> Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 15:51:34 +1000 > From: "Stephen Dampf" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Hey all, I thought MD's could only hold 100mbs or so of data yet > now this MD Camcorder etc implies that MD "data" discs can hold 650mbs. Can someone > clarify this for me? > Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 13:11:58 -0500 > From: "Zach Prichard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > it says MD Data2 discs so I'm guessing that they're just usin' > some sort of new compression > Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 18:33:39 -0400 > From: "." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > It would have to be more than that. It still holds five times as > much actual data than the audio MD. I think they're also doing work at the actual > read/write level with putting sectors closer together and such. Different > lasers maybe, different disc materials. And improved compression > as well I'm sure. > > Anyone have any links for technical information on them? It would > be neat to have some concrete idea how it works. This Sony page http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/service/mdcamcorder.shtml#s4 mentions that the format has the same specs as DVD. This means: smaller pits, narrower tracks, and a shorter wavelength laser. Compression has nothing to do with it. It also notes the data transfer rate as 9.4Mbps, or just around 1MByte/sec. It's unclear to me whether this is the actual limit of the drive's speed, or if this speed is due to the camera's 10Mbps ethernet interface. What is clear, though, is that MD-DATA2 (which Sony is now calling MD-VIEW) is now comparable in speed to some older hard drives. Certainly fast enough to keep my PCMCIA Adaptec SCSI card busy. Also note that the camcorder uses original ATRAC, not ATRAC3. There are some nice ideas in this thing but there are also some very confusing things here. You would think that a flagship product like this would have the absolute best technology they could throw at it: ATRAC3, Firewire. Oh well. -- Howard Chu Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc > ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
