Despite the popularity of MP3 and CD players, MiniDisc still has a good market share amoungst consumers. Sony have announced that they will launch new high-capacity MiniDisc products in April capable of storing up to 45 hours of music including other content such as images, documents and so on. The new Hi-MD format features double the existing MD capacity along with copyright protection (DRM) technology and their 1GB Hi-MD disc can store up to 45 hours of music at ~48kbps Atrac3 Plus as well as other data.
Sony expect to release three compact portable Hi-MD portable models as well as a desktop MD/CD player in June at Japan. They made this Hi-MD announcement just several days following Apple's announcement of their iPod mini model . Sony aims to compete with with other high capacity portable digital audio players. Currently Japan accounts for 60% of the world's MD product market with North America accounting for only 10%. 80 million MD players have shipped since the launch of the MD format back in 1992.
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"This is a part of continued evolution of MD. We want to make it a new global standard," Sony Corp. vice president Tadao Yoshida told a news briefing. The new 'Hi-MD' format would have double the recording capacity of existing MD discs, store computer data and have copyright protection technology. Sony will also produce a one-gigabyte Hi-MD disc that can store 45 hours of music as well as other data. The company will first launch a series of Hi-MD devices in North America in April, followed by a debut in Europe within a month, to coincide with the timing when local retailers replace their inventories, Sony officials said. In Japan, Sony will introduce three Walkman-style portable Hi-MD models as well as a desktop MD-CD player in June. The announcement followed news this week that the US high-tech firm Apple Computer Inc. will introduce a smaller and cheaper version of its popular 'iPod' music player next month to compete in the market for flash-memory-based digital devices. Sony's new higher-density MD format is its response to the increasingly competitive portable digital audio device market, said Takashi Kinouchi, assistant manager of product planning at Sony's mobile network company. Japan accounts for about 60 percent of the world MD product market, in which about 80 million MD players and recorders have been shipped since the first MD devices were released in 1992, according to Sony. With Hi-MD, Sony hopes to expand into North America, which currently accounts for about 10 percent of the global MD market, Sony officials said. |
TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony said it will launch in April high-capacity MiniDisc (MD) products that can store as much as 45 hours of music, text data and photo image files on one disc.MiniDisc
seems to be the most popular portable recording device amoungst musicians and anyone else I have seen who is serious about recording live music. The current MD format supports Atrac audio at 292kbps for up to 74/80 minutes of recording while MD-LP supports Atrac3 at 132kbps for up to 148/160 minutes of recording. Atrac3 Plus is Sony's latest codec format and Sony claim to be able to store high quality audio at only 48kbps. As I have not yet tested their codec or seen it in action, I am not sure how it compares with 128kbps MP3 or if they are simply trying to compete with Microsoft's WMA format claims.
Source: Yahoo Technology News
