"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
normanstrong wrote ...
There have been a number of articles recently discussing the death of the
CD, and wondering what might replace it commercially. Some of the
possibilities discussed are flash memory, downloading a la iPod, or even
sending info directly to the brain. Let's ignore this latter, since it's
not presently possible, and attempt to answer the question of what might
actually take the place of CDs. A successful replacement will have to
have all the features of a CD, but solve a few of the CD's drawbacks.
Among these are the following:

1. Not long enough playing time, as is evidenced by the large number of
multi-CD sets on the market.
2. Too large. A 12cm disc will not fit in the pocket conveniently.
Furthermore, the players are too large; they should be about the size of
a minidisc player.
3. Stereo only. A new standard should allow for multi-channel playback.

You are looking at from the consumer POV.
If you were looking from the label POV, you would have included...

4. Unencrypted. Trivial to rip and re-purpose content beyond any
control of the owner of the intellectual property.
5. Unprotected. No way to control who/how/where content is used.
No way to protect unauthorized copying, transmission, etc.
6. Quality level beyond requirements. Wasted space with uncompressed
recording. Too easy to compress to MP3, etc. MP3 is now the "standard".
Anything beyond that is only of interest to the fringe (and unprofitable)
audiophile
market.

And likely others I didn't think of at the moment.

Just playing devil's advocate here. Don't kill the messenger. :-)

Those are excellent points--all of them. My guess is that protection will
be overlaid on the other requirements of the new protocol, in the commercial
market at least.

Norm