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MP4 file format

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MPEG-4 Part 14 , or MP4 , is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio , but it can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats , it allows streaming over the Internet . The only filename extension for MPEG-4 Part 14 files as defined by the specification is .mp4 . MPEG-4 Part 14 (formally ISO / IEC 14496-14:2003 ) is a standard specified as a part of MPEG-4 .

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78-538: Portable media players are sometimes advertised as " MP4 players ", although some are simply MP3 players that also play AMV video or some other video format and do not necessarily play the MPEG-4 Part 14 format. MPEG-4 Part 14 is an instance of the more general ISO / IEC 14496-12:2004 (MPEG-4 Part 12: ISO base media file format ), which is directly based upon the QuickTime File Format , which

156-523: A line-level audio signal (radio, voice, etc.). Devices such as CD players can be connected to the MP3 player (using the USB port) in order to directly play music from the memory of the player without the use of a computer. Modular MP3 keydrive players are composed of two detachable parts: the head (or reader/writer) and the body (the memory). They can be independently obtained and upgradable (one can change

234-626: A personal organiser are emulated, or support for video games , like the iriver clix (through compatibility of Adobe Flash Lite ) or the PlayStation Portable , is included. Only mid-range to high-end players support "savestating" for power-off (i.e. leaves off song/video in progress similar to tape-based media). Nearly all players are compatible with the MP3 audio format, and many others support Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and WAV . Some players are compatible with open-source formats like Ogg Vorbis and

312-482: A 0.85" drive that shipped in September of the same year. This form factor remains the smallest one ever shipped. Capacities of 2 and 4 GB were offered, destined primarily to the cellular phone market Samsung entered the microdrive market at a very late stage in 2008 with announced capacities of 20, 30 and 40 GB. Doing away with the bulky compact flash II connector, Samsung Spinpoint A1 microdrives were able to use

390-584: A 1.3" diameter disk, while keeping the same outer microdrive dimensions (42.8mmx32.4mmx5mm). They also used perpendicular recording technology which had just been introduced in the hard disk industry. At the time when flash memory was becoming the medium of choice for all portable application, Samsung's entry was very short lived, with only one product carrying the 30 GB model known to ship: JVC 's Everio GZ-MG73, an ultra-slim camcorder By 2006, flash-based CompactFlash cards surpassed Microdrives in maximum size and over time became less expensive as well, which rendered

468-526: A 4-foot (1.2-meter) drop onto a hard surface whereas CF cards can survive much higher falls. They are not designed to operate at high altitudes (over 10,000 feet or 3,000 meters) but can be safely used on most commercial aircraft as cabins are generally pressurized. Microdrives are not as fast as the high-end CompactFlash cards; they generally operate at around 4–6 megabytes per second while high-end CF cards can operate at 45 megabytes per second. Unlike flash storage, Microdrives require power even when no data

546-433: A bug in the wear levelling algorithm can cause data loss in flash storage were a card unplugged at the exact wrong time. Data on rotational disks is modified in place, and hard drive algorithms at the time were much more advanced than those of flash storage. Being mechanical devices however, they are more sensitive to physical shock and temperature changes than flash memory. For example, a microdrive will generally not survive

624-486: A colour liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen is used as a display for PMPs that have a screen. Various players include the ability to record video, usually with the aid of optional accessories or cables, and audio, with a built-in microphone or from a line out cable or FM tuner . Some players include readers for memory cards , which are advertised to equip players with extra storage or transferring media. In some players, features of

702-831: A crossfade mixer. Many such devices also tend to be smartphones . Many mobile digital media players have last position memory , in which when it is powered off, a user does not have to worry about starting at the first track again, or even hearing repeats of others songs when a playlist, album, or whole library is cued for shuffle play , in which shuffle play is a common feature, too. Early playback devices to even remotely have "last position memory" that predated solid-state digital media playback devices were tape-based media, except this kind suffered from having to be "rewound", whereas disc-based media suffered from no native "last position memory", unless disc-players had their own last position memory. However, some models of solid-state flash memory (or hard drive ones with some moving parts) are somewhat

780-468: A decline in sales of PMPs, leading to most devices being phased out, such as the iPod Touch on May 10, 2022, though certain flagship devices like the Sony Walkman are still in production. Portable DVD and BD players are still manufactured. Digital audio players are generally categorised by storage media: Some MP3 players can encode directly to MP3 or other digital audio formats directly from

858-627: A few hundred dollars. Some DAPs have FM radio tuners built in. Many also have an option to change the band from the usual 87.5 – 108.0 MHz to the Japanese band of 76.0 – 90.0 MHz. DAPs typically never have an AM band, or even HD Radio since such features would be either cost-prohibitive for the application, or because of AM's sensitivity to interference. Newer portable media players are now coming with Internet access via Wi-Fi . Examples of such devices are Android OS devices by various manufacturers, and iOS devices on Apple products like

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936-541: A few months after the MPMan, and also featured a 32 MB storage capacity. It was a success during the holiday season, with sales exceeding expectations. Interest and investment in digital music were subsequently spurred from it. The RIAA soon filed a lawsuit alleging that the device abetted illegal copying of music, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. and MP3 players were ruled legal devices. Because of

1014-499: A given media player is followed by an increase in the number, for example an MP5 or MP12 Player, despite there being no such corresponding MPEG standards. iriver of South Korea originally made portable CD players and then started making digital audio players and portable media players in 2002. Creative also introduced the ZEN line. Both of these attained high popularity in some regions. In 2004, Microsoft attempted to take advantage of

1092-413: A popular standard format and as a result most digital audio players after this supported it and hence were often called MP3 players . While popularly being called MP3 players at the time, most players could play more than just the MP3 file format. Players also sometimes supported Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Vorbis , FLAC , Speex and Ogg . The first portable MP3 player

1170-473: A spartan user interface and a smaller form factor, the iPod was initially popular within the Macintosh community. In July 2002, Apple introduced the second generation update to the iPod, which was compatible with Windows computers through Musicmatch Jukebox . iPods quickly became the most popular DAP product and led the fast growth of this market during the early and mid 2000s. In 2002, Archos released

1248-536: A standalone consumer product based on these drives with a product known as the Pocket Hard Drive. These devices came in the shape of a hockey puck with an integrated USB 2.0 cable. Seagate launched their 6 GB mini drive on the same day as Hitachi, in February 2005. In early 2005, Western Digital announced they would be joining the mini hard drive market with their own drives. These would be available by

1326-465: A three-month period in 2007, while 560,000 units of 1-1.8-inch drives were sold throughout July to September 2007. Hitachi wanted to shift over to bigger 2.5 and 3.5-inch hard disk drives, rather than retain focus on the small hard disk drive business. \ Founded in April 1998, Halo Data Devices was a direct competitor to IBM's Microdrive. They designed a 1-inch hard disk drive that was slightly thinner than

1404-570: Is a revision of the MPEG-4 Part 1: Systems specification published in 1999 (ISO/IEC 14496-1:1999). In 2003, the first version of the MP4 file format was revised and replaced by MPEG-4 Part 14: MP4 file format (ISO/IEC 14496-14:2003), commonly named as MPEG-4 file format version 2. The MP4 file format was generalized into the ISO Base Media File format ISO/IEC 14496-12:2004, which defines a general structure for time-based media files. It in turn

1482-434: Is being transferred to or read from them, just to keep the disk spinning in order to maintain quick access. As a result, many devices such as the iPod mini leave the drive switched off for most of the time while periodically starting it up to fetch data from it to fill the device's buffer. Microdrives will switch off after idling for more than a few seconds to counter this problem; however, this means that it needs to spin up for

1560-984: Is nearest competitor in 2006 being SanDisk . Apple also led in Japan over its homegrown makers Sony and Panasonic during this time, although the gap between Apple and Sony had closed by about 2010. In South Korea, the market was led by local brands iriver , Samsung and Cowon as of 2005. European buying patterns differed; while Apple was in a particularly strong position in the United Kingdom, continental Western Europe generally preferred cheaper, often Chinese rebranded players under local brands such as Grundig . Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe including Russia, higher priced players with improved design or functionality were preferred instead, and here Korean makers like iriver and Samsung were particularly popular, as well as such OEM models under local brands. Creative

1638-479: Is published on the official registration authority website. The registration authority for code-points (identifier values) in "MP4 Family" files is Apple Inc., and it is named in Annex D (informative) in MPEG-4 Part 12. Codec designers should register the codes they invent, but registration is not mandatory, and some invented and used code-points are not registered. When someone is creating a new specification derived from

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1716-545: Is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory , microdrive , SD cards or hard disk drive ; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media , such as cassette tapes or vinyl records . Digital audio players (DAP) were often marketed as MP3 players even if they also supported other file formats and media types. The PMP term

1794-620: Is used as the basis for other file formats in the family (for example, MP4, 3GP , and Motion JPEG 2000 ). The MP4 file format defined some extensions over the ISO Base Media File Format to support MPEG-4 visual/audio codecs and various MPEG-4 Systems features such as object descriptors and scene descriptions. Some of these extensions are also used by other formats based on the ISO base media file format (e.g., 3GP). A list of all registered extensions for ISO Base Media File Format

1872-504: The EU , demand for MP3 players peaked in 2007 with 43.5 million devices sold totalling 3.8 billion euros. Both sales and revenue experienced a double-digit shrinkage for the first time in 2010. In India, sales of PMPs decreased for the first time in 2012, a few years after developed economies. The market was led by Apple with a share of about 50%, while Sony and Philips were the other major brands. Meanwhile, sales of Apple's best selling product,

1950-516: The Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Audio files purchased from online stores may include digital rights management (DRM) copy protection, which many modern players support. The JPEG format is widely supported by players. Some players, like the iPod series, provide compatibility to display additional file formats like GIF , PNG , and TIFF , while others are bundled with conversion software. Most newer players support

2028-554: The MPEG-4 Part 2 video format, and many other players are compatible with Windows Media Video (WMV) and AVI . Software included with the players may be able to convert video files into a compatible format. Many players have a built-in electret microphone which allows recording. Usually recording quality is poor, suitable for speech but not music. There are also professional-quality recorders suitable for high-quality music recording with external microphones, at prices starting at

2106-539: The Sansa line of players, starting with the e100 series, and then following up with the m200 series, and c100 series. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPod Touch , the first iPod with a multi-touch screen. Some similar products existed before such as the iriver clix in 2006. In South Korea, sales of MP3 players peaked in 2006, but started declining afterwards. This was driven partly by the launch of mobile television services (DMB), which along with increased demand of movies on

2184-553: The Windows 95 and NT operating systems, which did not have native support for USB connections. In 1999 the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive, the Personal Jukebox (PJB-100) designed by Compaq and released by Hango Electronics Co with 4.8 GB storage, which held about 1,200 songs, and pioneered what would be called the jukebox segment of digital music portables. This segment eventually became

2262-527: The iPhone , iPod Touch , and iPad . Internet access has even enabled people to use the Internet as an underlying communications layer for their choice of music for automated music randomisation services like Pandora , to on-demand video access (which also has music available) such as YouTube. This technology has enabled casual and hobbyist DJs to cue their tracks from a smaller package from an Internet connection, sometimes they will use two identical devices on

2340-635: The "best of both worlds" in the market. Media players' firmware may be equipped with a basic file manager and a text reader. There are three categories of audio formats: Microdrive The Microdrive is a miniature, 1-inch hard disk drive released in 1998 by IBM . The idea was originally created in 1992 by duo Timothy J. Riley and Thomas R. Albrecht at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose . A team of engineers and designers at IBM's Fujisawa , Japan facility helped make

2418-469: The 1 GB model costing $ 499. Following the merger of IBM and Hitachi HDD business units, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies continued the development and marketing of the Microdrive. In 2003, 2 GB and 4 GB models were announced by Hitachi. The 4 GB model was first available on February 20, 2004 for a price of $ 499. This was followed by a 6 GB capacity model in February 2005 for a price of $ 299, with

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2496-477: The 2000s. Other non-phone products such as the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita have also been considered to be PMPs. DAPs and PMPs have declined in popularity after the late 2000s due to increasing worldwide adoption of smartphones that already come with PMP functionalities. Sales peaked in 2007 and market revenue (worth $ 21.6 billion) peaked in 2008, albeit notably mobile phones that could play music outsold DAPs by almost three to one as of 2007. In

2574-402: The 4 GB model dropping to $ 199. Hitachi additionally planned an even smaller 1-inch hard drive with a capacity of 8-10 GB under the code-name "Mikey" for late 2005 with a weight of 14 grams and a size of 40 mm × 30 mm × 5 mm. By 2007, sales and profit of the Microdrive were dwindling so Hitachi discontinued production of 1 inch hard disk drives. Sales of 1-inch drives were only about 3,000 in

2652-562: The CW100, under the brand name iAUDIO . In December 2000, some months after the Creative's NOMAD Jukebox , Archos released its Jukebox 6000 with a 6 GB hard drive. Philips also released a player called the Rush. On 23 October 2001, Apple unveiled the first generation iPod , a 5 GB hard drive based DAP with a 1.8" hard drive and a 2" monochrome display. With the development of

2730-625: The IBM drive, and was compatible with CompactFlash Type I devices. Main Article: Seagate ST1 In 2004, Seagate launched 2.5 and 5 GB hard disk drives in the same small physical form-factor as IBM Microdrive and referred to them as either 1-inch hard drives or CompactFlash hard drives due to the trademark issue. These drives were also commonly known as the Seagate ST1 . In 2005, Seagate launched an 8 GB model. Seagate also sold

2808-449: The ISO Base Media File Format, all the existing specifications should be used both as examples and as a source of definitions and technology. If an existing specification already covers how a particular media type is stored in the file format (e.g., MPEG-4 audio or video in MP4), that definition should be used, and a new one should not be invented. While the only filename extension defined by

2886-712: The Microdrive ended up being a success. Although a niche for a short time, the Microdrive market later became very competitive. Many companies began producing miniature hard disk drives also referred to as Microdrives. Some offered more storage capacity or were even more smaller in physical size to the original Microdrive. This did not last long however. By the mid to late 2000s, miniature hard disk drives were being viewed as obsolete with flash media such as CompactFlash , SD , and USB flash surpassing them in speed, capacity, durability, and pricing. Main Article: HP Kittyhawk In June of 1992, prior to

2964-486: The Microdrive, a 1.3-inch hard disk drive nicknamed the " Kittyhawk " was launched. It was a collaboration creation by Hewlett Packard , AT&T and Citizen Watch . It was the smallest hard drive in the world at the time, being 2.0" × 1.44" × 0.414" (50.8mm × 36.5mm × 10.5mm) in size while offering 20, then later 40 MB of storage capacity. The Kittyhawk was a colossal failure, and was withdrawn 2 years later in 1994. In 1996, HP shut down its Disk Memory Division and exited

3042-590: The South Korean giant Samsung Electronics . Sony entered the digital audio player market in 1999 with the Vaio Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkman , however they were technically not MP3 players as it did not support the MP3 format but instead Sony's own ATRAC format and WMA . The company's first MP3-supporting Walkman player did not come until 2004. Over the years, various hard-drive-based and flash-based DAPs and PMPs have been released under

3120-481: The US. However, in 1988 Kramer's failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent meant it entered the public domain. Apple Inc. hired Kramer as a consultant and presented his work as an example of prior art in the field of digital audio players during their litigation with Burst.com almost two decades later. In 2008, Apple acknowledged Kramer as the inventor of the digital audio player The Listen Up Player

3198-624: The Walkman range. The Samsung YEPP line was first released in 1999 with the aim of making the smallest music players on the market. In 2000, Creative released the 6 GB hard-drive-based Creative NOMAD Jukebox. The name borrowed the jukebox metaphor popularised by Remote Solution , also used by Archos . Later players in the Creative NOMAD range used microdrives rather than laptop drives. In October 2000, South Korean software company Cowon Systems released their first MP3 player,

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3276-607: The ability to download music to FlashPAC. AAC and such music downloading services later formed the foundation for the Apple iPod and iTunes. The first production-volume portable digital audio player was The Audible Player (also known as MobilePlayer, or Digital Words To Go) from Audible.com available for sale in January 1998, for $ 200. It only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate format which

3354-511: The ancestors of digital audio players such as the Apple iPod. There are several types of MP3 players: British scientist Kane Kramer invented the first digital audio player, which he called the IXI . His 1979 prototypes were capable of up to one hour of audio playback but did not enter commercial production. His UK patent application was not filed until 1981 and was issued in 1985 in the UK and 1987 in

3432-570: The beginning of the year 2003, originally marketed as an alternative to Microdrive by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. It was to be followed by 2.2 and 4.8 GB 1-inch HDD that was unveiled in 2004 International CES, with 0.8-inch HDD. On December 28, 2004, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced it had filed lawsuit against GS Magicstor, Inc., GS Magic, Inc., and Riospring, Inc. for infringement of multiple Hitachi GST's patents relating to hard disk drives, after GS Magic Inc. had started promoting mini-HDD (small form factor hard disk drive). Cornice

3510-598: The beginning or end of the file. In the latter case, the video file is not playable if the file is incomplete (truncated). MP4 files can contain metadata as defined by the format standard, and in addition, can contain Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) metadata. Portable media player A portable media player ( PMP ) or digital audio player ( DAP ) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data

3588-576: The creation of the drive possible. Due to the failure of the Kittyhawk , a 1.3-inch hard disk drive also created in 1992 by Hewlett Packard, initial support for it was reluctant. Despite that, development persisted. The Microdrive caused the creation of the CompactFlash Type II format which became the de facto standard for devices utilizing the technology at the time. Because of this, and it's advantages over CompactFlash technology,

3666-659: The dominant type of digital music player. Also at the end of 1999 the first in-dash MP3 player appeared. The Empeg Car offered players in several capacities ranging from 5 to 28 GB. The unit did not catch on and was discontinued in the fall of 2001. For the next couple of years, there were offerings from South Korean companies, namely the startups iRiver (brand of Reigncom), Mpio (brand of DigitalWay) and Cowon . At its peak, these Korean makers held as much as 40% world market share in MP3 players. These manufacturers however lost their way after 2004 as they failed to compete with new iPods . By 2006 they were also overtaken by

3744-462: The drive such as the spindle motor and head actuator. Thomas R. Albrecht , another researcher, collaborated with Reiley to design and create the drive. Thomas changed the drive technology to miniaturized conventional technologies instead due to the increased technical risk and costs of using microelectromechanical systems. The leader of mobile drive development at the IBM Fujisawa facility at

3822-531: The first PMP, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia with a little 1.5" colour screen. The next year, Archos released another multimedia jukebox , the AV300 , with a 3.8" screen and a 20 GB hard drive. In the same year, Toshiba released the first Gigabeat . In 2003, Dell launched a line of portable digital music players called Dell DJ . They were discontinued by 2006. The name MP4 player

3900-458: The first generation 1-inch Microdrive. It had storage capacities of 170MB and 340MB at a price of $ 499. The physical dimensions of Microdrive were 1.65" × 1.42" × 0.197" (42.0 mm × 36.0 mm × 5.0 mm) and conformed to CompactFlash Type II card standard. A second generation of Microdrive was announced by IBM in June 2000 with increased capacities at 512 MB and 1 GB, with the 512 MB model costing $ 399 and

3978-460: The globe and by 2005, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones and all major handset makers in the world had released MP3 playing phones. By 2006, more MP3 playing mobile phones were sold than all stand-alone MP3 players put together. The rapid rise of the media player in phones was quoted by Apple as a primary reason for developing the iPhone . In 2007,

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4056-473: The go led to a transition away from music-only players to PMPs. By 2008, more video-enabled PMPs were sold than audio-only players. By the mid-2000s and the years after, Apple with its iPod was the best-selling DAP or PMP by a significant margin, with one of out four sold worldwide being an iPod. It was especially dominant in the United States where it had over 70% of sales at different points in time,

4134-729: The growing PMP market by launching the Portable Media Center (PMC) platform. It was introduced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show with the announcement of the Zen Portable Media Center , which was co-developed by Creative . The Microsoft Zune series would later be based on the Gigabeat S , one of the PMC-implemented players. In May 2005, flash memory maker SanDisk entered the PMP market with

4212-433: The head or the body; i.e. to add more memory). Today, every smartphone also serves as a portable media player; however, prior to the rise of smartphones in the 2007–2012 time frame, a variety of handheld players were available to store and play music. The immediate predecessor to the portable media player was the portable CD player and prior to that, the personal stereo . In particular, Sony 's Walkman and Discman are

4290-481: The iPod, were eclipsed by the iPhone in 2011. DAPs continue to be made in lower volumes by manufacturers such as SanDisk, Sony, IRIVER, Philips, Apple, Cowon, and a range of Chinese manufacturers namely Aigo, Newsmy, PYLE and ONDA. They often have specific selling points in the smartphone era, such as portability (for small sized players) or for high quality sound suited for audiophiles . PMPs are capable of playing digital audio , images , and/or video . Usually,

4368-755: The late 1990s following the creation of the MP3 codec in Germany. MP3-playing devices were mostly pioneered by South Korean startups, who by 2002 would control the majority of global sales. However the industry would eventually be defined by the popular Apple iPod . In 2006, 20% of Americans owned a PMP, a figure strongly driven by the young; more than half (54%) of American teens owned one, as did 30% of young adults aged 18 to 34. In 2007, 210 million PMPs were sold worldwide, worth US$ 19.5 billion. In 2008, video-enabled players would overtake audio-only players. Increasing sales of smartphones and tablet computers have led to

4446-428: The market. The idea of the Microdrive was created by IBM researcher Timothy J. Reiley who was working at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose . He wanted to create a small form factor hard disk drive with high capacity storage that would be used for mobile devices, after working on a project to look at Micromechanics . Originally Reiley planned for the drive to use Microelectromechanical systems for parts of

4524-563: The new technology, and instead young startups would come to dominate the early era of MP3 players. Other early MP3 portables included the Creative Labs Nomad and the RCA Lyra . These portables were small and light, but had only enough memory to hold around 7 to 20 songs at normal 128 kbit/s compression rates. They also used slower parallel port connections to transfer files from PC to player, necessary as most PCs then used

4602-495: The next access, which takes about 1 second. This effect would be particularly problematic if an operating system is being run from the drive, as seen in the case of the Palm LifeDrive . Since they are thicker than flash-based CF cards, Microdrives require a Type II slot. Many newer compact cameras only have a Type I slot due to the increasing popularity of flash-based cards, so Microdrives have limited popularity outside of

4680-427: The number of phones that could play media was over 1 billion. Some companies have created music-centric sub-brands for mobile phones, for example the former Sony Ericsson 's Walkman range or Nokia 's XpressMusic range, which have extra emphasis on music playback and typically have features such as dedicated music buttons. Mobile phones with PMP functionalities such as video playback also started appearing in

4758-513: The player's notoriety as the target of a major lawsuit, the Rio is erroneously assumed to be the first digital audio player. Eiger Labs and Diamond went on to establish a new segment in the portable audio player market and the following year saw several new manufacturers enter this market. The PMP300 would be the start of the Rio line of players. Noticeably, major technology companies did not catch on with

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4836-501: The professional photography market. Certain bus-powered CF card readers lack the power needed to run a Microdrive although they do take CF II cards. When using such a device, it will usually be detected by the host, but errors will occur once the user attempts to access the drive. Some "OEM Only" drives use the CompactFlash form factor but only provide a 5V IDE/ATA interface. These will not work in readers or devices which expect

4914-413: The same size and are often compatible with each other), and USB flash drives. Microdrives allow more write cycles than flash storage, making them suitable for use as swap space in embedded applications. Flash storage always needs to move some old data around while writing, to ensure the flash's finite write life is consumed equally. Microdrives are better at handling power loss in the middle of writing:

4992-740: The second half of 2005 and reach capacities up to 6 GB. Western Digital launched a 6 GB external USB 2.0 microdrive as a part of the Passport Pocket brand in March 2006. This was made as a competitor to the Seagate Pocket Hard Drive. The unit had 2 MB of cache, 11 ms seek, spun at 3,600 RPM, and was 60 × 45 × 9 mm. The price for the unit was $ 130 upon release. On July 16, 2003, a Chinese manufacturer called GS Magicstor, Inc. (subsidiary of GS Magic, Inc.) announced it had produced 1-inch hard disk drive with capacity of 2.4 GB at

5070-731: The standard is .mp4 , various filename extensions are commonly used to indicate intended content: Most kinds of data can be embedded in MPEG-4 Part 14 files through private streams . A separate hint track is used to include streaming information in the file. The registered codecs for MPEG-4 Part 12-based files are published on the website of MP4 Registration authority (mp4ra.org), but most of them are not widely supported by MP4 players. The widely supported codecs and additional data streams are (but many more are also supported, including audio like FLAC or TrueHD ): The moov atom contains information about video resolution, frame rates, orientation, display characteristics, and more. It might be placed at

5148-561: The storage technology division in San Jose and were responsible for the business development and marketing of the Microdrive. In September 1998, IBM announced the Microdrive in North America with a maximum capacity of 340 MB. It was advertised as being about the size of a large coin, weighing less than an AA battery, and storing over 200 times more data than a floppy disk . The Microdrive was expected to be available by mid-1999. At

5226-407: The technology obsolete. As of July 2012, there are no known manufacturers of 1-inch form-factor hard disk drives. Hitachi had also stopped production of its trademarked Microdrive product. Microdrives weigh less than a roll of 35mm film . Until 2006, Microdrives had higher capacity than CompactFlash cards. As of 2006, Microdrive's capacity advantages were exceeded by CompactFlash cards (which are

5304-442: The time, Hideya Ino , highly sought the potential of a 1-inch disk drive. He had a team collaborate with the IBM researchers to create working prototypes. Those prototypes were then used to persuade product planning and marketing teams to support the project. Two notable people from the Japan development team were Mitsuhiko Aoyagi and Kenji Kuroki, who contributed to launching the product line. Bill Healey and John Osterhout worked at

5382-484: The time, CompactFlash cards had a maximum capacity of 128 MB. On June 24, 1999, IBM Japan announced the IBM Microdrive 340 MB for ¥58,000 or $ 475 USD . It was planned to be marketed as a storage device for digital cameras and other handheld devices. On August 24, 1999, Microtech International announced they would be the first North American distributor of the 340 MB Microdrive. In June 1999, IBM launched

5460-480: The user the song currently playing. The first car audio hard drive-based MP3 player was also released in 1997 by MP32Go and was called the MP32Go Player. It consisted of a 3 GB IBM 2.5" hard drive that was housed in a trunk-mounted enclosure connected to the car's radio system. It retailed for $ 599 and was a commercial failure. The Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia was introduced in September 1998,

5538-416: Was a marketing term for inexpensive portable media players, usually from little-known or generic device manufacturers. The name itself is a misnomer , since most MP4 players through 2007 were incompatible with the MPEG-4 Part 14 or the .mp4 container format. Instead, the term refers to their ability to play more file types than just MP3. In this sense, in some markets like Brazil, any new function added to

5616-452: Was developed for spoken word recordings. Capacity was limited to 4 MB of internal flash memory, or about 2 hours of play, using a custom rechargeable battery pack. The unit had no display and rudimentary controls. MP3 was introduced as an audio coding standard in 1992. It was based on several audio data compression techniques, including the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), FFT and psychoacoustic methods. MP3 became

5694-462: Was founded in 2000. Based in Longmont (Colorado), it quickly came out with 4GB and 8GB microdrive models, destined to the MP3 player and mobile phone markets. Hit with patent infringement lawsuits by Seagate and other disk drive companies, and faced with stiff competition and lagging sales, the company eventually folded in 2007. Toshiba decided to skip the 1" form factor, and in March 2004 announced

5772-510: Was introduced later for devices that had additional capabilities such as video playback. Generally speaking, they are portable, employing internal or replaceable batteries , equipped with a 3.5 mm headphone jack which can be used for headphones or to connect to a boombox , shelf stereo system, or connect to car audio and home stereos wired or via a wireless connection such as Bluetooth . Some players also include radio tuners , voice recording and other features. DAPs appeared in

5850-529: Was launched in 1997 by SaeHan Information Systems , which sold its MPMan F10 player in South Korea in spring 1998. In mid-1998, the South Korean company licensed the players for North American distribution to Eiger Labs, which rebranded them as the EigerMan F10 and F20. The flash-based players were available in 32 MB or 64 MB (6 or 12 songs) storage capacity and had a LCD screen to tell

5928-519: Was published in 2001. MPEG-4 Part 14 is essentially identical to the QuickTime File Format but formally specifies support for Initial Object Descriptors (IOD) and other MPEG features. MPEG-4 Part 14 revises and completely replaces Clause 13 of ISO/IEC 14496-1 (MPEG-4 Part 1: Systems), in which the file format for MPEG-4 content was previously specified. The MPEG-4 file format, version 1, was published in 2001 as ISO/IEC 14496-1:2001, which

6006-547: Was released in 1996 by Audio Highway, an American company led by Nathan Schulhof . It could store up to an hour of music, but despite getting an award at CES 1997 only 25 of the devices were made. That same year AT&T developed the FlashPAC digital audio player which initially used AT&T's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC) for music compression, but in 1997 switched to AAC . At about the same time AT&T also developed an internal Web-based music streaming service that had

6084-477: Was the top-selling maker in its home country of Singapore. In China, local brands Newman, DEC and Aigo were noted as the top vendors as of 2006. Samsung SPH-M2100 , the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 player was produced in South Korea in August 1999. Samsung SPH-M100 (UpRoar) launched in 2000 was the first mobile phone to have MP3 music capabilities in the US market. The innovation spread rapidly across

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