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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.

3 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. 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?

    --
    Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
  2. 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)

  3. 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.