What is the nature of the Player

The MP3 standard has been around for a few years now in the computing world. Ever since it was introduced, it heralded controversies in the form of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) versus previously known Diamond's Rio Port, which contested the notion if it was lawful to "rip" music data from retail audio CDs, and transfer that audio data to a portable player. The Rio Port was popularly acknowledged as the first portable player in the industry, which allowed MP3 playback, and ever since Diamond won this historical case, a multitude of new technology has been introduced which allows the playback of MP3. From mini harddisk to solid-state portable players to CDR/CDRW players, it is now no longer a niche item, but more of a mainstay of the music player industry.

Notice the use of the 8cm media instead of the more popular 12cm media.

As such, we now come to the introduction of the "WalkieMusic MP3 Deluxe" from CyQ've (pronounced as sai kju:v). This is a portable player that can only play 8cm CDR/CDRW. Why only 8cm disks, you ask? Well, 8cm discs would essentially make the player smaller, lighter and more portable when compared to its other counterparts in the market that plays 12cm disks. Though an 8cm CDR/CDRW cannot hold as much data as a 12cm disk, it can still hold about 40 to 45 MP3 songs with a capacity of about 200MB. A good quality 8cm CDR/CDRW with its own plastic casing can be purchased for about S$5. Thus, this represents an attractive proposition for those who are looking for portability, and yet want a significant amount of storage for the money.

However, one draw back to all of this is that you must have access to a CD and a CDRW drive, capable of reading and burning 8cm media respectively, in order to make full use of the WalkieMusic MP3 Deluxe. But, since the price of a typical CDRW drive is constantly falling in price, this should not be a problem for most consumers.