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Tenth Anniversary of First Commercial MP3 Player
Posted by
Zonk
on Monday March 10, @09:14PM
from the now-they're-implanted-at-birth dept.
from the now-they're-implanted-at-birth dept.
Pickens writes "The first commercially released personal music player capable of handling MP3 files was launched in March 1998 — the MPMan F10, manufactured by Korea's Saehan Information Systems with 32MB of Flash storage, enough for a handful of songs encoded at 128Kb/s. In the US, local supplier Eiger Labs wanted $250 for the F10, though the price fell to $200 the following year prompted by the release of the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300. The Rio was released in September 1998, but by 8 October had become the subject of a lawsuit from the RIAA which claimed the player violated the 1992 US Home Recordings Act. It was later ruled that the Rio had not infringed the Act because it was not responsible for the actions of its customers. Thanks to its lesser known name, the F10 avoided such legal entanglements, but at the cost of all the free publicity its rival gained from the lawsuit."
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Lame (Score:5, Funny)
32 MB is enough to get you broke, with the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, it should be "engough for everybody"
And to think.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And to think.... (Score:5, Informative)
However, the Court did reason that its ultimate holding was consistent with the purpose of the Audio Home Recording Act, which supposedly was to "ensure the right of consumers to make analog or digital audio recordings of copyrighted music for their private, noncommercial use." 180 F.3d at 1079 (citing S. Rep. 102-294). And then the Court said the following:
And then the company that made the Rio went into bankruptcy and Apple made a gazillion dollars. Sometimes it's good to be second to market.RaveMP (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RaveMP (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh, 1998 was a great year... (Score:5, Funny)
I got my MPMan... (Score:3, Insightful)
Liars (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
not responsible for the actions of its customers? (Score:3, Interesting)
And now you can get 32GB flash (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/usb_32gb.htm [pricewatch.com]
An increase of capacity at around roughly 1000x in a decade. I don't know if the trend will continue.... but if it does we'll be at 32TB in another decade.
I guess even those who don't use music players can be thankful for those devices as they, along with digital cameras, were really were the commercial products on the market that really sold and pushed the flash envelope. Sure there were PDAs/GPS units and other stuff, but in comparison they really niche markets that were happy with 256MB or whatever in most cases. Now things like the airbook (and all the SSD notebooks to follow, yes there were earlier ones I know), iPhone and the convergence of devices will further drive the market for more space.
Re:And now you can get 32GB flash (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been studying this and if the price improvement rate of flash stays about the same as it has for the last 5 years (and hard disk does the same) it will only be 4 years before every laptop has a flash drive.
Charts and data here: http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/flashdiskcomparo.html [mattscomputertrends.com]
I Used To Have A PMP300 (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember it was one of the perks given to early employees at a dotcom called myplay which let users store their music collections online and access it from anywhere in the world, as long as you had an internet connection, it was of course another portable media player - the iPod which let people take their music collection (or at least a decent part of it) anywhere, regardless of interet connectivity.
Funnily enough I now work at imeem which lets users upload their music collections and share them with other users, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
I actually owned one of the first Rio 300s... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course they lost [virtualrecordings.com], but if they had won, it would have been an 'illegal' item, which would have brought me no end of satisfaction.
What's that old adage, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns? It wouldn't have been much different.
Re:I actually owned one of the first Rio 300s... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm still using my MPMan (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Pontis MPlayer3 was out there, too. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey I had one and to be honest I loved it, running with a mp3 player versus running with a CD player, which would you choose?
Re:Crippleware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crippleware (Score:5, Interesting)
Or a jogger.
I remember at the time most CD players (and MP3 CD players eventually) had a bad problem with skipping if you ran with one strapped to your belt. There was so called "anti-skip" technology (just a buffer that in theory would get you through the period you skipped the disc), but it didn't work very well. Vigorous joggers (or rope jumpers, etc.) would find that their players still skipped. I had a few friends that were early adopters of flash based players because flash just didn't skip. It was better to listen to half an album than it was to have a full CD and be constantly annoyed by the audio cutting out.
Personal Jukebox (Score:3, Informative)
The Personal Jukebox (also known as PJB-100 or Music Compressor) was the first commercially sold hard disk digital audio player. Introduced late in 1999, it preceded the Apple iPod and similar players. The original design was developed by
Re: (Score:3, Funny)