What Is The Current State Of SDMI On The Market?

theancient1 asks: "With malls already decorating for Christmas, it's time to start thinking about gifts. Since MP3 players are making their way onto more people's lists this year, I thought this would be an excellent time to get a round-up of the current state of SDMI with respect to current hardware. Are any players currently looking for a watermark within a standard MP3 file? What restrictions do current players have on what I do with my music? To what extent are the popular vendors caving to the demands of the recording industry? Numerous vendors are advertising their players as 'SDMI compliant to allow you to download music from major labels.' How can we get the message across that SDMI is not a feature without a price? I'm looking for some good Web resources for the average non-geek consumer."

Warning others about SDMI

[Lazarus Short]

How can we get the message across that SDMI is not a feature without a price?

Just tell them the truth. SDMI is a system that's stated goal is to prevent piracy (or copyright infringement, uauthorized redistribution, sharing, or whatever you want to call it). Then tell them that SDMI is going to make it harder for them to make legitimate copies of music they've purchased. Then tell them, that when SDMI workarounds are developed (as they inevitably will be, DMCA or no DMCA), that the RIAA will push for harsher laws taking away their rights to fair use, all in the name of preventing piracy.

Tell them this, and tell them that the only way they can keep their fair use rights, and stick it to the greedy, corrupt record companies, is to "Just say no" to SDMI.

--

Nada

[Masem]

From my understanding of the SDMI challenge and why it was done, there probably is no SDMI-enabled players out there today. SDMI will not be implemented by the hardware makers until they know that the SDMI format is finalized lest they lose money. Given that the SDMI challenge was taken and completed, this will slow the completion of the finalization of SDMI probably until at least next Christmas.

If RIAA does go ahead and put out SDMI silently, I'm sure you'll hear people complaining about how a certain device cannot play their old CDs, at whihc point you know that it's out, but I'm sure that this will be a well-document blemish for RIAA if they did it this way.

SDMI Compliant == SDMI Level I Compliant...

[Bill Barth]

(or somesuch).

The basic idea is that a player that currently claims to be SDMI compliant will stop working and request the user to upgrade its firmware the first time an SDMI watermarked file is downloaded into the player.

kinda sucks, huh?

Re:Nada

[epodrevol]

There is the Nomad jukebox available too.

Re:SDMI

[FiNaLe]

What id like to see, is some small technology that would lemme carry around all the music I might wanna hear with me in a relativley small space, until then, mp3 players cant beat the price/perf ratio :)

I've been thinking about minidisc lately, Approximately $250 (+ or -) for a portable player/recorder, $2 media that holds 74 minutes stereo 148 minutes mono(say for 2 and 1/2 hours of geeks in space, prairie home companion, college lectures, etc...)

Only thing I'm not sure is how any SDMI or similar schemes might be implented in them, I'd like to find out though.

Will SDMI even make that big of an impact?

[phreak404]

I think that when we all consider SDMI's impact on MP3 technology, we need to take another such encryption effort into consideration. CSS. MPAA has tried just as RIAA is now trying to encrypt their so called "artist's rights". And we all know what happened to CSS. SDMI will be the same. No matter how complicated of a system it uses or how it cyphers the data, there will always be one of us that figures out how to uncypher it in a way that we can still use it. (i.e. computer software) When one looks at the hardware aspect of SDMI (Mp3 players), it seems like when faced with the potential of convenience plunging and cost escalating, I, for one, wouldn't even consider a portable stand alone Mp3 player a viable solution if I had to comply to SDMI. I'd just as soon burn my Mp3's to Compact Disc. On the bright side, there will probably be at least one Mp3 player that will circumvent some aspect of SDMI. (i.e. Region circumvension with older DVD players)

Just my take on the whole thing

Re:Nada

[Wakko Warner]

Actually, at least one player I know of has SDMI built in -- the Sony Memory Stick player. That doesn't mean it won't play normal MP3 files too (nobody would buy it if it didn't, let's be serious), but it's got the capability.

- A.P.

--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Re:Nada

[SaxMaster]

Actually, the very reason that few people buy the Sony Vaio Music Clip is that it only plays ATRAC format music. You need to convert your open MP3's into the clunky, SDMI-compliant ATRAC to play them on your Vaio Music Clip. Dont know about the memory stick walkman, tho.

SDMI Compliancy

[Fryed]

There are currently two ways which MP3 players are claiming to be SDMI compliant. The first is, as stated above, to require that the user upgrade the firmware the first time an SDMI watermarked file is loaded into the player.

The other way players are currently being made SDMI Compliant is to make sure that files can only be transferred one way; you can download your mp3s to your player all you want, but you're not allowed to upload those back to your (or someone elses) computer. In the case of the common 64 meg players, this wouldn't be too much of an issue; zip drives/other removable media/cdrs/broadband etc are slowly but surely becoming common enough so that there are better ways to move those mp3s around.

The only time the inability to upload really becomes an issue is with the hard drive based, 6 gigabyte mp3 players. Those make a great way to give your favorite mp3s to a friend, and of course the RIAA doesn't want that. Of course, with 6 gigs of mp3s, it doesn't seem too farfetched that one would delete some files from your computer after loading up the mp3 player, and only later would the user realize that, *surprise*, they can't get those back on their computer from the mp3 player.