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Hi everyone!
When I first heard about the MD Data format being released by Sony, I
thought that it would be a successful "B Drive". But Iomega went in around
the time that Sony released MD Data and aggressively pushed their "Zip" disk
on everyone.
The factors that brought Zip as the primary "B drive" was the snappy name,
the sexy blue case that the external drive came in and the way the earlier
versions were able to connect via the parallel port on the average PC. This
was exaggerated by the big-budget ad campaigns that they took out, with the
goal of running it as a "loss-leader".
What Sony needs to do is promote the new MD-Data2 650Mb disc as a "B drive"
is to market it as a "Zip killer". This would mean designing USB or SCSI
external drives that work with current-generation PCs and Macs and are
presented in sexy boxes; encouraging the Linux community to write Linux
drivers for the MD-Data2 drives, providing software for playing (and perhaps
editing or recording) regular audio MiniDiscs; and market it in a
loss-leading way.
The MD-Data2 discs could hold heaps of high-resolution digital images
(especially in bitmap form), many projects worth of Word documents, one or
two desktop publishing projects with all of the images for that project.
An interesting appliance concept for this medium would be a digital image
view-download unit for use in the field. These devices, in a similar vein to
Iomega's Clik digital-image-download device which fills 40Mb disks, would
transfer images from a CompactFlash card or a SimartMedia card to an
MD-Data2 disc (which holds 10 times the amount of the biggest CF card). This
would allow a photographer to work at the highest resolution on one of the
new 2.3 or above megapixel digital cameras for a long time without worrying
about memory-card space. This comes in handy during weddings, holidays and
other occasions where a lot of pictures are being taken and there is no
chance of being able to download the images during the trip.
By providing a built-in LCD screen in the device (which the Iomega Clik
device doesn't have), it makes it possible to preview images taken during
the past shoot, thus conserving the camera' batteries for taking pictures.
The unit can support external video outputs so images can be viewed on a
video monitor by a group or projected using a video projector. USB ports
would be provided so the unit can be connected to a computer for image
manipulation or to a printer, card drive (for other solid-state media) or
scanner. As well, regular audio MiniDiscs can be played in the unit, with
such facilities as an "at-a-glance" track index.
With regards,
Simon Mackay
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