Yes, MDs are hard to write. An MD-deck that records at "4X" speed is really writing 4:1 compressed data at 1X speed. Sony has been refining the compression algorithm for around a decade now, and DSP hardware has gotten cheap enough and fast enough to handle it at far beyond realtime speed. Compression is not the issue. Remember how the LIMDOW write mechanism works: a laser has to heat a spot up above its Curie temperature, then the magnetic head polarizes the spot, and then the spot cools, "freezing" the magnetic bit in place. The drives have gotten faster, but I don't think you can dramatically speed up this heat/write/cool process. Since the read process is purely optical, MD drives can read as fast as the fastest CD-R drives. Writing is still another story. But note that the MD-Data2/MD-View format can write at around 1MB/second, vs MD 150KB/second. So obviously Sony has figured out a way to improve the write process as 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]
