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OT & FWIW: Overpeer Poisoning P2P on Behalf of Labels, RIAA
posted by Anonymous on July 05, 2002 @ 01:36pm
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/07052002e.php
A stealth-mode company called OVERPEER has been flooding the p2p networks with fake Eminem files in an attempt to stop the trading of "unauthorized" mp3s. If you've encountered the "loop" files, in which a section of the chorus or hook is repeated over and over, you've been tricked by OVERPEER.
OVERPEER are doing this with the full knowlege and consent of Interscope and Universal Music, in fact they are under contract to Universal and other major record labels, and will be doing a LOT MORE of this type of "interdiction" in the near future.
OVERPEER are an interesting firm, their CEO used to be a VP at ASCAP, the big American performing-rights organization, so he's majorly connected to the top levels of the U.S. music business. His father has been on the ASCAP board of directors for decades. Strangely, the company was actually started and funded by a Korean conglomerate called SK Industries.
SK Industries are the second-largest corporation in Korea, a firm with many energy and IT infrastructure holdings. In fact they were partners with Enron! They have tons of money, and they're not going to quit, give up, or go away.
OVERPEER's mission is to kill p2p by poisoning the networks with fake, bogus files. They hope to discourage users away from Gnutella, KaZaA and other free networks, and drive everyone to the industry-approved Pressplay and MusicNet services. For more on OVERPEER, visit
http://www.sk.com/news/newsletter/current/essay.asp
If you don't agree with OVERPEER's mission to destroy p2p, let them know! Their headquarters are at:
110 E. 55th Street, 14th Fl. New York, NY 10022 TEL: 212-906-8143 FAX: 212-906-8149
The 7th Annual Jupiter Music Forum - Produced in Association with Billboard - July 8-9, 2002 - New York, NY
Already registered to participate at Plug.IN 2002:
AFTRA
Alliance Entertainment
AOL Time Warner
Apple Computer
Atlantic Records
AT&T Wireless
beatgreets.com
BeMusic
BestBuy.com
Billboard
Bluewin
BMI
CallWave
Case Logic
CDP Capital Communications
Columbia House
Cox Interactive Media
DataPlay
Digital Club Network
Dreamworks Records
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein
DuoCash
Earthlink
eDigital Corporation
EMI Music
FullAudio
France Telecom/ BGP
Galaxie CBC
Gateway
Google
Half.com
IKPop Company Limited
Intel
J Records
KazaA.com
KnittingFactory
Lightningcast
Liquid Audio
Listen.com
Loudeye
Lycos
Midbar Technology
Microsoft
Music Choice
MUSICMATCH
MusicNet
Panasonic Disc Services
Peermusic
Portal Software
pressplay
Rhino Records
RioPort
Roxio
Savage Beast Technologies
SONICblue
Sony Music Entertainment
SoundExchange
StreamCast Networks
Telus Corporation
TM Century/Sold-Rite
Universal/Motown Records Group
Verve Music Group
Viacom
Warner Music Group
XM Satellite Radio
Yahoo!
Zomba Recording Corporation
...and others
http://www.jmm.com/xp/jmm/events/forums/plugin2002/overview.xml
(Thanks, Berge)
T3 reviews the Beosound 2
Key features: The BeoSound 2 holds 128MB-plus of compressed audio files in a hugely stylish package, fully articulated, infinitely comfortable headphones, bespoke BeoPlayer software enables you to organise your MP3s and transfer them grouped by playlist, rechargeable lithium-ion battery with ten hours' playback, shiny stainless-steel exterior resembles a UFO, small base unit transfers data, upgrades firmware and recharges battery, simple interface design, software and storage capacity upgradeable
The Danish design maestros do it again with a stunningly unique-looking personal audio player - but did they forget something?
What looks like a Pac-Man in super-shiny stainless steel, but holds 128MB-plus of compressed audio files? The BeoSound 2, the personal audio player rounding out the portfolio of Danish design wizards Bang & Olufsen, that's what. This flying saucer-like silver disc comes with gorgeous B&O headphones, a simple array of arrow keys for volume and track selection, and an on/off button optimistically marked "Go". Its one major flaw: there's no display.
Set-up is disgustingly easy - you pop the CD in your computer (it's Windows-only), it tells you what to plug in and when (first power, then data cable), and away you go. The BeoSound's little base has a flashing red light (only increasing its resemblance to a UFO) that tells you when it's communicating with your PC and recharging. Its lithium-ion battery should provide around ten hours of playback.
You might not think of B&O as a software developer - and obviously it's had some help from those nice people at Gracenote with their CDDB music-recognition technology - but BeoPlayer is nothing short of brilliant, and will automatically upgrade the player's firmware every time a new version is released.
BeoPlayer runs along the left and right sides of your screen, leaving the centre free. The right-hand bit is a perfect facsimile of the trademark B&O remote control unit, with stop, play (or "Go"), change track and change album. These operate within both N-Music ("Net music", B&O's general term for your compressed audio files) and PC CDs, for playing or ripping from your CD drive. If you've got other B&O products, or a PC TV tuner card, you can also customise the remote control to have buttons marked TV, satellite, radio, video, DVD and so on.
The left-hand side enables you to organise your audio files, and upload them to the BeoSound 2 itself, sadly using USB rather than FireWire. BeoPlayer doesn't let you edit the track name or artist info on an individual MP3 file, but it does organise your MP3s beautifully by title, artist, genre or album, or by where they're stored on your machine - or by playlist.
FLYING BLIND
This last is crucial because of the lack of a display. Your MP3s go onto the BeoSound 2 player in playlist order, and you just have to keep your playlists in your head. Luckily, like the software, the BeoSound's MMI (man-machine interface) is identical to the B&O remote, so you use one set of buttons to jump from playlist to playlist and one to move from track to track within a playlist.
The headphones themselves are understated, beautiful and fully articulated for total comfort - our only criticism is that a display could have gone onto the headphone lead, just like a Sony. The BeoSound 2 comes with a 128MB SD memory card, or space for about four hours of tunes, but you can upgrade using either SD or MMC memory cards (SanDisk recently announced a 256MB SD card for a fairly reasonable £140).
The IBM Microdrive would seem to indicate that within the not-too-distant future, this player might even hold 1GB of compressed audio files, or nearly 18 hours of music - just try to imagine memorising that lot off the top of your head.
All in all, the BeoSound 2 looks gorgeous, sleek and sexy, as we've come to expect from a B&O product. But it's also vastly overpriced compared to other players on the market, and its storage space is limited, even with an upgrade. For £350 you can get an iPod that stores 40 times as much music as the BeoSound 2, boasts an LCD display and looks equally sophisticated.
Verdict: This is an unspeakably beautiful-looking MP3 player with superb headphones, but it's too expensive and there's not enough storage capacity
http://www.t3.co.uk/rev_print.asp?rev_id=2077
Technology and Design Hand in Hand
In a survey conducted a few years ago, people were asked what they liked best about Bang & Olufsen's products. Those who didn't own any said 'the way it looks'. Those who owned a product by Bang & Olufsen said 'the way it works', Vibeke Arkil Franck of Bang & Olufsen tells us.
These comments aptly describe Bang & Olufsen's products, which are known worldwide for their minimalist elegance. The stylish exterior conceals state-of-the-art technology.
"Our products are not simply stylish - they are also high quality, durable and easy to use. This is because at Bang & Olufsen designers and engineers work together in close partnership", explains International PR Manager Vibeke Arkil Franck.
"Neither technology nor design should have to make compromises. With us the designers and engineers have an on-going dialogue to find the optimal solution - and one that satisfies both parties."
THE COURAGE TO QUESTION CONVENTIONAL SOLUTIONS
Bang & Olufsen was founded in 1925, and right from the beginning the factory's guiding principles have been innovativeness and imaginative applications of technology.
According to Arkil Franck, Bang & Olufsen's vision is to constantly question the ordinary, in search of long lasting,
surprising solutions.
"We want our equipment to be both imaginative and easy to use - the kind that makes people think when they use it: This makes sense. Why hasn't anyone thought of it before?" says Arkil Franck.
MULTIMEDIA IS HERE TO STAY
Bang & Olufsen has invested in Information Technology for years. The BeoLink System, which was developed in the 1980s, had a recent update, BeoLink PC 2. BeoLink PC 2 allows you, for example, to connect a CD player and stereos to a home computer and watch dvd films on your computer screen.
Bang & Olufsen's web music organizer BeoPlayer works with the Beolink PC 2 and with the new MP3 player BeoSound 2. The Beoplayer allows you to organize your music automatically by artist, genre, song and album title.
The compact portable BeoSound 2's musical experiences take place in close cooperation with the BeoPlayer. The program makes it possible to download and organize digital music from your computer onto a memorycard in your portable player.
"We believe in compatibility between television, music listening devices, the computer and the Internet. In the future multimedia will be part of our everyday lives", Arkil Franck states.
http://www.salcomp.com/magazine/5.pdf (page 13)
Defining Market Cap
Market capitalization, or market cap, refers to a company's value. How is market cap determined? By multiplying a stock's current share price by the total number of its outstanding shares. For example, if a company has issued 20 million shares that are priced at $20 each, its market cap would be $400 million.
Companies are categorized as small-cap, mid-cap or large-cap. There are also micro-cap stocks, the smallest of the small. The definition of each category can vary, but typically, small caps have market values of $2 billion or less, mid caps have values of $2 billion to $15 billion and large caps have values of more than $15 billion.
As you may have guessed, a company's market cap is related to its growth pattern. A good analogy may be family siblings: Small-cap firms are often younger and may be growing at a fast rate; mid caps (like the middle child) may be experiencing (or expected to experience) rapid growth spurts; and the often older, more mature large caps might still be growing, but at a slower rate.
Sizing Up Company Size
When it comes to investing, a company's size is an important consideration. Small-cap stocks may offer substantial growth potential because they often fill niches in the market, but they may also be subject to higher levels of volatility than other stocks. Add in the above-average rate of small business failures and you're looking at increased investment risk. Examples of small-cap companies are Martha Stewart Living and Office Depot.
Similar to small-cap stocks, mid-cap stocks may have the potential to grow quickly. On the risk spectrum, they generally fall somewhere between more risky small caps and less risky large caps. This is an important stage for a company and often determines whether it will become a leader in its field. A well-known mid-cap company is Federated Department Stores, which includes retailers Bloomingdale's and Macy's.
Large caps are generally mature companies that are dominant within their industries or markets. They are considered less of an investment risk than smaller companies. Ford Motor Company, Johnson & Johnson and EMC Corp. all fall within the large-cap definition.
OT: Microsoft’s Freon project is an Xbox, with extras
http://www.msnbc.com/news/774751.asp?0dm=C19LT
By Rebecca Buckman, Khanh T.L. Tran and Robert A. Guth
July 1 — Its code name is “Freon,” reflecting the notion that it is the coolest secret project at Microsoft Corp. these days, at least in the eyes of the Xbox video-game division.
What Freon stands for is a souped-up successor to the Xbox console — capable of playing games but also offering television capabilities, such as pausing live TV and recording shows onto a computer hard drive, say people familiar with the effort. Though it is unclear whether such a product will ever be built, its core concept appears to have the backing of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who wrote in an internal memorandum in January that he was a “big fan” of a machine that would combine video services with gaming.
Such a device, which could cost around $500, would have another big advantage: It could beat video-game market leader Sony Corp. to the punch.
Microsoft officials are mulling releasing some kind of new game machine sometime next year or in 2004, say people familiar with the matter. That timing could shake up the $20 billion global video-game market, breaking a long-established pattern of developing and releasing new systems in roughly five-year cycles. Sony, the undisputed leader in a three-way race with Microsoft and Nintendo Co., isn’t expected to release its next PlayStation system until 2005.
“The utmost goal is to ship something before Sony,” says a person familiar with Microsoft’s plans. Changing development cycles could be particularly threatening to Sony, which relies more than Microsoft on specialized computer chips that take years to design. “My biggest concern is if Microsoft or Nintendo try to change the rules of the market,” says Shinichi Okamoto, chief technology officer at Sony’s game unit, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “I can imagine several [ways]. The first one is very simple — launching an annual new model: Xbox 2002, Xbox 2003.”
Microsoft officials won’t comment on Freon. But the software titan has been playing catch-up to Sony since it introduced the Xbox last year. Though Microsoft hoped the introduction of a hard disk and other features would inspire developers to write more exciting games than for the PlayStation 2, Sony’s hardware has retained an edge among consumers and programmers.
“It’s amazing how far we have come, and yet we still have to get people to see Xbox as even more of a breakthrough than they do today,” wrote Mr. Gates in the internal e-mail sent to top Xbox executives in January.
Officially, Microsoft says the current Xbox has been an early success. The company’s focus right now is on selling more Xbox consoles this coming Christmas season, says John O’Rourke, director of Xbox sales and marketing. At the same time, “we have to be thinking about the future,” Mr. O’Rourke says.
Microsoft officials are also mum about the release date for the Xbox console’s next version, known as “Xbox Next,” expected about 2005 or 2006. Still, the various Xbox projects inside Microsoft — as well as Mr. Gates’s musings in his memo — show Microsoft is serious about overhauling Xbox, if necessary, to strengthen its challenge to Sony.
A key pressure is economics: The Xbox console isn’t profitable for the Redmond, Wash., company and its costs are believed to be higher than Sony’s, partly because of the hard drive and a version of its powerful Windows operating system included with each machine. While “the Xbox is a full-feature BMW, the PS2 is a Toyota,” says Bruno Bonnell, chairman and chief executive of French game maker Infogrames Entertainment SA.
But many gamers prefer the more practical Toyota. Sony has shipped about 32 million PlayStation 2 machines world-wide, while Microsoft was expected to have shipped only 3.5 million to four million Xboxes by Sunday, the end of its fiscal year. Microsoft, which lowered sales expectations earlier this year, insists its more-powerful machine eventually will win over customers.
Mr. O’Rourke says the machine’s hard drive helps deliver features like the voice commentary on Microsoft’s “NFL Fever” football game. Microsoft also recently showcased a new Xbox game called “Blinx: The Time Sweeper,” which allows players to record moves they have made in the game and replay them at different speeds in the future.
“That is something you can only do with a hard disk,” Mr. O’Rourke says.
Still, Mr. Gates doesn’t seem convinced. In his memo, sent after one of his periodic “think weeks” away from the office, he mused about whether a hard drive would be necessary for Xbox’s online-gaming service, expected to be launched later this year. “Do we really know that you have to have a disk to do online?” Mr. Gates wrote. “I think it’s probably right, but say Sony tries to do online without it — how bad will it really be?”
Mr. Gates also tossed out a thought he described as “heretical,” wondering whether Microsoft will have to “back down” from its plan to offer online gaming only over high-speed Internet connections. That plan has been criticized because so few U.S. computer users have high-speed connections.
Mr. Gates received a briefing about the Freon product last week, a person familiar with the matter said, and also presided over a pep rally of sorts for a larger Xbox group. When asked about Freon at the meeting, Xbox chief Robbie Bach said there were no definite plans for deployment, this person said.
Mr. Gates has long been fascinated with extending Microsoft’s Windows software into the living room, though Microsoft stumbled with most of its previous TV efforts. And many in the video-game industry wonder if consumers would pay $500 — compared with the $199 Xbox — for a complicated home-entertainment machine.
“I worry about what I call feature creep — layering too many things into a product so the original intent of the product gets lost,” says Schelley Olhava, an analyst with International Data Corp.
File-Trading Furor Heats Up
By Brad King, 1:15 p.m. PDT, July 3, 2002
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,53662,00.html
In 1991, Willie Nelson's picture splashed across newspapers as government representatives emptied his house, preparing for an auction that would help him settle a $9 million tax bill. Nelson forgot to do some addition around April, so the Internal Revenue Service came calling with a boatload of press behind in tow.
The site of a star standing outside an empty home sends an unmistakable message to Americans: cheat and we'll catch you. On Wednesday, recording industry executives pulled a similar stunt, leaking word to The Wall Street Journal that they were zeroing in on a plan to sue the most aggressive file-traders.
The plan would mark a radical change in philosophy within the music industry. RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen, the head of the music industry's trade association, has repeatedly said they didn't want to pursue individuals. But record sales have been dropping -- 5 percent worldwide -- and the industry is fast approaching panic mode.
The problem is that it's bad business to sue the people who most want your product. That has been a lesson hard learned for music industry executives, many who believed they could control the Internet the way they controlled traditional sales outlets. Their tune changed several years ago, after an outpouring of negative publicity over individual prosecutions.
Less than 24 hours after the news first leaked, officials within the industry have backed away.
"Music sales have slumped and the industry is looking at a variety of tactics to tackle online piracy," said an official within the music industry. "The record companies have introduced and are continuing to pursue innovative ways to deliver online music to consumers. The story in The Wall Street Journal outlined a plan that has been discussed and has not been agreed upon."
While executives are putting distance between themselves and the story, they haven't denied that those specific plans are being developed. Today, those same executives who stumbled through early litigation now have four years of experience and public opinion polls to help them craft a better strategy to nab illicit swappers.
Since Napster reared its head in 1999, popularizing the swapping phenomenon, the recording industry has struggled with finding the best strategy to combat online piracy. While the primary tack has been a legal strategy focused on companies distributing file-trading applications like Napster and Audiogalaxy, there have been occasions when individual users were targeted.
The Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry trade association, began targeting colleges and universities in its anti-piracy efforts several years ago. The RIAA's anti-piracy group began an educational campaign that warned college administrators that their institutions could be held liable for copyright infringement damages if their systems helped facilitate song swapping.
The threats caused many schools to temporarily ban students from university networks. In what became a public relations fiasco for the RIAA, Oregon University student Jeff Levy was arrested and convicted of copyright violations for making thousands of music files available for uploading.
Soon afterwards, the RIAA expanded its hunt to include groups instead of individuals. At the prestigious Carnegie-Mellon institute, 71 students were disciplined after the school instituted a crackdown on music piracy at the RIAA's behest.
Then fervor over individual piracy reached a crescendo with the "Napster" raids in Belgium, which drew brief attention in the United States, when government officials raided private homes. The threats against individual users hasn't subsided either. Last month, news broke that large corporations were being targeted for allowing employees to store MP3s on their computers.
Still, these periodic threats against individuals have been overshadowed by the high-profile lawsuits targeting the largest file-sharing services, not individual users. Napster and Scour both wilted, shutting down their services. Audiogalaxy recently capitulated, revamping its system so that entertainment companies could decide what would appear on the system. Kazaa and Morpheus face lawsuits in Los Angeles.
Despite the legal victories, file trading is as popular as ever because of networks that operate on the individual computer of every user. These "decentralized" systems are nearly impossible to shut down. With technology quickly outpacing the speed of the court, representatives from a variety of industries are looking to Congress to craft laws that will carry digital entertainment into the future.
Hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives have covered digital rights management, intellectual property protection, and online distribution. With so many questions being raised, and so few answers provided, Congress will have a difficult time staying ahead of the technology curve.
Despite the pitfalls of legislation, several representatives plan on moving forward with bills, far removed from the individual file-traders scattered around the globe.
"The day for cleaning up P2P networks through court action may now be past," Rep. Howard Berman (D-California) told the Computer and Communications Industry Association. "It may be that truly decentralized P2P systems cannot be shut down, either by a court or technologically, unless the client P2P software is removed from each and every file trader's computer."
Berman, a strong advocate of digital rights management copy-protection being installed on all consumer electronics devices, is the author of controversial legislation that would weaken the safe harbor protections for ISPs by giving copyright owners more freedom to attack companies that have users who run file-sharing programs.
Industry starting to endorse Net music
Listen.com to offer songs from all five major labels
Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, July 1, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/07/01/BU145460.DTL
One year ago, the record industry was celebrating as Napster Inc. -- the maverick Redwood City startup -- silenced its popular online music- swapping program to satisfy a court order.
Since then, the industry has made a lot of noise about offering its own services, but has taken only small steps toward providing online music fans with a compelling and competitive alternative to Napster. That has left the door wide open for Napster successors like KaZaa and Morpheus to make free music and video sharing more popular than ever.
But there are signs the big labels are beginning to chase the online music revolution that has been racing ahead without them.
Today, Universal Music Group, the world's biggest label, is expected to announce it has licensed music from its roster of stars -- including Eminem, Sheryl Crow, Beck, Jay-Z and U2 -- to the online music subscription service offered by Listen.com Inc. of San Francisco.
The deal, which took 16 months of negotiations, makes the pay service -- called Rhapsody -- the first to offer music from each of the top five labels. Even two competing services that are owned by the labels themselves, MusicNet and Pressplay, can't make that claim yet.
"It completes the circle," said Sean Ryan, Listen.com chief executive officer. "Now we have almost all of the music people are looking for."
However, unlike the file-sharing programs, the majority of songs played via Rhapsody can not be permanently saved or burned onto a CD.
The so-called celestial jukebox, the idea that almost any song is available at the click of a mouse, is one of the key reasons file-sharing programs like Napster, KaZaa, Morpheus and Audiogalaxy became popular among millions of music fans around the world.
In a temporary action that turned into a permanent shutdown, Napster blocked all file trading on July 2, 2001. Since then, the record industry has tried to fill the void with online music subscription services like Pressplay and MusicNet, which have been roundly criticized for a limited selection of songs. None has enlisted more than three of the top five labels, which control about 90 percent of the market.
Rhapsody, however, gained critical acclaim as the best of the new breed. Listen.com previously signed deals with Sony Music Entertainment, BMG Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, along with about 50 independent labels.
With Universal and its 29 percent share of the music in the fold, Rhapsody will offer 175,000 tracks. That's more than any other service except EMusic, a Universal unit that offers more than 200,000 downloadable MP3 songs from mostly independent artists who are not at the top of the popular music charts.
Even so, Rhapsody does not yet offer the ultimate flexibility -- music downloading and CD burning -- already available to users of programs like KaZaa and Morpheus, which the music industry portrays as tools for illegal music piracy. To listen to music, Rhapsody subscribers must be at their computer and online.
Ryan said Listen.com hopes to negotiate agreements allowing music to be burned to a CD or transferred to a wireless device later this year.
INDUSTRY CHANGES COURSE
But when compared with its actions from last year or even two years ago, the record industry has made an about-face, said analyst Phil Leigh, vice president of technology research at Raymond James & Associates.
"This is another sign the labels are beginning to recognize the inevitability of online music distribution," Leigh said. "Two years ago, they considered MP3s one of the creations of Satan."
Leigh cited two prime reasons for the labels' change of heart: a decline in CD sales and the availability of recordable CD drives on computers.
Indeed, international CD sales were down 5 percent in 2001. Industry trade associations like the Recording Industry Association of America attributed the drop to Internet piracy and CD burners.
According to a study released last month by research firm Ipsos-Reid Corp., about 19 percent of Americans 12 years and older -- about 40 million people -- have downloaded an MP3 song at least once using a file-sharing program.
And 13 percent of Americans 12 and older have burned a CD with songs downloaded from the Internet.
The data suggest that a relatively small but growing segment of the marketplace is becoming more comfortable with "the flexibility of digital music," said Matt Kleinschmit, senior research manager at Ipsos-Reid.
He added, "It's not just early adopters. There are more than 40 million people who have undertaken an often technologically cumbersome distribution method," he said.
So far, the record industry has only delivered "services that are being assembled due to legal restrictions and what is most comfortable for artists, songwriters and labels with little regard for what's most comfortable for consumers," he said.
That's changing. The two biggest labels, Universal Music and Sony Music, last month revealed new plans to sell digital singles and allow CD burning.
"To think there's a magic bullet is wrong," said Larry Kenswil, president of ELabs, Universal Music's e-commerce division. "Each individual step looks small, but they're now starting to add up into a significant force."
AOL TIME WARNER EXPERIMENTS
AOL Time Warner last month began an experiment that raised eyebrows among online music watchers. It allowed America Online subscribers to download a small selection of MP3 singles for 99 cents each. The MP3s carried no copyright protection restrictions, meaning they can be downloaded, transferred to a portable player or even burned to a CD, just as if they were shared on KaZaa.
Early results of the 90-day trial, which has included tracks from artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "are very encouraging," said AOL Music chief Kevin Conroy.
AOL has also begun First Listen, a promotion that encourages users of AOL's Instant Messenger program to send Buddy List friends a link to new songs.
One Alanis Morissette single, "Hands Clean," premiered on First Listen 24 hours before hitting the radio airwaves and had more than 500,000 plays in one week.
First Listen attempts to capitalize on the fact that, much to the dismay of the recording industry, the AOL Instant Messenger service is already one of the more popular methods that online music fans use to swap free MP3 songs.
Conroy, a veteran record industry executive who began charting the possibilities of Net music in 1995, said the debate over file sharing has been "too focused on technologies and business models" that were "not ready for prime time."
Conroy hopes to expand the concept of online file sharing beyond simply downloading an MP3 file.
"We're creating a much more holistic file-sharing experience," Conroy said.
Analyst Matt Bailey, however, is skeptical, noting that the record industry has previously "heralded new services that have never seen the light of day."
"The last year has been hugely disappointing for the digital music industry, " said Bailey, president of Redshift Research, a Belmont, Mass., firm that studies digital entertainment.
"Twelve months ago, it looked as if online music would at last become a legitimate business. While the music industry prevailed against Napster, its subsequent inaction has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.
A look at the sharers 12 and up in the United States:
-- Number of users:
41.5 million (19%)
-- By age group:
12-17: 8.7 million
18-24: 11.7 million
25-34: 9.2 million
35-54: 10.8 million
55+: 1.2 million
-- By gender:
25% of males 12 and up
14% of females 12 and up
Source: Ipsos-Reid
Music labels go after song-swappers
Recording companies plan lawsuits against individuals
By Anna Wilde Mathews and Bruce Orwall
http://www.msnbc.com/news/775684.asp?cp1=1
July 3 - Major music companies are preparing to mount a broad new attack on unauthorized online song-swapping. The campaign would include suits against individuals who are offering the largest troves of songs on peer-to-peer services
The big recording companies, working through their trade association, the Recording Industry Association of America, are moving toward filing copyright lawsuits that would target the highest volume song providers within the services, which allow people to grab songs without paying artists or labels, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The suits would be part of a broader effort, including a public campaign that may feature prominent artists urging music fans to respect copyright rules.
DIFFERENT APPROACH
The new legal tack would be a departure from the entertainment industry's strategy so far. Companies have been reluctant to take legal action against individual Internet users, in part because they have feared the possible backlash that could result from big corporate interests dragging individuals into court.
Instead, the industry has focused on lawsuits against for-profit piracy outfits and the operators of peer-to-peer services like Napster, Morpheus and Kazaa. Those attacks have generally been successful in the courts. But they have failed to stem the growth of online song bazaars. The Morpheus file-sharing application has been downloaded more than 95 million times, and Kazaa more than 90 million times, through Cnet Networks Inc.'s Download.com.
People with knowledge of the matter say that the recording-industry trade association is still in the early stages of planning its efforts. The labels are discussing what actions should trigger such suits, including exactly what a music uploader would have to do to become a target. The details and scope of the PR push also haven't been resolved. In general, music artists haven't been out front in combating digital piracy, and some have even endorsed file-sharing.
Still, these people say, top record-label executives agreed in a trade association meeting a few weeks ago that they would move toward preparing suits that would focus on individuals who supply the biggest amounts of music, as well as so-called 'supernodes' or people who provide the centralized directories that enable online music-sharing. According to people with knowledge of the matter, two of the strongest backers of the tough tactics have been the biggest music companies, the recording units of Vivendi Universal SA and Sony Corp.
It isn't clear that all of the five parent companies of the big record labels are completely behind suing individual users, a move that could put some of them in an awkward position. Some officials, particularly from AOL Time Warner Inc. and its Warner Music Group, have raised concerns about the problems that could be caused by such suits and the complexity of proceeding with them. The suits could set the company against many users of its own America Online Internet service.
Bertelsmann AG, for its part, has tied itself to Napster Inc., the original online song-swapping service, though Napster is no longer operating with any unauthorized content. People with knowledge of the matter say that BMG has supported the trade association's efforts.
Suits against individual Internet users (particularly if the defendants aren't seeking to create profitable operations based on their online music activities) could cause a backlash from some of the record industry's own fans and biggest customers. But many music executives, watching revenue sag as home compact-disc copying has soared, feel that they have little choice if they are to save their business. World-wide music sales dropped 5% last year, while global sales of compact-disc albums declined for the first time since CDs were launched in 1983. So far this year, U.S. music sales are down steeply from a sluggish 2001.
ONLINE OFFERINGS
Music executives hope the legal attacks will be part of their broader Internet strategy, which has included rolling out more legal online services that include their music. The two major record-label-backed online subscription offerings, MusicNet and pressplay, have yet to rival the popularity of their free competitors. But they are both working to add more inviting features and broader music offerings. The record labels have also increased their licensing to independent online music services such as Listen.com Inc.
Filing suits against individual users is complicated. Entertainment companies frequently hire services that specialize in tracking copyrighted material online. But to get the name of an individual user, they have to send a subpoena to that person's Internet-service provider. Even for the ISP, linking the Internet address to a name can be complex. Moreover, it's hard to verify which person was logged on to an Internet connection at a given time.
If the target of a suit turned out to be under 18, he or she would likely be liable. Under certain circumstances, the parents could also be liable.
Short of suits, entertainment companies are using technological tools that they hope will make the peer-to-peer services less inviting. For instance, some have hired companies to distribute files labeled with the names of movies or songs. The idea is to frustrate illicit downloaders with dummy files that don't work. California Democratic Congressman Howard Berman has said he plans to introduce a bill that would help protect copyright holders who use such methods, which may fall into a gray area of certain current laws.
Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Corporation Losses
The taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 changed the treatment for net operating losses. Most corporate losses may now be carried back two years and/or carried forward 20 years as a deduction against income earned in those years. Losses arising in tax years beginning before Aug. 5, 1997, are still subject to the three year carry back and 15 year carry forward rules.
Capital losses are allowed only to the extent of capital gains. A current year deduction for a net capital loss is not allowed. A net capital loss may be carried back 3 years and forward 5 years as a short-term capital loss. Carry back a capital loss to the extent it does not increase or produce a net operating loss in the tax year to which it is carried. Foreign expropriation capital losses may not be carried back, but may be carried forward 10 years. A net capital loss for a regulated investment company may be carried forward 8 years.
from form 1120 for C Corporations
DaiLin, I take exception to your characterization of the $200,000 increase in principal as 'cash inflow'. It would be more correctly accounted for as an increase in short-term debt. It is by no means an influx of cash to EDIG since these monies are not available for our use. An accurate simile would be adding the closing costs of a refinanced mortgage to the principal, rather than paying them out of pocket. Strictly IMHO, the finance charge amount borders on extortion.
OT: Vivendi Universal Net USA Invites Music Fans to Become a Backstage VIP
'Nellyville' CD Purchasers Can Unlock Exclusive Bonus Features Online: Games, Videos, Ringtones & More
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020702/latu048_1.html
LOS ANGELES, July 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Vivendi Universal Net USA (VUNet USA) today announced the premiere of Backstage VIP, an innovative online service that provides music purchasers with free access to special multimedia content from some of their favorite artists. Making its debut with Nellyville, the new Universal Records release by multi-platinum rapper Nelly, Backstage VIP invites fans to unlock exclusive Nelly bonus features online, such as games, videos, remixes and ringtones.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020701/VIVENDILOGO )
To access this content, fans with a copy of a Backstage VIP-enabled CD, such as Nellyville, can simply insert their CD into a CD-ROM drive and visit http://www.backstagevip.com or a direct URL link provided on the album ( http://www.nelly.net for the Nellyville promotion). Using VUNet USA's Beam-it(TM) recognition software that instantly identifies the CD, the album is verified and the owner is invited to register to become a Backstage VIP.
Backstage VIP's exclusive Nelly bonus content includes the Nellyville carnival game, access to two remixes of Nelly's "Hot In Herre," the never-before-seen video for St. Lunatics' "Let Me In," and a special Nelly ringtone.
"We believe Backstage VIP is a great way for artists to reward fans who purchase their CDs," said Robin D. Richards, chief executive officer of VUNet USA. "By using the CD as the pass-key to getting bonus content online, artists and record companies will be able to build mutually-rewarding, ongoing relationships with music fans. It's exciting to launch our Backstage VIP service with the global release of a multi-platinum artist like Nelly, as it marks the first time that such a service is available on a large scale. We expect that this type of service will become as popular as the special bonus features that come as part of DVD movies."
About Nellyville
Nellyville is the follow-up to Nelly's 2000 Grammy-nominated debut, Country Grammar, which spawned a string of hits including "E.I.," "Batter Up," the Grammy-nominated "Ride Wit Me," and the catchy, melodic title track, "Country Grammar." To date, Country Grammar has sold over 9 million units worldwide.
About Vivendi Universal Net USA Group, Inc.
Vivendi Universal Net USA Group, Inc. -- the U.S. arm of VUNet, Vivendi Universal's Paris-based Internet and technology unit -- provides world-class digital entertainment and education content to tens of millions of media consumers each month through the aggregation of its prominent Internet brands including MP3.com, RollingStone.com, EMusic.com, GetMusic.com, MP4.com, the Flipside Network and Education.com. Through its ownership of Moviso LLC, the company has also established a leadership position in the growing mobile media services industry. In addition, VUNet USA is a global leader in creating innovative online applications and infrastructure technologies. Established in October 2001 and headed by CEO Robin D. Richards, VUNet USA is headquartered in Los Angeles with operations in San Diego and New York.
For More Information, Please Contact: Deana Graffeo, Public Relations Manager of Vivendi Universal Net USA, +1-917-464-0638, deana.graffeo@vunetusa.com.
OT: SongPro and RioPort Work Together to Deliver Secure Online Music and Multimedia Content for Upcoming Plug-In Module for Nintendo Game Boy Color and Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Tuesday July 2, 9:31 am Eastern Time
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020702/20114_1.html
LOS ANGELES & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 2, 2002-- SongPro, Inc., a new digital multimedia device and content distribution company, and RioPort, Inc., the leading music application service provider (ASP), today announced a technology and services partnership to deliver secure online music and multimedia downloads for SongPro's upcoming WMA/MP3 multimedia player plug-in for Nintendo® Game Boy® Color® and Nintendo® Game Boy® Advance®. SongPro will utilize RioPort's PulseOne Media Service(TM) and Direct-to-Device (d2d)(TM) technology, allowing its device users to easily access a large library of secure music from major recording artists using their SongPro player and any PC.
SongPro and RioPort are combining efforts to create new content packaging technology that will bind secure WMA music tracks with graphics and text, such as album art, lyrics and other metadata, for synchronized display on the Game Boy® high-resolution screen. The resulting secure SongPro Audio (SPA) files will be playable only on SongPro's device, which also supports standard WMA and MP3 music playback. The SPA format opens up a new realm in digital content delivery, allowing for future multimedia content, such as storybooks, slide shows or other entertainment pastimes, to be enjoyed using an enabled portable device. Importantly, the SPA format creates a new paradigm in digital content delivery by enabling the imbedding of advertising within files. As with television and radio, this commercial component will allow SongPro to deliver high quality content to consumers free of charge. SongPro intends to license its software to other online sites that want to offer SPA tracks for its device, which will launch at retail this fall.
RioPort is providing SongPro with its complete PulseOne Media Service, delivering aggregated major label content, hosting and e-commerce infrastructure for SongPro's upcoming SongPro Network, a group of channel sites designed to serve users with content and community tools. Additionally, RioPort will provide SongPro with the necessary d2d firmware to ensure that the SongPro device can play back secure online music tracks using multiple formats and Microsoft's DRM. RioPort is currently the only music ASP that has secured the rights from major record labels to deliver commercial digital music to enabled portable devices like SongPro's offering.
To enable access to subscription content directly from the SongPro device, SongPro will utilize RioPort's Media Activation System (MAS), a DRM-agnostic d2d component that manages and enforces content usage rules, such as termination by play count, cumulative play time or time-based expiration for music tracks on the enabled device. The MAS functionality can also be used to enable video content and games on a pay-per-play basis in the future.
"RioPort is the clear partner of choice to execute on our content and delivery strategy for the SongPro device," said Dr. Marc Hannah, chief technology officer of SongPro, Inc. "RioPort's d2d technology is at the forefront in providing what companies like SongPro need to make secure commercial music delivery to portable devices a reality."
"I am very proud of how the RioPort team and SongPro team are working together to create SongPro's compelling new service," said Anthony Schaller, chief technology officer of RioPort, Inc. "We think the SongPro business model is a great example of how digital content delivery can increase revenue possibilities for content holders and artists."
About SongPro, Inc.
SongPro is a digital multimedia device and content distribution company that enables the delivery of open and secure content to the consumer marketplace. SongPro's premier product is the first multimedia player plug-in module for the Nintendo® Game Boy® that bridges the ever-popular world of handheld video gaming with the tidal wave of digital music and audio content. The SongPro module turns the millions of Nintendo® Game Boys® in use into affordable WMA/MP3 players with the unique ability to simultaneously display scrolling visuals, such as album art and lyrics. SongPro is developing the SongPro Network, giving its device users access to thousands of SPA music and multimedia files through the company site, partner sites, and digital docking stations.
About RioPort.com, Inc.
RioPort is the leading music application service provider, enabling e-tailers and consumer electronics manufacturers with industry-standard solutions for selling music to consumers in a simple, secure manner. RioPort's distribution partners include BestBuy.com, the MTVi Group, Radio Free Virgin, House of Blues, Bolt, and others. RioPort is backed by Oak Investment Partners, Vulcan Ventures, SONICblue, Microsoft Corp., Mitsubishi Corp., EMC Corp., Quantum Corp. and Macrovision Corp.
OT: Messier Out, Investors Slaughter Vivendi
By Merissa Marr and Tim Hepher
PARIS (Reuters) - Panic wiped out as much as 10 billion euros from the shares of Vivendi Universal on Tuesday as investors fled from the rubble of debts and mounting cashflow problems left by ousted CEO Jean-Marie Messier.
Vivendi's (Paris:EAUG.PA - News) stock lost as much as 40 percent of their value as fears took hold that the world's second largest media company may be running out of the cash needed to repay short-term loans after its debt ratings were slashed to perilously low levels. Vivendi shares closed 25.5 percent down at 17.80 euros in Paris Tuesday.
With Vivendi left temporarily rudderless after Messier reluctantly agreed to resign following a boardroom coup, analysts forecast a rapid breakup of the group to pay debt and reverse the 70 percent plunge the share price has suffered so far this year.
But without waiting for an expected shake-up under an interim chief to be named Wednesday, sources close to the situation said Vivendi has begun talking to banks about emergency funds to tide over short-term needs estimated at 2 billion to 3 billion euros.
And as French political sensitivities about the fate of Vivendi's domestic water and television businesses began to stir, advisers to French President Jacques Chirac also joined the fray.
"His advisers are having discussions with a whole range of people, including board members ... ahead of the meeting tomorrow," a source familiar with the situation said.
Messier has been blamed for Vivendi's problems after hetransformed the 150-year-old former water company into a global media titan with control of Universal Studios and a music label boasting a galaxy of stars that includes Sting, Eminem and U2.
"I tried to do too much too quickly," Messier told France's Le Figaro newspaper in an interview in its Tuesday edition.
DEBT/ACCOUNTING FEARS
Despite investor relief at the departure of the unpopular media mogul, the stock sell-off was ignited when ratings agency Moody's Investors Service cut Vivendi's long-term debt to high- risk "junk" status. It cited growing doubt about Vivendi's ability to repay debt and refinance short-term obligations.
Rival ratings agency Standard & Poor's on Tuesday also put Vivendi on the lowest rung of its investment-grade ladder and warned it could downgrade the company to junk status if it did not quickly secure new loans to avert a potential cash crisis.
"In terms of timing ... we'd like to see support from the banks materialize within the next few weeks, that is to say very rapidly," S&P analyst Guy Deslondes said.
Rating downgrades increase a company's borrowing costs and, in the case a "junk" rating, make it impossible for some fund managers to invest -- leaving Vivendi more exposed to its banks.
Vivendi had planned to issue a 1 billion to 2 billion euro bond this year. It says it has 3.3 billion euros in credit lines to cover short-term needs, but some analysts say this may not be enough.
ACCOUNTING CLAIM
Vivendi's battle to restore confidence while it works out its future post-Messier, took another blow when French newspaper Le Monde published what it called new revelations about Vivendi's accounting methods, claiming the group had tried to fudge its 2001 books.
While French regulators confirmed they intervened to prevent Vivendi from accounting for a complex transaction in a way that would have boosted profits, Vivendi was cleared of any irregularities and the company insisted it had acted properly.
But the report sent a wave of panic through European stock markets as investors fled from any whiff that a multibillion dollar accounting scandal -- such as the one facing U.S. telecommunications group WorldCom (NasdaqNM:WCOME - News) -- was crossing the Atlantic.
"There's panic selling. Any mention of the words accounting and irregularities and investors are gone. Coupled with the CEO disappearing and questions over its strategy, investors can't see a reason to own this stock right now," said one analyst.
In frantic trading, five percent of Vivendi's capital changed hands in Paris -- five times the normal volume.
"The hedge funds had huge amounts of this one and are losing big time. The Moody's downgrade is a disaster. The value of the assets is falling by the minute. Management's a mess. People are giving up on it," said a specialist salesman in London.
GLOOM SPREADS
But Vivendi pushed on regardless with plans to appoint a French successor to Messier at a board meeting Wednesday and prepared for a makeover after the dramatic rebellion against his leadership. However, there was last minute dithering over who should replace him, with the name Charles de Croisset, head of French bank CCF, thrown into the ring alongside widely- tipped favorite Jean-Rene Fourtou, deputy head of drugs company Aventis SA(Paris:AVEP.PA - News).
Despite the swirling rumors and precipitous stock slide, Vivendi has remained silent except to deny it has any accounting problems.
But the company seems in disarray.
"It's remarkable how quickly the rot has set in... This appears to have moved from being a crisis for Messier personally to a crisis for the whole company," said one financier. "Everything is falling in on them at once. There is a downwards spiral and they may well be entering it."
DRAWN-OUT RESIGNATION
And while Vivendi tumbled, Messier was negotiating his severance package -- a 12 million euro golden parachute that newspapers reported could fail to open. That is because he also owes an estimated 25 million euros on a loan he took out to buy Vivendi shares at some 50 euros each, according to French newspaper Liberation.
In his final battle with the Vivendi board, Messier wants to be freed from the loan, Liberation reported. Vivendi declined comment, but a source close to the company said the loan report was incorrect.
Of bigger potential impact to shareholders, there was also speculation that Messier would try to get a legal waiver protecting him against any lawsuits brought by shareholders angry with management. Such a move could challenge the concept that all board members are responsible to shareholders for a company's actions.
(additional reporting by Kirstin Ridley in London, Reshma Kapadia in New York, William Emmanuel, Rebecca Harrison in Paris)
($1=1.017 Euro)
MEDIA ENABLING ANNOUNCES PLANS TO LAUNCH DATAPLAY-ENABLED DEVICES IN EUROPEAN MARKET
(Wien - June 20, 2002) - Media Enabling today announced plans to launch multiple DataPlay-enabled products in Europe by the end of 2002. These products consist of a portable music player, USB drive, a professional 5Mpx digital camera and the "DiscGO!" storage device.
Media Enabling is a brand of Mediatech, an Italian based company with offices in Milan and Sardinia. Founded in 2001, Media Enabling designs, manufactures and distributes DataPlay-centric CE products. For faster penetration into the European markets, Media Enabling is using an internal sales force and regional distributors.
The first product scheduled for launch is a DataPlay-enabled portable music player. The DataPlay-enabled device operates as a portable music player, recorder and external storage drive with USB connectivity. The device supports downloadable music formats such as MP3 and pre-recorded formats such as AAC and QDX. One DataPlay digital media can hold over 11 hours of MP3 music and over 5 complete pre-recorded albums. Major music labels Universal Music, BMG, EMI and Zomba have all agreed to release albums on DataPlay.
Media Enabling is also planning to launch the DataPlay-enabled USB drive this fall. This device functions as a player, recorder and external storage drive. The main advantage is the portability of the device; it is as small as a packet of cigarettes and connects via a USB cable to the PC.
In September Media Enabling plans to launch a DataPlay-enabled professional digital camera (5 Mega pixel, Reflex). This camera, developed in partnership with a famous German brand, will be the first digital still camera to market that utilizes DataPlay digital media. One 500MB DataPlay digital media can store approximately 100 non-compressed 5 Mega pixel photos. Media Enabling plans to launch a consumer digital camera in 2003.
The Media Enabling "DiscGo!" product is a portable universal mass storage system (battery powered), which enables the transfer of digital content from any type of Flash Memory to a DataPlay digital media. "DiscGo!" is USB enabled, which allows drag & drop operations from a PC. "DiscGo" simplifies the use of multiple memory formats for consumers.
About Media Enabling
Founded in 2001 and based in Milan, Italy, Media Enabling is among the first DataPlay development partners, and is the most advanced in all of Europe. The company is focused on developing hardware and software applications for the DataPlay technology, both as a development partner, and as a complete system supplier. Backed by one of the leading Italian industrial Groups, MediaEnabling is currently building a growing number of strategic partnerships with major players in the audio, digital photography, video, wireless, gaming and computing markets.
About DataPlay
DataPlay, Inc. was incorporated in November 1998 to develop a Web-enabled digital content recording and distribution media for portable Internet appliances and hand-held consumer entertainment devices. Headquartered in Boulder, Colo., the Company employs more than 240 people in the United States, Singapore and Japan. Visit DataPlay on the Internet at www.dataplay.com.
"On December 3, 2001, Musical announced that its first product, the Classic XP3, created under their licensing agreement with e.Digital, will be sold through Circuit City, a national consumer electronics retailer. *To date, we have received $6,560 of licensing revenues under this agreement and have received $50,000 with respect to NRE fees, of which $43,333 has been deferred at March 31, 2002."
*IMHO, 'to date' refers to June 5th or 6th of this year.
Oh, well; another night's sleep shot all to hell.
DivX needs your input:
http://www.divx.com/survey/
(Courtesy of RossS at Agora)
coyote, is there anything stopping YOU from making a sincere effort to find the answers you seek? (Hint: you should seek sincere answers sincerely.)
OT: Review: Toshiba 5GB PC Card
July 3, 2001
By Loyd Case
Recently, there's been a lot of talk about advances in hard drive technologies. It wasn't that long ago that the future of rotating magnetic storage was considered bleak, and that it would one day be supplanted by either rotating optical storage or cheap solid state storage. In fact, those competing technologies have become interesting niche players, but have never come close to replacing classic magnetic media.
The reason behind the continued dominance of hard drives as the primary storage medium has been the incredible advances in data density on rotating magnetic media. A recent example has been the furor around IBM's "pixie dust" statements (see 'IBM "Pixie Dust" To Be Matched By Fujitsu' for more details). Desktop hard drives with over 41,000 tracks per inch are already shipping, and we'll no doubt see even higher densities in the future.
Brute Force Versus Elegance
These higher data densities often manifest themselves in bigger hard drives. Already, 80GB drives are common, with 100 and 130GB drives arriving on the scene in the near future. However, another less-noticed trend has been smaller drives. You may have observed) that the hard drive capacities in laptop PCs have gotten bigger, with 20GB and larger drives becoming commonplace. Those mechanisms are smaller than standard desktop drives--usually 2.5 inches in diameter--and have fewer platters. The smaller size is needed for the tighter space constraints inside a notebook computer. These drives also tend to be slower performers, mostly due to the need to use less power and thus they rotate slower than desktop drives, not because of their physical size.
Last year Toshiba shipped a 2GB 1.8" hard drive mechanism into the OEM market, and also shipped a PC card drive based on this mechanism. The 2GB drive in that form factor was pretty incredible at the time, but the company has recently upped the ante with a 5GB mechanism.
The thought of 5GB in a PC card format starts to get very intriguing in today's space-hungry environment. Toshiba manages to pack five gigabytes onto a single, 1.8" (4.6cm) platter.
A single head mechanism locks back when the drive is not in use. Given the portable nature of the drive, Toshiba built it to be quite rugged. It will withstand a 200G shock when running and survive a 1000G shock when powered down and the heads locked back.
As you might imagine, the data density is impressive, coming in at a staggering 41,600 tracks per inch. This is mitigated somewhat by the smaller size, but the drive is still capable of a recording density of 538KB per linear inch on a single track. This compares favorably with IBM's Travelstar 2.5" hard drive targeted towards the notebook PC market. The Travelstar 32GH has a linear data density of 389KB per linear inch, but spins at 5400RPM. The overall data density of the Toshiba drive is 21.1 Gbits/square inch, versus 14 Gbits/square inch for the Travelstar 32GH and 17.1 Gbits/square inch for the slower (4200RPM) Travelstar 30GT.
Like all compact drives, the Toshiba mechanism is geared more towards efficiency than performance. It spins at 4,200RPM, somewhat slower than the slowest desktop drives, which spin at 5,400RPM. It's even a tad slower than 2.5" laptop drives, which typically spin at 4,500RPM. Average access time is 15ms, also slower than most desktop drives. The mechanism itself does support ATA/66 transfer rates, but the PC Card version doesn't seem to enable this.
While the raw mechanism has some limitations, Toshiba chose to further downgrade the version that went into the PC Card drive. The PC Card drive only rotates at 3,990RPM and has a slightly lower per track recording density (507KB per inch).
In fact, you wouldn't want to use this drive as a primary drive for your notebook PC--it's just too slow, even when compared to the standard 2.5" drive in the Dell Inspiron 8000 we used for testing. Part of the reason may simply be the limitations Toshiba has imposed on their PC Card drive. The PC Card version of the drive is limited to either programmed I/O mode or "memory mode". In programmed I/O mode, the drive maxes out at 5.2MB/sec. In memory mode, the maximum buffer-to-host throughput is 20MB/sec--far below the theoretical maximum for an ATA/66 device.
Even given the limitations designed into Toshiba's PC Card drive, there are additional contributing factors to the differences in performance when compared to the built-in drive on the Inspiron:
· The size of the drives comes into play here. The outer track of the Toshiba drive is only 2.54 inches long, whereas the Travelstar 32GH used in the Dell Inspiron 8000 has an outer track that's 4.9 inches long. Although the data density is lower on the IBM drive, the faster rotational speed and longer outer track means that the IBM drive can (theoretically) pull twice as much data off the drive each second.
· The Travelstar drive built into the Dell also has 2MB of cache, versus 256KB for the PC Card drive.
· Another major factor is that the Toshiba drive is most likely running in programmed IO mode, which maxes out at 5.2MB/sec (according to Toshiba). The CPU utilization when running the Disk Winmark tests came in at over 99%. While the drive is physically capable of moving more data, the CPU becomes the bottleneck.
However, the drive is an excellent backup device. The huge capacity, coupled with ease of use that's far better than CD-RW drives, makes it a great device for storing data on the go. It's also a great repository for media files. I dropped 745MB of MP3 files (125 songs) on the drive, all recorded at a data rate of 160Kbps. At that data rate, the audio quality through good headphones was superb. The low power draw (1.2W) of the drive was also easy on the battery.
That got me thinking--what about PDA's? We dug up a Compaq iPaq 3650 (PocketPC) with a PC Card jacket and loaded the drive into it. At that point, we discovered the Compaq wouldn't recognize the drive. A quick trip to the Compaq web site uncovered a ROM update and new PC card drivers for the iPaq. After updating the Pocket PC, we were up and running. Media Player 7.1 for the Pocket PC immediately found all the songs and listed them.
After fully charging the iPaq battery, I started playing songs continuously. The iPaq ran for 3:36 (three hours, 36 minutes) before the low battery warning popped up. That's surprisingly good for the iPaq, which tends to be a pretty power-hungry device.
At a retail price of $445, you wouldn't want to buy the drive just to play MP3 songs. However, if you have a need for a highly portable backup device with a huge capacity, then this drive is definitely for you. It works completely transparently in notebook PC's--we tested in units from Dell, Sony, HP, and IBM. Pop the card in and it comes up as another drive letter under both Windows ME and Windows 2000. It's fully sharable over a network, too.
It is not, however, particularly fast. If you're moving several hundred megabytes of data, you may have to wait a few seconds. CPU utilization, as measured by the Winbench 99 disk tests, is very high as well, due to the lack of DMA and busmastering support.
It's also usable in PocketPCs. We did have some minor difficulties that were resolved with an OS update, but that's more a PocketPC issue than a problem with the drive. We didn't have a chance to test it with a Palm-compatible device, however. There are other solutions suitable for PDA's, too, such as IBM's compact-flash compatible Microdrive--but that's limited to 1GB, and you need an external reader or PC card adapter.
In the end, the Toshiba 5GB PC Card drive is a compact, elegant solution for backing up and transporting multiple gigabytes of data. It works well, offers the durability needed in a portable storage device and is easy to use.
Toshiba 5GB PC Card Drive
Price: $445 (MSRP)
Pros: huge capacity for a compact device; rugged
Cons: Pricey; pokey performance
Score: 8/10
http://www.toshiba.com/taissdd/news/awards_reviews/extremetech_070301.htm
New Toshiba "MOBILPHILE": 5GB Portable Digital Audio Player With High-Speed USB 2.0 Interface
(Courtesy of Savant at SI)
WAYNE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2002--
Ultra-Lightweight Miniature HDD-Based Digital Music Player Stores 1,000 Songs; Creates Brand New Category in Portable Entertainment
Toshiba, a leader in the development of innovative digital entertainment technologies, today announced the introduction of its compact and convenient MOBILPHILE(R) portable digital music player.
The MEG50AS is one of the industry's smallest and lightest portable hard disc drive (HDD) music players and the first portable music player to combine the benefits of a high-speed USB 2.0 interface with the flexibility and music storage capability of a 5GB removable Type II PC data storage card.
The silver, attractively styled Toshiba MOBILPHILE(R) is compatible with MP3, WMA and WAV digital music files, providing users new freedom and flexibility in the enjoyment of their favorite music.
The MEG50AS offers storage capacity for approximately 1,000 songs (about 100 hours of music), and provides up to 18 hours of continuous playback from its built-in Advanced Lithium Ion rechargeable battery.
In addition to its extensive portable music capabilities, MOBILPHILE(R) is also an ideal medium for consumers who regularly transport computer files from the office to their home and back to the office. Users can simply download their files onto the data storage card, place the card back in the player and use it as a transport device - making it easier than ever before to work on files at home and bring them back to work the next day!
Noted Toshiba's Craig Eggers, Toshiba Director of Product Management: "Toshiba has connected strengths in HDD, digital media and miniaturization technologies. The sum of these abilities is a personal player that combines the benefits of high storage capacity and high-speed connectivity and promises to create an entirely new category in portable audio entertainment. The MEG50AS marks a significant new direction in portable digital products for our company. Our research indicates the market for portable entertainment devices such as MOBILPHILE(R) will triple over the next three years.
The introduction of the MEG50AS signals our intention to lead the way in this important new category."
MOBILEPHILE(R) - Faster Downloads, Better Sound Quality
Through its high-speed USB 2.0 interface, MOBILPHILE(R) brings users more music in less time. A transfer rate of nearly 480Mbs transfer rate lets users download music quickly and efficiently. MOBILPHILE(R) could potentially download as many as 1,000 songs in 10 minutes, depending, of course, on the processing power of the connected CPU.
Better Music Management With Easy-To-Use Toshiba Audio Manager Disc
MOBILEPHILE(R)'s high-speed USB 2.0 interface and massive 5GB storage capacity opens up a variety of new and exciting applications for users, and with the unit's supplied Toshiba Audio Manager software, it's easier than ever to manage an entire library of music.
Users can arrange music by genre, edit song lists, or play songs in predetermined order. Music information, including song titles and operating mode status, is displayed on the unit's high-contrast 1.8-inch LCD blue backlit window display. Convenient menu buttons and four-way cursor controls located on the front panel make menu navigation and song selection fast and easy.
A Compact Never Sounded This Good - Or Offered This Much
Slightly larger than a pack of playing cards, the stylish metallic MOBILPHILE(R) is ideal for active lifestyle pursuits such as jogging or biking. Fitting easily into a shirt or coat-jacket pocket or attached to the belt for convenient portability, it measures just 72x112x22 mm and weighs 180 grams. The removable 50GB PC card adds a mere 50 grams to the overall weight of MOBILPHILE(R). The MEG50AS is Linux OS compatible and connects to Windows-based PCs and laptops via its high-speed USB 2.0 interface.
MOBILPHILE(R) is supplied with stereo headphones, and AC adaptor, built-in battery charger and 5GB PC card. It carries a suggested retail price of $499.00 and will be available in July 2002.
Toshiba America Consumer Products, Inc. is an independent
operating company, owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, a world leader in high technology products with subsidiaries worldwide.
CONTACT: Dobbin/Bolgla Associates
Sara Trujillo, 212/388-1400
strujillo@dba-pr.com
KEYWORD: NEW JERSEY
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT
SOURCE: Toshiba America Consumer Products
Today's News On The Net - Business Wire's full file on the Internet with Hyperlinks to your home page.
URL: http://www.businesswire.com
Jun-18-2002 19:50 GMT
Source BW Business Wire
Categories: MST/R/US/NJ MST/I/ENT MST/S/PDT
New Products, Services and Memory Choices Spur Digital Audio Growth
http://www.instat.com/rh/commverge/newmk.asp?id=236&SourceID=00000024000000000000
Due to the introduction of new products and services, the digital audio market is entering a new era, according to In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm reports that with the availability of file-swapping and new online subscription services and portable players with 10GB and higher storage capacity, consumers now have more choices than ever for how they enjoy their music. As a result, revenues derived from sales of online music (both physical media products and those that are downloaded) and digital music players will experience exceptional growth rates. Despite current controversy over the delivery of digital music, online music revenues are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33.4% between 2001 and 2006 and portable digital music player unit shipments (including solid state and revolving media products) will grow from about 7.2 million in 2002 to almost 30 million in 2006.
One of the significant factors affecting the portable digital audio player market is the increasing variety of players available. The success of Apple's iPod has led many manufacturers to enter the hard drive-based segment of this market. Revolving media will also experience growth due to the inexpensive cost of blank CDs, the availability of networked products, and the growing percentage of consumers with CD burners.
Though the digital audio market has grown from a fledgling niche market, the industry will still experience significant hurdles in the coming year or two. Subscription services and anti-piracy technologies will need to address issues from a consumer, manufacturer, and record label perspective. Legal issues affecting the worldwide music industry will also have an effect on the industry. Though the recording industry finally seems committed to establishing a viable online distribution model. The labels will be in a much better position to understand how to structure their services to entice customers in another 12 to 18 months.
In-Stat/MDR has also found that:
When comparing online music sales by segment, revenues from actual "physical media" music products will account for the lion's share of total online sales. Revenues from downloading and streaming are expected to remain less than 10% of total revenues through the year 2004.
Consumer interest seems to validate the concept of a home jukebox with an integrated hard drive. This year will see the introduction of many new home jukebox products offering a variety of features and hard drive options.
This Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat/MDR report, Digital Audio: Can You Hear it Now? Good. (#IN020040ME), which analyzes and forecasts the worldwide market for compressed audio (MP3) players, including both portable and home-based products such as jukeboxes and receivers. The worldwide markets for portable and home-based players in units and revenue are forecasted for the period 2002-2006. An overview of available devices and manufacturers, trends affecting the industry, and player components including memory and ICs are also examined. The report also evaluates the global music industry, with regard to sales figures, legal issues, anti-piracy technologies, and subscription services from the consumer and manufacturer standpoints.
OT: BMG to buy Zomba for $3 billion
By Reuters June 11, 2002, 4:15 PM PT
Zomba Music, which has churned out stars from Britney Spears to 'N Sync, said Tuesday that it will be bought by German media group Bertelsmann in a deal worth close to $3 billion. Cashing in on an agreement that could boost Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment arm into the world's top three music giants, Zomba exercised an option to sell BMG the shares the record giant does not already own in its independent business.
Zomba will add other acts such as the Backstreet Boys, Michael Bolton and Mystikal as well as a library including Buddy Guy to BMG's roster. Zomba has a series of Internet and technology deals with companies including Listen.com, DataPlay and the major labels' online subscription services: Pressplay.
getdown, is it possible that the labels are no longer content with content that can be copied to one's heart's content? Maybe that's why the majority of them are working with DataPlay. Just a thought.
Zero, I think it might be more appropriate to have that discussion when DP products are available and initial customer acceptance can be gauged. At this point in time, there have been no announcements of 2nd or 3rd generation products nor disclosure of contractual terms between EDIG, DP and DP OEMs. Such a discussion would of necessity be based on nothing more than guesswork, rendering it little more than an idle diversion for the interested parties.
Memories of the future
Maury Wright, Editor-in-Chief -- 5/1/2002
CommVerge
http://www.e-insite.net/commvergemag/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA214594&pubdate=5/1....
At the edge of a converged network, you'll find a variety of intelligent devices that span applications from entertainment to productivity and reside everywhere from the auto to the living room. All of these nodes share some characteristics, such as connectivity and intelligence, and they all rely on some of the same key enabling technologies.
Nonvolatile memory is perhaps the most important of the enablers, even if processors get the most glory. Flash memory serves in cell phones, set-top boxes, digital music players, and a host of other devices, acting both as program storage and as a content store for music, pictures, contact lists, and many other data types.
Given the significance of flash, we decided to host a roundtable discussion on the topic. We felt that such a format might prove valuable because it would allow industry experts to pontificate on the issues directly. The summit took place only virtually (via email) but yielded a robust, realistic dialogue nonetheless.
Follow along to learn where flash-memory capacity and prices are headed, which applications will drive consumption, whether alternative nonvolatile memories will encroach upon flash markets, and other valuable insights.
CV: Because CommVerge generally focuses on convergence applications and uses that application-level focus to spotlight enabling technologies like memory, I'd like to start at the application level. Could each of you describe the three or four products that consume the largest quantities of flash memory today?
PARTICIPANTS
Philippe Berge, Director of Marketing, STMicroelectronics Memory Product Group
Bertrand Cambou, Group Vice President, Memory Group, Advanced Micro Devices
Keith Horn, Vice president of Marketing, Fujitsu Microelectronics
Bill Krenik, Wireless Advanced Architecture Manager, Texas Instruments
Brian Kumagai, Business Development Manager, Flash Products, Toshiba
Kevin Plouse, Vice President of Technical Marketing and Business Development, Memory Group, Advanced Micro Devices
Sudeep Sharma, Associate Vice President, Memory Division, Mitsubishi Electric and Electronics USA
Victor Tsai, Product Marketing Manager, Flash Products, Hitachi
Mike Williams, Director of Marketing, Flash Products Group, Intel
Bing Yeh, President and CEO, Silicon Storage Technology
Sudeep Sharma (Mitsubishi): Today the largest quantities of flash memory are consumed in cellular handsets, storage cards, BIOS flash applications for PCs, and portable electronic devices such as digital cameras, PDAs, and MP3 players.
Kevin Plouse (AMD): Cellular telephones use the bulk of flash memory today, and we don't expect that to change anytime soon. So, when we look in our crystal ball, we see a cell phone with more features that uses more flash memory. One key point is that the people who invested in 3G networks invested that money because those networks drive data, and they drive data to phones. The convergence of the phone and the handheld computer is the single largest opportunity for flash memory. The second driver is the consumer product. There are all kinds, but the ones that come to mind are music, video, and photo storage (cameras, video recorders, etc). If the cost is right, these will drive a lot of demand. Consumer appliances too - like DVD players, high-definition television - drive growing demand for flash devices.
Bertrand Cambou (AMD): And the third one is internetworking. Obviously, the dot-com explosion resulted in extensive investments in networks, and flash provided network reprogrammability. The dot-com explosion has been replaced with a dot-com collapse, but eventually the networks will be replaced. We don't know yet what they will look like, but we can assume that with the fundamental growth in data, we must keep data moving.
Mike Williams (Intel): Cellular phones by far consume the most flash in millions of megabytes. Cell phones are the highest volume, shipping approximately 400 million units with a large density mix. Digital cameras would be next, not because of their volume, but due to their higher average density. The next few applications - which include networking/communications, set-top boxes and handhelds - are all smaller and comparable in consumption.
CV: Today, the flash market is clearly divided into data- and code-storage segments, dominated by NAND/AND [not and/and] and NOR [not or] flash architectures, respectively. How do these different architectures match up with the flash applications? Also, please explain the need for flash in these applications and point out the key memory-system requirements, such as capacity, speed, cost, and others.
Brian Kumagai (Toshiba): Today's primary NAND applications are digital cameras (mainly in removable-card format), game consoles/accessories, and digital audio. Today's primary NOR applications are cell phones, PDAs, and set-top boxes. NOR applications are increasingly being restricted to code storage/execution, where the density requirements are relatively small, code must be executed from flash, and write performance/reliability are not concerns.
"The people who invested in 3G networks invested that money because those networks drive data, and they drive data to phones. The convergence of the phone and the handheld computer is the single largest opportunity for flash memory." - Kevin Plouse, Advanced Micro Devices
Mike Williams (Intel): Flash is critical to all these applications for supplying system and application code and data storage. The best way to split the flash market requirements is between code and code+data architectures/requirements (cellular, handheld, set-top, networking, and telematics) and pure data-only storage (digital cameras and MP3 players). Code and data applications typically require high-performance reads (burst or page-mode), read-while-write capability at 66-MHz, data integrity/reliability, low power, and mid- to high-density capacity, while data-only applications require and value high density in a removable form factor.
Philippe Berge (STMicroelectronics): In addition to mobile terminals (cell phones), we see PC BIOS, automotive, and digital home gateways as key markets. In mobile terminals, the key requirements are low power consumption, high-density, tiny packages and footprint, an optimized interface with the baseband processor, and the ability to combine flash with SRAM. These nonvolatile memory requirements are directly driven by more and more user-friendly application features, such as GPRS [general packet radio services] and WAP [wireless application protocol], Internet and talk-mode protocols, tri-band support, voice memos, voice recognition, predictive text input, and color displays.
Games require bigger and bigger operating systems, hence bigger and bigger nonvolatile memory that has to be executed as fast as possible. Longer standby and talk times require low-power supply and low-power operative and standby consumption. In digital home gateways, the key requirements are cost and write and programming throughput. They are driven by the following system evolution: Web navigation, e-commerce, expert systems for user profiling, and remote software downloads for things like operating-system updates and TV program guides.
CV: From a pure silicon perspective, discuss your organization's technology roadmap in the NAND and/or NOR camps. Tell me where you stand today in terms of capacity and where you expect to be in 2005. Please describe, at a high level, the techniques that will deliver on your roadmap, such as multilevel cells (MLCs) as opposed to single-level cells (SLCs).
"Until a product is proven in production with real customers, it is difficult to place much faith in it. MRAM has been researched for over 30 years, yet it is still not in mass production." - Bing Yeh, Silicon Storage Technology
Bing Yeh (Silicon Storage Technology): SST is aligned in the NOR camp, and we believe this will continue to be the dominant area for flash, especially for code storage, but also for data storage. Code storage requires fast access times for system boot-up and reliable byte access without the latency that is common in NAND flash. Furthermore, in low density, NAND cannot compete, as it requires massive overhead circuitry to implement.
MLC technology will bridge the gap in cost between NAND and NOR in the medium and higher densities, and we foresee a realistic roadmap to four bits per cell using MLC SuperFlash technology. Currently, SST has a wide range of capacity in the low densities from 256 kbits to 16 Mbits. We will expand into the medium densities, from 32 Mbits and up, for the coming years for the code-storage applications. We also plan to offer more than 1 Gbit per chip for the mass data-storage applications.
Sudeep Sharma (Mitsubishi): We are primarily focused on DINOR technology, a special type of NOR architecture. Relative to NOR flash, our DINOR technology offers faster random access at a lower voltage, and seven to 25 times quicker erase cycle. All of our flash-memory parts also have a BGO (background operation) function. Mitsubishi was the first to adopt the BGO function in 1997 on 8-Mbit flash. BGO can eliminate EEPROM [electrically erasable programmable read-only memory] from cellular phones since data can be read from banks while another bank is being programmed or erased.
Mike Williams (Intel): Our product portfolio is focused on NOR, not only for code but also for specifically optimized code+data requirements. We have three product lines. Our high-performance Wireless Flash, for handheld customers requiring the ultimate performance, offers a 1.8-volt (3-volt I/O option) product family with densities from 32 to 128 Mbits. Currently in production on 0.18-micron technology, we are sampling now on 0.13-micron, with a roadmap to 90 nanometers. Also on 0.13-micron, we are adding a new x32 implementation and increasing density to 512 Mbits by 2005.
Intel StrataFlash Memory is the highest-density, lowest-cost flash memory for code+data applications. Used in nearly every WinCE/PocketPC handheld, today's StrataFlash memory on 0.18-micron is Intel's third generation of MLC technology, which we originally introduced in 1997. StrataFlash is offered today in 32- to 128-Mbit densities and a 256-Mbit density later this year at 3 volts (1.8-volt I/O available). A high-performance 1.8-volt version will be released later this year, and densities on the MLC technology will reach 512 Mbits by 2005.
"The anticipated largest consumers by 2005 should be cell phones, consumer electronics (digital cameras, MP3 players), networking, and automotive (including engine control and navigation systems)." - Keith Horn, Fujitsu
Industry-standard boot block (C3/B3) flash, now in its fourth generation of complete backward compatibility, is currently in production on a 0.13-micron process. This product family includes 8 to 64 Mbits, and production will continue through 2005 and beyond. In addition to continuous improvement, leading lithographies that keep us one product generation ahead of our nearest competitors, and proven multilevel cell manufacturing, we are exploring the use of four bits per cell and Ovonyx Unified Memory to expand our roadmap in the coming years.
Brian Kumagai (Toshiba): In NAND flash, we are currently in mass production of 512-Mbit monolithic SLC, 1-Gbit stacked (two-chip) SLC, and 1-Gbit monolithic MLC. In 2005, maximum density will increase to 4-Gbit SLC and 8-Gbit MLC monolithic devices. In NOR flash, our highest density today is a 128-Mbit SLC. We have plans for 256-Mbit and possibly 512-Mbit MLC devices in 2005.
Kevin Plouse (AMD): FASL [Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Limited, AMD's joint venture with Fujitsu] is a leader in NOR technology. We are neck-and-neck between FASL and Intel for first and second position in the market. The NAND/NOR line is getting more and more blurry in terms of applications. Our customers prefer NOR but they want cost reductions.
Bertrand Cambou (AMD): One path to cost reduction is MLC.... [However,] we don't see how 4-bit MLCs can work reliably for code-storage solutions. As a result, we see the classical floating-gate technology coming to a point where it is not extendable anymore. That is why AMD took a different path with our MirrorBit architecture, which is not based on the MLC principle.... For years we have worked to develop an alternative path and now we are working full speed on MirrorBit; a technology without the compromises associated with MLC. We also recognize that MirrorBit is very expandable, even to four bits per cell. We believe that the move away from floating-gate will happen and our conviction is strong that we are engaged in a paradigm shift.
"There will be a sustainable need for code-storage flash that will be driven by the need for bigger and bigger operating systems enabling more and more user-friendly applications." - Philippe Berge, STMicroelectronics
Victor Tsai (Hitachi): We are a major supplier of data-storage flash with our MLC AND-type flash technology, and we are a manufacturer of code-storage NOR flash products. Hitachi recently introduced the new AG-AND multilevel flash memory cell, which gives Hitachi a technology and cost advantage over competing data-storage flash products and technologies.
Keith Horn (Fujitsu): We currently offer only NOR flash. However, our Multi Chip Package lineup will continue to provide both NOR and NAND flash. The company's flash roadmap offers an impressive range of densities (2 to 128 Mbits), voltages (5 to 1.8 volts), and we have a well-established reputation for advanced packaging methods.
CV: Is there the possibility that the flash industry might consolidate toward a single type of flash architecture? For example, could NAND flash be augmented with DRAM cache and control circuits that would allow code-storage applications to leverage the low-cost, high-density benefits of NAND flash? Or, are there breakthroughs in the NOR world that can ramp capacities and lower costs to compete with NAND flash?
Keith Horn (Fujitsu): The disadvantage of NAND flash is its reliability. Some applications simply cannot risk reliability issues and will be forced to continue to utilize NOR or NOR-like flash. However, the production of multibit cell flash product will allow higher NOR-like reliability with pricing that is more in line with NAND flash.
Bing Yeh (Silicon Storage Technology): NAND- and NOR-type applications and specs are quite different, and both types will coexist forever. Four-bit-per-cell MLC will provide a great challenge to NAND flash in terms of cost. However, because several large Japanese companies have focused on NAND flash, there will continue to be some NAND flash market inertia. So, regardless of what arguments technologists might make about whether NOR or NAND is technologically better, NAND will continue to play a role in the high-density flash market. In the embedded and mainstream code-storage markets, however, NAND will never penetrate. We see clear evidence of this, as NAND vendors have followed a DRAM model in the manufacture of NAND flash, pushing products into higher and higher density and not even offering NAND devices anywhere below 64 Mbits, which is the domain of code storage today.
Victor Tsai (Hitachi): There may be a point in time where there would be a convergence of data-storage and code-storage flash. Data-storage flash is generally more cost-effective than code-storage flash. Hitachi has just introduced the superAND flash product, which incorporates some NOR-like features, including power-on read for system boot-up and 100 percent good memory without error handling and memory management by the host CPU. This is the first crossover product that can satisfy both data-storage and code-storage needs in a system.
Sudeep Sharma (Mitsubishi): We don't see the NOR and NAND types of flash-memory architectures converging. However, new flash-memory architectures may be developed to handle both types of applications.
Mike Williams (Intel): We believe it will continue to fragment. Application requirements are diverging rather than converging. We see this today in multiple line-item offerings on our silicon and numerous stacking configurations requested. Additionally, our long-term strategic alignment with our top customers indicates continued diversification. One size certainly does not fit all.
"Application requirements are diverging rather than converging. Our long-term strategic alignment with our top customers indicates continued diversification. One size certainly does not fit all." - Mike Williams, Intel
And let me correct a potential misconception with our Intel StrataFlash memory on leading-edge lithographies. We believe we do compete with NAND on a cost basis. The question isn't about cost per se, but about what price a manufacturer is willing to sell that flash device. Currently, NAND manufacturers are pursuing a very aggressive pricing strategy to make up for what we believe is an inherent mismatch with the system requirements in a code or code+data environment (bad blocks, error correction, read speeds, increased system memory, etc).
CV: Mike, is it your point that NAND manufacturers have cut prices to artificially low levels to gain entry into code or code+data storage applications, and that some buyers will deal with mismatched characteristics like slow read speeds to buy the lower-cost flash? And when you say you "compete with NAND on a cost basis," are you making that claim based on system costs in a code or code+data application?
Mike Williams (Intel): There were some lofty expectations for NAND growth the past few years, mainly driven by growth projections for digital cameras and digital music players. Each year, the forecasts were pushed out another year. The missed growth expectations have left the NAND suppliers scrambling to find homes for their products, and they have resorted to trying to fit their products into the traditional NOR markets. But NAND has inherent feature mismatches for these applications. For example, you cannot execute out of NAND, given the slow read speeds. Therefore, redundant memory, consuming more space and power, is required for the device to operate. NAND also requires error-correction circuitry. NAND contains bad blocks that must be managed. And the list goes on.
"In the near-term, the 'perfect' memory, nonvolatile RAM, will remain an R&D product. While some technologies appear promising, we believe the applications will be restricted." - Brian Kumagai, Toshiba
In short, there are a number of system-complexity issues when designing with NAND, and the NAND suppliers are attempting to overcome these issues by using cost as an incentive. Hence, NAND is selling at a very aggressive price today. In most cases involving both code and code+data applications, Intel StrataFlash memory offers a lower overall system cost and is much easier to use in design.
CV: Given the state of the market today, and developments in NAND and NOR technologies, take a look at your crystal ball and project the top three or four products for 2005. And again, please explain the key memory-system requirements for flash.
Keith Horn (Fujitsu): The anticipated largest consumers by 2005 should be cell phones, consumer electronics (digital cameras, MP3 players), networking, automotive (including engine control and navigation systems). As cell phones offer more and more features, they will continue to require larger densities of memories and smaller packages.
Mike Williams (Intel): By 2005, cellular, cameras, networking, PDAs, and set-top boxes will remain as the top markets, in our opinion, with cellular continuing to lead and handheld growth most likely outpacing the others. Telematics/GPS will also emerge as a top flash application.
Brian Kumagai (Toshiba): In 2005, NAND applications will include digital still/video cameras, cell phones (mainly for digital camera/audio/video purposes), PDAs, and set-top boxes. In all of these applications, whether the flash is used for code and/or data storage, the primary factors driving the usage of NAND are the requirements for high density and low cost. Additionally, for the data-intensive applications, the superior write performance and reliability of NAND compared with NOR is an important consideration. NOR applications for 2005 include cell phones, low-end set-top boxes, and networking/communications equipment.
Kevin Plouse (AMD): Looking into our crystal ball though, we can't forget to talk about the auto dashboard. It's small, but the fastest growing forecast is in the cockpit of the car—for entertainment and navigation. The car PC has just hit the inflection point for growth. It's been in development for eight years or more and is now becoming a standard part of the car.
"The car is a very interesting environment for us because we have been focusing on the car for a while, and you do not use substandard flash in a car." - Bertrand Cambou, Advanced Micro Devices
Bertrand Cambou (AMD): The car is a very interesting environment for us because we have been focusing on the car for a while, and you do not use substandard flash in a car (for example, because of the extreme temperature variation requirements). And that has been our strength.
CV: With cell phones identified as such a huge consumer of flash memory, could you further illuminate how flash is used in those devices. Digital cell phones rely on high-speed DSPs, so I know SRAM is required for code execution. Perhaps you could provide a scenario for what types of code and data are stored in different memory types, both when a phone is standing by and when a call is in progress. And describe how close this model of memory usage comes to other applications like PDAs or telematics systems.
Mike Williams (Intel): Flash memory has traditionally been used in cellular handsets to store program code used to control the operation of the device, to store data for device-tuning parameters, and to store data such as frequently used phone numbers and other personal information. Flash was adopted in these devices due to its solid-state ruggedness and high data retention—a phone can be dropped to the floor, the battery can be removed, and the information in the flash memory is retained.
Internet capable handsets, including new 2.5G and 3G phones, are driving the requirements for higher-performance and higher-density flash memory. These cellular handsets can be separated into two main processing functions: the baseband communications processor and the applications processor. Flash memory is used in the baseband unit to store program code for the traditional microcontroller device in charge of handling the specific cellular protocol. Flash memory can also be used in the baseband unit to store the DSP algorithms, as well as acting as the main memory in the event of an onboard cache miss from the integrated SRAM memory. Regardless of standby operation or active operation, the baseband processor is continually executing code from the flash device. In standby mode, approximately 1 to 3 percent of the time (depending on the actual protocol), the baseband processor must "wake up" to ping the nearest basestation in order to stay connected.
Flash-memory requirements are exploding on the application-processor side, where flash is used to store program code for new functionality such as Web browsers, color displays, Java applets, and audio/digital data manipulation. Connecting to the Internet opens up the need for more data on the application-processor side for storing large video files, digital music files, photographs, and email.
The memory usage between an application processor in a cell phone and a PDA are the same (hence the convergence of cell phones and PDAs). The industry debates whether one common multipurpose device will emerge or whether we will continue to see a variety of devices tailored for a specific need. Whether a cell phone, PDA, or telematics, Intel is offering common building blocks, including baseband processors, applications processors, and flash memory based on the Intel Personal Internet Client Architecture—a development blueprint for wireless devices and software combining voice and data.
CV: Brian Kumagai of Toshiba seems to imply that future cell phones will have a mix of NAND and NOR flash. I assume the former will serve integrated add-on functionality like a digital camera or MP3 player, while the latter, I assume, serves to store code for the cell-phone application. Could you give me a precise picture of how you see this memory architecture applied?
"Although in many ways integration is the key to low cost, we believe that discrete flash memory will continue to be less expensive than embedded flash memory on a per-bit basis." - Sudeep Sharma, Mitsubishi
Brian Kumagai (Toshiba): We expect both evolutionary and revolutionary cell-phone architectures utilizing NAND flash. The evolutionary architecture will utilize NAND for data (photos, audio, video, etc) and the NOR for all types of code storage. In this case, the NOR will have to be fast enough to support code execution for all processing/control functions, including the DSP, which will probably be realized by page/burst mode. Toshiba would expect the NOR density to increase at about its historical rate for this architecture, since the NAND will take over some of the previous NOR functions, such as phone-number storage. The revolutionary architecture would use only NAND combined with lots of RAM (probably DRAM). In this case, the NAND would store all of the code and data, and the code would be executed out of RAM. The smartphone and PDA-combo phone will drive the transition to the NAND-only architecture.
CV: Outside of external CompactFlash, SmartMedia, SD Card, and Memory Stick modules, will there be a sustainable need for stand-alone flash memory chips going forward? Integration is the key to low cost, and SOC [system-on-chip] is an unmistakable trend. Will flash become largely a feature integrated onto other chips? If not, describe the capacity requirements or silicon limitations that will prevent such consolidation.
Philippe Berge (STMicroelectronics): There will be a sustainable need for code-storage flash that will be driven by the need for bigger and bigger operating systems enabling more and more user-friendly applications. Embedding flash will always remain a tradeoff of cost, footprint, and performance. Overall, flash will keep growing in three directions: standalone, embedded, and cards. Standalone and embedded flash will grow mostly for code storage. Flash cards or flash-plus-other-memory cards will develop as real subsystems for data storage. There is no real standard package yet, but the evolution of a standard associated to cost/bit reduction will push the market to a higher level of volumes/value.
Sudeep Sharma (Mitsubishi): Flash memory is being integrated already and will continue to be more integrated in SOC devices. However, the density of flash memory in SOC applications will continue to be limited because of chip-size constraints, which is also related to the yield issue. Continued development of finer process technologies will increase SOC flash density, but future applications will also continue to demand more flash memory density. Although in many ways integration is the key to low cost, we believe that discrete flash memory will continue to be less expensive than embedded flash memory on a per-bit basis.
Bill Krenik (Texas Instruments): Texas Instruments doesn't make flash, but as a leading vendor of ICs for cellular handsets we have a vested interest in flash developments. For wireless, integrating flash memory on the same chip may result in an inflexible memory configuration, because the handset designer will need to specify the amount of flash memory to be integrated early in the design cycle, before actual memory needs are clear. This may result in excess memory, leading to a cost penalty, or insufficient memory, resulting in loss of product features or the need for added external memory.
Further, flash integration normally requires six to eight additional process reticles over a conventional digital CMOS [complementary metal oxide semiconductor] process, significantly increasing manufacturing costs. Since there are no significant performance benefits obtained by integrating flash onto the same chip for wireless, it is difficult to justify flash integration. Other options, however, such as the use of multidie packaging, may be attractive in some cases.
Bing Yeh (Silicon Storage Technology): SST is by far the world's leading, if not the only substantial vendor, of embedded-flash solutions. Our split-gate SuperFlash architecture is available as integratable intellectual property through many of the world's leading foundries. Today, dozens of blue-chip companies license SST's SuperFlash technology for integration into their own wireless chips and other ASICs on a regular basis. Since SuperFlash technology is CMOS-compatible for fab portability and scalability, and since SuperFlash offers significantly better power usage and die size efficiencies compared with both stacked-gate and NAND flash, SST believes this will continue to be a rapidly growing and successful market.
That being said, however, flash is not always as cost-effectively integrated with other system requirements onto a single chip, due to the additional processing and testing steps required for flash memory. SOC with flash is most effective on very small die, where most of the component cost is in the packaging, or at the very high-density spectrum of so-called smart flash memory, where most of the SOC silicon is occupied by flash.
CV: The mixture of memory technologies on one dedicated memory chip or in a multichip package appears to be another trend in the integration story, and without doubt many convergence products require a mix of memory types. Give me your opinions on what types of mixes will be popular, including the possibility of mixing multiple flash types along with SRAM and DRAM. Describe why a chip dedicated to a mix of memory is a good idea, and if so, how you can craft a standard product family that meets the needs of different applications.
Mike Williams (Intel): Providing one packaged memory subsystem is compelling for handheld devices due to the space savings. Today, we are stacking flash and SRAM into one package, and the possibilities are almost endless for stacking, including flash and flash, flash and logic, flash and other memory, and any of the combinations above. These combinations are driven by the memory-subsystem needs of our customers. Crafting one standard product family is not achievable due to the fragmentation discussed previously. Successful flash suppliers must strive for flexibility and quick turnaround time to meet their customers' specific needs.
Keith Horn (Fujitsu): Our lineup of multichip packaged (MCP) devices, which includes flash and SRAM or flash and Fast-Cycle RAM, will continue to lead the field in mixed-memory technology on one package. For cellular applications, this MCP device can replace multiple components, resulting in space savings. It can also offer higher densities that are not available in today's marketplace with a one-chip solution and at a reasonable cost.
"Rotating storage is not a practical memory solution for today's handsets. However, in the future, the technology may be a good fit for high-end PDAs." - Bill Krenik, Texas Instruments
Bill Krenik (Texas Instruments): In wireless-handset applications, SRAM is normally used for multiple levels of cache, while flash is used for program storage and storage of user data and system settings. Since the cache needs to be integrated with the processor and flash integration appears to be cost prohibitive for wireless, it seems unlikely that SRAM+flash products will emerge.
CV: Do you see any near-term prospects for technologies like MRAM [magnetic RAM], FRAM [ferroelectric RAM], Ovonyx's optical technology, or some other nonvolatile memory to succeed in mainstream applications? Also, can rotating storage technologies, like hard-disk drives and the new Dataplay drive, impact the market for flash modules?
Bing Yeh (Silicon Storage Technology): Until a product is proven in production with real customers, it is difficult to place much faith in it. MRAM has been researched for over 30 years, yet it is still not in mass production.
Brian Kumagai (Toshiba): In the near-term, the "perfect" memory, nonvolatile RAM, will remain an R&D product. While some technologies appear promising, we believe the applications will be restricted. For example, Toshiba is developing 32-Mbit and 64-Mbit FeRAM [FRAM], which can be used to replace NOR+SRAM in low-end cell phones. Still, none of these new technologies will reach the density or cost-per-bit of NAND flash. Toshiba plans to introduce a commercial FRAM by the end of 2002. The target density is 32 Mbits. The primary technical challenge is acceptable performance in terms of access time.
Bill Krenik (Texas Instruments): Of the advanced memory technologies you cite, only FRAM is proven in high-volume manufacturing today. FRAM is also attractive because it can be integrated with very few additional process reticles. While MRAM and Ovonyx memory are very interesting technologies, they remain unproven as real solutions for low-cost, high-volume applications.
Rotating storage, of course, looks great on a cost-per-bit basis. However, this low cost is only available for relatively large memories. As a result, rotating storage is not a practical memory solution for today's handsets. However, in the future, the technology may be a good fit for high-end PDAs.
Mike Williams (Intel): As we've discussed publicly, Intel is pursuing Ovonyx memory technology. Although it is still early in the development, the initial results look encouraging. Compared to MRAM and FRAM, we believe Ovonyx holds the best promise for delivering on the performance, densities, integration, and reliability needed for our customers. If all goes well, we would expect Ovonyx to start making an impact on mainstream applications as early as the middle of the decade. But it is premature to discuss specific product plans.
Rotating storage technology will always be an alternative in the pure data-storage area. We see this in the digital-music-player market segment today, where NAND memory is being squeezed by less-expensive rotating technologies.
CV: We'll finish with the unpopular question. I'd welcome your views on where flash prices are headed. I'd like to discuss price for two reasons. First, low price enables convergence applications. Music players, for example, have been hampered by flash prices, although I know they've dropped considerably (and I know the RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America] has hit the music players harder, but that's a discussion for another day). However, low price has potentially negative ramifications for flash manufacturers. Moreover, the number of manufacturers making flash today is still relatively large relative to other commodity memory types like DRAM. Is the flash market headed for a major consolidation toward a small group of major players? What characteristics of your business make you a long-term participant in the flash industry?
Bertrand Cambou (AMD): It is our belief and strategy that what we need is to continuously and relentlessly cut the price-per-bit. And to commit to our customers a cost reduction that empowers them to build higher and higher densities into their systems, thereby making flash even more pervasive.
Philippe Berge (STMicroelectronics): We are expecting prices to stabilize in Q2 due to the recovery of the demand and to rise in the second half of the year. As for consolidation, the high end of the code-storage market is already at an advanced stage, with very few suppliers having the proper relationship with the key customers, advanced technology, and manufacturing capacity. High-density flash devices are already coming from only three to four suppliers. Second-tier vendors are shipping devices made with lower-density older technology. In the long term, flash technology is essential for STMicroelectronics' SOC strategy. Flash offers ST the advantage of both differentiated and standard products. The flash-differentiated products, essentially custom configurations for high-volume applications, are key for our corporate strategic customers and give some stability to the business. The standard-product portfolio contributes by extending our customer base and providing the volume to lower our overall manufacturing costs.
Victor Tsai (Hitachi): There are many code-storage NOR flash suppliers, but the number of data-storage NAND/AND flash suppliers is relatively small. The growth rate of data-storage flash is much higher than code-storage flash, so while there may be consolidation in the code-storage flash supplier base, there is still a lot of market potential for new entries into the data-storage flash market.
Sudeep Sharma (Mitsubishi): We believe flash-memory demand will increase strongly and likely outstrip supply as the US and worldwide economy improves and as cellular handset demand increases. Mitsubishi Electric has been strong for a long time in providing a wide variety of memory technologies that can be combined to provide a complete solution.
Keith Horn (Fujitsu): Flash prices appear now to have stabilized. We have not seen prices increase yet, but they certainly are not decreasing. Low prices may eliminate some newcomers to the flash business, but established flash manufacturers will continue to thrive by implementing die shrinks and investing in new technologies such as multibit cell product. Fujitsu should be considered a long-term participant because of our joint venture with AMD and the considerable investment that has been made in our facilities.
Kevin Plouse (AMD): Flash has attracted every major memory player. Those that are the strongest will survive, the best technology will survive, the most innovative will survive. We've been a leader in nonvolatile memory for more than a quarter century. We've built a strong partnership with Fujitsu. With Fujitsu, we believe we have the best high-volume manufacturing facilities. We've brought a lot of innovation to the market, so we have compelling products (1055 patents filed in 2001). We have the broadest product portfolio. So, we've been committed, we stay committed, and our goal is to be the preeminent supplier of flash memory. We have a track record that proves we are going to be a force in the flash-memory market.
DATAPLAY'S MOBILE INFORMATION DISTRIBUTION AND STORAGE TECHNOLOGY
A PORTABLE SYSTEM USING SMALL, HIGH-DENSITY OPTICAL DISCS WITH PRERECORDED CONTENT AND SPACE FOR CONSUMER-WRITTEN DATA GIVES CONTENT OWNERS NONINVASIVE ACCESS CONTROL.
David H. Davies, DataPlay http://www.computer.org/micro/mi2002/pdf/m2008.pdf
The Internet and the World Wide Web have stimulated the development of novel products and devices that provide a new dimension in interactivity. Further development of wireless-based technology and its growing interleaving with the Internet foreshadow even greater advances in Web-based portable communication and information products.
Nevertheless, several key technology components still lag, preventing this information revolution from reaching its potential. These include sufficient bandwidth, truly portable and inexpensive local storage, and a timely and cost-effective way to distribute content, especially the large files required for video and images. Moreover, any content distribution technology must provide adequate protection for the rights of content and copyright owners.
Despite these limitations, many devices exist that seek to meet consumer expectations, and availability of these mobile information distribution platforms has driven the development of the DataPlay digital media and micro-optical engine1 for using, distributing, storing, and protecting information.
The DataPlay disc is a 32-mm optical disc on which users can record up to 500 Mbytes of content and that alternatively could contain up to 400 Mbytes of prerecorded data in a low-cost embossed format, similar to a CD or DVD. Prerecorded content and read/write capabilities are seamlessly combined on the same disc up to the 500-Mbyte capacity. The DataPlay disc is compatible with the most advanced forms of music, data, and video digital compression. For example, MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding music compression at 192 Kbps or MPEG-4 video is readily utilized with the DataPlay player/recorder. Therefore, it can contain the equivalent of several complete compressed music CDs and still have space for music videos, lyrics, text files, still images, and so on. Because providers can selectively control access to content, they can protect secondary content after the disc's initial purchase and make it available in subsequent transactions. Content owners can write unique encryption and conditional access keys to the media that specify a desired content protection scheme. For example, keys written to the disc follow the content of the disc through multiple generations of copies and allow for permissible copying while preventing wide-scale illegal distribution. The content protection scheme counts how many copies a user makes and tracks this count on the disc itself through the generations, following the rules set by the content owner. Binding these keys to the disc ensures that content protection is disc based rather than host based, so that the disc can be played on any DataPlay-compatible player. Thus, content control and protection are generally transparent to the user, unless content rules are violated.
The 32-mm discs are played and recorded on the DataPlay micro-optical engine. The device uses a mixed-signal CMOS controller integrated circuit (IC) developed jointly by DataPlay and ST Micro. This custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) provides the channel, interface, decode/encode functions, and an integrated error-correcting code (ECC) scheme. The optical engine's tilting rotary actuator permits rapid data access in a simple mechanism. The actuator uses a very small integrated optical pickup head that weighs only a few milligrams. Combining lowmass optics and mechanics and the ability to write to the disc with minimal laser power results in a low-power-consumption system that dissipates only a few hundred milliwatts (mw) for typical applications. The device's storage engine permits digital storage without regard to the data's source or format. The storage media is removable and can maintain data integrity for many years. Because of their small physical mass, the disc and its associated player/recorder are compact enough to fit into handheld portable appliances such as cell phones and PDAs.
Media
The 32-mm disc is enclosed in a 41 x 33.5 x 3 mm molded cartridge. This cartridge - constructed from two identical molded halves sealed together - is impact-resistant polycarbonate and protects the disc from dust, handling, and wear. Disc access is through a movable metal shutter that operates independently on each side of the cartridge. For further protection, the shutter is locked during normal operation and is opened only by the recorder/player mechanism. The cartridge is moldable on simple, conventional injection-molding equipment and is further contained in a molded pocket case to simplify packaging and use. The pocket case and cartridge also provide a mechanism for attaching content labels and for stacking and distribution. G. Volan discusses the design principles and specific features of the cartridge, pocket case, and associated mechanisms. Extensive data integrity testing under accelerated temperature and humidity conditions has confirmed the media's stability and allowed the DataPlay engineering team to predict a minimum 100-year data life. Figure 1 shows the disc and its cartridge.
The storage media itself consists of a double-sided, 0.6-mm-thick polycarbonate disc molded as a single piece with the embossed data simultaneously pressed on both sides. Industry-standard EFM+ encoding of the digital data stream facilitates development of a broad range of content. The disc's recordable area is grooved, and encoded address marks let the system locate data, facilitating random access and data seeks. The tracks are wobbled; that is, a fixed spatial amplitude modulation is applied to the groove in the plane of the disc to provide a timing reference on the disc. A digital formatter, provided by external vendors operating under license from DataPlay, encodes the address marks on the disc using the high-frequency wobble mark (HFWM) method. Figure 2 (next page) illustrates this method, showing the HFWMs and the push-pull signal from the tracking servo as a function of tracking position. The wobble frequency is 128 kHz, and the added HFWM frequency is 641 kHz. The track pitch is 0.74 micron, the minimum recorded feature size is 435 nanometers (nm), and the device uses constant linear velocity recording at 2.9 meters per second (Mps). A.B. Marchant describes the push-pull concept used for tracking.
The write marks on the media result from an amorphous-to-crystalline phase change. The material is reflective enough in the 650 nm range to serve as the reflector for tracking and focusing, and it can be written to with low write power. Figure 3, a photomicrograph of an actual EFM code sequence with written data adjacent to embossed data, shows the combination of recordability and writability.
The power series data in Figure 4 illustrates the low write power. Fully optimized write marks require less than 2 mw of power at the disc surface; read power is typically 250 microwatts. Special stabilization methods ensure stable laser operation. The laser emits nominally at 650 nm (in the red region of the optical spectrum). Figure 4b shows the second harmonic performance, or minimum distortion point, of these 4T marks and the adjacent-track crosstalk performance. (T represents the minimum timing interval of the EFM+ code.) The carrier-to-noise ratio (Figure 4a) achieved at 2 mw is a more than adequate 50 decibels (dB). The media is stable through essentially unlimited reads at the nominal read power levels. Moreover, it increases in reflectivity upon writing, and once written to the media doesn't permit rewriting. This writeonce recording is archival and permanent. Wrobel provides more details regarding the physics of write-once optical recording. Because the disc also contains pre-embossed data, it is important for the molded information to have high data quality. Data-to-data jitter is a critical test of how well the read data from the disc falls within the preassigned timing window for all pulse lengths of the code. The jitter values for prerecorded data are about 6 percent of the timing window; jitter values for user-recorded data are slightly higher at about 8 percent, but still well within specification. Arnoldussen and Nunnelly provide further information regarding jitter determination and performance in storage media.
Optical pickup
The optical head in the player/recorder detects data and keeps the sensing laser on track and in focus. In traditional optical drives, the optical head is generally large and has significant mass. This is partly to provide a motorized drive for the objective lens and heat sinking for the laser. DataPlay's optical head doesn't have these restrictions. It is extremely small and light - weighing less than 10 percent of a traditional head - and thus lets the recorder/player meet the design height target of 11 mm. The optical pickup, diagrammed in Figure 5a, is an integrated monolithic structure consisting of two subassemblies: the optical prism assembly (OPA) containing all optics, and the silicon submount, both shown in Figure 5b. The OPA is assembled using machine vision robotics equipment and consists of a finite conjugate objective lens, a spacer, a quarterwave plate, a periscope beam splitter, and the optical element block. Wafer-scale and semiconductor assembly methods produce the silicon submount, which contains the laser diode, a high-frequency oscillator IC, a folding mirror, and photo detectors. The silicon submount connects to a heat sink and is wire bonded to a flexible circuit. During bonding to the silicon submount, active alignment monitoring signals from the photo detectors on the silicon help in aligning the OPA. This completes the optical pickup assembly, which is then bonded to the actuator arm via the heat sink, providing good thermal coupling of the laser diode to the arm. The complete optical pickup measures 4.75 x 3.3 x 1.4 mm.
Actuator
Large optical heads have hampered the use of rotary actuators in optical recording. Using a miniature integrated head on the actuator, however, can overcome this limitation. DataPlay's rotary optical actuator is well suited for a miniature optical drive. The actuators must maintain a focus point that keeps the laser's image at the disc's surface while it rotates. Designers accomplished this by having the actuator tilt, under control of the focus servo, to maintain focus. The actuator permits rapid rotation and hence rapid data access. Typical seek time is a few hundred milliseconds, and the channel data rate is 20 megabits per second (Mbps).
Because of the optical head's small mass, the actuator stiffness, and the short seek distances, a single voice-coil motor, appearing at the left end of the arm in Figure 6 (next page), and a cartridge pivot bearing enable both radial positioning functions (fine track following and coarse seek). A voice-coil motor at the center of the arm and a flexure that pivots about an axis that intersects the tracking pivot enable focus acquisition and focus following protection.
Player/recorder mechanism
Focus and tracking stops built into the actuator design act as fail-safe devices to prevent the optical head from touching the disc surface except under extreme conditions. Primary control for this function is based on the optical servo system that directs the actuator's position in both dimensions. If it detects that the head is moving into a collision mode, this system automatically withdraws the head.
The built-in stops provide further physical A power-driven load-and-eject mechanism implements digital media ejection. Several advantages accrue from this method. Software commands are used to address the electrical system that drives the mechanism. Fail-safe methods to ensure that the actuator is parked and the disc is no longer spinning have been incorporated into the eject command so that the disc will not eject until these conditions are met. Ejection and insertion, which take a fraction of a second, rely on a small drive motor with a gear train and lead screw built into the mechanism. Upon insertion, the disc drops onto the alignment and registration pins, and the shutter lock and the shutter itself both open. A door covering the front of the entirely encased mechanism, shown in Figure 7, is normally closed.
Other player/recorder components include a metal base plate and cover, the spin motor that rotates the disc at a constant linear velocity of 2.9 Mps, and an electronic board that provides all electrical and firmware control.
Electronics
The electronics and firmware in any digital read/write system must not only read, write, and correct data but also perform five other major functions:
-interface with the external world,
- maintain the servo system that keeps the head focused and tracking,
- seek for tracks and perform associated reading of address codes,
- control the spin motor, and
- manage ancillary functions such as eject modes.
A 15-square-mm custom ASIC manufactured in a 0.25-micron CMOS process is central to the system and combines mixed analog and digital functions. A block layout of the chip appears in Figure 8. Some of the digital functions are performed by two ST Micro ST10 microprocessors, one of which is integrated into a digital signal processor (DSP) block that performs several functions, including servo control. The ASIC has an integrated analog read channel and read and write data paths. An integrated write strategy controls the write process. The data rate at the disc surface is 20 Mbps.
Other system components are a 2- to 4-Mbyte block of DRAM, the motor control ICs, and up to 512 Kbytes of flash memory. The system also contains transimpedance amplifiers and motor controllers.
The photo detectors in the integrated silicon submount shown in Figure 5 detect signals from the optics of the head. The four quadrants of the photo detector are used to separate the optical responses from the disc surface into separate signals. These signals are used for tracking (on the basis of the reflected pattern's symmetry on the detector), focusing (on the basis of the reflected image's size), and for detecting the presence or absence of data (on the basis of the signals' integrated intensity). The DSP servo code uses the tracking and focusing signals to drive small motors that move the optical head into focus or onto the track. The read channel analyzes the data and from the intensity transitions extracts the digital data using a conventional slicing-level channel scheme. This data is then assembled into code words that the ECC block analyzes for correctness. The ECC scheme, illustrated in Figure 9, is built on the two-dimensional product code method used for DVDs but with an added layer of correction power. K.A.S. Immink provides more information on ECC methods and codes used in optical recording.9 A general guide to certain aspects of the technology is available at http://www.dvdforum.org.
This ECC scheme, together with the protective cartridge, permits front-surface recording. DataPlay has shown in practice that the ECC scheme can reliably correct discs having 5 percent of their data initially in error. Of course, this depends on the size and distribution of the errors, but DataPlay's testing of discs having contaminants ranging from dust to oils on the surface has confirmed the utility of the combined cartridge and ECC scheme. Five other ICs complete the electronics system. Figure 10 shows the six-layer printed circuit board assembly layout consisting of the ASIC as well as the other system components described above.
The DataPlay file-type interface, illustrated in Figure 11, resembles those used in network-attached storage devices. The user-sustained data rate is 1 Mbyte/s; the burst rate can reach 10 Mbytes/s. A buffer memory provides shock stabilization. Data is both read and write cached, allowing the use of sophisticated shock sensing and detection methods and minimizing the impact of shock events. The media (the product's only removable part) has a shock specification of 2,000-g acceleration, and the engine (without added shock buffers in the application device) can withstand 600-g shock in nonoperational and 150-g shock in operational mode. The noncontact read/write process permits the read/write head to remain nearly half a millimeter off the surface.
Content protection technology
The ability to emboss the media with content as well as let consumers write to it permits a form of content protection that DataPlay calls ContentKey. Depending on the content owner's needs, part or all of the content may not be accessible to the user.
When the disc is first placed in the recorder, a unique and permanent identifier is written to the disc on a designated inner track. By completing a suitable Web transaction—say, a monetary payment or some demographic data transmission; the disc purchaser may then download a software key that, in conjunction with the unique disc identifier, unlocks the disc to allow access. Unlocking may consist of decryption, or it may create a file on the disc that gives the system permission to access previously locked content. It could involve both. Such file access could be complete, partial, or time dependant, as determined by the enabling transaction.
Because ContentKey is media rather than player-based; unlike some other enabling key technologies, users have unrestricted use of the media in other DataPlay-compatible players. As well as being downloaded to an inaccessible area of the disc, the key written to the disc is itself encrypted by the ASIC-based encryption system. These two layers of protection can supplement the digital rights management methods that the content industry is developing. State-of-the-art DRM methods, accessed by writable keys bound to the disc, give the DataPlay system and compatible consumer electronics devices a way to guarantee content owners that their use rules travel with each disc through as many generations of disc copies as desired. DataPlay expects that 2002 will see the commercial availability of several DataPlay-enabled products with applications ranging from music recorder/players to digital cameras.
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the DataPlay engineering team in this technology's development, and in particular the creative and innovative input from Steve Volk, Ian Redmond, Mike Braitberg, and Dan Zaharris, who pioneered many of the concepts.
References
1. B.W. Bell Jr. DataPlay's Mobile Recording Technology; Technical Digest 2001 Optical Data Storage Topical Meeting, SPIE Press, Bellingham, Wash., 2001, pp. 4-6.
2. G. Volan, DataPlay, Innovation Access: The Quarterly of the Industrial Designers Soc. of America, Spring 2001, p. 91.
3. K.A.S. Immink, Codes for Mass Data Storage, Shannon Foundation Publishers, Netherlands, 1999.
4. A.B. Marchant, Optical Recording, Addison Wesley, New York, 1990.
5. K.C. Pan, Y.S. Tyan, and D. Prews,
lickily, as I posted over the weekend, I suspect that Digitalway and Digital Global Networks are tightly bound. DGN is listed on Digitalway's website as their sales contact for the US ( http://www.digitalway.co.kr/e_sales.asp ). If you scan the DGN corporate resume ( http://www.dgntech.com/about.html ), you will note that they 'began producing MP3 players in 1998 - Digitalway was founded in July, 1998. DGN goes on to say that they are 'The OEM to Samsung Electronics (Yepp) and RFC (Jazpiper)' - The Digitalway website makes the same claim. IMHO, DGN is a wholly owned subsidiary of Digitalway. The BBS posting noted by cksla is not, IMHO, accurate with regards to DGN's pedigree.
DGN seems to be doing quite well, with or without Samsung...
"Digitalway's critical markets are the U.S., Japan, and the rest of Asia -- it has managed to grab about 33% of the market in each. Woo is especially proud of sales in Japan. 'I had to fight Sony, they are the big guys,' he grins."
http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=190261&refid=190042&orig=189347
Is EDIG sending us an oblique message re Samsung?...
DGN = Digitalway: "EX-MP has been one of the top sellers of Digitalway products."
( http://www.dgntech.com/products.html )
"Digitalway, an MP3 player maker, ships most of its products to Samsung on an original equipment manufacturing basis."
( http://www.mpman.com/e_image/news/eng_news_read.asp?num=2 )
DGN (Digitalway)'s OEM:
http://www.vintion.com/english/new/news010228a.htm
http://www.vintion.com/english/intro.htm http://www.vintion.com/english/product.htm
Let's see now... China has 25% of the world's population; not a bad market to penetrate.
Bang & Olufsen vs Sony... an interesting read:
http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/ACCT/courses/acc646/projects2002/bovssony/business_model2.html
FWIW, I suspect that the BeoSound 2's controls are limited to Go, Stop, Skip forward and Skip back. Since the current model offers only 64 or 128 MB of memory (~16 or 32 songs), navigation need not be as complex as that required by a larger capacity player. Besides, a legible display would not readily fit into the player's tiny form factor ( http://www.icetrek.com/northpole/icepix/large/BeoSound2.jpg ).
OT: marc4, if the file extension of the downloaded file is .wav, it is uncompressed. You could try compressing it using any MP3 ripping software such as MusicMatch. Since it is voice-only, you can get better compression by using a lower bit rate setting than 128 KBPS, such as 96 or 64 KBPS. If it has a .mp3 extension, try decompressing it to the .wav format, then re-compressing it with a lower bit rate setting. If your recorder only has 8 MB of onboard memory, the file can obviously be compressed at 14:1 or better. Otherwise, it would not have fit into your recorder's memory in the first place.
DIGITAL SET-TOP BOX MARKET TO STAY THE COURSE IN 2002 DESPITE OVERPRODUCTION AND INVENTORY ISSUES
http://www.gii.co.jp/press/ab9354_en.shtml
From 1999 to early 2001, digital cable set-top boxes were being built faster than MSOs could sign up new customers, but vendors overestimated how quickly customers would switch over to digital and found themselves with significant inventory. Therefore, settop box vendors, particularly Scientific-Atlanta, sharply curtailed their production runs of digital settop boxes.
Nevertheless, the industry is preparing for a rebound as cable MSOs are still getting large numbers of customers migrating to digital tier service. Hence the overall market will continue to show significant growth. Worldwide digital set-top box sales (including cable, satellite and terrestrial platforms) are projected to reach 45 million units in 2002, up from 36 million in 2001, and 28 million in 2000. Global sales are expected to reach 88 million boxes in 2007, with market revenues $13.9 billion.
"Digital services will spur vendors to build more powerful boxes and more powerful boxes will allow operators to deploy more compelling services. The first trick is to make sure that these two forces work in tandem," said Joshua Wise, Allied Business Intelligence (ABI) Senior Analyst and author of the report. "The second trick is to make sure that the consumer stays in the picture too."
Digital set-top boxes, which had started along a path towards becoming home gateways, have been scaled back slightly to reflect current hesitations in putting too many features into the boxes too soon. Set-top box vendors, have begun offering mid-range boxes that would allow operators to roll out a few advanced services while maintaining some level of profitability and at the same time keeping an eye to the future of interactive TV and the features that come with it.
The new ABI report "Digital Set-Top Boxes: Satellite, Cable and Terrestrial Opportunities" discusses the shift towards digital set-top boxes across satellite, cable, and terrestrial platforms. Projections for these platforms are further segmented on a geographic basis. Also provided is an analysis of key set-top box vendors. The report details the related operating system and middleware markets, along with an examination of advanced interactive services.
FWIW, if you add up the annual sales figures given in the bar chart at the link posted above, the size of the installed base by 2007 approximates the number quoted in the report posted by Mary. The reports were produced independently; one coming from MindBranch, the other from Allied Business Intelligence. Also, it should be noted that the fastest growth rates for new STB installations are predicted (at least for Europe) to occur in regions without a significant cable presence. This will be prompted by growing availability of satellite and terrestrial wireless digital broadcasting.
ex·po·nen·tial
Pronunciation: "ek-sp&-'nen-ch&l
Function: adjective
Date: 1704
1 : of or relating to an exponent
2 : involving a variable in an exponent <10x is an exponential expression>
3 : expressible or approximately expressible by an exponential function; especially : characterized by or being an extremely rapid increase (as in size or extent) <an exponential growth rate>
FWIW, in math there are two basic exponential functions. The most common uses 10 as the base to be raised to whatever power the exponent specifies; natural logarithms use a base of approximately 2.71. Of course, one should acknowledge the possibility of negative or fractional exponents. (As for me, I'll take door number 3.)
Todd, if I read the following right... "we anticipate that revenues for the current fiscal quarter will be relatively flat compared with our last fiscal quarter... We... expect the second fiscal quarter (ending September 30, 2002) to be the strongest quarter in the Company’s history. In addition, we believe that starting in second fiscal quarter of this year, we will begin to experience exponential revenue growth as we distribute our products in more regional and national retailers.", the company is saying that the quarter ending 9/30/02 will produce revenues of at least $5 million (10x qtr 2, FY2002) and possibly as high as $8 million (10x qtr 2, FY2003). This assumes that revenues for the current qtr ending 6/30 remain flat at $800K and that the 10Q for qtr ended 9/30/01 does not get amended.
DivX/TI and where we fit in... well, sort of
http://www.commsdesign.com/story/OEG20011205S0017
FWIW, the DivX codec is one additional step that the DSP must perform. After the compressed data is restored to the standard MPEG4 format that DivX is based upon, it still requires decoding by the DSP into either an analog composite video signal (for regular TVs, or into one of the various digital video streams utilized by computers, PDAs, cell phones, or HDTVs.
Bostonredsox DDs DivX:
http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=187620&refid=0&orig=187620
DivX brings Net movies to your TV
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
03/07/2002
San Jose Mercury News
MO1
Page 1
(c) Copyright 2002, San Jose Mercury News. All Rights Reserved.
A video compression technology born in the hacker community is poised to enable a new generation of products that allow consumers to view films they've downloaded over the Internet on their living room TV.
DivX Networks said its software will appear in new DVD players, ReplayTV-like digital video recorders and portable devices similar to MP3 players, to reach stores this holiday buying season.
If DivX 5.0 makes the leap from the Internet's murky file-swapping underground to mainstream products without attracting a lawsuit from Hollywood, it will be a coup that other file-swapping pioneers, like Napster, have failed to accomplish.
DivX was created by Jerome Rota, a Frenchman who, according to the corporate account of the tale, wanted to send his resume -- with related video -- over the Internet. The compression scheme he developed -- and dubbed DivX , in a swipe at the failed Circuit City pay-per-view DVD technology -- caught on fast with the Internet underground.
It has emerged as the standard for trading compressed video files over online sites like Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster -- which, analysts estimate, distribute 450,000 bootlegs every day.
Indeed, DivXNetworks said its most recent version of the software -- DivX Open Source -- has been downloaded 30 million times. It remains among the most popular freeware applications available through CNet's Download.com, averaging a half-million downloads a week, ranking behind Morpheus, Kazaa, ICQ and WinZip in popularity.
Company co-founder and Chief Executive Jordan Greenhall, an MP3.com veteran, brought venture funding to DivX Networks -- and a determined effort to break with its hacker roots. He has met with representatives of the studios' own digital movie distribution ventures -- MovieLink and Movies.com -- and with the industry's lead trade organization.
In an apparent attempt to earn the trust of Hollywood, the latest version of its software, DivX 5.0, comes with built-in digital rights management technology that would allow studios to charge for films distributed over the Internet.
'If you build in DRM, you can hopefully prevent the studios from taking you into court and suing you back into the Stone Age,' said William Fulco, an analyst for the Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y.
Fulco said DivX is positioning itself to provide the technology that creates a new -- and potentially lucrative -- distribution market for studios. The pitch holds doubtless appeal: It would allow studios to deliver rental movies via Internet, bypassing the neighborhood Blockbuster.
It remains to be seen whether the eight major Hollywood studios will embrace DivX 's technology -- or opt for Microsoft's rival Corona video compression technology, Apple's QuickTime 6.0 or some home-cooked video compression brew.
Greenhall, in announcing the newer, faster version of DivX on Monday, seemed most excited about the new generation of 'convergence' products, that bridge the gap between the PC and TV.
Right now, Internet films -- even those downloaded through pay sites like CinemaNow -- are largely confined to the PC desktop. Even when burned to a CD, they won't play in DVD players. The only way for those without a home network to get the image onto the living room TV is to hook the laptop to the S-video output.
Greenhall said these new gateway devices would simplify that process. One device is like a video version of Apple's iPod MP3 player, with a USB port to connect to the computer and a video out source to the television. The user would use a computer to download video from the Internet, transfer the film to the portable player via the USB port, walk it into the living room and plug the device into the TV to watch a movie on a big screen.
{BoSox NOTE: could he be referring to the DataPlay portable video player here? Possible, imo, since a two-hour DivX video compressed to a few hundred MB, and each DataPlay disc holds 250 MB/side)
New DVD players will also play films compressed using the MPEG 4 standard for sending video over the Internet, Greenhall said. That means films compressed in DivX 5.0, which complies with the new standard, could be burned to a CD-ROM and played on a standard living room DVD player.
And another nice find: http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=187605&refid=0&orig=187605
Nice work, Bosox!