Memory Lane: More Formats Become Compatible

Just like most countries in the northern hemisphere, August is a traditionally slow month in Japan. In the IT world, things grind to a halt as electronics companies, including some of the biggest names in the industry, virtually shut-down for a week to allow people to return to their hometowns as part of the "Bon" holiday.

This August has been little different, although in one small sector of the industry, flash memory cards, there have been a few minor but noteworthy developments.

The first came in the dying days of July when Fuji Photo Film and Olympus Optical announced a new consumer flash memory card format called XD Picture Card. The two companies along with Toshiba, Sega, and Tokyo Electron developed SmartMedia, which debuted in the very first flash memory cards back in the mid-nineties.

Creating More Confusion?

The announcement virtually spelt the death of SmartMedia, which compared to some of today's cards looks oversized, as the two companies were the only major consumer electronics manufacturers still using the system in a big way. Still, it was too bad that they decided to develop their own format and not join previous partner Toshiba in the Secure Digital memory card group or even move to support another existing format such as Memory Stick, Compact Flash, or MultiMedia Card.

Their excuse is that the XD card is smaller than all others and will lead to more compact products. A quick comparison with the competition reveals it is indeed smaller although whether products will get much smaller remains to be seen.

What is clear is that the confusing and frustrating array of memory card formats will continue to confound consumers who want to do nothing more complicated that pull a memory card from one gadget and slot it into another.

Another Option

What a breath of fresh air, then, was Matsushita Electric Industrial's latest digital video recorder when it appeared during the month. Like the previous model, the new device has a hard disk drive and DVD recorder and has been upgraded with a memory card slot. Thankfully, Panasonic did not fit a slot for SD, for which it is a major supporter, but more sensibly made it a PC Card slot.

The company took almost the same course with a digital photo printer it announced a couple of weeks later. Designed to be used with a digital camera to produce photo-quality prints at home, the SV-AP10 has both a SD memory card slot and PC Card slot mounted right on the front of the box.

Of course, fitting a PC Card slot means users will have to use adapters but isn't that easier than forcing a single format down customers' throats with the result that many won't be able to use the function?

Dealing With DVD

It's not just the area of flash memory cards where different formats are coming together. In the optical disc world, a dizzying array of formats exist that serve to confuse users, especially when it comes to recordable DVD discs. There are three separate types of technology: DVD-R/RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD+R/RW.

Now, Sony is preparing a drive for personal computers that unites the two most popular formats, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW. With such a drive, users will no longer have to worry about whether they are backing the winning horse and that should help the spread of the technology which should benefit everyone in the future.