 | August 1, 2000 |
Dance partners
OUTLOOK: Can alliances drive digital music to the masses?
Despite ongoing roadblocks that range from the legality of online music swapping to the lack of a perfect portable storage medium, the momentum behind digital music continues to grow (see "Bit Players?" for more on the challenges digital music faces).
A number of new devices debuted around the recent PC Expo 2000. More significantly, partnerships are falling into place that might help drive the technology into the mainstream.
First, there's the unlikely pairing of MP3-player pioneer S3 (Diamond Rio) and Dell Computer. A few months back, S3 announced a living-room digital music player called the Rio Digital Audio Receiver, which connects to an Internet-enabled PC via a phoneline home LAN. Dell has signed on to sell the unit as a companion to its PCs beginning in August, and it now appears that Dell will be the exclusive source for the product for some time. Dell will offer the unit for $199 to anyone who purchases a Dell Dimension PC with a phoneline-networking card. Anyone else can buy the stand-alone unit for $249.
RCA meanwhile, plans to extend its foray into digital music. The company recently announced the Lyra 2, a slimmer version of its popular portable player. More importantly, RCA is readying a series of new products for later this year. These include portable and five-disc bookshelf CD players that play MP3 tunes, a palm-size mini MP3 player, and a hard-disk-based Digital Media Manager, which uses a TV for a display and stores 2000 songs.
RCA is also doing the partnership thing. The company will offer an Internet radio based on the Kerbango design—a boom-box-like product that connects to an Internet-enabled PC or LAN. Networking stalwart 3Com just bought Kerbango. 3Com is unlikely to sell a consumer audio product, but presumably will support the Kerbango Tuning Service and Kerbango Web site. Expect 3Com to sign other partners to deliver Internet radios in a variety of packages.
In one last alliance, S3 and Dolby Labs plan to bring higher-quality sounds to a portable player. The new S3 Rio 600 supports Dolby's AAC (advanced audio coding) technology, which, according to the company, produces sound that's indistinguishable from a CD. Watch our September issue for an article on audio quality.
—Maury Wright
| 
