Of minidiscs, Mp3, floppies, portable A/V and other miscellania...
Minidisc never did well here, too bad Sony botched this standard cause it coulda/shoulda/woulda done well but for classic Sony licensing greed. Oh well. My cousin, though, here from Europe, really likes them, and since he already has a healthy investment in minidisc he decided to take advantage of the Canadian dollar and pick-up a good deal on probably his last portable minidisc player. He already has a portable recorder and a deck for his home stereo. It really is very small and light and quite nice for 200 dollars canadian. Much better than most Mp3 players for sound quality and media costs/interchangeability. It isn't up to iPod standards though it is more than small enough, and it has interchangeable media, though not of very high capacity.
But what about 8cm discs methinks to myself? Already some companies have 8cm CD based MP3 players. 150-185MB isn't much of an improvement over minidisc, but at least the media is cheap and plentiful and easy to record. But what of 8cm DVD? It seems to me that DVD1-4 would make the perfect MP3/4 media. It isn't cheap yet, but in a year it will be both cheap and plentiful, and you'll be able to use your computer's regular DVD-r/w/RAM drive to make your discs. An 8cm DVD discman could be nearly as small as a minidisc but hold 1.3 to 2.7GB per disc. Also, it would share a robust support infrastructure with plentiful 12cd computer DVD-r/w/RAM drives and MP3/4 and other formats too (DTS, PCM, DD), not to mention video via MPEG-4. Publishers using dual layer discs could even deliver 5GB per disc (about 2.5 per side) if not for feature length film, for music in a choice of formats, including multichannel, and even select video content.
I don't think publishers will go for it though because by the time 8cm DVD-r media is cheap and DVD burners themselves are also cheap, copyright will also be a giant bugbear. Still, many hardware companies could give a damn about that, and perhaps such a use of 8cm discs would finally fulfill the promise of MP3 CD players (and minidisc) by providing a small cheap, recordable, plentiful, and interchangeable music medium.
Lets see an 8cm DVD (compressed) audio revolution!
But what about 8cm discs methinks to myself? Already some companies have 8cm CD based MP3 players. 150-185MB isn't much of an improvement over minidisc, but at least the media is cheap and plentiful and easy to record. But what of 8cm DVD? It seems to me that DVD1-4 would make the perfect MP3/4 media. It isn't cheap yet, but in a year it will be both cheap and plentiful, and you'll be able to use your computer's regular DVD-r/w/RAM drive to make your discs. An 8cm DVD discman could be nearly as small as a minidisc but hold 1.3 to 2.7GB per disc. Also, it would share a robust support infrastructure with plentiful 12cd computer DVD-r/w/RAM drives and MP3/4 and other formats too (DTS, PCM, DD), not to mention video via MPEG-4. Publishers using dual layer discs could even deliver 5GB per disc (about 2.5 per side) if not for feature length film, for music in a choice of formats, including multichannel, and even select video content.
I don't think publishers will go for it though because by the time 8cm DVD-r media is cheap and DVD burners themselves are also cheap, copyright will also be a giant bugbear. Still, many hardware companies could give a damn about that, and perhaps such a use of 8cm discs would finally fulfill the promise of MP3 CD players (and minidisc) by providing a small cheap, recordable, plentiful, and interchangeable music medium.
Lets see an 8cm DVD (compressed) audio revolution!
Comments
Ideally, a mini-DVD device would have a record function built into it, just like a mini-disc, but the ability to make very affordable read-only players would be there too.
I hope Apple goes back to an all tray loading line-up soon.
<strong>You jest?</strong><hr></blockquote>
jest: joke, fool with, make light. At least I think it's a verb too? <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=jest"; target="_blank">jest</a>
<strong>
Ideally, a mini-DVD device would have a record function built into it, just like a mini-disc, but the ability to make very affordable read-only players would be there too.</strong><hr></blockquote>
For portable recording to work in a useful way you'd have to use DVD-RAM, though, not -R or -RW.
Bye,
RazzFazz
And yes, I was speaking in jest. You're tech savvy enough, no ?
You know, DVD-RAM is quie nice. I've been using a DVD-r/RAM drive and it's very simple, drag and drop, can use caddies or not, 4.7 and 9.4Gb media. It's much faster when using a DVD-RAM disc, and simpler too. Too bad the discs cost so much, but I suppose those costs would come down quickly if the format became widely popular.
It's really nice and pain free and Apple would do well to embrace DVD-multi as new players come to market in the coming months.
Just the damned cost of DVD-RAM media, even worse than DVD-R/W.