One of the longest running jokes in storage technology — the DataPlay disc — is apparently back thanks to Ridata, but still leaves the basic question in the air: who would actually be stupid enough to buy this?
In the late 1990s, DataPlay was going to be the Next Big Thing in data storage with a small disc that could hold 500mb of data. People were going to use it for everything from data archiving to playing music — DataPlay even signed agreements with a number of record companies to issue their music in DataPlay format.
It never quite happened for two reasons. First, by the time DataPlay actually shipped a working product — in 2002 — a 500mb disc was no longer as impressive as it had seemed in 1998. At at time when a CD-R could be had for about $1/apiece or less, who was going to pay $10-$20 for a 500mb optical disc?
Second, DataPlay stole the Sony playbook and loaded down the DataPlay with a digital rights management scheme that only an ATRAC afficianado could love. In fact, DataPlay and its partners bragged that the format would replace the CD, whose drawback — in their minds — was that it was so easy to copy. As Talal Shamoon, senior vice president of Intertrust which provided DataPlay with its DRM put it,
This whole music piracy problem isn’t going to go away until the CD dies.
And DataPlay was going to be the CD-killer. Instead the company folded in 2002, shortly after it finally released a working product. Reportedly its DRM schemes ended up killing DataPlay rather than the CD. The effort to incorporate DRM into the player reportedly delayed the introduction of the players by up to 1 year, by which time the company was out of money and found investors were no longer willing to extend it more.
Now there are companies trying to revive the DataPlay format. In its November 2005 issue, Mobile magazine reviewed the Ridata Topy Mini Writer saying,
It takes 20 minutes to burn a CD’s worth of music to a DataPlay disc and the same amount of time to read that data back — roughly one-tenth the speed of the average optical drive. if that isn’t bad enough. DataPlay discs are write-once only, and they cost 10 times as much as a CD-R.
And you thought Zip discs were a lousy format. The amusing thing is seeing some of the companies behind the newest incarnation of the DataPlay picking a poor time to target another media format. Here’s DPHI CEO Bill Almon in April 2005 on one possibility,
Hard-drive based systems like iPod work well for music, but they don’t work well for video yet. And whatever develops, there’s still a need for inexpensive media.
LOL. Even with new owners, DataPlay’s timing just couldn’t be worse.
Source:
Second life for tech companies. Bob Mook, Denver Business Journal, April 4, 2005.
DataPlay Discs Stage a Comeback. Martyn Williams, IDG News Service, October 08, 2004.