I think there are a couple of reasons for this:
The write speed is probably the biggest problem (ie I would think the read
speed would be less of a factor) - there is a finite time taken to heat the
metallic substrate to it's Curie Point and also a finite time from that
point for the write magnetic head to align the substrate.
The factors governing the time taken for these events are probably related
to laser power output and disc groove/spot size. The groove and spot size
is fixed by the MD format and laser power output is probably limited by
cost and physical size in relation to fitting it in a portable recorder.
Computer MO technology may not be as limited by physical disc size or laser
power.
Maybe the playback (read) rate could be increased to acceptable levels by
increasing the speed of the disc when reading, as in computer CD-ROM
readers, but I don't think it would be as easy to do this when writing to
disc....
ATRAC would not be used in Data drives - it is a 'lossy' system and would
not be suitable.
It's my opinion that ATRAC is required by the MD (audio) format to reduce
the amount of data to acceptable levels that the format can cope with when
writing ie I doubt that the small size of disc and relatively low power of
the MD laser could cope with raw CD size data of 16 bit x 44.1 Khz
Further to that, it's possible that the small size of MD came about as a
'by product' of the fact that maybe it was (in 1990, when MD was in
development) impossible to write to MO discs at a suitable (raw CD) rate in
real time, hence ATRAC reduced the data rate to acceptable levels but then
Sony found that they only needed a small disc to hold the data....
All the above is just IMHO.....
GB
>What's the difference between MD and computer Magneto-Optical technology
>that makes MiniDisc unsuitable for data use? Is it to do with Atrac, or
>what?
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