numerous reasons why it will fail, but his main objection is the rights managment, "feature." I submitted it a few days ago but:

    * 2002-04-18 07:06:54 Copying Limits Stifle Innovation (articles,news) (rejected)

  5. Re:clueless article by BitterOak · · Score: 2, Informative
    They are intended for digital cameras, PDA's and similar small, battery driven devices.

    Err, how about reading the article. Unlike the CF memory which you compare it to, these disks are write-once media. Who would want to use such a thing in a digital camera? This is not a technical breakthrough technology. They are smaller than a CD, yes, but have less storage space (250Mb vs. 700), and they have all sorts of yucky DRM crap built-in. I would be amazed if this succeeds.

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  6. Re:This will be a good test... by jms · · Score: 4, Informative

    bzip2 was never designed for compressing audio, and it doesn't do a very good job of it.

    However, there *are* compression schemes designed specifically for lossless digital audio compression, and they work fairly well.

    For instance, the "shorten" codec can consistantly compress digital audio to a little over half it's original size -- not quite 50%, but about 55%. The codec works equally well on studio and live recordings. and is extensively used by Grateful Dead/Phish/etc music traders.

    Check out etree.org for more information.

    But yes, this new media uses lossy compression, which will send the early adopters away in droves.

  7. Re:Interesting Math by martissimo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Let's see 80 minutes of CD-quality music now uses 700 MB of space. How exactly does 300 minutes of CD-quality music fit on 500 MB?

    they say they use a compression format "similar" to MP3...

    to my mind a lossy compression technique does not equal CD-quality either, but i guess they dont care about people who like nice clear .WAV files.