e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[cksla]

DDI Pocket Adds Music Delivery Method to PHS Using SD Memory Card
March 30, 2001 (TOKYO) -- DDI Pocket Inc. announced that from late April it would support AAC-formatted music data on its "Sound Market" service, a music data delivery service for a personal handyphone system service dubbed "feel H" (edge)."
The Sound Market has supported MP3-formatted data for delivery to PHS.

The new service, offering a choice of AAC-formatted music data to be delivered, is called SDAIR. It enables feel H" PHS phone users to download and transfer music data to a portable music player that supports feel H". The downloaded music data can be stored on an SD memory card.

PHS phones as well as portable music players for the new SDAIR system will be sold by Toshiba Corp. and by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

The SDAIR system was co-developed by Toshiba, Matsushita Electric, Kyusyu Matsushita Electric Co., Ltd. and Music co.jp Inc. Based on the EMMS data distribution technique of IBM Corp. of the United States, these four companies combined the AAC music data compression technique and the Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM), an encryption/authorization technology. CPRM has been developed jointly by Matsushita Electric, Intel Corp., IBM and Toshiba.

The new SDAIR service in the Sound Market sets the bit rate at 128bps. For example, it can download a three-minute song in 6 minutes. The charge is the same to that of the conventional MP3 delivery method the Sound Market has used (Keitaide-Music ): 200-400 yen per song, excluding the communication charge (13 yen per minute).

Toshiba will start selling "Beat Carrots DL-B01" series PHS phones and "MEA212AS" portable music players by the end of April. Both prices will have an open price tag.

DL-B01 has two body colors, black and pink, and MEA212AS has one silver body color. By connecting with a cable (photo), music data downloaded by a DL-B01 phone can be transferred to an MEA212AS. Data is stored by the MEA212AS built-in memory or on an SD memory card. The DL-B01 model itself cannot store the data. The MEA212AS can be connected to PCs by USB cables to transfer the data.

DDI Pocket started the Sound Market service on Nov. 30, 2000. At present, 16 companies including Toshiba EMI Ltd., Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd. and Pony Canyon Inc. are providing about 1,000 music data. Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. and Kyocera Corp. have been selling PHS phones that support Keitaide-Music, or the Sound Market service for MP3 data.

DDI Pocket said that more than 200,000 feel H" series phones have been sold, about 70 percent of which were for the Sound Music service, and thousands of people are using the service every day. Accesses to the Sound Market service are about 7,000 a day. Users download 2,000 free music data for demo play and 200 charged data every day.

http://www.nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asabt/news/126995

These are carrots i can get behind.