The recording industry complains about people downloading and sharing music, but they add fuel to the fire with their sister companies/divisions' mp3 players, more powerful, cheaper CDs, and little gizmos designed to reap a profit from the music biz. Even outsiders, like Apple, Virgin, and Roxio, are trying to cash in on the market in some way.

:-:~ Phantom


Sony has delivered the first optical technology capable of storing up to 23 GB of data on a single-sided disc.

Blue Laser-based Professional Disc for DATA optical storage drives, automated devices and media for OEMs and system integrators were demonstrated this week at the Radiological Society of North America's 2003 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting in Chicago.

Designed to deliver an advanced optical storage and archiving solution for professional applications such as document and medical imaging, e-mail archiving, multimedia projects, graphics design and audio/video editing, the new devices include a drive with a maximum native transfer rate of 11 MB/sec and an automated Autochanger that offers up to 1.6TB of native capacity in a compact 19-inch rack-mount design.

The rack can be configured with one, two or four drives for the desired balance between storage capacity and speed.

"The new Professional Disc for DATA devices are positioned as a natural successor for users who have outgrown the 9.1 GB capacity per magneto-optical (MO) disc offered in the market today and are looking to use removable storage to address the intensifying data retention and storage requirements driven by growing government regulatory mandates," said Rick Thong, manager of OEM optical storage solutions marketing for Sony Electronics' Component Solutions Business Division in a recent press statement.

"The new technology offers more than twice the capacity of the MO format in the same form-factor."

Sony plans to launch a second-generation drive and media to the market by 2005 that will feature up to 50 GB of capacity with a transfer rate of 22 MB/s, and the third generation is expected to feature100 GB of capacity with a transfer rate of 43 MB/sec.

http://www.gizmo.com.au/public/News/news.asp?articleid=2398

When will it ever end? and who will risk losing 23gig if a disc is lost or damaged? definately not me, although one could store a lot of mp3 files on it for car use if they could only make a jog free player which they haven't ( to my knowledge) yet. Australia has a lot of rough roads so tape or solid state memory are the go. Why don't Sony concerntrate on solid state memory with no moving parts? 128k is pathetic ( memory stick) 1 gig would be more useful for car, location recording (the local pub). incidently I bought a portable mini disk player two years ago and when in a noisy enviroment had problems recording live music. I contacted Sony and they assured me that there was nothing wrong with it. I later found out from one of their servicemen that the flimsy recording head vibrates with high sound levels and will cause errors if you try to record live loud music. Sony told me I need a memory stick recorder, but after looking at what is available I declined, although National Panasonic build a better solid state recorder than Sony ( in my opinion.) The reason I bring all of this up is that I spoke to a dozen or so people at Sony and they would not admit the design flaw with the MZR700. They all told me I needed to buy another of their products, they refused a money back offer. I would advise all to wait and see if the 23 gig disc is really feasble before investing.

Good advice. It is interesting, though, that they try to get on the news with this type of "development" release.

:-:~ Phantom

23Gb optical disk, hmm, un needed... yes. why? because Solid State media (chip memory with no moving parts) is the way of the future.

let's see...at 3-4 meg per MP3...LOTS OF TUNES !

Great article!

Oh, now this is gonna be FUN!

23GB = 24696061952 bytes

24696061952 bytes = 23552 MB

1 MP3 tune = approx. 4 MB

23552 MB divided by 4 MB MP3 = 5888 MP3s

5888 MP3s X $0.99 = $5,829.12 per disk filled with "legal" MP3s!

Who's first in line to buy this disk????????

Holy Crap, I want this disk just to store Anime and MP3s. LoL. Thats freaking Crazy. All along I thought that a DVD disk was large. o.O

kyodylee...and then you have to add the RIAA conversion..their DMCA
of "valued added"...which is
5888 MP3s X 150,000 per tune... $ 883,200,000.00
Getting close to a billion dollars worth of tunes figured the RIAA way