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DataPlay, which has developed a new type of storage for digital media players and recorders, is planning to see both its postage-stamp-sized discs and gadgets that use them on store shelves in the first quarter of 2002, company executives said this week.

In January, DataPlay said it planned to have products available in the second half of this year. However, development took longer than expected, Steve Volk, DataPlay chair and chief executive officer, said at Comdex. "It just took a long time," Volk said. "We had to develop the drive, the media, and the manufacturing process."

DataPlay's tiny discs will be available for sale--either blank or prerecorded--for use with digital cameras, portable music players, and personal digital assistants, Volk said. "This is a universal media for all things digital," he said.

The company seems to have enough force behind it to win users for the media, with Universal Media Group--an early investor--EMI Group, and BMG Entertainment all announcing plans to sell prerecorded music on the discs. Users would buy an album on a DataPlay disc, for about the price of a CD, and then be able to unlock additional albums already stored on the 500MB discs, for under $10, Volk said. Blank media will cost from $5 to $10, he said.

Versatile Discs

Players and media are now set to launch next quarter, and while Volk would not disclose who the first hardware manufacturers would be, the price of the players will be in the $299 to $329 range, Volk said. However, DataPlay and Imation had announced earlier that Imation would be the first U.S. manufacturer.

"The discs can also store music videos, Web links, and an up-to-date list of concert dates," Volk said. Users wanting to unlock the additional content can do it through an online retailer by connecting the player to a PC through a USB port, Volk said.

One analyst said that while the company's product holds potential, it won't register until it actually appears on shelves. "Right now, we're very much in wait-and-see mode," said P.J. McNealy, senior analyst at Gartner. "Some of their channel partners are in the same position."

Another analyst said that for DataPlay to be widely adopted, it needs to partner with one of Japan's large consumer electronics companies, mainly Panasonic or Sony. "I think they need one, if not both of those guys," said Danielle Levitas, a program manager with IDC. "Even then, it's going to take years for penetration to become significant."

The devices also double as portable storage devices when connected to a PC through USB, Volk said. Although the discs can fit 500MB of data, they can only be written to once, so when the disc is full, it can only be read, similar to a CD-R disc.

Other Implementations

DataPlay is working with other business models as well. One possibility might be putting all of Stephen King's novels onto a single disc, and letting the buyer have access to the first chapter of every book free, Volk said. Electronic bookseller Rosetta Books has already announced plans to offer books on DataPlay's discs.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, also in Las Vegas, earlier this year, DataPlay also showed prototype devices. Among them were a camera from Toshiba and an MP3 player from SonicBlue.

But the different uses of the media remains a moot point until it becomes available, Gartner's McNealy said. "Clearly their potential to distribute protected media is high, especially with the amount of data they can fit on the discs," he said. "But first they have to produce the discs, then they have to have the right content partners lined up, then distribution partners--until they get all that together, it's difficult to say how they'll do."

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