Samsung announces 16Gb CF cards

[Deanage]

Hi everyone. I wanted to post this in 2005 news but "you don't have access, etc" came up so here it is.

It's a bit off topic but I believe it concerns all Hi-MD/MD owners (and HD player owners as well), hence the post.

Samsung (and Sandisk, I believe), have developed 16Gb CF cards due for 2nd half 2006. 32Gb is planned

http://www.physorg.com/news6388.html.

It's a little while from production but I wonder what effect this card will have on the portable MD and HD market (i.e. the BIG markets).

-Will people still buy HD players when they can still get ample space in a card much smaller?

-Will anyone still bother with Hi-MD/MD's considering the relatively small storage capacity (as compared to the CF card in question), and the removable ability of CF cards, just like MD's?

I would expect an iPod nano in the future to have this much storage, as Samsung develops the NAND storage for iPod nano's.

All comments welcome.

[greenmachine]

It's all about the price. HiMD and HD are much ceaper per capacity. Other than that, i see only benefits with flash cards over any other digital storage media.

[Syrius]

You also have to wonder if current players can take advantage of it. Some machines won't see a 1 GB card when they can take up to 512. 16 GB.. sounds like overkill.

[atrain]

for cameras primarily i'd think

[banjo]

and laptops - samsung have a prototype laptop that runs on flash rather than HDD. Once the proce drops a little, we'll be there.

[tommypeters]

Also, that's 16GBit - not GByte - meaning it's 2GBytes.

Still, it's the way to go with no movable parts. Flash will probably always (or at least for quite a number of years) be more expensive than MD-like media, but it's possible to make the players cheaper. With no movable parts it's possible to make players that last longer, but that seems to be i no manufacturer's interest.

[jadeclaw]

for cameras primarily i'd think

Correct.

Think 10-Megapixel SLR cameras.

In RAW-mode, that's 30 MBytes per picture.

In other words: 66 pictures and a 2GByte-CFCard is full.

To the chip itself, depending on the case used, I guess six of them would fit along with the controller into one Type-1 case, giving 12 GByte.

But I don't think, that CF-cards or SD-Cards become a competitor to MD/HiMD in the near future.

They are simply too pricey.

Btw, 8GByte CFCards are already available - for a whopping 950 Euros (1300US$)

Edited November 11, 2005 by jadeclaw

[ynos]

Also, that's 16GBit - not GByte - meaning it's 2GBytes.

Still, it's the way to go with no movable parts. Flash will probably always (or at least for quite a number of years) be more expensive than MD-like media, but it's possible to make the players cheaper. With no movable parts it's possible to make players that last longer, but that seems to be i no manufacturer's interest.

The report is quite confusing. I think the Samsung is talking about 32 GBytes here, I have 4GB CF which I bought 9 months ago

[tekdroid]

I would expect an iPod nano in the future to have this much storage, as Samsung develops the NAND storage for iPod nano's.

All comments welcome.

http://www.palm-dubai.net/001/2005/10/hynix_nand_flas.html

Apparently Hynix is in talks with Apple now.

Flash capacity (and investment in flash) is growing rapidly and prices are dropping, and it is used where MDs just cannot be (high-speed writing to cameras, shockproof portables, etc). And it isn't owned solely by a DRM-crazy corporation hell-bent on abusing their customers and their rights

Since Sony does a lot of flash and HD work now, they know they can't make MDs the top choice for certain products in certain markets.

To compete with some of the uses of flash, MD would need a capacity and/or speed increase pretty soon, at the very least. Flash still has relatively limited writes before it fails (in comparison to MD, which used to claim 1 million rewrites), but considering most things these days are moving so fast that in 2-3years they become basically obsolete, nobody seems to care about relatively limited rewrites; it is "good enough" for Joe User. What they do notice is speed (or lack of it in MD's case) and size of portables, though.

...and for flash to compete with MD for some markets, it needs to become cheaper so discs/cards can easily be shared and duplicated. Considering networks like the internet these days (and lossless and lossy compression), that is less relevant than it used to be. Also, sharing can be had with the more universally-accepted DVD and CD, which are the default choices for offline shares and long-term archival - and both have good speeds and cheap capacity.

It wasn't too long ago when 1GB of flash was considered outrageously expensive, yet now it comes standard in many portables. If decent (MD-like) recorders aren't made with flash very soon (and competing head-to-head on price and quality of recordings), I would be very very surprised.

Edited November 12, 2005 by tekdroid

[Breepee2]

There's not gonna be a new DAP-standard with removable media. No one wants that (or everyone would have MD/CD players).

[AMPlitude]

the md will still have its niche in the buyers market

[jadeclaw]

There's not gonna be a new DAP-standard with removable media. No one wants that (or everyone would have MD/CD players).

Don't say that too fast.

Currently on sale here are cheap MP3-players for 20 Euros.

Add a SD/MMC-Card with up to 2GByte and you're set.

If you don't need the long term storage MD provides, this is a cheap alternative.

And the cards aren't that expensive either, 256MB = 20 Euros, 512 MB is 33 Euros, including sales tax.

Need more space? Add more cards.

Soundquality is a different matter...

Edited November 13, 2005 by jadeclaw

[Breepee2]

Currently on sale here are cheap MP3-players for 20 Euros.

Of course, they exist (just like MD and CD portables exist). PDA's and mobile phones are used too in combo with an SD card to listen to music.

The fact is that the vast majority of the market consist of intergrated, non-removable storage. And for a reason: everyone wants that.

Those MP3players are dirt cheap because no-one wants them.

And the cards aren't that expensive either, 256MB = 20 Euros, 512 MB is 33 Euros, including sales tax.

Need more space? Add more cards.

Altough they're not as expensive anymore (and MD is still a fraction of the cost). I know of no one using SD-cards as a removable storage solution. People just remove and add new music. When the space becomes too limited, they buy a bigger card and sell the old one.

Removability is NOT the selling point, price is.

Only MD and CD players are used with removability in mind. And the other 98% of the DAPs out there are just MP3 players with integrated HDD/flash.

[Christopher]

SD is pretty strong these days. I think it's more popular than MD has ever been, but we just haven't seen it in the applications MD is integrated into. Would I consider this to be a real healthy topic, comparing flash cards to optical media? No, because one is irrelevant and the other is blooming, and their two completely different physical medias anyways.

[tekdroid]

SD is pretty strong these days. I think it's more popular than MD has ever been, but we just haven't seen it in the applications MD is integrated into. Would I consider this to be a real healthy topic, comparing flash cards to optical media? No, because one is irrelevant and the other is blooming, and their two completely different physical medias anyways.

I think the topic is very relevant 'cause we still haven't seen a quality recorder in MD's price bracket to replace it. Until we do, this will always crop up. If MD really is irrelevant, you'd think at least one or two big-name manufacturers would hit the market with some killer flash recorders targeting MD's price bracket very soon (even if selling without the flash card) and offering potentially more linear pcm recording time (for starters). Yes we've discussed it before, but it's truly perplexing to me.

Until that happens, these topics will always come up. Both MD and flash essentially do the same thing and can both do it fast enough for recording and playback, while in other devices, MD's failings are more apparent. So when's the flash invasion on the recording front (and at similar costs to MD)? That is the question on my lips.

[dyonisus]

Soundquality is a different matter...

That's what I was thinking. For that price it has to have way better sound quality.