In the event that they actually know their stuff, they’re going to even let you know it got here out in late 1998. They’re fallacious both manner, though you should not be too harsh on them. Their mistake is comprehensible.
Say it with me: “MPMan.”
The Diamond Rio’s false standing as “the primary MP3 participant” is virtually cemented in expertise lore, so earlier than it is too late, I wish to set the report straight. The world’s first mass-produced {hardware} MP3 participant was Saehan’s MPMan, bought in Asia beginning within the late spring of 1998.
The Diamond Rio’s false standing as “the primary MP3 participant” is virtually cemented in expertise lore.
It was launched in the USA because the Eiger Labs MPMan F10/F20 (two variants of the identical machine) in the summertime of 1998, a number of months earlier than the Rio.
Most tech-savvy varieties wrongly suppose Diamond’s machine was first as a result of, like almost each different main growth in digital music, the Rio introduced with it a spectacular flurry of authorized wrangling and the attendant media publicity. (Again in these days, you had been no one within the digital-music enterprise except the labels had sued you.)
So why did the Recording Business Affiliation of America single out Diamond as the primary defendant in its doomed battle in opposition to digital music fairly than concentrating on Saehan-Eiger Labs, which was the precise “affected person zero?” It is easy: California-based Diamond Multimedia was far simpler for the report labels to sue than the MPMan’s Korean producer. If the RIAA had wished to sue Saehan as an alternative, it will have needed to discover a U.S.-based workplace or subsidiary of the corporate, win the case in court docket, after which attempt to persuade a Korean court docket to implement the ruling. What a problem.
What went fallacious?
If the RIAA had gone international and sued Saehan as an alternative, maybe Eiger Labs could be as recognizable at this time because the Rio model is. Or possibly Saehan ought to have established an workplace in America, the place it might be correctly sued or feted for its new machine.
Photograph: CNET Networks
The Eiger Labs F20 is proven subsequent to
the most recent 40GB iPod.
It could have been a drastic measure, however as issues stand at this time, Eiger Labs stays largely nameless.
Even the blink tag-laden EigerLabs.com, which used to proudly show the phrases “World’s first MP3 participant,” appears to have lastly bitten the digital mud. (There’s nothing on the web site, though the area is registered till Oct. 6, 2005.)
So if Saehan-Eiger Labs produced the world’s first flash-based MP3 participant, you is perhaps questioning who earned that distinction for hard-drive gamers like Apple Laptop’s iPod.
The world’s first “iPod”
Credit score for this goes to Compaq’s Methods Analysis Heart and the Palo Alto Superior Improvement group–essentially a bunch of engineers from Compaq’s laptop computer division who realized that arduous drives might substitute flash reminiscence in MP3 gamers and allow them to carry way more music. Once I reviewed the MP3 participant these teams created (the Hango/Distant Options Private Jukebox PJB-100), I used to be blown away by the then unparalleled 6GB capability, crystal-clear sound and ample show, in contrast with the skimpy 32MB units I might seen beforehand, such because the MPMan and Rio.
Right here comes the irony: In 1998, Compaq’s engineers made the primary exhausting drive-based MP3 participant and licensed it to a Korean firm, Hango, that did not do a lot with it. In 2001, the primary iPod got here out. In 2002, Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq. In 2004, HP made a take care of Apple to distribute HP-branded iPods.
I do know I am decreasing the scenario, nevertheless it would not be an excessive amount of of a stretch to claim that the entity now referred to as HP beat Apple within the race to make a high-capacity moveable music participant by three years–an eternity on the earth of MP3 players–and nonetheless by some means misplaced.
I promise that the following MP3 Insider column shall be a bit extra forward-looking, however I simply needed to make it clear, as soon as and for all:
First MP3 participant on the earth: the Saehan-Eiger Labs F10/F20.
First hard-drive-based MP3 participant on the earth: the Hango/Distant Options Moveable Jukebox PJB-100.
Thanks.
