From: Simon Mackay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: MiniDisc Mailing List (E-mail) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 5:51 AM
Subject: MD: MD-Data2 as a "Zip killer"
> Hi everyone!
>
> When I first heard about the MD Data format being released by Sony, I
> thought that it would be a successful "B Drive". But Iomega went in around
> the time that Sony released MD Data and aggressively pushed their "Zip"
disk
> on everyone.
>
> The factors that brought Zip as the primary "B drive" was the snappy name,
> the sexy blue case that the external drive came in and the way the earlier
> versions were able to connect via the parallel port on the average PC.
This
> was exaggerated by the big-budget ad campaigns that they took out, with
the
> goal of running it as a "loss-leader".
Don't you think the fact that ZIP is about 40 times faster than MD may have
had something to do with it? MD drives at that point were only equivelet to
about 2x floppy drive speed.
>
> What Sony needs to do is promote the new MD-Data2 650Mb disc as a "B
drive"
> is to market it as a "Zip killer". This would mean designing USB or SCSI
> external drives that work with current-generation PCs and Macs and are
> presented in sexy boxes; encouraging the Linux community to write Linux
> drivers for the MD-Data2 drives, providing software for playing (and
perhaps
> editing or recording) regular audio MiniDiscs; and market it in a
> loss-leading way.
Definately! To make it a good data storage drive though, it needs a drastic
speed boost. Zip250 discs have over 2Mb per second transfer rates on the
internat ATAPI models, so they're hard to compete with.
> The MD-Data2 discs could hold heaps of high-resolution digital images
> (especially in bitmap form), many projects worth of Word documents, one or
> two desktop publishing projects with all of the images for that project.
And dual layer DVD-RW holds 5.2Gb, not too far off for computers now I would
think.... MD is going to have a hard time competing in the computer
marketplace. I think the reason superior technology fails to catch on
quickly when Sony are in charge (ie Betamax and MD) are that Sony have the
worst marketing department of any company I've come across, so naturally
people are left not knowing what the units are capable of, and as a result
buy something else.
> An interesting appliance concept for this medium would be a digital image
> view-download unit for use in the field. These devices, in a similar vein
to
> Iomega's Clik digital-image-download device which fills 40Mb disks, would
> transfer images from a CompactFlash card or a SimartMedia card to an
> MD-Data2 disc (which holds 10 times the amount of the biggest CF card).
This
> would allow a photographer to work at the highest resolution on one of the
> new 2.3 or above megapixel digital cameras for a long time without
worrying
> about memory-card space. This comes in handy during weddings, holidays and
> other occasions where a lot of pictures are being taken and there is no
> chance of being able to download the images during the trip.
That would be great, although wouldn't the new IBM micro-drives be a better
substitute?
> By providing a built-in LCD screen in the device (which the Iomega Clik
> device doesn't have), it makes it possible to preview images taken during
> the past shoot, thus conserving the camera' batteries for taking pictures.
LCD screens drain batteries very quickly, which is why I never use the LCD
screen unless I have a few spare batteries or mains supply handy. I get
about 12 hours work time from my single battery normally, but less than 2
with the LCD screen on. Raking a picture requires minimal battery power
unless you use the flash. The most sensible implementation of this I've seen
was on the Canon A-1 camcorder, where the colour hi-res LCD screen was
inside the viewfinder and was only about 1cm wide, but it was enough to
watch back clips and find edit points.
> The unit can support external video outputs so images can be viewed on a
> video monitor by a group or projected using a video projector. USB ports
> would be provided so the unit can be connected to a computer for image
> manipulation or to a printer, card drive (for other solid-state media) or
> scanner. As well, regular audio MiniDiscs can be played in the unit, with
> such facilities as an "at-a-glance" track index.
Well, the size of it would make a laptop and web-cam a smaller substitute,
but we can dream!
Personally I think this would be a mistake for MD, as there are technologies
on the horizon that would (once again) leave MD standing still. I'd settle
for Sony actually marketing their existing products effectively!!
Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."
Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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