DataPlay

DataPlay Inc.
Incorporation
Founded 1999
Headquarters Longmont, Colorado, USA
Key people
 Bill Almon, Jr., CEO and President
Jeff Roberts, CFO
Products DataPlay Engine
DataPlay 500MB Optical Media
Number of employees
 ~30 (2006)
Website www.DataPlay.com (defunct)

DataPlay was an optical disc system developed by DataPlay Inc. and released to the consumer market in 2002. Using very small (32mm diameter) disks enclosed in a protective cartridge storing 250MB per side, DataPlay was intended primarily for portable music playback, including both pre-recorded disks and user-recorded disks (and disks that combined pre-recorded information with a writable area).

DataPlay included an elaborate digital rights management system designed to allow consumers to "unlock" extra pre-recorded content on the disk at any time following the initial purchase.

The recorded music industry was initially generally supportive of DataPlay and a small number of a pre-recorded DataPlay disks were released, including the Britney Spears album Britney. However, as a pre-recorded format, DataPlay was a failure.

There were very few products seen on the market that could write data to these discs. Most notable was the Topy Mini Writer, which retailed for $130 (USD) and housed an optical pickup unit (image №4) with a USB interface board, allowing the use of DataPlay discs much like other end-user writable optical media (e.g., CD-Rs). Other noted products were the iriver IDP-100 and the MTV Video Device "MTV FLIP", which both housed the prototype-based model (image №2).

Other trademark names:

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