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murgirl - speaking of the xplod unit, from today's sf chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/07/08/BU225999.DTL
Arkieboy - LOL, in this case OS stands for Occupant Sensor, not Operating System. Lutron makes light switches, dimmers, etc., hardly a need for edig technology.
lickily - I was just about to post that article.
OT - 20th birthday of CD approaching
(from my company newsletter):
The following is an excerpt from a news release issued earlier today from Leverkusen.
20 years of audio CDs:
An electronic storage marvel – thanks to modern polymers
For decades the black vinyl disc offered the ultimate in listening pleasure for music-lovers. Then came the revolution: exactly 20 years ago the first CD appeared, instantly redefining the concept of sound quality, and ushering in a new era of electronic storage media. Today in addition to music, video clips, computer programs and games and all kinds of other data are stored on the tiny silver discs.
25 billion discs were manufactured in 2001 alone. Even more impressive is the total figure for global production of optical data storage media from the early days in 1982 up to and including 2001, which comes to more than 110 billion units. Bayer AG is one of the leading manufacturers of the polycarbonate that is used to make optical data storage media, as well as a host of other products. It is due in no small measure to the constant improvements made to this material that the storage capacity of optical data carriers continues to increase.
The shiny plastic disc we call the CD weighs a mere 16 grams, is 1.2 millimeters thick and 12 centimeters in diameter. According to popular legend, this particular diameter was chosen because the conductor Herbert von Karajan begged his record company during the early days of CD development to create sufficient storage capacity so that the whole of his favorite piece of music – Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – would fit onto one disc. With the technology available at that time, this necessitated a diameter of 12 centimeters, which remains the global standard for CDs to this day.
Of the 1.9 million tons of polycarbonate used for manufacturing in 2001, 22 percent or 430,000 tons went into optical storage media – the second most important field of use for this high-performance resin after the electrical engineering and electronics sectors. “Approximately one third of all optical storage media in use around the world are made from our Makrolon®,” commented Dr. Jürgen Dahmer, head of Bayer's Plastics Business Group, before an audience of some 70 journalists from ten European countries at a press conference held in Hanover to mark the 20th birthday of the audio CD. “In Europe, Makrolon is the number one material for this application by a long way,” he added.
“Optical storage media are no longer just audio CDs,” added Dahmer. “The market is undergoing dramatic changes. The audio CD is a fully-developed product. In 1997 recorded CDs accounted for virtually the entire music and data markets. Just 4 years later the market is now almost 3 times as large, and new storage media like recordable CDs and DVDs already have a share of almost 30 percent. According to various forecasts, the market volume will almost double again to some 800,000 tons by the year 2005. By then the front-runners will probably be recordable data media and DVDs, with the market share of audio CDs having shrunk to about 34 percent.”
Planned increase in Makrolon capacity by 2006
At the end of 2001 Bayer's annual polycarbonate production capacity amounted to more than 650,000 tons. “We believe that the demand for polycarbonate will continue to grow throughout the world,” explained Dahmer, “and are consequently planning a general increase in production capacity for Makrolon, probably concentrated in Asia. We are investing primarily in Map Ta Phut in Thailand and the new Caojing site near Shanghai in China, and expect our global production capacity for Makrolon to increase to more than 1.1 million metric tons by 2006.”
The first audio CD was produced on August 17, 1982
It was on August 17, 1982 that PolyGram produced the world’s first mass-produced audio CD containing classical music: Claudio Arrau’s rendition on the piano of various waltzes by Frederic Chopin.
Bayer developed the technology for these compact discs together with Philips and PolyGram. A specially customized Makrolon polycarbonate was the plastic starting material, which – having been modified a number of times – still serves as the base material for all electronic storage media today.
The successor to PolyGram is the Universal Manufacturing & Logistics company, part of the French-American Vivendi Universal Group, whose factory in Langenhagen near Hanover manufactures around 750,000 mainly audio CDs per day. “The growth in CD production since 1982 has far exceeded even the wildest expectations from back then,” Dr. Bodo Wiechmann, Managing Director, Production of Universal Manufacturing & Logistics, told the assembled journalists. “Over the last ten years the average annual growth rate has been around 34 percent,” added Wiechmann.
Growth in production at Universal in Hanover has been equally dramatic: starting with just 376,000 discs in 1982, production of CDs reached some 160 million last year. “In total we have manufactured over 1.8 billion optical data carriers since 1982,” Wiechmann declared.
Protecting the environment: CDs are too valuable to throw away
In view of the enormous quantities of Makrolon that are already used today for the manufacture of discs, the question has to be asked – what will happen to them when they have come to the end of their useful life, are damaged, or – much more importantly – are no longer in vogue? Computer magazines in particular bombard their readers with CD-ROMs whose contents soon become out of date and therefore obsolete.
In 1991 Bayer AG pioneered an industrial-scale chemical recycling process for CDs made from its Makrolon polycarbonate. For many years, the plant built at Bayer’s site in Dormagen in 1994 with a recycling capacity of about 6,000 metric tons was unique throughout Europe. Thousands of tons of polycarbonate have been processed to yield a granulate that can be used for new products, such as housings for printers and computers. The ISL Polymers company in Duisburg now carries out recycling using Bayer's process.
For the Universal Manufacturing & Logistics company, high-purity polycarbonate is also a valuable raw material. With umpteen thousand CDs produced each day there are substantial amounts of sprue waste as well as the occasional reject. Stock taken back from the market is also recycled internally. Using a special mechanical stripping process it is possible to recover up to 13.5 grams of polycarbonate from an original CD weighing approximately 16 grams – about 85 percent. To ensure that the quality and purity meet the stringent demands of Universal and its customers, only CDs from the company's own manufacturing plant in Hanover are recycled. “In 2001, the total was around 300 metric tons,” stated Wiechmann.
The DVD – ongoing development
The market launch of the DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) in 1996 marked a new leap forward in technology. The production of this new data carrier with even smaller pit structures presented polycarbonate manufacturers with a major challenge. Bayer was the first to respond, and now Makrolon is the material of choice for DVDs too.
What of the future? Higher storage capacities with the same disc diameter mean smaller pit sizes and narrower track pitches. This requires new types of laser, in particular those that use shorter wavelengths. CD players have red lasers that operate at a wavelength of 780 nm, while DVD players use a shorter wavelength of 650 nm. Very small blue lasers have recently become available commercially.
This created the conditions necessary for the “Blu-ray disc“, a new standard agreed to by leading international manufacturers in February 2002. The pits and track pitch have been reduced again by a factor of around two compared with the DVD. This decrease in size means that the quality of the plastic used as a substrate assumes greater importance in order to avoid errors in readout. With the Blu-ray disc storage capacities of around 25 GB are possible.
The next generation of optical storage media currently being developed in the laboratory may even allow data to be stored directly on the surface. Coupled with opto-magnetic reading systems, this would enable hitherto undreamed-of data densities to be stored, with capacities as high as 100 GB, according to expert estimates.
“Polycarbonate, and therefore Makrolon, will continue to play an important role in optical data storage in the future because of its superior properties,” asserted Dr. Dahmer.
Click on the Makrolon logo if you'd like to learn more about this versatile Bayer product.
Forward-looking statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in our public reports filed with the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (including our Form 20-F). The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.
Here's a wild site - film88.com - streaming movies for $0.50 or $1.00 - based in tehran - check out the free sample as a test (need realplayer).
gernb1 - I'm a netflix customer and think it's a great service - however, imagine where instead of selecting a movie to add to your queue, and having it arrive in a couple of days, you get home, select what movie you want to see that evening, begin downloading in Divx, and by the time you're done with dinner, you're ready to burn the divx file onto a CD and play it back on your Divx/edig set-top box THAT EVENING. The file could probably be encoded to play not more than twice (or with some other drm scheme) to satisfy film industry concerns.
gernb - volume seems pretty low across the board, not limited to edig.
OT:cksla - the third website has a brick & mortar location about 2 blocks from my job in Berkeley, predominantly lesbian clientele. They had been pushed out of their previous location (Oakland's Piedmont Ave area), they shocked the grannies at the nearby nursing home.
re sigmaTel - sounds more like a potential partner (i.e., TI), than a competitor.
Sentinel - while the form factor for the Odyssey is obviously identical to the MPIO products, it is possible that the feature sets are different, ie. both Mac/PC capability, 30 hrs on AA, PC-less encoding (as in the Classic player). I'd be curious to know if the MPIO players have these capabilities. Also, just because the DGN/Digitalway announcements are recent doesn't mean that edig may not have been working with them for a while and may have had some input as to the MPIO designs. They may have deferred any income from that work, so it wouldn't have been evident from the 10k's.
Murgirl - I had some younger co-workers turn me on to DIVX almost a year ago, apparently most all people in my old department were trading DIVX files at that point.
dataplay vs. minidisk:
major advantages of dataplay disks - minidisk is basically a smaller casette tape with no hiss (as a result of the data being stored digitally vs. analog) - with minidiscs (and DATs), recording occurs in real time, thus a 45 minute CD will take 45 minutes to record - with minidisks, you have to babysit the recording process so that you stop recording when the CD(or individual track, if making a party-mix tape) is over, while with a dataplay disk, after your tracks have been ripped onto your computer, you would create your transfer list and upload, with the upload being faster than real time recording, and the recording process stopping when the upload has finished - with minidiscs, you need to fast-forward through the tracks, so if you want to listen to the first song, then the last song on a mini-disk, you have to wait while the tape spins, while with dataplay, you would just select the last song after the first song is over (or possibly set up the songs in a queue) - .
tolstoy - I was refering to the pre-recorded music that will come with the encryption scheme.
Regarding dataplay copies:
In spite of all the DRM restrictions, we're talking about ~ 5 DIGITAL copies, but you can always make analog copies, ie connect your dataplay device output to your soundcard and record WAV files, that can then be burned onto CDs for friends, use on computers, etc. Considering that so many people are perfectly happy with the quality of CDs that they've made from downloaded MP3s,the CDs recorded in the above fashion would sound considerably better if using any halfway decent soundcard.
My band usually records our live shows on a DAT machine, which we then convert to WAV files, then CDs, and the difference between the DAT source recordings and the resulting CDS is negligible.
Music Downloads help new artists:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/17/DD124027.DTL&type=t...
Anyone with Edgar access?:
http://www.edgar-online.com/bin/esearch/default.asp?QT=1&query=edig&date=1994
Also interesting that SONY pictures is advertising on the divx website.
Here's an interesting existing divx product:
http://jump.divx.com/jump.php?URL=http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard_intro.htm
Barhz - blockbuster is already going to start feeling the pinch from Netflix, which provides similar selling points - you set up a queue of dvds that you want to rent, get 3 of them, then get the next one on your queue as soon as one is returned, so it works almost like video on demand, and no late fees. However, a settop system to download divx movies would be even better - maybe blockbuster will have a hand in this as they do with pay per view in many areas.
Interesting that Treo comes with 3 mos. AOL in CompUSA ad.eom
jqlaw - that sounds like a distinct possibility to me.
BARHZ - I don't see how that would be possible, the DataPlay engine is a pretty specialized component with optical read/write capabilities, while a compact flash (typeII)/microdrive port has no optical component.
Lickily - I'm sure that GoodGuys will be running sales to bring the price below the website price. They're probably displaying this higher price so that they can claim to be discounting heavily once the sale price is announced. GoodGuys is actually very good about living up to lowest price guarantees - when I bought my big screen TV last month, the Circuit City across the street had merchandise give-aways in conjunction with their sales price on the unit I was getting - while the GoodGuys didn't have the same exact give-away items, they threw in some other stuff and lowered the price even further. Also, 10 years ago, I bought a pair of Klipsch speakers from them and a week later those speakers went on sale - the salesman called me up to make sure I came in to recieve the price difference. BTW, they used to carry Bang & Olufsen equipment.
JDrake - the Emeryville GoodGuys mentioned in the first email is my local electronics retailer, can't wait to see edig products on their shelves. I've actually spent a lot of time in there over the last few weeks, getting my home theatre system together, and I bought my previous stereo system from the same store about ten years ago. I have plenty of space on my GoodGuys credit card for the edig stuff, they've been providing interest free financing on practically any purchase over a certain dollar amount, may have to get both the MXP and Treo to qualify.
Emit - Good Guys is huge - near where I live, every place that there is a Circuit City, there is a Good Guys nearby (actually, the Good Guys were there first - Circuit City moved in as direct competition, but the Good Guys have held their own since CC moved in about 10 years ago). When I first moved to California in the mid eighties, they were basically IT as far as large chain electronic retailers. CC and Frys have taken a chunk of that market, but they're still number one in these parts (SF Bay area). I just bought a SONY widescreen home theatre from them (no interest financing for 2 years), I'm awaiting delivery as we speak, and will probably use my Good Guys card to pick up a Treo when they come in.
Sentinel - wasn't implying anything about a merger, just interesting in that we're already aware of the IBM/EDIG ties, and PTSCs java chips.
gernb1 - IBM/EDIG/PTSC connection???
milplease - I've seen the article before, but I'm very pleased to hear that KRnews picked up the story.
MP3.com email with Treo article:
Looking for a Nice, Clean MP3 Player?
Ashampoo Media Player+ is a free German import that takes the sting out of making playlists and listening to tracks encoded at different bitrates. It has plenty of bells and whistles for veteran users but is easy enough for newbies, too. You can even use it burn custom CDs with an inexpensive plug-in.
Read our review, then download this free program for yourself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
World's First Internet-Audio Player from Philips
Introducing the world's first Internet-audio shelf system. Play over 1,000 streaming radio stations from the Internet, plus play MP3s from on your PC. The FW-i1000 is loaded with features you'd expect from Philips.
Find out more or buy now and receive a $20 instant rebate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transport Tons of Tunes on the Treo 10
This new portable stores thousands of MP3s and WMAs on its 10GB hard drive, so you can take your entire music collection anywhere you go. It's rugged and skip-proof, and its lithium-ion battery gives you six hours of uninterrupted tunes. It's a great value for the price.
See why our reviewer thinks the Treo 10 is terrific.
http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/individual/3666.html
cksla - and Reigncom dataplay device:
http://www.reigncom.co.kr/what/what.htm
cksla - dataplay enabled digisette, hmm (former CES best of show winner):
http://www.digisette.com/
Fresh Gear (TechTV) lead story - sneak peek at devices to be launched this week - 1st item, DataPlay/NowEvolution/MTV - no edig mention, though (yet).
This truck has ECLIPSE commander in dashboard:
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/0122/web-truck-01-26-01.asp
Woo Hoo - edig in US gov. Smart Truck:
Just saw a segment on techtv regarding a specially designed new military vehicle, using Ford 350 as a base so that it blends in with civilian vehicles - control center in dashboard of vehicle was labeled ECLIPSE. WOW.
today's zdnet re:dataplay -
David Carnoy
Executive Editor
My first scheduled appointment at this year's show is with Microsoft's Ed Suwanjindar on Tuesday morning, just after Bill Gates makes his keynote speech. In the past, Suwanjindar, who's from Microsoft's Mobility Division, has shown us Pocket PC devices and earlier versions of the company's Stinger smart phone (where is that phone anyway?). But the mysterious device he'll have on Tuesday is supposedly not a Pocket PC and isn't Stinger-related, either. Hmm, could it be some new, integrated wireless device, or does it have something to do with Microsoft's eHome division, which was formed after last year's CES with the mission of extending Windows beyond the desktop computer? Either way, it's a good bet that whatever that thing is, it'll be handheld and portable.
What else am I looking forward to seeing? Everything from smaller, more powerful digital still and movie cameras to upcoming affordable, HD-ready TVs to newfangled digital audio players to reasonably priced (well, under $1,000, anyway) home DVD-R decks designed to replace the VCR and take on TiVo and ReplayTV devices.
Good or bad, early reports indicate that convergence will retain its buzzword status at this year's show, and I expect to see more digital-entertainment boxes that tie together the home stereo, TV, and broadband Internet access. Bill Gates will be talking about all that; as, most likely, will be a start-up called Rearden Steel, which was founded by WebTV founder Steve Perlman.
And then, of course, there will be the ghosts of CES past--those products that made a splash at last year's CES but haven't quite made their way into the real world yet. DataPlay, the start-up that makes tiny CD-R-like discs that can store 500MB of data and are supposed to cost between just $5-$10, promises to announce new partnerships, and we may even see a working device or two that uses its product. Wouldn't that be nice?
http://www.zdnet.com/zdfeeds/msncobrand/news/0%2C13622%2C2836341%2C-hud00025guide%2C00.html
Sentinel - hey, I just copied and pasted CNETs article, from TODAYs update.
http://www.cnet.com/techtrends/0-6014-8-8364660-1.html?tag=sd