[jimmiez]

anyone familiar with this new audio format? jimmiez

 

[jlo mein]

ya i think theres a thread on this from a LONG LONG time ago...

i do know that the discs are about the size of a quarter. I forget if they are write once or rewritable. They come in 2 different capacities, one the lenth of a cd, the other i think about half that.

I'm not sure whether these discs use compression or not. For some reason they haven't caught on well yet, even though the company making them was supposed to have a big push launch last fall or winter.

I did see on cnet.com that they reviewed one dataplay disc device.

 

[Pepzhez]

I'd be very wary of this format, although I'm happy to report it does seem to be dead in the water anyhow. Dataplay, it seems, uses a proprietary compression format with Draconian "copy protection" built-in. I remember reading about the workings of Dataplay: a write-once format with no editing or copying capabilities, oppressive registration requirements which force you to give personal info to the Dataplay Corporation, etc.

If you search the "General Discussion" forums at minidiscussion.com you'll find plenty of valid criticism about Dataplay. I also clearly recall Dataplay's shameless method of planting trolls at Minidiscussion. Quite unethical, if you ask me.

With all this, is it any wonder the format failed before it ever took off? Then again, Dataplay may have been a scam all along - a way to extract investment money from the likes of Vivendi Universal (who invested something around $50 million in it).

Avoid ANY and ALL formats which infringe on your fair-use and privacy rights (and Dataplay looked as bad as Circuit City's happily dead Divx format). By not adopting them, this is the ONLY way to prevent them becoming the norm.

 

[jlo mein]

ya when i first saw it i thought it was just a ploy format...no real backing behind it....

compression ought to be terrible as the size of the discs are the size of quarters, and they only cost like $5 each so they must be really cheapy...

 

[andrzejpw]

THe copy protection thing though, that's what scares me.

 

[Mystyler]

At the moment, DP discs are write once.

 

[andrzejpw]

Is the compression variable?

 

[phidauex]

They are all write once at the moment. I don't know anything about the compression, but the disks themselves hold over 500mb, so the compression doesn't have to be super-heavy. They are small, but they are still an advanced optical storage technology.

peace,
phidauex

 

[andrzejpw]

Quote:

Originally posted by phidauex They are all write once at the moment. I don't know anything about the compression, but the disks themselves hold over 500mb, so the compression doesn't have to be super-heavy. They are small, but they are still an advanced optical storage technology. peace, phidauex

no, it doesn't. But I'm guessing it will. Seriously, think about minidiscs. The biggest selling point now is NetMD + MDLP.

 

[Mystyler]

Minidisc is the best portable format at the moment and in the foreseeable future, IMO. Forget dataplay.

Also, the DP discs are damn expensive. $20US for a double-sided 500MB disc, and something like $12US for a single-sided 250MB disc. And they are all write once. Write once sucks.