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Hardware

Sony Announces Upcoming 1.3GB CD Products 87

Posted by timothy from the I-do-like-the-3.5"-floppies-OK? dept.
jedi_jeffrey writes: "Check out the Sony 1.3 Gig High Density CD/CDRW -- They say it can't be copied :-)" Higher-capacity CDs might be nice, but many comments in the attached Talkback forum (like this one) gripe with reason about incompatibility, particularly given Sony's track record with closed-standard storage devices, and the much larger capacity of DVD.
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Sony Announces Upcoming 1.3GB CD Products More

Sony Announces Upcoming 1.3GB CD Products

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  • Back in the day PS/2s were top of the line machines.

    The bus speads were higher than even EISA and you never had to fidle with jumpers.

    Too bad the compatibility and price sucked so much. I remember needing a new power supply and hard drive for one PS/2 and finding it cheaper to get a new computer fro ma latter generation.
  • Just to clue you all in. It is a standard CDROM with 1.2 GB capacity so that it cannot be copied. Unfortunately, they CAN be read, so people hack out the 600MB movies and then you have 600MB of game leftover that can be burned to a normal CDROM and played on your Dreamcast since burners can't burn 1.2 GB...
  • I can see one use of these. Once the power requirements are reduced, Sony will be placing them inside thier Mavica line of digital cameras. That market is much more profitable then the commodity computer parts market. They might even put digital music on it if they can be sure it will not be "copied".
  • PSX discs only have a little proprietary data, and it's circumvented with a modchip.
    Don't know about PSX2, but I think it's pretty unprotected.

    Dreamcast, on the other hand, is quite proprietary, AND has extra copy protection apparently. (I know it's been cracked, but you still won't make a valid GD-ROM with these discs, as GD-ROM is separated into low density, a large gap with text printed on it, and high density. At Sega, they don't just write them differently, they use blank GDRs.)
  • XDF is a usual floppy with less control data on it and thus capable of storing ~1.8 megs. IBM used it for OS/2 distributions since version 3. It requires no special drive.

    Maybe IBM used 2.88M before, but I hardly believe it had different distributions for different types of floppies.

    P.S. LS/120 is a great thing although it's s-l-o-w.

  • I really wish it was backward-compatible. 1.3GB is really good for an entire DVD rip encoded with FlasK [go.to] into a DivX ;-) [divx.ctw.cc] AVI (most rips I do average about 800 MB @ 720x480, 29.97 FPS). I would definitely be interested if this format could be read by a run-of-the-mill ATAPI CD-ROM.

    To the MPAA: I don't rip DVD movies. I like being raped for $8 at the movies and even more for a DVD disk I can't play under Linux. Thanks.

  • I don't know why hjames scored 0 (moderated down, not A.C.?) but he had the point right. Sony had no involvement in the audio cassette patent. Philips patented it around 1963, with a license policy that was basically "free to anyone but you must conform to the spec". That made it a hit, guaranteeing compatibility. Eventually (post-patent expiration) there were some oddball half-speed cassette drives for voice transcription.

    Sony is famous for the Beta fiasco. They didn't license it to other makers, so JVC came up with VHS. Just different enough to escape the patents, and licensed to any and all comers. Sony got 100% of a dying market; JVC with its slightly-inferior VHS ended up winning.

    So will Sony follow its own precedent or have they learned?
  • I guess Sony hasn't learned. When VCR's came out, they marketed the Betamax which was propritory and while it was a better quality then VHS, because it was a closed standard and therefore more costly they lost the VCR revolution (my parent's still have their betamax somewhere). Same thing here.
  • GoRK wrote:

    his format is 99% likely NOT TO BE backward compatible. Your AudioCD player, PSX, Dreamcast, (insert your own consumer device here) will NOT be able to read these discs.

    And this is why I think it will be a total failure. If the tens of millions of CD-ROMs out there can't read this, nobody will use it.

    After sony introduces this format, It's likely that we'll see a plethora of firmware upgrades to every CDROM reader under the sun to support this stuff and the format will take off and soar.

    Not too bloody likely. Can you imagine iMac users or corporate IT guys upgrading CD-ROM drives en masse to support such a small incremental improvement - and be forced to deal with copy protection to boot? Upgrading firmware is a pain on anything, particularly cheap devices like CD-ROMs/CD-R, etc.

    sulli

  • Imation is a 3M company [3m.com]. It's not just a "brand".

    Superdisk is an open standard championed by 3M/Imation.

    Neither one has anything to do with Sony.

  • Sony is famous for the Beta fiasco. They didn't license it to other makers, so JVC came up with VHS. Just different enough to escape the patents, and licensed to any and all comers.

    That's actually a common myth. Sony did license Betamax (in 1977), but only after they noticed all the licensees JVC and Panasonic were getting by licensing VHS (in 1976). Sony abandoned its long-standing policy of "no third-party licensing", but they didn't get as many licensees as JVC/Panasonic. There were other factors involved in Beta's downfall besides licensing.

  • It used to be (early cd days) that you couldnt get blanks the same size as the originals. ie, max blank size was 74 mins, but you can write 80 mins or whatever on a cd.

    On floppies they`d put stuff you couldnt copy down...stuff that was written some strange non standard way, and use strange non-standard reads of the disk to see if it was ok. i think you can do low level reads on some drives. Probably easy on a fixed platform like a console..then again i imagine sony/sega etc source cd drives from different manufacturers according to cost, so perhaps they use a low common denominator to be safe.
  • Note the "fully". Until you can run 5 miles of cat5 (and establish a connection, without about 100 repeaters (more?)), I can't send my friend a text file via ethernet. Of course that's not to say that I can't send it to him via the internet... which would take less time than driving there with a floppy disk. Regardless, point being that ethernet is not a complete replacement for floppies. I have not heard of any projects to backup data onto an ethernet cable (cool plan), fed-ex a few ethernets (bad syntax, i s/floppys/ethernets/'d...) to your buddy across the country, etc... ok i'm ranting, you get the point. Ethernet hasn't entirely replaced floppys, but it has replaced one use for floppies, and other uses have been replaced by other things. Floppies are in fact (for the most part) useless, and you are correct there.

    --
  • CDRW is [...] still slow and expensive

    Hardly... when you compare speeds, CDRW has become far speedier than floppies. Try writing 650M of data to floppies in 15 minutes. (This is how long my burner (4x) takes... there are much better burners available, which could do it in 5 (maybe not rw tho).) Then think about the cost of buying 650M worth of floppies... CDRW is impractical for trading text files, yes... but that's what email is for :-P heh

    Man I love to nest (())'s...

    --

  • Now, you're better off with an mp3 player.

  • Missing the point. (Score:4)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Thursday July 06, 2000 @04:15AM (#954214) Homepage Journal
    Take heed.

    This format is 99% likely NOT TO BE backward compatible. Your AudioCD player, PSX, Dreamcast, (insert your own consumer device here) will NOT be able to read these discs.

    The format is a nice idea and will probably make a pretty good showing. To the people griping about "well we already have DVD-RW DVD-RAM et al." remember that this format isn't designed to replace DVD. DVD requires not only a different disc format but also a different redbook/orangebook/whitebook spec. The 1.3GB CD's will be different media but still work with normal CD-style stuff (e.g. CDDA) which you can't do with DVD.

    I really hate this whole idea though and I wish they would have spent all that money on figuring out how to maximize the storage capacity of existing CD equipment (Like the new 99 minute! CDR's coming out soon - these use the thinner spiral of 80Min CD's along with a better and more reliable method of manufacturing the disc which allows for the media to be overburned reliably to 99 minutes.)

    Consumer CDROM readers and many commercial players already have accurate enough laser assemblies and motors that by virtue of tweaking the firmware, you could easily handle thinner track width and/or smaller pits/lands on a disc.

    Which is another interesting point. After sony introduces this format, It's likely that we'll see a plethora of firmware upgrades to every CDROM reader under the sun to support this stuff and the format will take off and soar.

    We'll have to wait and see.

    ~GoRK
  • SuSe has been shipped on 6 CD's for quite a while now, though you can request it on one DVD. It doesn't seem to be that inconvenient.

    Regards
  • Hmm... Anyone who is a hardcore gamer knows that Sega's Dreamcast uses proprietary CD's, which are called GD-ROMs. These special CDs hold 10^9 bytes of data, thus making it impossible to copy on a standard 650-700MB CD. Now that it will be possible to write 1.3GB disks, it won't take long until someone is able to adjust the track pitch when recording to make it about the same as GD-ROM disc. The security codes for the system have already been cracked, which makes it even easier to pirate games. The thing that scares me the most is that it will be licenced in September, just one month sooner than the Playstation2 is released. Although I strongly doubt this is technology will take off, I feel as though Sega has something to worry about.
  • Why would I want to go to a proprietary format that stores only twice what widely-available CDs store?

    When the 180GB 5" discs finally come out of the labs and onto shelves, THAT will be news and worth looking into.

  • The problem with 2.88mb floppy is in a conflict with a component introduced with the pentium processor (i think it was the the PCI bridge or something like that). In fact, they have been an option in 386 and 486 PC with VESA local bus. Now they are disappeared. In fact, in our company, we used 2.88 mb floppy to generate FAT filesystem image to be written in flash/eprom drive (yes, I know this thing sucks). We have tried to buy some disk last year, but NOBODY sell them anymore. We had to switch to a more intelligend sistem.

  • Paranoia.. :) (Score:4)

    by Lonesmurf ( 88531 ) on Thursday July 06, 2000 @04:25AM (#954219) Homepage
    Did anyone else realise that this new media is about the size of a Dreamcast GD-ROM (which is 1.2GB)? Perfect for making those pirated copies of DC games on one disc.

    And who is making these discs that are used to pirate games? Why, Sega's arch-rival.. SONY!

    Co-ink-ee-dink? I think not!

    What a world we live in.

    Rami James
    Guy who sees possibilities.
    --
  • This was a product asking to be developed for 10 years really - the CD came out in the early 80's, and the CD-ROM was the late 80's, but still held the same amount of data as the audio CD. So in 20 years, the capacity has not increased at all for data-CDs - I find that amazing.

    DVD-RAM/RW etc are too expensive. You are talking up to $3000 per player, for 5Gb of storage. If these Double Density CD-ROMs/RW/RW can be made and sold for only a little more than normal CDs, and the Players and Recorders are not that much more expensive, and they license the technology to other CD-ROM/R/RW manufacturers for a reasonable amount, then this product could see some large market dominance. What would you have? A 1.3Gb CD2RW that costs $4 and a $200 CD2RW drive, or a $20 2.6Gb DVD-RW/RAM and a $500 - $3000 DVD-RW/RAM drive? What will the end consumer end up getting in their consumer PCs?

    Looking at disc media capacities, we have 650Mb CDs, 2.6Gb, 4.7Gb and 5.2Gb DVDs (and 9.4Gb DVDs coming out next year. That leaves room for the 1.3Gb CD-DD quite nicely. It might not be downwardly compatable, but neither is the DVD (with CD, or even DVD-ROM), so they are on a level playing field, but the price is in CD-DDs advantage.

    Of course, I would like to see a more open standard for CD-DD and later on CD-HD (High Density 2.6Gb CDs). It would have more mass market appeal.

    One thing that struck me was having this on those 7cm Mini-CDs, as used in the latest Sony mavica. Instead of 150Mb of storage, you would have 300Mb of storage. Not bad. I am waiting for an MP3 player that can use these 7cm CDs :-)

    To recap: DVD writable products are too expensive, this is cheaper, and so it might have a lower capacity, it isn't significantly lower, and the total cost of ownership for this product (after wring 100Gb of data say) would be vastly lower than for DVD writable products. But the product will only succeed if Sony license the technology for reasonable rates, otherwise you run the risk of incompatable CD-DD formats...

  • You may not have had to "fiddle with jumpers" but do you remember how you felt the first time you where at a customer site installing some nice new bit of hardware only to find they had lost their reference disk.

    How I cursed IBM in those days. Now I find I'm working for them. *shrug*

    Regards
  • to dead formats [sony.com]. Heck, Sony's no stranger to breaking backwards compatibility [sony.com] with its own dead formats. Oh, and insert obligatory Betamax reference here. So this new format won't go anywhere... who cares? We can thank Sony for creating some standards [emerson.edu] with sticking power. Weighing their successes and failures, I'd say the scale's still tipped towards success.
  • It is impossible to produce a double sided cd that is backwards compatible. The best you could do would be to double the thickness of the CD. You wouldn't be able to insert it into many players, but the laser stuff would still work.

    In addition to the dimensions of a CD being specified, other little details such as the distance of the pits from the surface and the refraction coefficient of the plastic are as well. If you made the plastic half as thick the laser beam wouldn't be able to focus on the pits. You could try to ajust the refraction coefficient to make up for this, but I really doubt that you could do it. Especially not in a way that would work for all existing players that use the assumptions about the disk in the spec.

    I never thought that class I took in college about CDs would actually be all that useful! ;-)

  • Does anyone make CDROMS/CDR burners that grant direct access to the bitstream coming from/going to the laser? I want a copier that just spins the discs and feeds the on/off bit pattern from the source CD to the write laser on the CDR. No 'sectors', no 'tracks', in fact, no interpretation of data whatsoever. Just a plain ol' dumb-copier. It would copy ANYTHING. Any CD, in any format, for any platform. WHY HASN'T ANYONE THOUGHT OF THIS YET?
  • Who on earth at Sony thought that a mere doubling of a 15-year-old capacity would be attractive? Extrapolating present trends in hard drives forward a couple of years or so, a PC Card hard drive of this capacity is going to cost about five bucks. (OK, a slight exaggeration. Maybe.) If CD capacity was keeping up with hard drive capacity, we'd have 1000GB CDROMs by now. This 'new' technology is proof that we've gone from planned obsolescense to pre-obsolescense.
  • MD also uses ATRAC lossy compression, which immediately made it unacceptable for its only real potential target market at the time -- Grateful Dead tapers, who stuck with DAT, and moved from there to CDR when the recorders came along.

    Computer accessability is a non-issue. MD recorders have SPDIF digital I/O, and every computer SPDIF card I've ever seen ignores SCMS, so you have always been able to get data off of an MD. However, the ATRAC compression degrades the signal quality, so why use it? Also, MD has a 74 minute limit, which makes the recorders a pain in the ass in a field recording situation -- one of the big advantages of moving from cassette to DAT was that you didn't need to worry about the tape flip anymore. With MD, you need to change media in the middle of the set.

    MD is an excellent example of a poorly thought out technology. They created a digital format with all of the disadvantages of cassettes -- short media time and degraded sound -- and tried to compete with DAT, with linear, uncompressed audio and a 2 hour running time.

    Bad planning.
  • Eventually (post-patent expiration) there were some oddball half-speed cassette drives for voice transcription.

    Also, double-speed cassette drives for inexpensive multitrack recorders. Fostex and Tascam still make some of them.
  • Thanks for the info.

    I didn't realize that the pits in the CDs were that deep. I had assumed it would be possible since they do make double sided DVDs, but of course that is a different spec.

  • Well no _new_ format is open. 3.5" and 5.25" MO disks are open. Kinda slow on writes but have nice incremental sizes and backward compatibility. New 1.3GB drives (in the 3.5" size) can accept older 128, 230, and 640MB media. And it is cross platform (the media, not the data format). Supposed to be really reliable too.

  • What makes you so sure it'll be able to find the high-density data past the couple-millimetre long gap that comes after the normal low-density stuff? Maybe reading the normal data on a GDROM would set the drive into a normal CD reading mode, and keep it from seeing the high-density area even if it could skip over the gap between sections.

    Fat chance of a silly gap stopping the drive. If a CD-ROM drive can read past the couple-mm gap on an Enhanced CD to get to the good stuff, so can a GD-ROM drive.

  • Good lord. We can't even get regular CD-Rs and CD-RWs with consistent life-expectancies... I can just imagine how flakey (literally?) a double-density format will be.

    ---
    click a button, feed a hungry person!
  • It's called Ethernet

    Which does me wonders when I'm trying to install printer drivers (a 2mb file) on a computer with a broken ethernet connection. Oops, can't use floppies for that one either.

    --

  • The clever idea used for Dreamcast GD-ROM is to include "trademark Sega" as human readable text that can also be read by the drive. Not the usual stuff you find on an audio CD, look about 3 cm in from the outside edge of the disk. Without this text disks should be rejected by GD drives.

    I'm not sure how the BootCD gets around this, I'm guessing that applications forget to check frequently, allowing the disk swap trick, hence the concept should work, even if the execution is flawed. The clever bit is that if they want to lean on someone producing illegal disks (assuming they know who they are - people who pass off fakes as the real thing) then it's easier to explain "trademark infringement" to the legal profession - just point to the human readable text.

    Anyway, thing is, would the Sega text work on the dumb copier - I wouldn't think so.

  • Philips patented it around 1963, with a license policy that was basically "free to anyone but you must conform to the spec".

    Hmm, sounds like a pragmatic use of the patent system where everyone wins. Heresy on /. ?

  • Enhancement this in not an enhancment at all more like a downgrade!
  • Wrong. Even audio/video CDs that use all 2352 bytes per "raw" sector are not using all of the space; quite a bit is still being used for error correction, leaving only 2352 bytes per sector for the actual "raw" data. Of this 2352 bytes, CD-ROM (Mode 1) devotes another 304 bytes to a second layer of error correction data, leaving only 2048 bytes for user data. That the 2352-byte sector is truly "raw" is a very popular misconception, but a misconception nonetheless.
    --
  • If I keep replying to my post can I keep a discussion alive?

  • The next obsolete storage media (Score:3)

    by Dungeon Dweller ( 134014 ) on Thursday July 06, 2000 @03:35AM (#954238)
    This will be like many of the iomega products, flopticals, and the superdisk.

    Almost obsolete when it comes out, not that great to begin with, closed so no one else can make them, and people won't even remember it a year from now.

    Here's to beta!
  • Could it be possible that this would be compatible with some Playstation CD proprietary format... ?
    In this case then I believe some kidZ would buy it to copy PSX games... Provided it appears to be affordable enough.
    --
  • You can gripe about them for closed standards and DVD, but you have to give them credit for keeping the audio cassette tape standardized. A number of companies wanted to make proprietary changes to it, but Sony prohibited them from doing so (by owning the patent).
  • I get the feeling that this is doomed to failure. The capacity isn't ground-breaking and its only selling point seems to be that it is anti-consumer! No technical details on how it prevents "illegal" copying, but I suspect that it'll just be more encryption.
  • I agree -- people will not choose to restrict themselves with such products unless the benefits far outweigh the cost in freedom. DIVX, anyone?
  • is what you'll be if you choose to buy this product. It looks like Sony thinks we actually WANT to be restricted as to what we can do with OUR data. It doesn't provide a signifigant enhancement over DVD, and you can accomplish the same thing with 2 CDR's so what's the point? If it will require a new drive, then the chances of this getting adopted are slim to none.

  • I stand by the belief that anything that is machine readable, or able to have any use will be able to be copied. Eventually. We've seen numerous examples of hype, and it has always been cracked.

    The article really didn't go into depth about how Sony would prevent copying. The only thing that I can see is if it was, like the DVD, a closed spec written by Sony (or licensee) for just one or two OSes (guess which one). Even so, it would be possible to reverse engineer, though met with familiar (DeCSS, DMCA) problems . . .

    Closing comments:

    • Has the DMCA ever been tested? Don't think so.
    • If this really is only available for the Two OSes, why is it appearing on /.? I thought CmdrTac o banned [slashdot.org] all news for non-Linux platforms.

    Amazing how that discussion never really talked about the movie yet had so many high scoring posts ;)
    Perhpas someone in Sealand could reverse engineer it ;)

  • Prediction #1: Sony will push these as a "next generation" mass storage medium for computer data. People who has about backwards compatibility for existing CDROMs will either be told to "get into the 21st Century" OR swept under the rug.

    Prediction #2: Sony will NOT push these as a "next generation" mass storage medium for MUSIC data. People who has about "more music for the dollar" will be told that there are problems with backwards compatibility with existing CD players.
    --
  • Anybody heard of a 2.88 MB Floppy? Few people even have any anymore - but gosh, they were going to be the saivior of PC removable stoarge, just before the Zip drive came in and tore up the market.

    The problem here is that Sony is about 6 months later than they wanted to be on this product, and DVD-Ram has in that time taken a market hold because it's bundled with media creation tools like the new Mac G4's and advertized heavily. If they were 6 months earlier, they might have had a chance, but in that time the market penetration of DVD-Ram has doubled.

  • Anyone remember how well those went over?

    Exactly.

  • Re:Missing the point. (Score:3)

    by Cy Guy ( 56083 ) on Thursday July 06, 2000 @04:41AM (#954248) Homepage Journal
    Wow, lots of points.

    Like many others I think this new disk is irrelevant. For 1.3G they could just produce a double sided CD which would be backward compatible with every current device, provided you are will to flip the disk over. Also, I think the failure of 2 and 3 disk CD-ROM drives has shown that merely doubling the capacity isn't sufficient to get people to scrap their old hardware.

    Regarding firmware upgrades, I know a lot of people that bought cheap Smart & Friendly CD-RW drives. Since Smart & Friendly is now out of business [zdnet.com], I assume I will be out of luck when it comes to firmware upgrades.

    Regarding alternative products, I thnk for recordable media, the recordable DVD formats have a significant headstart, so I think one of these (or a hybrid standard) will eventually win out.

    As for pre-recorded media, in addition to DVD, there is a lot of work going on with flourescent disk layering (FMD), including Constellation 3D [constellation3d.com]'s 50G disks which are supposed to be available (at least for high-end uses) by the end of the year.

  • so with DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM already fighting it out Sony produce another varient of lower capacity.

    Can't see this one actually doing anything.
  • Sure, CDs have lots of redundancy. Only 40% or so of all the bits on the CD actually store user data. The rest is redundancy and error correcting bits to compensate for errors. Yes, you can toss that redundancy and store more data but your CD becomes increasingly susceptible to even the slightest scratches, dust, or subtle misalignments in your player. You'll get garbled data from your reads and worse, won't even be able to tell you read the disc wrong anymore!

    So when your customers start bitching endlessly about how their games skip or won't play. Don't say "we didn't know!". Dreamcast games do this. They use the full redundancy on the inner 1/3 of the CD to store the game program (which obviously must read perfectly), and toss the EC data on the outer 2/3 for "non-critical data" like the FMV sequences. But do you really think players will tolerate high rates of skipping/breakups on those FMV segments? Hell no. Some people play whole games just to get to see that cool ending FMV sequence! Expect lots of bitching as their consoles age and CDs get a few minor nicks that wouldn't affect real CDs and mess up their $75 games.

  • What's the current status of writable DVD drives, anyway? Are there any available that will work with Linux? I'd like to make 4 day MP3 discs rather than 13 hour ones.
  • What makes you so sure it'll be able to find the high-density data past the couple-millimetre long gap that comes after the normal low-density stuff?

    Maybe reading the normal data on a GDROM would set the drive into a normal CD reading mode, and keep it from seeing the high-density area even if it could skip over the gap between sections.
  • Um, isn't this kind of like Sega's GD-ROMs for the dreamcast? Or is this extremely different, technologically?
  • Sony just loves to release their own proprietary format in the face of superior or more widespread technology. See also: minidisc (nice for digital recording, but definitely not the consumer music format they were pushing it as), superdisk (?????), etc.

    Nothing wrong with new technology, but does anybody see any reason to buy this? Furthermore, I'm not clear on how a "read-only" CD could prevent copying. That's all you need to do to copy, read.

    Incidentally, anybody always misread their brand "Imation" as "Imitation"? I know I do.
  • I had access to a BBS and wold upload images of ever refrence disk I could find to it. I usualy got around the lost disk problem by means of that archive.

    To this day I don't know if it was legal. Not that I care much.

  • New drive (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So I'm confused, this format would require a new drive to read it, right? The news article I read certainly wasn't clear about that. I suppose I don't really see how it could work -- unless it's just some _wicked_ overburning! Talk about voiding your warranty!!
  • Yesterday,
    All my floppies seem so far away
    and yet they are here to stay...
    Oh I wish it was yesterday.

  • I thought Dreamcast GD-ROMs were more like DVDs?
  • Floppies are obsolete. I'm surprised something better hasn't fully replaced them yet.

    Something has. It's called Ethernet. :)

  • Aren't most of the S&F drives OEMs of others, like Yamaha?
  • Another small company called Optima Technology tried this before. I felt it was a bit of a waste since it had to install special software onto the system that would read the discs, and even then sometimes the CDROM drive couldn't track onto the disc. Unless you're archiving for yourself, pretty useless.
  • also some very low speed recorders that would use a 90 minutes tape to record 24 hours of heartbeats (holter)
  • Did anyone else realise that this new media is about the size of a Dreamcast GD-ROM (which is
    1.2GB)? Perfect for making those pirated copies of DC games on one disc.

    Dreamcast Pirated Games are already available. And yes, most fit on one CD-R. Soul Calibur, probably the most media heavy game available on the Dreamcast, fits on one CD (and has been released). If that game can, most likely almost any except ones using a lot of FMV will do so as well...

    Here's what you do:

    - Go to http://www.dcisos.com and download the boot loader.
    - Burn the boot loader.
    - Download your pirated games (heck, I'm not telling you where...)
    - Burn those to a CD.

    Pop the boot loader into your Dreamcast. Wait for it to boot. Then pop in your pirated game. And voila... it's the Playstation all over again.

    How'd they do this? I believe they found that using the Dreamcast debugging tool which was posted on Slashdot a while ago, they found they could copy the program data used on the GD-ROM for the actual game. Then, they just pulled it off sequentially and saved it to an image file (not sure how exactly they do that - perhaps software of their own?).

    I don't know how they pulled off the boot loader either - but seeing as WinCE boots on the thing, I suppose it was a matter of time for that to happen.

    I love the kinds of possibilities this opens up - home grown Dreamcast games, anyone? Someone basically has to figure out the API used for rendering, loading data, etc and you've got yourself a console development platform. Only problem is you'll have to burn a CD each time you make a change to the game :P
  • Oops, guess I have more than the name mixed up. =)
  • They were really great when they came out. It was like a CD-player the size of a pager.

    They were at least as cool as pocket MP3 players are now.

    If only they were cheaper, and you could buy minidiscs as easily and cheaply as CDs (instead of having to own a CD-player, plus a minidisc recorder, plus a portable minidisc player, buy the CD, then buy a minidisc blank - definitely a rich man's toy that way)...
  • They say it can't be copied
    Ha! I can copy it easy - I've got a tool that even the 1337 hax0rs don't know about! I'll let you in on it: It seems there's this company - they invented the GUI, the mouse, tons of stuff... well, they've been working on a machine that'll let you copy anything! You just put whatever you want copied on a little glass partition and push a button. Then, this green light goes over it, and bam! Instant copy comes right out of the paper chute! There's even an underground chain of stores called "kinko's" that'll help you out for only 5 cents or so! Just ask one of the 'assistants' for a machine. If you're not a cop, they'll hook you up.
    Remember - keep this under your hat. I've got to get out of here, the minute B. Dalton finds out what I've told you guys, I'm in trouble.

  • How on earth will it stop you copying anyway?
    I don't see how it can work and it isn't explained on the story.
    A file is a file. You copy it to your hard drive and then onto a new disk. How can they prevent that?
    Someone please tell me what I am missing..

  • Do they really think it will remain closed in format? I just don't buy it, especially if it doesn't require new hardware. Although, the article said "Illegal copying". How does it differentiate between pirating and fair use back-ups? Or is it just another CSS? And if so, wouldn't it require new hardware? If so, you can forget about it making any money. This doesn't seem to add anything new of value to the consumer. DVD has far superior storage capabilities, and CD doesn't have the hassle of copy protection.
  • Look at the Playstation 2. Look at the minidisk. Look at this new development.

    Sony's going just a little bit too far with the whole "Mine!" thing - closing and restricting copying as much as they can, pretending to be open (PSX2 Hardware), and then challenging developments that would potentially beneficial. I think we'll see somehting with this like we did with bleem! - It's practically a knee-jerk reaction of jealousy. "Sure, it could help us in the long run, but we didn't think of it first, so we're going to stomp it out!" I can see the lawsuits raised over the first generation of copiers for this, and the challenges over "alternate" uses for the players, and a holy host of terrors of litigation.

    Sony, please do us a favor. If you're going to continue to develop and keep closed, at least be reasonable and rational about it. I won't even ask you to change that much. Just remember that some of us "other" types like your hardware too.
  • D'oh.

    Too slow apparently =p
  • What's this about Iomega's stuff being "almost obsolete when it comes out"?

    Just because they don't come pre-installed in consumer setups (and they can be requested from several companies) doesn't mean they're obsolete. We've got one Zip drive at the office, and I'm considering getting another, because it's come in handy many many times in the past couple weeks.

    Floppies are obsolete. I'm surprised something better hasn't fully replaced them yet.

    --

  • This is a flop waiting to happen. It has 2X the capacity of a CD and far less than a DVD. It is copy protected ( fat chance ) and requires new hardware to work.

    What is the market for this thing ? How is it going to sell ?

    Software authors will continue to use CD-ROM for anything that fits because copy protection is impractical for stuff users must install.

    Movie people will still use DVD because frankly they own that format and have an installed base. Never mind that 1.3 Gig is too small for high res film.

    That leaves users who want to make copies of there own stuff but alas CDR drives are down in the $170 range and blanks are rapidly approaching diskette price. $1 and less in bulk.

    In order for this to move into the market it needs to be faster than CDRW and in the same price range even then there is a pretty good chance it will flop like LS120 and 2.8 meg floppies before it.

    Dose anyone else remember 2.8 meg floppy ? Has anyone actually used a 2.8 meg diskette ? I have and it was the OS/2 setup disk for a high end PS/2. No 3rd parties ever adopted it as far as I know of. Compaq had the same prob with LS120 for some years until now it's irrelevant ( zip is cheaper too ).

    In the removable storage business incremental improvements don't matter and less than DVD is no improvement at all. Sorry Sony, better luck next time.

  • What are you talking about? Phillips invented the Compact cassette format back in the 60s and owns it to this day? Sony is a latecomer to this.
  • Yeah, there are a lot of Zip and Jazz drives out, and about 50 other types of media that they make. I use Zip and Jazz... I don't use ORB drives or anything like that though.
  • He said most Iomega products, and he's right. The Zip drive was very sucessful, compared to devices like it. However, Iomega makes quite a few other devices that didn't quite take off the way the Zip drive did. The kind of devices people get 2 of for a specific task between 2 computers, and they don't expect anyone else to have one of the discs to use with them. Iomega probably has a dozen or more devices like this in their history. They're still a remarkable company because they got 1 to take.
  • DVD-RAM/RW etc are too expensive. You are talking up to $3000 per player, for 5Gb of storage.

    That's funny... I bought my DVD-RAM for the equivalent of just under US$400 last year. I doubt these Sony drives are going to be significantly cheaper than that at launch. If they sell well, then no doubt the price will drop, but then so will the writable DVD formats.

  • Floppies were on open format.

    Anyone could make the drives.

    Anyone could make the disks.

    Who makes zip drives and zip disks? Same with LS120 and superdisk. If the format is not open it'll SUCK because it's expensive and it's success or failure relies on how well a single company does. Floppys are the last open removable, rewritable disk standard, hence we still use them on PCs. CDRW is open and a nice idea but still slow and expensive and unreliable.

  • But if you use Nero or some similar software, you can copy the CD bit for bit, 0 for 0, 1 for 1 - including "bad" sectors. There's always a way around.
  • DVD-RW drives can cost up to $3000 each. DVD-RAM drives are cheaper, yes.

    Anyway, write 100Gb worth of data using the DVD-RAM with 2.6Gb DVDs: $400 + 40*$20 = $1200.

    Write 100Gb worth of data using CD-DD: $200 + 80*$4 = $520. Less than half the cost. Even if the DVD-RAM media cost only $10 each it would still be more expensive. Still damned useful for backing up *huge* datasets though.

    And I hope that someone comes out with a CD-DD normal CD Player. Coupled with those 99minute CD's that somebody else mentioned, that would be 3 hours of CD quality music on a CD. I am worried about the copying restrictions though, but they will be worked around anyway. Of course, these new CD Players could be playing 5.1channel music at 24-bit quality for an hour using CD-DD. Bye bye DVD-Audio...

  • I really hate this whole idea though and I wish they would have spent all that money on figuring out how to maximize the storage capacity of existing CD equipment (Like the new 99 minute! CDR's coming out soon - these use the thinner spiral of 80Min CD's along with a better and more reliable method of manufacturing the disc which allows for the media to be overburned reliably to 99 minutes.)

    Whoa! Where can I find out more about these 99-minute CD-Rs? Will they be burnable by my existing CD-RW drive (8x4x32, purchased in March)? Will they play audio in normal CD players?

    I now use 80-minute CD-Rs almost exclusively, but 80 minutes is not quite enough for my audio needs/wants. 99 minutes would be great, though. I'm really looking forward to this now... :)

  • Just before ZIP, huh?

    I saw my first 2.88MB Floppy on an IBM PS/1 in 1990. Zip drives didn't hit the market until 1994. That's time enough for Moore's law to kick people twice and it still didn't make it!

    ~GoRK
  • What do you mean just before the Zip drive came in and tore up the market?

    The 2.88 floppy drive came out way back during 386 or 486 era, long long before zip drives and well before cdrom drives, granted no one used them but your time frame is way off.
  • "Dose anyone else remember 2.8 meg floppy ? Has anyone actually used a 2.8 meg diskette ? I have and it was the OS/2 setup disk for a high end PS/2. No 3rd parties ever adopted it as far as I know of. Compaq had the same prob with LS120 for some years until now it's irrelevant ( zip is cheaper too )."

    Wait, did you say High End PS/2? Isn't that on the same lines as Military Intelligence?

    ;>
  • When is any industry going to learn this: If the intent of a medium is to distribute data, then it is inherently vunerable to being copied. The only way to prevent something from being copied is not to release it in the first place.

    This whole thing (which is incredibly useless, in my eyes, considering that DVD-R holds more and will probably end up being cheaper) is just an attempt from Sony to force people into one-vendor solutions. It's almost as sad as the memory stick non-MP3 players.

    Sony would be much better of if they stuck to providing what their customers want (ie PlayStation 2) instead of making up useless forms of media for self-interest purposes.
  • I don't know much about it... so this is really an honest question..

    How can they keep you from copying it? I mean can't somebody just do a kind of like raw copy of the disc? What keeps that from working?

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