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DataPlay Discs - What's the Point? |
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The New York Times (reg. req.) takes a look at a new media format, the Dataplay disc, and questions why anyone would buy one (The Even-More-Compact Disc):
HERE'S the proposition: The record industry wants you to buy your music on a new kind of disc. Unlike a CD, the format will greatly restrict your ability to make digital copies. It will cost more than a prerecorded CD. And it will require you to invest a few hundred dollars in a new player.
If the appeal isn't immediately apparent, you have some idea of the salesmanship task ahead.
The NY Times is right on with this article; this technology is dead even as it is being released. To offset the disadvantages above, a dataplay disc offers the following benefits:
- It's much smaller than a CD. So what? Data storage, such as mini-hard drives is even smaller, holds even more, and the batteries last longer. In any case, it only has 500MB storage capacity. Apple's latest iPod comes with 20GB for $500 (cheaper MP3 players with as much storage go for as little as $300). A Dataplay player and a similar number of blank discs will run about $550.
- It has music and video too. So what? When music videos are as important as the music MP3 players will incorporate them too. Who the heck wants to look at photos and videos on a tiny LCD screen?
- Pre-recorded and copy-protected DataPlay discs are cheaper than CDs. Ooops, actually they are more expensive.
- Unlockable music. A pre-recorded DataPlay disc can have entire albums available - as long as you pay for the code to unlock them. This is a selling point?
Maybe one of the reasons that profits are down in the music industry is because they are wasting money supporting dead on arrival media formats.
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