DataPlay: The futuristic optical disc format that time forgot

in the cult 1980s film cherry mm they imagine the data storage for bath 2017 would look like this now of course tiny optical disks a Akron is tick in our modern-day world of flash storage but what you might not be aware of is that back in the early 2000s a product did ever so briefly make its way to the market that bought a remarkable resemblance to that movie prop this is a date of play disc and to give you some idea of just how tidy this is here it is next to a few other objects to provide a sense of scale so this is a compact disc and this is a Sony mini disc now just like the mini disc while in use the dates of play this was contained within a caddy however unlike a standard mini disc that held 160 megabytes that tiny data play disc could hold 500 megabytes 250 odd each side they sold two different models of personal data play recorder / player there's also a range of pre-recorded music titles available in the format and these discs as well as including the music would often have bonus material such as videos which could be accessed by connecting your device up to a computer and viewing them through a piece of software called future player this software was also used for birding your own CDs and mp3s - the data played discs however data play had big plans beyond portable music players their tiny discs were being touted as a high-capacity alternative to the compact flash card and the recently launched SD card to put the 500 megabyte capacity of the data play discs into perspective against other familiar formats this article in DP review from June 2001 shows that SanDisk were proudly announcing the launch of the largest SD card yet at a hundred and twenty eight megabytes data play pictured there high-capacity disks being used in all sorts of devices from desktop computers e-readers handheld games machines cameras multimedia players and smartphones and when data play made its debut at CES in January 2001 the compact size of the cards combined with the high capacity where'd the crowds and it weren't a best of show award at the time it was reported that there were many different products being worked on that would utilize the new format Samsung was even showing a prototype storage device and a music player that used dates of play and the first products were due to make their way into stores in the second half of 2001 however by September 2001 data play was still in a holding pattern the CEO insisted that they'd only really planned on launching in 2002 all along and that they were just waiting on their hardware partners who they named dropped at this point as being Sanyo Toshiba sonic blue and Samsung and therein lies the rub as data blazer company was entirely reliant on others amasian made the discs for them music labels licensed their music to the former and various hardware manufacturers made the machines that played them there are that's in comparison to a company like Sony who could introduce a loss-making product and support it with their own artists manufacturer in their own factories and sell various iterations of it for years before hoping to eventually turn a profit somewhere down the road whereas data play needed to be a hit straight out of the gate nevertheless in March 2002 data play took out a 2-page of 37 in billboard to announce the launch of a multimedia promotional campaign for the former but over a year after that first triumphant showing at CES it's clear that the cracks we're now starting to show there's no longer any mention of companies like Samsung and saw shiba things seem to be a little bit more desperate with the only player manufacturer being there much less high-profile evolution technologies the advert seems to be more of a call to arms than our launch an attempt to get record companies to support the copy-protected day to play former in the face of the clear threat from the exploding rise in mp3 file sharing the standout quote for me comes from a seemingly beleaguered CEO who states we certainly don't have all the answers yet which while being professionally honest doesn't do much to fill the reader with confidence in this new format data play limped to market sometime around April 2000 with the uninspiring evolution technologies personal digital recorder which appears to have been based on pre-production technology this was joined after a coupla months by the slightly more high-tech looking IDP 100 from the South Korean manufacturer iRiver at which point the earlier player was relegated and renamed the classic PD are looking at Amazon the IDP 100 went on sale there in July 2002 however those promised pre-recorded music titles were a no-show until a few months later in October 2002 when BMG who seems to be the only company supporting the format at this point released 13 of their albums on data play however just one week later data plate file for bankruptcy it seems that the cost of launching a whole new format onto the market had just been too much for the small company to bear so its hopes of becoming the next cassette weren't going to come to fruition they also had a product there was slap bang in the middle of a rapidly changing market because as we know now flash memory prices tend to reduce over time but even if you didn't have much flash memory it would be more useful to many people than a day to play disc for example I had this Lyra player in 1999 with just 32 megabytes of storage which I just wrote over and over again when I wanted to put new files on it you could do the same thing of course with a mini disc that's something you couldn't do with a data play disc because one thing I haven't mentioned up to this point is that data play discs were right once disk yes just like CD ARS you could put multiple sessions on them but whatever you put on a data play disk stayed on that desk you could not erase it and at a price of $10 a disk that was something that was really the final nail in the coffin for the format for most people it came as a bit of a surprise to some of the Amazon reviewers as well this chap here found this out to his cost when he tried to delete a track that he didn't like that he copied onto a disc and no that track was going to be there forever as he said at the end if he'd wanted a CD player he would have bought one and it's a fair point for example at the same time the data play was out he could have bought this Sony CD mp3 playing Walkman which went on sale in January and to and provided he had a CD burner in his PC as long as he didn't mind carrying around something the size of a CD walkman after burning a cake of CD ours he'd have been quids in just to give you a perspective of the changing portable music landscape at this point this chap says that instead of the day to play he got himself a 20 gigabyte our cost you'd box which could also play davecs videos as well one of the disadvantage of using data play was the speed of putting files on those discs because it under tempt to assuage the fears of the music labels with regard to piracy data play it agreed to some pretty egregious copy protection which meant that when it came to wreaked music the player would only play its own proprietary CK mp3 format so when transferring music to the player the software converted it into this format which slowed down the file transfer process to a crawl it appears that data play disappeared from the market very quickly after their 2002 bankruptcy never managing to secure the funding needed to carry on oddly enough though I found the iRiver ID p100 being reviewed in PC Magazine in December 2004 that's two and a half years after the format's launch and that will be because a company called DPH I had acquired the data play IP and was looking into developing the tech presumably they'd also acquired any unsold stock of players as well now this company said they got big plans for a relaunch including reducing the blank disc price to half the arty developed a 750 megabyte version of those discs and a 2 gig version was expected in 2006 with plans for a 7 gigabyte version down the line but that's the last anyone heard of that ever since I became aware of data play ever existing that was perhaps five or so years back now I've been searching for a player and some discs to play on it may think that for something so relatively recently discontinued it'd be quite easy to find but in all my years of looking the first Breaker had was six months ago when I managed to obtain this box have used blank data played discs even being able to finally just hold one of these elusive discs in my hand after all this time felt like a big achievement because up to then all had seen were pictures in fact some of the articles I'd seen said that the thing never even came Arrowwood of course it did although very briefly there was mentioned earlier these are 500 megabyte discs 250 megabytes per side the disk is protected by the plastic caddy and inserting that into the machine slides back this protective metal sleeve of which there's one on either side now the box of five blank discs that this came out of would have cost fifty dollars back in a day and that is really quite a significant amount of money but despite that you can see that it's only the first disk in this set that's been used so presumably the previous owner abandoned dates of play and moved on to something more convenient so finally having some disks was great but of course I still needed something to play them back on well a couple of months ago you may remember I made a video about a new quadrophonic vinyl release I got chatting with the record producer behind that gentleman called Connor on V and we shared a common interest in obscure music formats he advised me that he'd been involved in the development of data play in some capacity and as a result had a pre-production player as well as a sealed Beck album that from what I can tell never got a retail release on this format so back when he sent over that quad album and decoder that did the video on there was also one other thing in the box that he didn't see in that video inside the bottom he sent over his date of play machine now this is the first of the two player designs that came out this one later became known as the classic PDR but at this point it was the only machine that was available how this was a pre-production one number 20 is listed on the side there you can see that the blue sections on this are starting to look a little bit strange and that's because they were using that coating that textured coating that was popular at the time on plastic devices which gave them a kind of premium feel back then but now just turns into a sticky brush because the coating is broken down and it feels a little bit like you're holding a boiled sweet anyway on the top here you got your headphone output that's a volume control as well as a multi-function dial that you can select things by pushing it in your various other controls on the front here the whole thing runs off a rechargeable battery and that battery is charged through this DC port on the left here the USB style port on the right is just used for data transfer now one thing that would have been a problem over time when it came to reducing down the size of these data play compatible devices was the optical drive unit that was common to all of them it's a sealed component of course capable of reading and writing to those disks but this is a transplant component the concept was that this was going to be in all the devices whether you bought your laptop from Toshiba or your camera from Samsung they'd have this same unit inside them now in addition to the data play recorder he sent me over some discs that he'd recorded at the time and a 3-pack of blank discs that hadn't been open now it's interesting to look at the information on the outside of this because it shows the devices that they had hope would one day be using data play disks for storage now just go back to that player for a moment and that sticky outer coating I do get people from time to time asking me what could be done to fix this because it's a common problem with a lot of devices of this age unfortunately there's nothing that you can do to stop it once it started it's just heading in one direction and working its way back to becoming oil again all you can really do if you really want to is rub the coating off entirely using something like isopropyl alcohol which will take it back down to the bare plastic but of course also removes all the logos and decals in the process now one thing I didn't get with the machine was the appropriate lead for data transfer however I managed to get hold of one of these because fortunately this same lead was used in the subsequent model from iRiver and then in other various iRiver mp3 players so it's not too difficult to find one of those new still as far as the power goes I've just got a multi voltage power supply and once I plug that in there the Machine came to life now before I started shooting this video I wanted to make sure that it played music otherwise the whole thing would have been a waste of time so I did put some disks in it before I started recording this and I've played those back and they were working fine but I thought one thing that I should really include in this video if it's going to be complete is a pre-recorded data play disk now BMG did ship 13 titles apparently but data play did go bankrupt the week after those appeared in the stores and despite years of searching I've never found a single word of the pre-recorded site for sale anywhere data plays such an unknown search term eBay thinks I'll be better off searching for cat play instead now I do know that Connor on V house his sealed back title but I wouldn't want to open that up any more than he'd want me to however I do know of one other person who does have a date to play album I've mentioned the Museum of obsolete media a number of times over the years and I know in the collection there they do have a data play disc so I got in touch with Jason and he was kind enough to lend me he's Avril Lavigne album now the date to play logo is visible at the top there and you can see that this disc includes a bonus video photo gallery and more and the logo is present on the back of the box as well and the disc itself is visible through a window on there presumably to avoid confusion as to what format you're buying because the case itself is CD sized so that it fits on standard retail shelving now the booklet inside appears to be straight out of a CD case as it makes no mention of data play anywhere in it the disc itself is contained in the same type of plastic clamshell case as the blank disc came in however you can see the album artwork is on a sticker on one side and the disc itself is visible through the clear case on the other side now the case on this pre-recorded title only has the shutter on one side which means that it's a one sided disc of course so has a maximum capacity of 250 megabytes the other side of the case has room for a round sticker which despite appearances is applied to the outer case and not to the disc itself and as it's not a writable disc the color of it is more akin to a pre-recorded CD than one of these blank discs and you can see on this particular blank this the section towards the center has been written too so there I've assembled almost everything I need to make a video about data play there's just one last thing and that's to install the Windows future players software which fortunately after all these years we're still available to download from the iRiver website ok let's do this so I thought that I'll show you first what a prereq Oddie title looks like now when you push one of these disk cartridges into the side of the machine once you get it past a certain point it operates a switch which then activates some kind of motor which grabs onto the disk you can feel like a powered system holding it in place and that then also is used when it comes to ejecting the disk so if you hold down a stop button this motor again activates and just pops the disk out of that disk tray door but the machine still holds it in place it doesn't go flying across the room or anything now once we've got this pre-recorded title playing you can see at the bottom of the screen there the codec it's AAC and 192 kilobits a second now of course that will apply for these pre-recorded titles when it comes to making your owner whether you've done it from ripping a CD opening mp3 files onto this those then get converted into date to play zone CK mp3 format as is common of mp3 players of this era you can apply various equalization presets to the sound and in fact everything works as expected there are no surprises it's perfectly adequate for the job skipping between tracks is quick enough and overall it's a very similar experience to pretty much any other early 2000s mp3 player [Music] [Applause] [Music] now before I started shooting this video I had played a couple of the other discs that DIY ones and they'd been working fine as well but this time when I came to show it on camera the Machine suddenly refused to read them now I tried all the discs multiple times I even went back and tried the avril lavigne discs again but unfortunately machine just refused to play another disc the sound it was making was sound very familiar to anyone who's ever had an optical drive fail on them and the more I tried the worse it got so of course I have a quick go at opening it up but despite removing all the visible screws the case would not come apart I've got a feeling that there was some more hidden screws underneath the silver trim but I decided I didn't want to rip that off and ruin the looks of this rare machinist they really wouldn't be any points after all the optical drive inside is a tiny little sealed unit but even if it was open what could I do when I got there I'm almost certain that the lasers failed anyone who bought an early PlayStation one will recognize the sound of an optical drive with a dead laser of course I've tried cleaning it through the door but that made no difference so unfortunately due to the sudden demise of the player I was unable to shoot my planned demonstration of the PC software however if you're interested here's what it would have looked like in action the videos would have been played on the screen in the middle you'd have links to a website and a gallery and additional content on some discs that could be unlocked in an online store for a fee of course all these things depended upon whether the disc in question supported those particular features now I know from previous experience that people often worry about and focusing on what's missing from a video rather than just rolling with it and enjoying what was there so I'll make you a deal if everyone doesn't go on and on about the player breaking you know just brushes it off because these things regular they happen with old devices well if you do that their name return I promise I'll keep looking for a replacement data play machine that works as well as some pre-recorded albums to demonstrate on it if I get those things together I'll come back and do a follow-up video where I take a good look at the software so concentrating on the positive and what we have seen well I've covered the history of data play as best as I could we've looked at the hardware and the discs themselves we've even watched a prototype player die doing what it moved playing skater boy and surely a kirby the only one who when looking at the juxtaposition between the tiny data play disc and a standard CD thought to himself that's not a compact disc this is a compact disc if anyone didn't get out reference to a classic eighties movie scene well the accent is important on this occasion it was provided by David Jones from EE vblog who kindly agreed to help me out by doing his best Crocodile Dundee and if you haven't already been over to his channel I thoroughly recommend you paid a visit because he gets my vote for the most enthusiastic man on YouTube but this whole video has been a collaborative effort from conlon via psychic rec or to generously supplied the prototype player and discs to jason Curtis a obsolete media who very kindly loaned me his avril lavigne disc from the extensive collection there now without their help I'd still only have a box of blank discs to show for five years of searching for data play so from mid 1980s science-fiction future to early 2000s reality to present days forgotten former that was the story of data play that tiny optical disc that came and went in the blink of an eye and barely left a trace anyway that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 1,412,527

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, Data Play, DataPlay, Optical disc, CD, Mini, Micro, Tiny, CD-R, 2001, Retrotech, MP3, Minidisc, Smallest Optical Disc, Coin Sized, Caddy, player, Futureplayer, retro, data, storage, 500MB, mini disks, failed, tech, media, format, history

Id: uEISYaWgCRg

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/K-leb25]

Gotta love bonus goodies that "come with the album" being activated online. It's a perfect recipe for any of that extra stuff not being available in a few years, and then you gotta snoop around for it.

[u/readyjack]

Spoiler -- he doesn't open it. All you get to see is the front/back for a couple seconds. Still interesting.

[u/[deleted]]

I'd be so hyped for Beck to reissue his albums on super obscure formats.